In June of last year, the band kicked off the campaign for their second album by “going dark” on all social accounts, deleting their social media channels entirely. Coupled with a hand-typed note from frontman Matthew Healy with cryptic language that alluded to farewells and changes, the move threw fans into a hysteria as they speculated as to whether or not the band were breaking up. Gradually, a brand new visual aesthetic for the band was revealed, first through social profile imagery being changed to a block of solid pink, before elusive mailers were sent to the band’s database of over 200k with new neon pink sign imagery, the only copy being a link to download an image file of the new neon sign. Slowly it was built to a point where speculation about the band’s new direction reached a digital fever pitch, before the campaign’s first major asset, the track and video for ‘Love Me’, was launched in late October.

As the campaign progressed, The 1975 continued to innovate with hand-typed notes from Matty that offered clues to songs’ meanings and forthcoming announcements.

The band’s use of direct emails to fans in order to super-serve them with unique content and let the band’s most engaged users seed out content throughout the fanbase through evangelism was a key aspect of the campaign, as was the use of countdowns appearing on the band’s website to fuel speculation and anticipation online.

On top of the album release, the band partnered with Apple and Beats 1 to perform a live-streamed show from atop a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles, broadcast live on Zane Lowe’s show on Beats 1 and featuring lengthy interview content with the band and Zane. The level of support which this engendered from Apple was a key reason behind the band’s digital success.

The band also partnered with Tumblr to run a series of Tumblr IRL pop-up shops in London and New York City which brought the digital campaign to life and allowed fans to experience a physical incarnation of the band’s Tumblr page – essentially a curated storefront with original artwork, exclusive merchandise and more.

Around the launch for the video for ‘A Change Of Heart’ in April, the band embraced an innovative strategy of seeding pieces of exclusive content related to the video around various partners in order to leverage key profile across their services; Vevo, Tumblr, Twitter and more were examples of platforms we were able to leverage support from in this way.

The 1975 have constantly embraced social media, direct email communication with fans, teasers, digital breadcrumbs and digital innovation throughout their career to cultivate a fiercely loyal fanbase and an eye-catchingly unique aesthetic.