Finding The Prince Fan Base: Creative Segmentation in a Fragmented Media World

Editor's Notes

• #2: JESSE: Welcome and define topic a bit.
• #3: JESSE: Jesse couldn’t be here today…but he leads the Prince account and worked directly with our agency, Ciceron.
• #4: JESSE: Key Challenges for WBR: previously no digital ad strategy no DMP now making a move to be smarter about our audience data and budgets My role is to now move the label forward and identify audiences, segmentations, and content/ad plans to grow and support those audiences
• #5: JESSE: Before we began with the Prince campaigns, we took a look at various success metrics around our other major artists. • We looked at a band like Linkin Park which has multiple active channels and a huge fanbase Over the years we have cultivated their fanbase (still biggest band on Facebook) and developed strategies across all content partners: Spotify, FB, Insta, Twitter, Apple, etc. We recently developed a segmentation strategy for Linkin Park with the new album “One More Light” and the pop-leaning focus of the record The amount of segmentation has helped immensely in continuing the band’s success, their share of voice on each platform, and the kind of content we run programmatically across the user base These were some methods we knew we’d want to apply to the Prince launch.
• #6: JESSE: Just as we wanted to identify the type of fans that have stuck with long-term artists like Linkin Park for the Prince campaign, we also wanted to strategize how to reach new, younger, fragmented fans that gravitate towards emerging and developing artists, like Bebe Rexha We looked at many of our developing artists, like Bebe Rexha, since they have critical mass on socials and DSPs We looked at Bebe’s fragmented audiences across all platforms like Musically, Smule, and video retargeting We determined that we’d want to incorporate some of those strategies into the Prince release, as well.
• #7: JESSE: Which brings us to the Prince releases….The first was for his Prince4Ever album back in November. Needless to say, a newly-signed deal with Prince coming back to WBR was a momentous occasion for the label
• #8: JESSE: On the plus side, the catalogue opportunities are massive for us and also the passion within the label around the vault tracks, unreleased recordings, and more
• #9: JESSE: However we faced some key challenges:
• #10: JESSE: We had literally no data or audience insight going into the 4Ever campaign. And without current Prince audience data we had no idea where to communicate the releases, build fans, target ad spends etc.
• #11: JESSE: We also knew we had more catalogue releases coming, like Prince’s streaming launch that was soon to follow. We also knew we were getting geared up for the Purple Rain Remastered release this spring.
• #12: JESSE: Furthermore, audience strategy had to be considered. We knew that fans were out there, but it was just a matter of how to find and connect with them. With the help of Ciceron, we’d ultimately cultivate a communication channel around various platforms for Prince fans, young and old.
• #13: JESSE: That audience strategy included an emphasis on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Retargeting strategy Programmatic Journey for different segmentations and age group These areas were all crucial in our ongoing deals with the Prince estate and we knew without the agency support in segmentation and audiences by platforms we wouldn’t be able to build ongoing support from Prince’s team and the future opportunities would be nil
• #14: JESSE: We don’t have the luxury anymore of limited channels to communicate, plus the ever decreasing budgets across multiple channels We feel more programmatic planning is crucial for our artists and labels to properly speak to the right fanbase, build relationships, advertise at the appropriate times to each audience segment, and to make the biggest impact with our content Agency insights are critical for our business. We don’t have the internal teams or bandwidth to run proper campaigns. Plus, we don’t have the internal expertise to identify our fragmented fanbases and to develop a journey strategy for each fan group I hope one day we’ll have a team with the type of ad/data/tracking/ intelligence but currently the best strategy for us is to leverage the expertise of an agency like Ciceron to make our campaigns as successful as possible TURN IT OVER TO ASHLEY
• #15: ASHLEY: Introduction/history in working with WBR (Jesse)
• #16: ASHLEY: Founded in 1995 (before Google and YouTube), we were one of the first purely digital agencies in the country. Ciceron literally means ”trusted guide’. As we did with WBR, we love to partner with our clients and help them navigate complex journeys in the digital space.
• #17: ASHLEY As Jesse said, this journey was definitely a complicated. We were starting from scratch, from a data perspective.
• #18: ASHLEY: We had to start somewhere, despite not having much data to work with. Prince spans across multiple genres so we needed to initially cast a wide net. We started the Prince 4Ever campaign targeting a broad audience to help uncover the audience segment.
• #19: ASHLEY: This is generally how we began framing up who our audience might be. Again, we truly didn’t know.
• #20: ASHLEY: It was ultimately like the old Guess Who game.
• #21: ASHLEY: We then pushed out the first Prince4Ever album release campaign. We delivered it through these channels. Of course, video, display and native were done programmatically….etc….
• #22: ASHLEY: As this campaign went out, our Ciceron digital media team was monitoring and optimizing its performance. Our unique approach allows us to keep everything (data and media dollars) all under one roof.
• #23: ASHLEY: We featured the new album art and saw high engagement with many of the video assets. Whether the audience saw display ads or even a Facebook Canvas ad, they were taken to a custom Linkfire page.
• #24: ASHLEY: Whether the audience saw display ads or even a Facebook Canvas ad, they were taken to this custom Linkfire page. (Expand on Linkfire a bit?)
• #25: ASHLEY: Over 78K people took action on this site.
• #26: ASHLEY: Based on campaign data from the first release, we finally had data.
• #27: ASHLEY: We were noticing that those who tended to convert more were females, ages 45-54. Note the way they were identified. We used the collected data to also frame up a lookalike audience. JESSE: This was surprising to us since we had other ideas in mind as to who our audience might be.
• #28: ASHLEY: Based on campaign data from the first release, we finally had the data we needed to better target our audience.
• #29: ASHLEY: The streaming campaign allowed people to listen to the WBR collection of music at these sites. This campaign also went directly to a Linkfire page.
• #30: ASHLEY: We saw some interesting things happen where visitors were dropping at the Linkfire page. Perhaps it was too saturated with our targeted group of mostly women so we decided to do a test.
• #31: ASHLEY: We increased the male audience reach. This did not show a vast improvement in the campaign.
• #32: ASHLEY: With the targeting of the second campaign, we saw a 34% lift to streaming services. That’s basically 1 out of every 3rd person clicking through to listen. TURN IT OVER TO JESSE
• #33: KAZY: CLOSING The Prince 4Ever campaign showed us some very important lessons that we have taken into our ad strategy going forward Without the programmatic elements, the campaign would not have been as successful – we wouldn’t have known where our fans were located due to social restrictions We wouldn’t have had the right data going into the streaming launch and now going into the Purple Rain campaign The learnings, reporting, and success of this campaign in particular was presented to our highest internal levels and is now the benchmark for how we run campaigns