Calvin Harris began 2018 by declaring that he had “fallen in love with dance music again”. Determined to bring house music back to the global charts, Calvin was clear that he wanted to make a clean break from 2017’s Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1 project and focus on the Nineties house sounds that first inspired him.

One of the key tent poles of the campaign was Calvin Harris Radio. Curated solely by Calvin and updated weekly, the playlist served as a sonic template for the change in musical direction showcasing both his new material and its influences. Aware that promo opportunities would be limited, this playlist became the key reference point in our re-education of Calvin’s fanbase.

Combining organic social with a paid digital campaign, we placed the playlist at the centre of our online campaign, linking to specific tracks when promoting the singles, as well as spending behind the playlist in its own right. Over the course of the year, we added over 110k followers to the playlist on Spotify (a total increase of 360%) and recently launched it on Apple Music and Deezer.

As a label, our task was an obvious one – ensure these releases are the biggest of Calvin’s career to date. In order to achieve this, we engaged each of the DSPs to negotiate a content-led plan that would deliver maximum profile. At Spotify we launched vertical videos for both ‘One Kiss’ and ‘Promises’ that were profiled globally, while at Apple Music we negotiated a 24-hour premiere of the ‘One Kiss’ official video in return for AAA support.

Tailored audiences & disruptive ad creative:

We started our digital advertising campaign with two objectives: first re- educate Calvin’s audience on his return to dance music; second engage the fanbases of the featured artists and migrate them to Calvin’s. Aware that we needed to talk to each audience in a different way, we developed bespoke creatives for each of our targeting segments, capturing additional content such as the ‘Promises’ live video to ensure we had a creative to engage every audience.

As the success of each song grew we looked to broaden out our targeting to a more passive audience, switching to a disruptive creative designed cut through on-platform in a bid to sustain engagement. These “glitch ads” were specifically designed to disrupt the user interface of Facebook and Instagram – and they were the best-performing creative of the campaign.