Global YouTube Creator Q&A: directly following the radio reveal, there was a live streamed Q&A with artist questions which came from online audience and live audience of YouTube creators – hosted by YouTuber, JacksGap. YouTube Creators got access to the event by taking part in a one-off lyric video for the single – and the video was aired in the stream. We timed the release of the iTunes single to go live during the event so Ed Sheeran could tell fans to go and download it.
Multiply Day Gigs: three gigs in one day across three different cities in the UK, each event growing in audience size. The competition was launched prior to the day to select two super-fans to accompany Ed Sheeran on the day and document their experience on Instagram. The whole day was documented on EdSheeran.com through a multi-media content hub that pulled in #MultiplyEd content from online and offline fans, behind-the-scenes photos and InstaVids from artist, Atlantic Records and two superfans plus film crew turning round real-time tour documentaries uploaded after each leg. The final show from Dublin’s Vicar St venue was live streamed into EdSheeran.com via an eight-camera set-up
Multiple iTunes instant grat drops: five instant grat tracks from the album released in the five days leading up to the album release. Each track drop was replicated on streaming services, including YouTube. Supported on edsheeran.com with a website splash switching to a new track creative each day, it included: CTA to iTunes; a YouTube embed of the track; and the full lyric reveal of the song that also let fans share their favourite line in a single click to Facebook and Twitter.
Interactive TV campaign: TV advert in first break, with Ed Sheeran inviting fans to vote for one of three songs from his new album via dedicated hashtags. The winning song was then chosen in real time and performed by Ed Sheeran in the closing ad break. The ad also featured a ‘Shazam for more’ initiative where fans tagging the winning performance could see one of the other losing acoustic performances.
Across the campaign we drove over 2m global clicks to the album pre-order.
#EdSing trended #1 globally during the Q&A and had over 40k questions and comments via Twitter and YouTube.
Multiply Day results were 3.5k tickets sold in eight minutes, 4k uses of # multiplyed hashtag, 5.5k entries to the superfan comp, 100k unique views on the Multiply hub, 198k views, 544k likes and 2.2m people reached.
iTunes instant grat tracks ended with four of the five songs hitting #1 on iTunes and, on the Friday before release, we had eight of the top 10 iTunes songs.
KEY LEARNINGS
The YouTube Q&A energised the heart of his core fanbase, Ed Sheeran and the YouTuber creators was targeted perfectly at his most vocal online fans; this was crucial to amplifying the excitement around the launch of ‘Sing’. His Multiply Day gigs perfectly combined the warmth and scale we were aiming for on this album campaign. We were then able to spread this message to the world via socials and the online hub. Replicating the instant grats on streaming services meant we sated the fans’ demand for new music by making it easily accessible. As a result of this, there were no illegal leaks of the album.
Project Budget
Demographics
