It has been a breakout year for Cate. After her tracks ‘Stupid’ and ‘Groupie’ went viral, she saw growing support from DSPs in North America, UK and Southeast Asia, helping her begin to cultivate a global audience. ‘Groupie’ in particular was picked up by different fandoms (BTS and One Direction fans, most notably) and helped her reach fans of those artists around the world.
With the release of her EP, Tell Me Things You Won’t Take Back, our goal was to establish Cate as a powerful presence on the pop scene: a voice to watch for the future, but also one that demands attention right now.
Underpinning everything we did for this campaign was authentic engagement with Cate’s fanbase. In the weeks leading up to the EP release, we organised secret shows with Cate in New York, Berlin and London, where she performed exclusive, unreleased tracks for a select number of fans. These sessions were recorded and posted on Cate’s YouTube, TikTok and other social channels. For the London show, we had a livestream partnership with TikTok that saw 7.1k people viewing the stream concurrently at the peak, and 35.2k unique viewers overall.
In honour of the release of the single ‘Ruin’, Cate invited fans to send over objects that their exes ruined for them, along with a backstory. One week after the single release, she livestreamed from a “rage room” that had been decorated according to her aesthetic, going through the objects sent by fans and cathartically destroying them one by one.
With the release of each single, we revealed parts of Cate’s new digital fanzine, which will be made available as a limited-edition physical product by the end of the year, and will be bundled with handmade jewellery crafted by Cate.
As part of the fanzine, we’ve collected submissions from Cate’s fanbase, including the biggest lie a boy or girl has ever told them (in keeping with the theme of the album) by using a question box in Instagram Stories. Fans whose submissions are chosen to be featured will receive a physical copy of the fanzine signed by Cate. We’ve also solicited fan art submissions via Discord to be featured in the fanzine.
This digital-first strategy has paid off, with Cate gaining the attention of notable tastemakers and new fans alike. Cate will be supporting Maisie Peters on her 2023 UK tour, and has been called “a generational voice to watch” by Line Of Best Fit and “your new favourite pop star” by BBC Radio 1’s Mollie King. Even TikTok’s Rodger Cleye has featured ‘The Ruler’ in one of his viral videos.
Cate is now approaching 50m total streams, which has been helped along by significant DSP support and playlist inclusions. Cate’s TikTok following has grown steadily, with over 250k followers and a number of viral videos with millions of views. Her Instagram presence has exploded recently, growing 75% in the past six months to over 50k.
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