We have faced the challenge of sustaining and growing Nick Mulvey’s streaming and social media numbers post-album release when traditional markers, radio, TV press, were not fully firing. Our campaign is still ongoing and it has been 15 months since Wake Up Now was released.

Together with label, management and artist, we developed a post-album release and live strategy that covered the musical evolution through three tours giving so much life and new experiences for fans. This generated organic content that could sustain the social conversation. Our main activations have been around:

• Full five-piece band tour + live recorded EP full band
• Follow up tour as a trio + demo recording
• Solo totally stripped tour + solo live session EP

To help tell this organic story, we worked directly with artist and management, helping deliver and honesty and detail in the comms from Nick direct to fans as a conscious strategy decision. This was not always easy, but created deep connections with fans via his preferred channel of Instagram. We worked together by a WhatsApp focus group that helped answer questions, encourage and share the positivity coming from this strategy. The content we created was ported over to other social media platforms including new usage of Instagram TV, Stories and YouTube Community.

Alongside this strategy utilising our data tools, we were able to identify and nurture what we’ve been referring to as a “seasonal” playlist strategy with DSPs. Especially for Nick who has, across his two albums (First Mind and Wake Up Now), built up a repertoire of songs that consistently sit and perform well in Spring, Summer, Autumnal and Winter playlists.

This campaign was less about money and more about spreading a traditional album launch budget over a longer period of time. And having a full team including promotions, live, label, sync, commercial and marketing UK and international who all believed in the long term and weren’t demotivated by traditional markers not firing when expected.