After a hiatus, Mitski’s return to music started with countdown for the video launch for ‘Working For The Knife’. 60k fans gathered in the chat during the YoutTube premiere; some stayed for hours, even overnight, chatting and waiting for the video. The next day, Mitski launched a mystery T-shirt alongside a tour and her “return to socials”.

During her time away, there had been an explosion in growth through TikTok, across multiple songs, and embedded within multiple communities. We began carefully tracking and dissecting the data behind these growth spurts. We wanted to allow it to ebb and flow, while making sure fans felt connected to the new music, creating space for existing fans to gather, and open the door to whoever else wanted to come in.

We told the story of Laurel Hell through defined clear visuals. Each single and video release had distinct imagery and we made sure that all the ancillary marketing and products reflected this. We met demand for physical product through different lyric-based CD products (lyrics are very important to her fans). We had tons of different options on our D2C, colour exclusive for indies as well as different cover art for the LPs and digital.

The main single for this campaign was ‘The Only Heartbreaker’. Radio was key, as was a very curated media, and DSP plot too. There was wellplaced press features: the digital cover of Rolling Stone, and covers of Crack and the Guardian’s Film & Music supplement. Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music and Amazon Music all supported her throughout with playlisting and even some OOH marketing. On release week, it was a blanket of Mitski visibility everywhere.

One other central element was real world spaces for online communities to gather: activations like pop-up shops in New York and LA, listening parties, and key billboards across London.

The true impact of the campaign was seen during Mitski’s sold-out tours across the US, Europe and South America, as well as the chart successes.