London Grammar

Overview

London Grammar were gearing up to release their third album, Californian Soil, just before the global pandemic hit. As with everyone else, timelines, video/photo shoots, live/promo/marketing plans all shifted until we knew more and it was safe for the band to be back together again.

Prior to the launch of new music, a key focus was to re-engage the band’s audience after a four-year break. A catalogue campaign ran to re-engage casual fans, retarget previous audiences and drive them towards the band’s discography playlists across all DSP platforms.

This activity helped re-engage the fans during lockdown and build momentum going into the first single. To tease this, new DSP profiles were created under the name Baby It’s You, with 30 seconds of the track playing alongside posters randomly appearing over the UK which, when AI scanned, would reveal the snippet plus 10-second TV adverts in popular shows that historically worked for the band – all featuring frontwoman Hannah’s distinctive vocals without alluding to who it was. This had fans in a frenzy guessing who it could be.

The snippet was linked to the official discography playlists, Canvases were switched and socials were wiped to reveal the same imagery that had been illusively appearing. Fans knew the band were back.

The track premiered alongside Radio 1’s Hottest Record and a bespoke one-hour YouTube mix premiered before revealing the track in full. Performances on Jools Holland and Radio 1 Live Lounge followed.

The album pre-order launched alongside the title track revealing the stunning album cover only featuring Hannah who revealed the album was written in response to the misogyny and sexism she has faced over the years, with subsequent key press including covers with NME, Music Week and an appearance on Channel 4 news giving Hannah a voice she felt she had previously lost.

We also ran a successful UK tour/ album bundle initiative and worked closely with all retail and DSP partners to ensure they each had an incentive on the album.

To boost streaming and provide content for fans to engage with throughout the numerous lockdowns, the band leaned into socials more so than ever before, including onboarding onto TikTok which allowed us to showcase every side of the album pre-release.

Given how prolific paid livestreams had become we were conscious not to ask too much from fans. Knowing how much of a force the band are live, plus how international their audience is, we knew we needed a live moment and partnered up with YouTube to provide a free global stream in release week with the band performing the album in full for the first time in the stunning surroundings of Alexandra Palace’s Theatre, which really brought the album imagery and bands vision to life. We were also the first UK artist to optimise YouTube’s after-party feature with a Q&A with Greg James straight after.

Alongside this performances on Sunday Brunch and The Jonathan Ross show also allowed the band to reach their widest audiences yet.

Key Learnings

• Album entered straight in at #1 – outselling the rest of the top 5 combined

• 20,000 copies ahead of #2 and fastestselling domestic release

• Also debuted at #1 in Australia, Belgium and Switzerland – firsts for the band

• Lead album single became their highestcharting single in four years

• Biggest UK tour to date, including two nights at Alexandra Palace – all sold out within a day

 

Between the first single and album release:

• Spotify followers hit over 1m followers

• Spotify monthly listeners grew by over 81% to hit a new peak of 5m on album release

 

• Instagram grew 74%

• Facebook grew 96% to over 1m

• YouTube grew 81%

• TikTok launched growing to over 100,000 followers

Key Metrics

Project Budget

Demographics

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