Millennium Parade (MP) are a Japan-based creative collective organised by Daiki Tsuneta, a producer and songwriter based in Tokyo, who also leads one of the region’s biggest bands, King Gnu. Chaos and mystery underlines the group’s collective vision to present Tokyo’s new values to the rest of the world. We were tasked with launching and managing MP’s social channels in a way that brings this vision to a global audience.

Visual identity is a central component of what makes MP unique so we launched their Instagram with a custom nine-image grid which introduced the band to new visitors. Within each post was either a snippet of an older music video, a piece of merch or a teaser for an upcoming video. In this way, we were able to creatively reveal their discography and tease their upcoming music, while staying true to their visual identity. On Spotify, we created Canvas videos for each track, strategically uploading clips from their previous music videos and sharing across socials, to drive uplifts in streams of each song from their catalogue on the platform.

Once the accounts were launched, we turned our focus to introducing the members of the collective, which was tough as the group didn’t want to be the face of their social accounts. First, we produced pixel art-based character cards for each member of the collective to introduce their role. Second, we created a Spotify playlist curated by the members to help show the music that inspires them and ran a Spotify competition for merch which drove close to 2,000 new Spotify followers on their profile. Third, we re-wrote the band’s bio and reflected across all digital platforms to ensure it conveyed their vision in a way a global audience could connect with.

After introducing the members, we emphasised bringing the characters of their latest music video to life in unique ways. To do this, we utilised Giphy to launch a custom Giphy Arcade game. By doing this, fans were able to interact with the characters, rather than letting them remain a passive concept. We then continued to used the characters in assets to celebrate milestones and encourage streaming, Shazams and video views. We strategically targeted these assets to different groups of fans by genre and by country to learn more about the global potential fanbase.

Finally, we wanted to bring the audience into MP’s story. Being a visually oriented collective, we knew their audience had a keen interest in art. To achieve this, we launched a fan art campaign and social unlock campaign, which helped flood social media with thousands of pieces of user-generated content and drove an additional 2,000 new Spotify followers. Throughout our organic social efforts, we were also running social ads to help increase followers across social platforms and Spotify. By working both organic and paid socials, we were able to develop a more strategic campaign, utilising our organic strategy to build retargeting audiences from video views and social engagements to promote new music later on.