The overall concept of the campaign stemmed from the music itself, which was a comment on consumption culture and corporate greed in an increasingly connected world.

The narrative constructed had the band forced to sign their rights away to the fictional corporation called Everything Now that then took control of all aspects of the campaign, allowing us to engage with social media, content creation and all aspects of marketing in ways that would never have been possible before.

To launch, we created a 12-hour live stream from Death Valley, California, where the album was written. This ended to reveal the new album title and artwork as the band took to the stage at Primavera Sound to play the new album for the first time. All communication channels were controlled throughout by a fictional social media intern from the corporation, a character who would be slowly revealed over the campaign.

One key event was an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, carried out in character and fans delighted in playing up to the furore around all the unusual marketing activity – co-opting third-party content, rumour, memes etc.

Each track on the album had an associated product – e.g. a track called ‘Chemistry’ was also an energy drink. Fake adverts were created for several of the products, with content created around each “product launch” being used across social media, both organically and in promoted posts. The announcement of fake fidget spinner USBs (which had been teased previously) created a huge amount of traffic and widespread coverage during release week.

Underpinning the whole campaign was the use of satirical news articles. These all played into the ridiculous nature of the campaign, the band’s involvement with the corporation and ironic takes on music journalism, product placement and today’s news cycle. All the articles were linked to one another and we seeded our hero article with a media campaign that mimicked clickbait ads. Once we saw pick up among fans, press and influencers (some taking the articles at face value, some playing along), we began to reference them on the socials.