SOME key campaign highlights:

• The album ‘How To Be A Human Being’ told the story of eleven fictional characters, imagined from the mind of Glass Animals’ lead singer, Dave, from conversations he had had whilst on tour in the USA. In order to bring these characters to life, we created a series of bespoke digital activations to help flesh out the lives and backstories of these characters, and to create a real world around the album for fans to explore. These activations created a huge buzz within the fan base, and resulted in a highly engaged Glass Animals fan army that knew to expect the unexpected from the band. Activations included the creation of a never-ending blog for the track ‘Youth’, filled with images and gifs that were inspired by the lyrics of the track, that Dave curated and populated himself and which gave a intimate insight into the mind of the character. Whilst for the track ‘Season 2 Episode 3’, we created an 8-bit style game which fans could play, which included visuals of the gaming-obsessed character from the single’s music video, and revealed exclusive snippets of the song as fans played (in advance of its release) helping to drum up real excitement in advance of its release. Lastly, we created a sci-fi influenced website for the single ‘Life Itself’, where fans could sign up to a newsletter and receive updates and messages from the mad scientist at the centre of the track. All these elements resulted in a highly leant in fan base, who streamed the album into the millions, and which led to social numbers climbing into the hundreds of thousands and growing by over 27%. 

• The album track ‘Pork Soda’, told the story of two people whose relationship has fallen apart and yet they can’t seem to quite escape each other. A central part of bringing this narrative to life was through the visuals of the music video, which showcased a pair of eldery exes who still live in the same apartment building, and although not together also keep being reminded of each other. The couple both watch TV in their separate living rooms and are bombarded with messages from their ex-partner via their TV screens. In order to drum up excitement around the track, we used the central motif of the TV (from the music video) and created a bespoke campaign website https://porksoda.co.uk/ which fans could visit in advance of the track’s release. The website allowed fans to flick between channels on a vintage TV and to hear snippets of the track (before its release), as well being able to watch a series of mock-adverts, which featured each individual band member. It was an ingenious way of driving up excitement ahead of the track’s release, and helped us achieve one of the strongest streaming figures for the album in the first 24 hours, as well as pushing fans to view the music video (once it was released) to over 13 millions views.

• A key part of the overall album marketing campaign’s success was the highly original and cohesive album creative (artwork, video, visuals). We wanted everything to feel connected, and therefore every music video or piece of visual content, gave a subtle nods to the single creative that had come before it in order to make it feel as though everything inhabited the same world. The setting from one music video, would appear in the next music video, and artwork across each single would reference artwork that had come before, making the campaign feel like a never-ending journey into the eleven character’s lives. This also extended to the live tour, where the band re-worked all their live visuals to reference the album colours and motifs, to bring the characters alive on stage too. Upon the album release, we worked with Tumblr to host an immersive fan album event, and decorated the chosen venue with the colours and props of the ‘How To Be A Human Being’  world, including hiring actors to play the eleven characters from the album cover. It was a highly immersive, engaging way of bringing to life the band’s world, and cemented the creative, cohesive nature of the campaign. This attention to detail led to the band’s highest UK album chart position to date, and helped streams hit over 54 millions. The album also received a coveted Mercury Music Prize Nomination (one of only 12 nominations), and above all led to an extremely leant-in highly engaged fan base which still exist to this day.

• Alongside the compelling campaign creative, we also worked to roll out a highly ambitious live tour, with the band taking the album across the globe. As mentioned above, the tour production was completely centred around the album creative, making the Glass Animals experience feel like a whole cohesive world, and we even commissioned a huge golden pineapple (one of the album’s most recognised symbols and lyrics) to take centre stage as part of this. For key shows, like Glastonbury, we took this one stage further and encouraged the fan base to fill the audience with pineapple foats and flags, thereby creating viral fan moments that were then shared online. The commitment to live really grew authentic fan bases in market, and the shows creative visuals cemented the fans love of the band.