British singer Fred again.. has a name that is guaranteed to set a subeditor’s teeth on edge as it’s neither a full stop nor an ellipsis at the end. Plus the “again” part breaks the rules relating to proper nouns.
Typographical nitpicking aside, he has created something very interesting to drive Spotify engagement and to push his latest single, ‘Hannah (The Sun)’.
Built by Atlantic UK’s marketing team (alongside Warner Music’s internal Firepit Technology team) and Nerve Management, the key campaign activation involves users heading to a link on his official site (www.fredagain.com/thesun/) and connecting their Spotify account when prompted. (Those without a Spotify account can activate it using their email address.)
It has the tagline, “Watch The Sun set around the world…” and leads to an interactive UGC section where you can pick from any of the countries listed on a clickable arc to see fan-shot footage of sunsets from different countries.
He had previously asked fans to submit clips for use on the site. “You can dance, sing, kiss, do absolutely nothing, do absolutely everything,” he said. “Whatever feels right to you.”
There is also the option to play chunks of the singles ‘Hannah (The Sun)’ and ‘Homies’ (from his forthcoming album, Actual Life (February 5 – October 15, 2021)) as you do so.
When we visited the site, it said there were 257 UGC sunset clips uploaded and they come from a range of locations that include Slovenia, Colombia, France, the UK, the UAE, New Zealand, Greece and Malaysia. That said, one was marked as “location unknown” and we hope this was just a tagging oversight and not actually sent in by someone on the lam.
The music does not autoplay as soon as you access the site and only features brief sections of the two tracks on a loop. They do, however, appear to run for 30 seconds each, meaning they should technically quality as full plays on Spotify – so if you sit and watch a number of the sunset clips you could be quickly racking up multiple plays of the two tracks.
Here we have UGC as a Trojan horse for stealth plays of two singles. Possibly. If so, it’s a sunny and subtle triumph.
