Yes, It’s Time To Talk About Christmas Music: Silya & The Bad Santas ‘Happy Holidaze’ Case Study

Here we follow the journey of one Norwegian band who capitalized on the Holiday season by giving themselves a festive rebranding and dropping the seasonally themed album Happy Holidaze.

Guest post by Jenn Schwartz of The Daily Rind

“Christmas music which is a bit out of the ordinary.”  That’s what Norway’s Silya & The Sailors set out to create for fans this past November, renaming themselves Silya & The Bad Santas and releasing the tinsel-charged holiday album, Happy Holidaze. The band, fronted by the fiery, pinup-styled Silya, have been long beloved for their vintage-inspired jazzy tunes and downright fun on-stage presence. And with holiday song titles like “A Marshmallow World,” it was only fitting that our Nordic Digital Marketing team set out to create a campaign that was equal parts festive, light-hearted, and anything-but-ordinary, like Silya and her Santas.

With a release date of November 15th, we set out to initially build anticipation for Happy Holidaze and build the band’s mailing list for messaging about the album. Post-release, we switched gears to consistently re-engage fans around the new songs’ silly and upbeat holiday vibes, leading right into Jul (that’s Christmas in Norway).

Tactics

On November 15th, release day of Happy Holidaze, our team helped Silya launch julekalender.silya.com. There, fans were met with a countdown to December 1st and a call-to-action to sign up for the band’s mailing list and receive a notification when the countdown was over and a special Jul surprise revealed!

When December 1st finally arrived, the website became a snowy advent calendar (or “Jul kalender”) that counted down to the arrival of Jul.  Each day, like presents placed under the tree, a new surprise awaited fans, ranging from Spotify playlists to sweepstakes.  Possibly the most interesting of these surprises was essentially a game of musical Mad Libs, where fans had the opportunity to submit words of their choosing for Silya to include in a completely new, original holiday song!

Each day the advent calendar was live, Silya & The Bad Santas teased the day’s surprise on Instagram Stories, driving fans back to the website to unwrap it for themselves.

To encourage organic sharing around the holiday season, we even launched a verified Silya GIPHY channel, filled with the silliest and merriest of all Jul GIFs and GIPHY Stickers. We delivered these everywhere fans were discussing all things Jul, like Instagram Stories and various private messaging platforms.

Results

On Instagram, December saw the band’s highest interactions of the year, by 36%. Their 3rd highest interactions of all time.

On Facebook, December saw the band’s second highest interactions of the year, a 282% spike from November.

Silya’s GIPHY channel saw 1.4MM views across all platforms.

The Jul calendar drove the highest click-through rates of our ad campaign.

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