The campaign for Stormzy’s Heavy Is The Head album left no stone unturned, with the UK rapper appearing pretty much everywhere – from guest editing The Observer Magazine and answering questions from kids at his old school for Noisey to doing a bible reading to end BBC One’s Christmas Day coverage and appearing on the side of London buses.
As part of the be-everywhere-at-all-times strategy, the Firepit Technology team at Warner Music in the UK also created an AR camera effect for Instagram. It allowed the user to recreate the album cover where Stormzy wears a virtual crown made out of the initials of the album title. Using facial recognition, it plonks a rotating HITH crown on your head (if you are taking a selfie) or on someone else’s head.
It was a relatively simple effect but one that was designed to reinforce the imagery in the album artwork and get fans to share their crowned creations, adding to the overall ubiquity of the Stormzy campaign in order to achieve optimum impact.
There is a risk, of course, that such carpet bombing in marketing can go too far and that heavy repetition feeds audience fatigue and the whole point of the campaign ends up undermining itself.
Overall, the campaign managed to make its presence felt in a whole host of areas but without overstaying its welcome. In the end, the album entered the UK charts at number 2, out-performing the Harry Styles album but unable to topple Rod Stewart who held onto the number 1 position with You’re In My Heart. Stormzy did, however, manage to land the first UK number 1 single of 2020 with ‘Own It’ (featuring Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy), making it his third number 1 single in the space of 12 months.