Back at the start of the year, (then) Scottish postman Nathan Evans’ viral rendition of the ‘Wellerman’ on TikTok brought sea shanties into the mainstream. The video, which hundreds of thousands joined in duetting on, caught the wind of lockdown in its sails, bringing people together from around the world with the joy of traditional folk harmonies, made possible by the power of TikTok.

The challenge for the label was to turn a viral craze in to a global smash record. Our primary focus to do so was to create a world of content beyond the UGC that was carefully curated and placed to target and engage the specific core audiences for the track to drive global consumption.

Targeting youth audiences and gaming We wanted to build the ‘Wellerman’ beyond just social media platforms to maximise the wave of virality and ensure maximum exposure of the track.

Much has been made of the scale and power of Fortnite to reach a youth audience. Epic Games rolled out a custom Shanty For A Squad emote into the game globally, when players used the emote the avatar plays a small drum and sings alone, yet when other nearby players use the emote they add their voices to the chorus in classic shanty style. Fortnite also created its own version with Fortnitefocused lyrics that was posted across their own platforms delivering several million views. Nathan as an avid Fortnite player also engaged performing the custom emote with fans on Twitch.

We took the gaming content collaboration even further partnering with Microsoft Rarer to create a music video made from the popular seafaring video game epic Sea Of Thieves, famous for its sea shanties. The video published on Nathan Evans’ channel has since gathered 10m views and was supported by Sea Of Thieves streamers and official channels.

Beyond the youth targeting, we also identified an opportunity with a kids audience targeting under-13s.

We commissioned Gabby & Alex, the biggest YouTube Kids stars, to feature in a bespoke kids music video for ‘Wellerman’. We then partnered with WildBrain, one of the largest MCN for kids content, to host and distribute our music video across their huge global network, delivering an amazing number of views to a core kids audience whilst retaining the integrity of the artist’s channels for ‘official’ content. A forward-thinking approach to digital content distribution, this was the first time WildBrain had ever hosted a music video.

We also embraced the viral spirit of early videos on the track such as the deepfake video of 4 Lads In Jeans outside an All Bar One singing the sea shanty. We worked with Deepworld to create further celebrity deepfakes throughout the campaign, including Joe Rogan and Elon Musk talking sea shanties on their podcast and breaking out in to song midway through (gathering 2m views and 24k shares).

Finally, it wouldn’t be a 2021 campaign without minting it into NFT forevermore. Nathan Evans worked with artist Jon Monaghan and Crypto.com to create The Wellerman Story 2021 NFT collection. This was the part of the first week of official drops on Crypto.com and embraced the zeitgeist of Nathan’s story and rise to success.