For the launch of ‘Strip That Down’, the debut solo single from One Direction’s Liam Payne, we knew that the huge fanbase and captive audience he had garnered as part of the boyband was the biggest tool at our disposal. As such, we focused heavily on digital and the various social platforms where Liam already had millions of followers to kickstart our campaign and build anticipation for the release.
We kicked off the campaign a week before release with a pre-save tool that gained a total of 35k saves, a record at that time for a UMG artist.
We would later go on to use the Spotify data captured here for extensive retargeting in our online advertising.
Our teaser campaign continued with a livestream on Facebook where we revealed the title and release of the single. To date this video has had 500k views and reached 2.2m people. We continued to tease the track via mobile-optimised video content throughout the week.
After the launch, Liam was also one of the first artists to use the Facebook Live with feature, which allows users to invite guests into a two-way stream. This was also highly successful with 565k viewers during the stream and VOD.
On the Wednesday pre-release, we launched a Snapchat filter lyric reveal, where we placed 24 Snapchat filters in locations globally each revealing a different line of lyrics from the song. Fans were encouraged to then tweet the lyrics with a #StripThatDown hashtag and piece together the song. This had huge and immediate reach, with 200k uses of the filters within 24 hours and #1 worldwide trend on Twitter.
Continuing our collaboration with Twitter, Liam’s largest social platform, we created a Twitter emoji (1.7m uses) and a set of Twitter stickers for their camera app (265k uses) to ensure prevalence on the platform.
Our largest partnership event was two weeks after the single release with YouTube. We held a simulcast livestream event at YouTube Studios in London and New York, where fans were invited to a Q&A event with Liam and host Marvin Humes. During the event, the ‘Strip That Down’ video was also premiered mid-way through broadcast to both fans in the room and those watching online at home. The video was then immediately delivered to go live on Liam’s YouTube channel. The show had 250k unique viewers. The ‘Strip That Down’ video itself has had 211m views to date. YouTube heavily promoted the event on its socials and we were also lucky enough to get a YouTube homepage masthead.
To us, it was crucial that we focused first on the existing fanbase and cater heavily to their anticipation and appetite for a Liam solo career. That is why so much of our initial planning and ideas were reliant on fan engagement and participation, making sure we catered to users on every key social network. This was highly effective in kickstarting a globally successful launch. The initial buzz translated quickly into wider awareness and excitement. One of the key learnings is that, for an audience like Liam’s, there is never too much content or too much you can do. Therefore, an always-on and digital-first strategy was and still is central to our campaign.
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