We worked closely with Apple Corps to define the overarching campaign objectives – to preserve the legacy of The Beatles and this album, whilst providing a new, younger audience an entry point to discover or rediscover it.
In addition to the release date itself, we created a secondary impact moment in #SgtPepperDay (1st June) and maximised partnerships with the City Of Liverpool, Abbey Road Studios and Chiswick House to globalise regional activity surrounding this iconic anniversary.
Keen to encourage a sense of communal listening and mass celebration, the #LetsPlayPepper map was developed to encourage fans to plot their location when listening and filter by track or country to explore worldwide streams – something that resonated with thousands of fans across over 25 countries.
We created a suite of accessible social tools that enabled all fans to show and share their love for the album. Highlights included over 60k authors using the Sgt. Pepper Twitter stickers, 25k Facebook profile frame additions and over three minutes on average dwell time exploring the story behind the artwork.
Access to Giles Martin for a Facebook Live Q&A and playback of the 2017 mixes drove over 140k views as well as questions from loyal and casual fans worldwide. Facebook is the biggest social platform for The Beatles, with over 41m fans worldwide, but Instagram continues to be the fastest growing.
Branding organic content with Sgt. Pepper frames created a dedicated campaign narrative within the feed and the use of real time stories around key moments has helped to drive the growth of under24s following the profile to over 40%. A series of impactful vertical Snapchat ads also helped us to target a potential new audience and reach beyond the hard core and lapsed fanbase on a platform that the band previously had no presence on. This was enhanced by the use of interactive Snapcodes on outdoor advertising and a dedicated geo-filter around Abbey Road on impact date. Across the multiple physical products, download and streaming, the campaign delivered a #1 album in the UK.
We took a mobile-first approach to all of the campaign creative. This meant repurposing and refreshing existing content for social environments.
-YouTube instream ads achieved a 31% higher view through rate than UMG’s current benchmarks and complimented native social feed uploads.
-An energetic Spotify homepage takeover achieved 12.5m unique sessions and drove almost 5m clicks, was supported on the service further by a Beatles takeover of the platform-owned #ThrowbackThursday playlist (1.4m+ followers) and pre-save mechanic. This activity resulted in an uplift of 33% streams in The Beatles’ catalogue overall.
-Sequential Facebook marketing was essential to isolate the loyal and engaged fans and direct them through a funnel to conversion.
-Whilst a combination of captivating Snapchat and YouTube ads, strategic Instagram content and Twitter tools, positioned this album front and centre for a potential new audience.
-A series of Sgt. Pepper Twitter stickers were used over 70k times during release week, including by Ringo Starr himself.
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