On 4thAugust, Britney Spears headlined Brighton Pride festival,kicking off the European tour of her Las Vegas show, Piece of Me. We saw this as an opportunity to celebrate two decades of hits with a goal of re-engaging both core and lapsed fans across all streaming platforms.
We launched the artist-curated playlist Pride With Britney on Apple Music, a first for Sony Music UK gaining amazing profile for both the curated playlist and the Britney Essentials playlist throughout Pride weekend. Both playlists entered the top 50 on the Apple Music playlist chart, gaining additional exposure as a result.
To support the pride playlist we activated a paid-social campaign which included a Snapchat geo-filter to capture fan engagement and maximise sharing. Our geo-filter achieved excellent results across all metrics, including a share-rate 550% higher than our agency’s benchmark.
We extended this activity by partnering with Gay Times online, securing bespoke editorial which helped us reach an additional 400k+ of Britney’s LGBTQ+ audience.
During the second phase of the campaign, centred around the UK tour dates we re-established partnerships with both Apple Music and Spotify, gaining additional premium profile for Britney repertoire.
For phase two we launched an extensive paid-social campaign that achieved over 14.3m impressions, reaching over 4.5m UK users. Using thumb-stopping and best-in-class targeting,we delivered 2.3x impressions in comparison to previous SME campaigns smashing Sony Music metric benchmarks. To measure success, we partnered with Facebook to launch a Reported Actions Study, achieving a UK first for streaming.
To further increase our impact in the lead up to the tour, we teamed up with global promoter Live Nation to reach Britney ticket purchasers with bespoke streaming marketing messages to build pre-show excitement.
We also identified influencer Mark Ferris as a Britney superfan and invited him to experience Britney’s Piece Of Me live show. Mark produced fantastic fan-curated content which he shared on his Instagram and YouTube channel to his combined following of 1.2m. His involvement was vital in reaching a younger digital-savvy audience and marked Sony CMG’s first artist influencer marketing initiative.
We used this moment as key opportunity to re-engage the Britney streaming community that we will continue to nurture. Artist involvement was a crucial element of this campaign and significantly contributed to the overall success.
Campaign highlights included:
-Increasing UK Spotify streams across Britney Spears repertoire by over 52%
-Achieving an uplift of 682% on the Spotify exclusive Piece Of Me Tour playlist.
-Increasing Apple Music streams by over 270% on the Britney Essentials playlist.
-Establishing our first artist influencer marketing campaign and developing relationships which we will continue to utilise.
-Working collaboratively with streaming and media partners to drive additional awareness and catalogue consumption.
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