About
After moving to Los Angeles to attend graduate school, a friend of mine asked me to join his band, Stillwater Sound. I joined the group as a vocalist and Chief Branding Officer. My first project as CBO was a social media campaign promoting our group's first single, “Karma”.
Objective
The goal of the campaign was to publicize the new single and generate as many streams as possible across various music platforms. The campaign would also need to establish Stillwater Sound’s brand, serving as an introduction of the band to our audience.
Brand Image
Before constructing a social media strategy, I worked with the group internally to establish an overarching brand image. The brand image needed to speak to the groups musical identity; a sound with strong influences from both classic rock and acoustic funk styles, utilizing modern production techniques. With these elements in mind, I first designed a logo incorporating the bands name in with an image of a vinyl record, and conceptualized a visual style that was warm, retro, classic, but also sharp, modern, and clean.
Social Media Strategy
With a brand identity in place, I then constructed a 21 day instagram campaign revolving around the release of Stillwater Sound’s first single. 13 days would be spent building anticipation for the release, and 6 days emphasizing its availability before tapering back into a regular posting rhythm. The overarching narrative of the campaign would be the creative process of our group- first journeying out to Joshua Tree to write the music, then venturing into the studio to mix and master the song. I collaborated with the group to create captions that spoke to our brands voice, and gathered appropriate hashtags to be used for different content types that would aid in increasing overall exposure.
Execution
After reviewing the schedule and narrative with the group, I compiled the photography and video content we had captured and edited this content to ensure adherence to the group’s visual style. I also used these materials to design artwork for the single, as well as graphics that would be utilized as content during the Instagram campaign.
Results
The release campaign has a huge success by all of our metrics. Our Instagram audience increased by over 100% the course of the campaign, and our single was streamed over 10,000 times within 2 weeks of the release. Spotify also featured our song on their curated “Release Radar” playlist, and Warner Music Group reached out to us after the Instagram campaign caught their eye.
Reflection
This initial campaign was, in many ways, an experiment for our group to see what strategies would be most effective. With its success, I now effectively have a format on which I can base future single releases campaigns.
This campaign focused more on pre-release content and less on post-release content, which may have been a weakness in our overall strategy. I am currently building a release schedule for our second single that will have an inverted content schedule (1 week pre-release content, 2 weeks post-release content) which will help me figure out which strategy is more effective. Regardless, consistent posting that continues to adhere to our brand image from here on out will be crucial in maintaining the momentum this campaign created.
