Arcade Fire
The overall concept of the Everything Now campaign stemmed from the music itself, which was a comment on consumption culture and corporate greed in an increasingly connected world.
The narrative constructed had the band forced to sign their rights away to a fictional corporation called Everything Now that then took control of all aspects of the campaign, allowing us to engage with social media, content creation and all aspects of marketing in ways that would never have been possible before.
To launch, we created an 18-hour live stream from Death Valley, California, where the album was written. The video itself wasn't filmed live but needed to be presented as if it were - so to maintain the illusion, we worked with IBM Cloud Video which allowed zero branding or user controls; and to deliver the video as if live we used OBS broadcaster software, running from a Mac Mini that had the actual video file open, which then delivered to IBM Cloud Video to be streamed.
This climaxed with a reveal of the new album title and artwork as the band took to the stage at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona to play the new album for the first time. All communication channels were controlled throughout by a fictional social media intern from the corporation, a character who would be slowly revealed over the campaign. One key event was an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, carried out in character and fans delighted in playing up to the furore around all the unusual marketing activity – co-opting third-party content, rumour, memes etc.
Each track on the album had an associated product – e.g. a track called Chemistry was also an energy drink, Creature Comfort had a cereal. Fake adverts were created for several of the products, with content created around each 'product launch' being used across social media, both organically and in promoted posts. The announcement of fake fidget spinner USBs created a huge amount of traffic and widespread coverage during release week.
Underpinning the whole campaign was the use of satirical news articles. These all played into the ridiculous nature of the campaign, the band’s involvement with the corporation and ironic takes on music journalism, product placement and the modern news cycle. All the articles were linked to one another and we seeded our hero article with a media campaign that mimicked clickbait ads. Once we established traction with fans, press and influencers, we began to reference them on the socials. The fake news articles were so authentic that they were picked up by a Canadian national newspaper and Vice, while the fidget spinners were covered by Mashable, The Verge and The Next Web among others.
Over 425k albums were sold worldwide in release week, and Everything Now was the bestselling album in six countries, including the UK, US and Canada.