Megadeth’s triumphant return to form with The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! saw their 16th studio album achieve the band’s highest-ever UK chart position (#3) since Countdown To Extinction (#5) in 1992.

With a glaring six -year gap since the last record, the longest in Megadeth’s release history, and Dave Mustaine out of territory for the duration of the campaign, we knew we had to make press and digital work hard in the UK to reach lapsed fans. We maximised our social sync capabilities and youth audience reach by partnering with the short-form social channel Woah Dude. Woah Dude specialises in cutting music to the internet’s most captivating clips of the moment to generate pieces of content with viral potential.

The singles from the campaign became our trigger points for this partnership, with a particular focus on TikTok. The content posted generated over 3m views, with one video going viral, achieving over 1.9m views on the platform within the first five days of release of the first single, ‘We’ll Be Back’.

The AV campaign centred on a global rollout of a multi-part short film chronicling the origins of the group’s mascot, Vic Rattlehead, with a video to accompany each new single. The first instalment, ‘Chapter I’, clocked up over 2m views in the first week, and was the highest performing video in over six years on the band’s YouTube channel. From the rollout of the remaining two chapters, we saw a 59% increase in WoW views.

To super-serve regional UK Megadeth fans, we partnered with Bloodstock Festival in Derbyshire for both onsite physical marketing as well as a ticket and guitar giveaway. In London, we set up a free tattoo flash day with Parliament Tattoo, playing off Dave Mustaine’s well-documented disdain for permanent “bumper stickers”.

We engaged specialist press and radio teams, receiving comprehensive, flagship support from NME, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, The Times, The FT Arts, and Classic Rock. Bolstered by on-air opportunities including an invite from BBC Radio 2 to feature Dave Mustaine as their Rock God on the Rock show, as well as support across Kerrang! Radio and other regional outlets.