Tom Grennan was a brand-new artist in an incredibly competitive and challenging market, so we quickly had to establish and position him as the most exciting debut artist of 2018.

With a feature coming with Chase & Status on ‘When It All Goes Wrong’, it was important we released a body of his own work pre-release to establish him as a credible artist in his own right, as well as making sure not to miss the opportunity of discovery whilst he was performing at Wireless in front of 60k people, performing on Jools Holland and Radio 1 A-list rotation. That track was the stripped back ‘Something In The Water’ which climbed to #1 on Hype Machine and Spotify’s viral chart, a track which was used on Love Island nearly two years later, gaining over 4,000 Shazams – which we used in our TV and digital creative when advertising around the show.

We were building Tom’s socials from scratch, including his Instagram which has now grown to 100k. We had to quickly create and build his “world”, which involved regularly posting with personable content worked for Tom. The engagement was incredibly high and we rewarded fans by offering exclusive content, including video premieres, audio teasers, first access to tickets, Facebook/Instagram live stream Q&As, as well as monthly meet & greet competition, driving people to his store
(which saw consistent spikes in pre-orders.)

Tom played football professionally when he was younger, so there was a clear opportunity when ‘Found What I’ve Been Looking For’ was confirmed as Sky Sports Premier League’s title track for two seasons. First and foremost, it was all about the music, but we cemented Tom in the sport world with regular appearances on Soccer AM, features with the Premier League, Soccer Bible, BBC Sport, Goal.com, Man U takeovers, an interview and goal kick session with Leicester’s James Maddison and he even had a “re-trial” with Luton Town FC.

The album was released around the World Cup, so we were reactive and used exciting goal footage with a ‘Found What I’ve Been Looking For’ the soundbed which we advertised with sports targeting, which performed brilliantly.

From the start of the campaign, with every single release, we announced a new show, placing him way ahead of his peers, and being one of very few artists to announce Brixton Academy before releasing his debut album (which he sold out). His October tour had over 30k tickets combined and he appeared at 14 UK festivals over the summer, performing in front of over of over half a million people – his Rize and Reading & Leeds being one of the most talked about sets – making him one of the hottest tickets in the UK at the moment.

We consistently fed out live footage of Tom from the start, both on stage and acoustic behind the scenes, constantly working the music and live side by side. On week of release, Tom played eight in-stores around the UK, as well as breaking a Guinness World Record for the most concerts (10) in 12 hours.

For his debut headline UK tour, we launched a hashtag gallery to collate fans live shots which have been used more than 1,500 times, incentivised by Tom choosing his favourite to frame and sign.

Tom Grennan is one of only three UK-signed artist to achieve a debut top 5 album this year, the biggest male debut album release this year. He has been awarded a Brit Certified Breakthrough Award.