Fred again.. had a sensational summer, with a viral Boiler Room set, viral TikTok sound ‘Turn On The Lights again..’, and jam-packed EU and US festivals, including unmissable sets at Primavera and All Points East.

All of this, plus the success of postlockdown anthem ‘Marea (we’ve lost dancing)’ and previously released Actual Life albums, laid ample foundations for an incredible album campaign and live plot to see out 2022.

Given the mass audience growth, our goal was to engage and educate new and casual fans on the Actual Life process, whilst also maintaining cult-like superfans.

For the former, we focused on a series of “process” videos; these showcase how Fred works with found sample sources and builds a world from them, resulting in a new piece of music and a story to accompany it. We seeded these out through TikTok and Instagram, on Fred’s channels, and via third-party creators, targeting audience tribes, identified from their journey to discovering Fred, and tailoring content as relevant.

We worked closely with artists sampled on the album to share their story and produce their own content.

We focused on building a community for super-fans to share their fandom, engage with each other and with Fred. We worked with Levellr and FourFour Digital to build and run Fred’s Discord server. Fred engaged with “shoot-outs” for fan input and Q&As, helping to cement the server as the place to be a super-fan.

The power of community became most evident the week before release. Fred announced he left the album at his favourite London pub and, at a few hours’ notice, hundreds of fans descended to hear it for the first time. The Discord community then organised their own pre-release playbacks around the world. A phenomenal 18 took place.

The night before release, Fred told the community he would lead a bike ride to play the album. Fred arrived at Marble Arch to find a group of hundreds of fans on bikes. Fred led a cycle round the park, eventually pausing at Wellington Arch for a rave. Fan and crew content merged to create the official video for Clara, which was released on Fred’s YouTube channel.