Bring Me The Horizon have been on a rocket of a journey over the last few years, selling over 2m albums globally to date and playing sold-out shows in over 40 countries, including two sold out nights at The O2.
To promote the band’s comeback single, ‘MANTRA’, and to support them in maintaining this momentum as well as pushing them further, we launched a mysterious two-week global outdoor and digital campaign.
Centralising the theme around a fake cult, posters were displayed across the globe which pointed the public towards
a website and a hotline, which received over 40,000 calls in two weeks. What was waiting for them was a mysterious website urging them to “Join a Cult” called MANTRA and an answering machine which played unsettling voice messages and teased snippets from the band’s upcoming single. Each time it was called, different teasers played, provoking enthusiastic fans across the internet to decode and piece together the puzzle left by the band. With support and interest from press such as Kerrang! and NME, it was on everyone’s minds that Bring Me The Horizon were set for a climactic return.
The campaign set-up had everything: from finding 10 different voiceover actors, recording 45 minutes’ worth of audio messages, setting up 12 different phone lines in 10 countries… to getting posters displayed around the world, building four websites, hiring actors pretending to be part of the cult before the band’s performance at Reading Festival. The campaign successfully combined together tangible and digital experiences, bringing the overall theme of the lead single into the real world.
The phone line was hugely successful, receiving more than 40,000 calls in two weeks, with an average call duration of five minutes. On launch we had more than 100 people on the line at the same time!
We kept updating the voice message every 72 hours to encourage fans to keep calling. The more they stayed on the line, the more clues and audio teasers they would get.
The fanbase was fully reignited and new listeners were on board, making Bring Me The Horizon a household name, As a result, the press coverage has been constant. There has been amazing support across the board including an NME feature and a Kerrang! cover and interview, followed by being made Greg’s Tune Of The Week and Annie Mac’s Hottest Record on Radio 1 upon release, earning its place firmly on the A-List.
The campaign lead to the single premiere on Radio 1 as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record. Following the set-up of the ‘Mantra’ teaser campaign, we launched the album pre-order across the band’s socials and introduced their new official website, as well as their official stores.
Across the band’s website and official stores, we’ve had almost 1m page views and 7,000 product sales with Instagram being the second-highest revenue driver after the band’s website and mailers.
The reaction across the band’s socials was incredible, with more than 20m impressions over those two weeks which is the most the band ever had in one week. On launch, we also delivered 75,000 emails with a 26% open rate. The album reached a total of 5k pre- orders in these two weeks which was 1k more than total pre-orders of their previous album, That’s The Spirit. The campaign resulted in peaking at #10 on the iTunes chart, entering the iTunes Top 50 in 44 countries and the pseudo video trended at #1 on YouTube.
On Spotify, the track was streamed 5.3m times and was added to 15 New Music Friday playlists, including #4 in the UK and #6 in the US. It was also added as the first track to Rock This, as well as to a further 33 Spotify lists with ‘MANTRA’ in #1 position in 13 of those. Similarly, on Apple Music the band received support across the board.
All this aside, the campaign has firmly re-established Bring Me The Horizon as one of the leading alternative bands produced by the UK and has since made them a household name.
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