The website
The johnnewman.co.uk website has been the focal point and hub of the digital activity surrounding the release of his #1 debut album, Tribute.
Within the album sleeve to Tribute, is a beautifully designed Tribute Tree where John acknowledges all his musical influences that led to the creation of his self-written and coproduced album.
Tribute Tree (as part of website):
We also worked with The Unit design agency to bring the Tribute Tree to life using YouTube. When fans navigate through the page and click on each artist their YouTube video loads in the central “diamond” playing John’s favourite track from each artist. This has proved to be one of the most active and engaging section of the website as users explore and discover artists new and old. The website also features a bespoke community section where fans can create their own profile, connect with other fans and post comments and images from the live shows they have been to. This will then grow to become a living, breathing archive of all John’s gigs throughout his career. http://www.johnnewman.co.uk/interactive_ tribute_tree
My Tribute – Creating Your Own Tribute Tree (as part of website)
We also launched a My Tribute section of the website. John wanted to offer his fans the ability to create their very own personalised ‘Tribute Tree’ design and show all of the artists and bands that have soundtracked their life. The tree can then be shared on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ and also have the option of buying a bespoke high-quality A2 print of their Tribute Tree.
Each print is purchased through John’s very own D2C webstore by quoting the unique PIN at the checkout stage. The prints are fulfilled by our chosen commerce partner Sandbag and individually printed by printpressonline. com.
Tribute App (Facebook and standalone):
We created a mechanic whereby fan made videos and images can be pulled into a single page. This page sits as a standalone webpage and also as an app on Facebook.
Videos are automatically pulled in from Vine and Instagram when a user uses the hashtag #MYTRIBUTEVID and played in the centre. Users can skip through and choose the videos to watch. We can also enable the app to pull in pictures. This app will prove particularly useful around John’s tour, whereby it will be a central hub for fans to upload and share their tour footage.
There was a 300% increase in web traffic week of release.
The average time spent on the Tribute Tree page was over two minutes and 30 seconds, considerably over the average user time. Basic social network/database stats over the last few months have been exceptional:
12,300 person database built from scratch over 10 months.
A huge Facebook increase from 42k on the 1st August to 186k to date. During week of release his engagement on Facebook was 20%, which was great as it meant we had a captive audience to push our marketing messages to on release week.
Plus an impressive Twitter increase from 27k on the 1st August to 70k to date.
Key learnings:
By working closely with John creatively and concentrating on building a solid fanbase from the start, we were able to drop exciting and relevant content/D2C offerings to an engaged, responsive audience around the singles and album launch.
Since then we’ve seen his social networks grow at an exceptional rate and have been able to re-promote these digital assets as discovery tools to a whole new pool of fans.
Due to the strength of our database from an early start, when it came round to doing the ticketing for John’s early headline shows, we were in a position to be able to negotiate up to 100% (unheard of) of the ticket allocation to sell D2F via his own ticket shop, for John’s first show in London, and high percentages ever since for his two headline tours since. We have gone on to sell over 3k tickets D2F across the two tours and his first headline show. We have therefore been building on our ‘early adopters’ database with D2C ticket and webstore purchaser data, further increasing our direct relationship and knowledge, with John’s key fans.
Project Budget
Demographics
