Seminal British singer/songwriter David Gray released his latest Best Of compilation on 28th October 2016. Including two brand new tracks, as well as a reworking of his first single, The Best Of David Gray spans over quarter of a century of hits and classic catalogue.
To announce the record, a unique and world-first dynamic Spotify playlist was launched. Titled The Best Of David Gray Weekly, the playlist populates its track-listing based upon which of David Gray’s songs were played the most during the previous week. The notion behind this was to complement the compilation’s release with an ever-changing Best Of David Gray, a greatest hits compilation for the streaming age.
As the release collected music from the past 25 years, a library of live footage was unearthed and watched by David for the first time. Filming his reaction to the footage created a wealth of assets to drip-feed via socials to his most dedicated fans. As the compilation was released on the Friday before Halloween, we decided to make a tongue-in-cheek video asset that corresponded to this particular holiday event. By compiling multiple “reaction cam” shots, we were able to generate a visual piece inspired by the classic horror movie, The Blair Witch Project. This allowed us to create humorous visual assets that showed the artist’s personality. After A/B testing the Halloween-themed pre-roll versus a generic video asset, we found that the former resonated stronger with core fans. As a result, our online advertising campaign targeted superfans with this particular pre-roll. This helped to drastically improve CTRs as the core fan base was essentially delivered a bespoke piece of content. The asset was also used for TV advertising across multiple channels and also alongside David’s appearance on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. All of it was perfectly optimised for mobile.
Debut Chart Position #30 Although The Best Of David Gray is fundamentally a greatest hits compilation, we were extremely careful for it not to be seen as another cheap release amongst a sea of bargain collections.
Whilst it does contain two brand new tracks, we wanted to further legitimise and validate interest in its release. This was primarily achieved by introducing an ever-changing and fan-dictated Spotify Best Of playlist.
Through publishing a world-first digital initiative we were able to generate excitement and news-worthy pieces to promote this release.
Multi-platform campaigns can be daunting, especially when you suspect an artist’s fan base is primarily focused around one digital space. However, after close inspection, it became more apparent that David Gray’s audience would likely engage in a fairly new technology (Spotify) and brand new technology (playlist).
A final key learning would be that being reactive to worldwide trends can generate incredible buzz and results. By using a comical Halloween-themed asset, we were able to create discussion, humour and, ultimately, broaden our reach.
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