The Neon is Erasure’s 18th studio album and followed the UK top 10 album World Be Gone.
Our campaign was designed to reach existing fans of Erasure whilst also increasing their audience by re-engaging with casual/lapsed fans, plus audiences gained during the Robbie Williams stadium tour in 2017. Our plan was: to create environments for this album’s reach to be amplified; contextualise the album within Erasure’s career; and further solidify their place in the contemporary music scene.
The album had been recorded and scheduled pre-pandemic. Due to lockdown, we moved the release by a couple of months to give us more time to plan the campaign. If there was one thing we were sure of, it was that the world needed the positivity of this Erasure album over the summer.
Erasure’s audience has been growing over the past three albums and we know that they are big fans of physical product. However, we wanted to be very careful with the state of the world being what it was. Out went our super-deluxe bundles: we didn’t want our fans to have to be spending too much during such a precarious time. We focused on strong packaging across key formats, with a simpler bundle approach.
Engaging the digital agency F-That, we created a series of digital tools that explored the Neon nature of the album so we could reach the audience whilst they were all at home. We also took the opportunity to work with a collection of drag queens who, whilst all at home and essentially out of work, jumped at the chance to be in the video for ‘Nerves Of Steel’ which stands out amongst a number of similar home videos recorded during lockdown.
Our in-house digital marketing team built a plan to run across all of the artist’s socials. Forming a coherent funnel process to increase audience reach throughout the campaign. A key print ad in Classic Pop plus a couple of outdoor back-lit posters to highlight the artwork as the world re-opened, alongside strong Radio 2 and DSP support were all part of the campaign to build the strong preorder numbers we were targeting.
The first single from the album was added to the BBC Radio 2 A-list (peaking at #15 on the airplay chart), second single on B-list. Performed at BBC Radio 2’s Live At Home festival.
The project received great support from Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer who we worked with closely so that the band’s key playlists were all updated, plus editorial support. Playlists featured heavily in our campaign. Three singles featured in New Music Friday. They gained over 200k new followers across Spotify and Apple Music. Spotify’s This Is playlist gained over 10k new followers. The album charted in the UK top 5 at #4, the band’s highest-charting album in 26 years.
The album charted at #1 in the Official UK Vinyl, Cassette and Independent Charts. Remixes of the first single hit #5 on Commercial Pop Club Chart.
First-month views on YouTube of ‘Nerves Of Steel’ exceeded our first single from both this and the previous album. Current views are at 403k with a fantastic 50% retention.
Pre-orders leading into release week matched previous album which was released three years ago in a more buoyant market and not during a global pandemic!
Project Budget
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