Iron Maiden’s The Book Of Souls was their first studio album in five years and first ever double album. Announced mid-June with just the front cover, track listing, track lengths and songwriters of each song, their global fanbase was sent into a frenzy trying to piece together what the album might sound like.
We wanted to retain as much mystery as possible around the album until people had it in their hands, so assets were initially limited.
Pre-orders steadily built on anticipation alone until the end of July when we utilised an animated version of the album cover coupled with a 27-second guitar solo, released natively to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube which sent the fans into a frenzy, amassing over 1m combined views.
The next music from the album to drop was the official video for ‘Speed Of Light’ on 14th August. We maintained engagement with the fans through this period via a re-launch of their official YouTube channel, uploading 19 of the band’s most popular videos in HD for the first time and encouraging fans to vote in a video tournament via Twitter and on the band’s website, building subscribers into the new video launch, which had over 1m views in its first day (now heading towards 9m).
The video is an incredible journey through the history of video gaming via the band’s mascot Eddie, which provided the perfect set up for a web game, where we chose to create the Donkey Kong level – which was released the week prior to the album release. The game received over 250k visitors, drove significant pre-orders of the album and received an FWA Site Of The Day award.
Video director Llexi Leon also provided additional insight into the video via a specially commissioned behind-the-scenes video, captivating over 150k hardcore fans and driving our remarketing data.
We also partnered with Amazon to offer fans that pre-ordered the album the chance to be flown to Paris by lead singer Bruce Dickinson to hear the album in the studio it was recorded in, pre-release. The album was then released hitting #1 in over 24 countries across the globe, cementing the campaign as a success.
