Scottish neo-trad band Eabhal, released their second album, Aisling, in May. The album is inspired by, and draws heavily on, geographical influences, with each track having a strong connection with a place and a time – from Assynt to Allendale. The target audience for the album was Scottish and Northern English people living within these breathtaking, but often remote, areas as well as international visitors to Scotland and the North of England.

The band were keen to get people to delve into the story behind their music and appreciate the songwriting process. For the band, the history, culture and language of the tradition is important, but so is innovation and evolution. With Aisling, they wanted to emphasise this and invite the audience into the stories and the narrative around the music. There was a focus on linking online and offline, encouraging active listening and trying to reach a younger audience.

To reach them, the band announced a 20-date tour and a geocaching campaign. The band worked with record label The Bothy Society on the campaign which, even pre-launch, had already seen people from all over the world find the “treasure” in the most magnificent places in the UK.

Geocaching encourages people to use phones or GPS devices to navigate to containers/geocaches hidden across the world. In this campaign, fans and geocachers used Google Earth to hunt down the boxes, which contained notepads and pencils as well as unique postcards for each spot. On finding the boxes, hunters would write their name and date in the pad. The postcards had embedded QR codes which users would scan to view integrated AR videos of the band congratulating them on their find, explaining the story behind the track and location. There were hidden links to listen to the tracks, links to live show tickets, and the ability to post comments about the music, location and their journey. Hashtags and social media tags were added to postcards to encourage people to screenshot and share content of their findings and clues.

The postcards were fully functional and hunters were encouraged to post on. They featured spectacular location photography from Eabhal’s whistle player, Hamish. For those who were unable to go hunting in person, information on the tracks and photos was also available on Google Earth to make it as accessible as possible.

The world of Scottish trad is evolving and innovative campaigns like this show the genre in a new light and allows us to reach a much wider audience.

The geocaching campaign showed that there is a younger audience for contemporary Scottish traditional music and that there is still an audience interested in active listening. The use of new technology doesn’t have to cost a lot and there are ways to link online and offline marketing that are natural and non-intrusive.