The objective of this campaign was to engage Metallica fans with the release of …And Justice For All: Remastered in an interesting and innovative yet profoundly “Metallica” way.
We drew on the iconic imagery of the artwork immediately as inspiration for our marketing and knowing the popularity of Metallica T-shirts as well as superfans’ great pride of their collections, we created #MetallicaTShirtDay – a way for fans across the globe both to celebrate the release and to bring them together with a united love of Metallica and …And Justice For All.
This was to take place on release date (2nd November), so ahead of time we created assets featuring multiple famous monuments/people from around the world in …And Justice For All T-shirts. These were seeded out via socials/eCRM in the lead-up release day with the message: “Share yourself wearing your Metallica T-shirt to feature on Metallica.com, plus one lucky winner will win a box set.” This was ensuring that the message of the album release wouldn’t get lost in the noise of #MetallicaTShirtDay.
In order to widen this beyond the traditional Metallica core fanbase, we worked with LOUD on creating a Facebook camera effect that would place a Metallica T-shirt on you or a friend, should you not have your own. LOUD developed a method of detecting whether the user was shaking their device and used it as a simple interaction to switch between two original …And Justice For All T-shirt designs. This AR lens launched on #MetallicaTShirtDay in the hope that people would use the lens creatively and add T-shirts to pets, friends, monuments… pretty much anything!
Alongside the lens launch, we used owned social channels, eCRM and PR to spread the message across other rock channels including our in-house brand, Rock Legends. We also created a series of GIFs for use on instagram stories that complimented the spirit of the day and tied it back to the release again.
#MetallicaTShirtDay was a resounding success worldwide with widespread use across Instagram & Twitter. We saw tweets with dogs in T-shirts, babies rockin’ Metallica onesies and multiple people sharing images of them at work as nurses and doctors with their Metallica logo emblazoned on their chest. It was great to see the AR lens T-shirts being shared alongside the ‘real’ T-shirts and to see the Metallica community come together and show their love for the band and a great album in their history.
We considered #MetallicaTShirtDay to be a success the moment we saw fans from around the world sharing their love for the band, their posts surpassed 3,500 on Instagram, reached more than 2m people on Twitter and saw some great rock accounts supporting it such as Kerrang! magazine.
The AR lens was a really interesting and engaging element to the day that saw 40k people engage with it. The functionality of the lens was sophisticated in comparison to an average selfie lens which only requests you “move your eyebrows”, as it requires you to move and place a virtual object – which some people may find complex. The figures show a 64% conversion rate from impressions to camera impressions with a further 20% taking a photo of the AR lens and their environment either saving to their device or sharing to their own feed or stories.
The success and enthusiasm is reflected in the sales of the product which charted in the UK at #22, the highest chart position in their reissue series so far (surpassing the last reissue by 16 places in week one).
A real world activation can be limiting, but creating a virtual equivalent broadens the reach and extends the life between the online and offline.
Superfans can be very authentic voices and storytellers when engaged with a campaign and are a key part in the success of an activation like this.
AR lenses are a great asset for a campaign, but with body tracking not yet being available on Facebook, we faced multiple hurdles when developing a lens that added a T-shirt to a user. We had to rely on facial recognition which wasn’t without its issues – meaning we ended up with a lens that required extra interaction from a user beyond the usual “move your eyebrows”. This meant a long development time.
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