Our mission statement for Hoodies All Summer was to deliver a campaign that represents the themes, cultural importance and quality of the record, while staying true to Kano’s commitment to artistry and integrity.
On album announcement, we launched a YouTube premiere of the long-form, two track music video ‘Trouble’ (‘Trouble’/‘Class Of Deja’), which exceeded 100,000 views and 1,000 comments in less than an hour. The innovative blend of two songs in a video piece that mixed both short form and long-form content enabled us to engage with different audiences and playlists on streaming services to showcase the range of the album.
Next, we created a piece of content that allowed Kano to discuss the current cultural landscape in conversation with Akala. Fan reaction to these two prominent figureheads travelled with unanimous social support. We strategically rolled out five segments in the build up to album release, all supported via YouTube, socials and on platform.
In parallel to this, we worked with Spotify throughout the campaign with an aim to connect fans to the record and create a highly impactful moment for the album post-release. For a Spotify Singles session, we recorded a completely bespoke interpretation of two tracks (one new and one classic – as opposed to the typical cover format) following the instrumentation themes of the record.
On album release, we worked closely with the Apple UK team around their MADE IN LDN campaign – a programme that inspires some of the most vulnerable young Londoners. On release day, store profile then launched with an in-depth commentary from Kano, resulting in playlist covers, homepage placement and driving momentum around the release.
Instagram and Instagram Stories soon became an active and integral channel to the campaign with bite-sized versions of the existing long-form content.
Later in the album campaign, we were able to capitalise on the profile of Top Boy by re-targeting a new audience that had been introduced to the artist from the series.
Another key area in the digital strategy of this campaign was podcasts. With multiple podcast promo moments (Eddie Hearn: No Passion No Point, Distraction Pieces with Scroobius Pip and Hip Hop Saved My Life), we found an opportunity for unfiltered and in-depth conversation. This was a strategy that allowed Kano to articulate the album message with in-depth conversation instead of the more traditional pull-quote media outlets.
The album entered the UK album charts at #8 and it was through an adjustment of the streaming balance that allowed us to achieve our target of a Top 10 album. Powered by the various streaming activations, we managed to raise streaming from a 13% week-one share on Made In The Manor to over 60% week-one share on Hoodies All Summer. This totalled to a monumental streaming consumption of 4.3m streams in week one. On Spotify, that equated to a growth from 118k to 998k monthly listeners (745% growth) and a 25% increase in Spotify followers.
On socials, we saw a massive uplift in channel growth and overall interaction. Instagram grew by over 60% throughout the campaign and is now approaching 500k followers. Interaction rates nearly tripled within this period and resulted in a total of 1.5m interactions during the course of the campaign. The top performing post was a selfie from Kano, which is testament to getting him active on the platform. Total reach on Facebook exceeded 1.4m new fans (all organic reach), with the top performing post being the tour announcement where we also drove sales of the album. This post reached over 230k fans. On Twitter, we’ve seen over 3m impressions and a top performing post which alone saw over 578k impressions and an engagement rate of 3.9%.
Project Budget
Demographics
