Limitations Breed Creativity
There is a substantiated reason for the longevity of Peter Drucker’s “Innovate or Die” axiom.
It’s proved true nowhere more than the music industry in 2020.
What most innovation manifestos neglect to address is the part about how it’s unforeseen limitations that breed creativity (and are arguably the most important milestones in a company’s success narrative). It’s these limitations that enable (i.e. force) iteration and lateral thinking -- in other words, we have no choice but to “think outside the box.”
As marketers & creators, 2020 backed us into that debilitating corner.
Unforeseen and uncontrollable limitations -- physical, financial, functional, fear-induced -- taught us that if we didn’t get creative, and quick, it was over… and it literally WAS over as we watched the industry halt & decay.
In the context of the music industry specifically, re-thinking the way artists produce and release content became a veritable sink or swim. The typical life-cycle of a single traditionally included the following spokes on labels’ perennial marketing wheel:
Touring
Live promo & appearances
Radio & Television
Fan Participation (e.g. Giveaways, Contests, etc.)
Big budget music videos
Ongoing rollout of studio-produced content
However, 2020 was anything but typical.
The primary conundrum became: how can we get people to engage when every aspect of life is limited to the confines of our home, including that of the artist.
365+ days of isolation, boredom, desperation for connection & community coupled with the meteoric organic rise of digital dependency only magnified our constant & consistent consumption of content. Everyone was fighting for a piece of the attention pie and doing it through an extremely limited number of engagement points/screens. That meant a rapidly narrowing window within consumers’ consideration sets & (shortening) attention spans.
And that’s exactly when & why fans’ desire for engagement peaked. Repeated acts of participation most often occur within (1) communities and (2) contests. Take a few more buzz-worthy and mania-inducing headlines about Elon Musk & Tesla from 2020 and suddenly we are seeing very tangible windows of opportunity.
When pieces appear to align, ride their momentum.
We were approached by Saweetie and her team to expedite momentum around the release of Best Friend, driving more streams, views, shares all while growing her overall brand. With the same pervasive limitations & concerns, they were stumped on any kind of creative solution, but we knew this was her first single leading into an album campaign so we needed to create an impact.
With a wholly new COVID-life set of rules of engagement, we formulated & executed the campaign, leveraged & elevated contest marketing, beyond just one platform or singular action, generated repeated engagement, made it authentic, and automated the flywheel process to trigger a sequential series of ordered operations. Contesting 2.0.
We created a contest giveaway for two Teslas, and built a widget which allowed us to create actions for each entry to trigger a stream, follow, retweet, save, etc. To get the most visibility, we rolled the campaign out in three parts. And we placed a pixel on the backend of the widget to capture audience data.
Using the Facebook Pixel, we could collect data from visitors to build lookalike audiences. It was important in this phase for her to post to socials and drive as many of her fans to the page as possible to inform our dataset of potential NEW fans.
With the data from Phase 1, we could create ads to engage a wider community and convert new fans from the lookalike audience.
We syndicated UGC content and information on the contest to various Instagram handles and Reddit Groups. This would drive a wider audience that may not be Saweetie fans but ARE interested in the contest (i.e. winning two new Teslas).
To date, we have generated over 11 million entries. There was a 10% lift in Spotify followers and 5% growth in social following.
The #ineedatesla trended #5 on Twitter and was used to create over 7500 pieces of UGC content across Twitter and Instagram .
Best Friend immediately catapulted into 30+ global viral charts on Spotify (US, UK, Australia, France, etc.)
The limits of 2020 forced us, as music executives, creators, & marketers, to rethink the way we produce & release content.