Five albums in five years, 75m+ fans, a widely reported hiatus and now a fourpiece; our objective was to deliver a campaign that placed the fans at the heart and show the band as truly unified. Put simply, say “thank you” to those loyal fans.
With the band and their fans now older, innovation had to be present at the core of the campaign, but the key was to keep this fun.
Partnering with Google, Twitter and Apple across the campaign allowed us to get creative and deliver what the fans wanted, where they wanted it – on mobile. In addition, it gave us reach outside the core, creating activity that achieved mainstream pick up.
There was a surprise dropping of tracks and content; no pre-promo, just four tweets from the band direct to fans, followed by a social and targeted ad campaign.
We partnered with Google to build a mobile site within Streetview that delivered 14 days of surprise interactions leading up to release. Items appeared daily in the Made In The AM space (a ‘fictional’ room shot with a 360° Google camera). Fans moved about the space to find new items which, when clicked, delivered exclusive IGs, videos, images and audio. Socials drove to the site and once inside fans were able to share content back to socials tagged with #MadeintheAM to sustain visibility up to release.
We partnered with Twitter to give the fans six custom emojis: band members, group and album. We then mobilised that groundswell with a 24-hour global fan competition to show just how much their country love 1D. The top 10 countries were rewarded with a custom emoji. Not wanting to leave anyone out, on release day all 140 countries were surprised with their own custom Twitter avatar and header. It culminated in The LDNSession with Apple Music, a secret gig hosted by James Corden for 150 fans and content from the gig was rolled out on Connect week of release.
Other campaign moments included a Snapchat Story, Blippable content and a digital photobook to drive D2C sales
The campaign achieved a #1 album across the world including key markets UK, Japan, Italy and Mexico.
We saw 1.1m visits to MadeintheAM.com in 14 days, with 76% coming from mobile devices. In addition, the site drove a 13% click-through rate to pre-order on day of launch, six weeks after the pre-order first went live.
It turns out that everyone does love emojis! Heat World announced that it was the “Best day ever!” and we saw over 46.7m uses of the emojis, multiple worldwide and country trends. The site and Twitter activity garnered PR coverage across music, tech and mainstream press, including Billboard, MTV and The Telegraph, plus The FWA awarded us Mobile Site Of The Day.
Other moments saw great results: Snapchat Story delivered 294.5m views whilst the UK D2C activity drove a 6k uplift on sales.
By putting in place a tight takedown strategy, we were able to drive fans to content available only on Spotify, iTunes and Vevo. Inevitably this had a huge and, in this case, positive effect on sales. However, it also demonstrated that this strategy was only going to be effective for certain artists. The fanbase is one that naturally creates a large volume of UGC and without this available there was a content gap that needed to be filled to ensure longterm engagement. By working with the band, Google and Twitter, we were able to deliver fans premium and exclusive content, rewarding them through an enhanced experience and activating them on a global level.
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