What Came Before, Chase & Status’ sixth studio album, went back to their roots, the fans that made them. This idea formed the basis for the album marketing campaign. Alongside Crowns & Owls (creative), we shot 1,000 C&S superfans at a bespoke “album cover rave” to capture a singular rave moment for the album cover.

Phone pouches were used to ban phones for authentic rave energy. A circular idea of shooting iconic rave films for the album visualisers also took place in the venue, alongside a music video shoot for ‘Mixed Emotion’ (directed by Femi Ladi) to capture authenticity.

This night was also the launch of the What Came Before album campaign. Superfans were the first to see the album title, with a sign-up page emblazoned across the venue. The next day, whatcamebefore.net launched across social media, and C&S went dark on channels. We spent two months dark pushing to the sign-up which gained close to 30k signees. Signees gained early access to C&S’s London summer headline and album messaging.

As the music launched, single covers were taken from the wider rave image captured on the night, keeping fans guessing. These images also formed a bespoke merchandise range.

Earlier in summer 2021, the band’s Discord and TikTok launched. These rewarded fans with early access to imagery, music (TikTok original sounds), a series of Twitter Spaces talks, and live events, including early access to the Koko album launch event. This event gave the fans the chance to hear the album mixed in full as a DJ set, ahead of release, and to see the album product in a pop-up shop. This generated significant online buzz via platforms such as TikTok, with fans tagging themselves in the image.

TikTok has become a huge success for C&S, gaining a huge modern music audience and helping to spike single success for ‘Mixed Emotions’.

On album release, the superfans from the launch event were able to own a physical copy of the album featuring them on the cover, a circular moment and piece of fan history. Fans that made C&S, immortalised forever and super-served throughout the campaign.

Oh, and we managed to get Hollywood star Jason Statham, or “Jason Status”, to promote the album as his own, but that’s another 400 words…