Some Key campaign Highlights: .

• During my time as Head Of Digital, we grew the band’s socials by over 10,000% resulting in over 20m fans worldwide. The highly engaged global fan base was achieved through innovative digital marketing campaigns, highly personal, targeted social content, and complex digital activations, which all led to a hugely leant in fan base across multiple channels including Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, You Tube and Facebook, all of which helped the band hit the no. 1 album spot for their first three albums in multiple markets, and also sell millions of tickets to live shows worldwide.

• Examples of bespoke digital and social activity included a 5 Seconds Of Summer Pacman inspired game called ‘Hungry 5SOS’ which we built to drive album pre-orders for the band’s debut album. Fans could create their own gaming character, and then play the game to unlock hidden, unreleased snippets of tracks from the album, and were then encouraged to pre-order the album once they had completed the game. This caused a huge talking point within the fan base and we had hundreds of thousands of plays of the game, and helped us push the album pre-order into the thousands, and worked towards the band hitting the album no. 1 spot across the USA, UK and Australia. 

• For the release of the band’s single ‘Don’t stop’ we staged a global You Tube live stream in conjunction with Google, which saw the band dress as superheroes (in line with the creative from the single artwork and music video) and abseil live down the UK Google office. The live stream was heavily seeded in advance with a clear CTA and appointment to view for the fan base, whilst always directing fans back to the track itself. We had fans from around the world join the live stream; invited Niall Horan from One Direction to chat to the boys (and thereby also pooled on the 1D fanbase) and performed an acoustic version of the track live for fans, before the band ‘abseiled’ down the side of the Google UK building. The stream garnered millions of views online, and the band trended throughout the night on Twitter, and we saw a direct uplift on streams on DSPs which helped push the band towards the no. 1 single spot in the UK. 

• We consistently worked towards a highly curated and heavily populated stream of social content which included everything from eye-catching, shareable campaign visuals and content, to behind the scenes, highly personal band content. The band wanted to be incredibly connected with their fan base, and we worked consistently to capture vast amounts of content documenting each stage of the band’s rise to fame, to ensure that fans felt they were there for every step of the journey. This led to monumental growth online and a hugely engaged, leant in fan base, as the content felt compelling and authentic. Fans were seeded a real mix of short form, off-the-cuff content for channels like Twitter and instagram, alongside longer form, more curated vlogs for You Tube to ensure there was a real variation in content for fans to engage with and share.  

• The creative behind the band’s second album, ‘Sounds Good Feels Good’, was heavily influenced by street art and in order to create a digital moment around this we implemented a global graffiti art and QR code campaign to celebrate the album’s release. We teased the location for various graffiti spots around the world, where local artists had created artwork inspired by the album songs, and fans were able to find artwork and scan a QR code to unlock extra content around each track, and were also encouraged to stream the track. We captured content from each graffiti spot to create a real buzz in each location and to get fans talking online, and this helped to push up streams on release week, with the album hitting the no. 1 spot across the USA, UK and Australia. 

• The band had a huge amount of tickets to sell for the ‘Sounds Live Feels Live’ worldwide tour, and in order to create a buzz around the tour announcement, we created a ‘5 On The Wall’ surveillance website . This mysterious website was leaked online, with fans unsure what the url meant at first, but which eventually led to a website which saw the band ‘leak’ footage from their tour rehearsal room  to promote their upcoming tour. Fans loved getting a glimpse into the backstage life of the band and quickly starting sharing the website inline, from which we then drove fans to the tour announcement and ticket on-sale leading to sell out shows across the globe, and thousands of tickets sold worldwide.

• In order to put the band’s huge global fan base at the heart of their marketing campaigns, we also organised two huge fan initiatives in Europe and the USA around the band’s first two album releases, which were designed to bridge the on and offline worlds, by bringing together IRL experiences with a number of digital initiatives. The first campaign was a ‘5 countries In 5 Days’ European fan-centric tour, which aimed drive sales and grow the band’s fanbase within the European market around their debut album. Over five days, fans saw the band visit five key markets in Europe, inviting fans to a series of bespoke pop up live shows. We spent weeks publicising the events in advance, by creating social content that was specific to each country, and allowing fans to win tickets to each event through participation in digital challenges, such as food and art challenges, that the boys also participated in and which drummed up a huge buzz online as the boys really made the content their own. When the band were actually in market for the five days, we pre-devised a consistent content rollout plan, with fans able to follow the band’s journey and feel part of the tour from wherever they were in the world. This led to our engagement rising by over 261% in the run up the campaign and we reached over 17 million fans in Europe throughout the five days on the road, and helped to grow our fan bases throughout Europe. This all helped towards the album hitting the top 10 chart position in numerous countries throughout Europe. 

• Alongside, the European event, we also hosted a mammoth 35-country-strong fan convention/competition in LA’s Paramount Studios in the run up to the band’s second album ‘Sounds Good Feels Good’, which saw the band take over the New York set in the studio and re-brand it into a 5SOS themed fan convention. Fans were able to win flights and tickets to the convention through taking part in a series of digital challenges and competitions in advance of the event, and we worked closely with our label partners across the globe to reach over 45 millions fans worldwide to drive the band’s presence in each market and to make each fan group feel targeted and seen, whilst also promoting the upcoming album release. Challenges ranged from digital competitions posted on the band’s socials to radio competitions that we promoted online and we reached fans from very corner of the globe. During the fan weekend itself, we curated a varied  content schedule from the event, as well as hosting a global live stream from the New York set that saw millions of fans tune in worldwide, again resulting in our engagement across socials going through the roof, and we trended on multiple occasions across Twitter throughout the event. This night ended in the band playing a show at LA’s infamous Forum, from which we also shared content clips, and meant that our whole fan base felt a part of the weekend. We saw a direct uplift in streams around the event and boost to our physical pre-orders, and this all helped towards the band reaching no. 1 with the album in multiple markets. 

• Alongside social and digital activations, it was also a key part of my role to build a lasting, meaningful relationship with all the major Digital Streaming Platforms (incl. Spotify, Apple, Amazon and You Tube), in order to secure key placements in editorial playlists and to drive in-platform marketing spend from these partners. We did this through working with each partner individually on a series of bespoke digital activations. This included launching a worldwide Spotify album listening party via a bespoke built website, which drove streams into the millions; an Apple curated video content piece that was promoted in the app and helped us leverage extra marketing support, and two global You Tube live streams which hit millions of views worldwide. We also ensured the band engaged with each platform throughout releases campaigns, be that through personalised playlists, creating platform specific visuals or utilising specific in-app features, in order to build up their followers across each platform and stream into the hundreds of millions. This was key in helping the band to hit the coveted no. 1 album spot across the US, UK and Australia for their first three records.