2021 saw the release of the debut album from Maisie Peters, You Signed Up For This. The album announcement came alongside news that Ed Sheeran had signed Maisie to his own Gingerbread Man Records.

For the years prior, Maisie had been dedicated to documenting her musical journey and so she had a deeply invested, ever-growing online community. By the time the album was released, we needed to ensure this audience were going to maximise exposure and genuinely care about the commercial success; You Signed Up For This went on to be a #2 debut.

In 2021 alone, Maisie’s TikTok grew from 45k followers to a staggering 230k. This rapid growth was down to a consistent posting strategy.

Kicking things off in February with the single ‘John Hughes Movie’ and it launched with a substantial TikTok collaboration to celebrate the birthday of the late movie icon. Using #JohnHughes, Maisie created a series of video “challenges” to encourage users to romanticise their own lives like a John Hughes movie, driving over 35m new hashtag views in the first week.

Following on from ‘John Hughes Movie’, Maisie had several other key moments on TikTok. An original song called ‘Girls House’ captured the imagination of the fans and had a viral moment with over 366k views and daily fan requests for release.

Around focus single ‘Psycho’, Maisie posted a series of clips from the recognisable video showing the cast interacting with trends at the time. This theme then came back around for Halloween where Maisie shared footage of the many fans who had copied the videos signature look. Single content for Psycho drove over 10m views alone.

Zoom played a key role in this campaign, where we were able to drive mailing list growth through a handful of key hangouts that Maisie hosted. This kicked off with the You Should Sign Up For This activation where Maisie then announced the album news before it went online. Over 2k fans were added in the few hours this was live. Other announcements included John Hughes movie watch parties, album release day parties and “leaking songs” sessions.

To “celebrate” Valentine’s Day this year, a phone number was given to fans to be able to text Maisie instead of texting back that boy that didn’t deserve them. Upon going live, Maisie received over 1.2k messages in the first day.

Overall, the fan first approach is and will continue to be the focus for Maisie. It’s helped build a strong and loyal fanbase that continue to grow alongside Maisie.