To bring the world of Lord Huron’s fourth studio album to life, Ben Schneider (lead singer/guitarist), the band and the Republic Records team created an immersive world and livestream series (streamed exclusively through NoonChorus) called Alive From Whispering Pines. It was a four-part series, rolled out once a month leading up to album release.
Along the way through the various episodes fans were seeded Easter eggs, teased new artwork and introduced to other characters. Between the skits, Lord Huron performed songs and slowly revealed more of the new album.
Song performances were uploaded to the band’s YouTube account for fans and exclusive merch was sold through the bands online store around the event.
Throughout the episodes, commercials were shown of the discography from the “long lost” bands/ artists that recorded at the studio before Lord Huron. To leave Easter eggs for fans, we started putting up “fake” memorabilia items up online and even in local record stores (none of the items online were actually for sale).
We also went as far as to set up “fake” DSP profiles for some of the artists and delivered songs to these profiles that fans heard from these artists on the livestream episodes.
The Thursday before the album was released we invited fans to join the first ever digital seance. Hosted online by Lord Huron, fans were asked to join WBUB TV and participate in a virtual summoning of our ghost characters to unlock a long-lost transmission from Tubbs Tarbell.
As the seance progressed, objects from the ghost characters faded into existence and circled a floating TV set, and every time a user successfully recited the incantation, they appeared on the sliding map background allowing fans to see where other fans were across the world.
Once the ritual was complete, the setting calmed and the broadcast began streaming. The broadcast consisted of audio skits from Tubbs and a first listen of the new album before it was released.
For our first ever digital seance, we set a goal for 20k utterances to unlock the broadcast but fans blew us away reciting the incantation over 25k times in 15 minutes.
The seance saw 20k unique page views and over 10k unique visitors. Following the release of the album, Long Lost debuted #1 on the Billboard Top Americana/Folk Albums Chart, #2 on the Billboard Top Alternative Album Chart, and #3 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums Chart.
Our lead single ‘Not Dead Yet’ also reached #1 on AAA Radio for three weeks. The Alive From Whispering Pines livestream series propelled Lord Huron to #2 on the BandsInTown x Billboard Top Livestream Artist Chart.
Through this campaign, we learned about the importance of narrative world building and leaning into your fan community. The more the passionate fans participated, the deeper down the narrative rabbit hole they went and the more we and the band rewarded their passion with various activations. They shared fan theories, alerted other fans of Easter eggs discovered online, and consistently shared key information on these platforms that we wanted fans to discover organically.
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