A key campaign element for this release was to make the unannounced digital release of the album (three weeks prior to the official release date) feel globally unique. The digital release was scheduled for 9th August.

We knew it was important for this to feel like a campaign for Bon Iver fans from across the globe so we had to do something that would feel specific to each territory. Rather than releasing the entire album at once, we decided to “give” a track to each key timezone in the world the day prior to the full album appearing and release the record as the world turned through the day on 8th August.

We set up a radio premiere in eight different time zones and released the tracks one by one on DSPs each hour. We laid the groundwork for this by launching a video for the first track (a short noise-prelude to the album) via Bon Iver’s very active Reddit page so that fans were aware that something was coming.

The first premiere went out on Australian radio and coincided with the track appearing on digital services and being added to the main album playlist hosted by the band. As each hour marker came up a new radio premiere would happen (Eastern Europe, Western Europe, UK, US (ET, CT, MT, PT) and each track would be added to the digital services and playlists. A lyric video for each track was also launched each hour. This gave us multiple social opportunities throughout the day and gave all the different time zones around the world a sense that this was both a global and local release. After the final track was added late in the day on 8th August, the playlist was complete and the album was released on all digital services as a complete product midnight local time on 9th August.

This was a unique launch of the album. To our knowledge (and to the knowledge of our DSP partners) this had never been done before and became a social and press talking point for the release, positioning Bon Iver as a creative, globally relevant artist.