Skepta Turns Up Heat With ‘Ignorance Is Bliss’ Album Campaign [CASE STUDY]

In this piece, we look at how chart-topping UK rapper and producer Skepta and has team planned and executed a successful global promotional campaign for the rapper’s fifth album Ignorance Is Bliss.

Guest post by Michelle Golden of The Orchard’s The Daily Rind

Goals

UK rapper and producer Skepta released his highly-anticipated fifth album Ignorance Is Bliss on May 31, 2019 via his label Boy Better Know and distributed via The Orchard, cementing himself once again top of the UK albums and singles chart. An international grime MC and founding member of Boy Better Know, Skepta’s genre-defining album is a glimpse into his life since his 2016 Konnichiwa, which garnered many awards including BRIT Awards nominations and the esteemed Mercury Music Prize. 

The Orchard and Skepta’s team had six weeks to create a global campaign for Skepta’s Ignorance Is Bliss — and Skepta wanted to turn up the heat. Heavily driven by Skepta’s vision and the album’s thermographic cover art, the campaign covered extensive web, digital, out of home, and experiential marketing efforts.  

Tactics

Skepta transformed the concept of global listening into an actual visual representation of his fans worldwide — an online interactive heatmap updated daily. Who said that data couldn’t be creative? This visualization was a reflection of Skepta’s music connecting fans across the globe, while using data pulled from The Orchard’s content management system. 

Captured on a high-end Thermology camera, Skepta’s album cover was the core of his campaign and influenced the creative direction. The heatmap, developed by Wayward Creative, was the landing page for Skepta’s official website (helloskepta.com) and in real-time pinpointed where fans were listening to Ignorance Is Bliss all over the world. The user could spin the globe 360 degrees and click to see how actively engaged their city was streaming Skepta’s album. It became a fan-facing method of tracking the release week performance. Fans could contribute to the heatmap growth by streaming Skepta’s barrier-breaking release. 

The heatmap was supported by a live experiential Thermology billboard screen in partnership with Amazon Music. Fans could walk through an area at Shoreditch High Street station in London and see a thermographic version of themselves right there on the big screen. Skepta also participated in a live Q&A hosted at YouTube’s London Creative Space and a special live performance for Spotify at a release event in London. 

Skepta’s Ignorance Is Bliss iconic artwork was used across all marketing, social, and advertising collateral including out of home ads projected in multiple cities worldwide and digital ads announcing the album release date and various tentpole moments of the campaign, directed and designed by Skepta’s team and The Orchard’s Marketing and Design teams. 

Results

• Skepta’s highest charting record landing at No. 2 on the Official Album Chart in the UK
• The first time thermographic technology had been used on a billboard in a public space
• 143 million+ streams across Spotify and Apple Music
• 12 million+ YouTube video views across official videos
• ‘Complete’ Spotify playlist created and built up to 24,000+ followers
• Music Ally’s Best Music Marketing Campaigns of 2019

Listen to Skepta’s Ignorance Is Bliss here.

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