Having delivered successful reissues for Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree, it would have been easy to follow the playbook for the 20th anniversary reissue of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Instead, we pushed ourselves to deliver something extra which would break new ground for U2 and pull in audiences to U2’s music long after the campaign glow had faded.
We realised that All That You Can’t Leave Behind offered us the chance to bring more of U2’s famed videos from that album to platforms for the very first time. Our ambitious approach was to deliver weekly video releases with deeper storytelling and exploration delivered across socials, whilst also engineering their YouTube channel to be industry-leading through an unprecedented YouTube partnership.
We led with the video for the iconic ‘Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’, carefully rebuilt from original 35mm rushes scanned at 4K, with newly remastered audio. Overall, we sourced, created or painstakingly restored new videos for the channel to full HD and 4k where possible.
Alongside this, we embarked on deep optimisation by delivering bespoke thumbnails, designing smart metadata and honing the overall appearance of the channel.
On the campaign side, we delivered a scrapbook website where fans could upload personal memories of the Elevation tour, discuss with fellow attendees and get their hands on an official U2 tour pass complete with their own picture.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind is famous amongst fans for its bespoke emojis that represent each song on the album, so we gave them each an animated home via bespoke Spotify Canvases and delivered the first ever official U2 GIFs hosted on Giphy, Tenor and Gifmagazine profiles to provide access for their huge global fanbase.
The crescendo to our reissue campaign was a livestream for the newly upgraded Elevation: Live From Boston concert video. It featured exclusive content and fans’ questions were answered by the band via a video call hosted by Jo Whiley. Working with Twitter, we created a bespoke emoji for fans live tweeting about the event.
This campaign proved to be a huge success, resulting in a significant increase in U2’s catalogue consumption, especially on YouTube.
The Elevation: Live From Boston stream saw over 57,000 devices tune in, of which 11% engaged in a save-to-Spotify overlay, adding 500k streams of the album after the event finished as well as a 53% increase in streams per listener. This, alongside the scrapbook, Giphy and further campaign initiatives landed the All That You Can’t Leave Behind: Anniversary Edition at #27 in the UK charts.
Reviewing our efforts to deliver lasting value, we’ve generated 13.2m views on YouTube above forecast, with an additional 160k subscribers in the five months from June to October. Most notably we saw that after our deep optimisation, algorithmic views increased by 250%, helping to expand and grow our audience on the channel long after the campaign comes to a close.
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