We focused on three key pillars with this campaign: staying focused on the quality and authenticity of the music, continuing to foster a very close relationship with fans and amplifying the power of live music.

CAPTURING CONTENT UPFRONT. One of the problems that we face with Bear’s Den is that, despite strong album and ticket sales, there was not a traditional online or print press base for the band. So, in order for the band to tell the story of this album, we took it upon ourselves to capture the making of the album to both allow us to tell that story via social media and give press some really special content so they could start telling the story. We captured a large amount of content in studio to use during the campaign. We filmed 20+ short video snippets in studio talking about every song, capturing the recording process and explaining some of the album influences. This video content was then very successfully trickled out across socials over a three-to-four-month build up to release and build up a good run of pre-orders and got coverage on sites like The Evening Standard. During this time, they also needed to announce the departure of their old member, Joey. This was handled very respectfully and amicably on socials with support from the fans which helped turn a potential negative into an intriguing point of interest about the new album.

FOSTERING CLOSE CONNECTION TO FANS. The band come from a very DIY ethos and their fanbase was built over early years of gigging constantly and creating a real connection with fans. We wanted to stay true to that. One of the ways we did this is the band created potato-stamped special-edition vinyl (something they have done on every release), all of which sold out before release. They played an underplay gig at the ICA three months before album launch to create a special sneak peek for their super fans. The band also played four in-stores across the UK on the week of release and several in-stores around Europe. We were keen to experiment with a Facebook Live stream, so we hosted an album listening party three days before the album release. We live streamed from their studio where they started by introducing the album and then playing the album in full, introducing every song and then panning out to the sound desk for every song while they typed out answers to fan questions online. This was an incredibly well-received and positive session. Fans were blown away and very complimentary on what an original way it was for them to have their first listen to the album narrated by the band. The post reached over 1m people (the band had fewer than 100k likes at the time). For ‘Dew On The Vine’, the second single, we created a very tongue-in-cheek video that featured the entire band, crew and friends of the band having a ping pong tournament. We shot a vignette for every character to introduce the band and crew to their fans. We then followed up by creating a competition to play ping pong with the band before their shows in London and Bristol. We created a splash page where fans could watch the video and then share on socials who their favourite character from the video was with the hashstag #dewonthevine. The fan interactions were very successful.

MARKETING. We spent advertising across the board – online, print, outdoor and radio. Using our unique position as a label and live promoter, we were able to integrate the marketing for both the live and record campaigns very tightly, enabling us to amplify the overall message about the return of Bear’s Den. To do so we experimented with new online formats such as Facebook carousel and to create a strong joint marketing campaign.