Adele – An Academy winner & Marketing wizard teaches you marketing.
The mysterious number 30 daunted all the famous monuments last year. It left Twitter stirring. People were left in speculation. And this became one of the biggest marketing marvels in history. Who’s to blame for it? The Global icon- Adele.
Adele – is the recipient of twelve Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, fifteen Grammy Awards, eighteen Billboard Music Awards, five American Music Awards, and two Ivor Novello Awards for Songwriter of the Year. And it would be an understatement not to say that she is also a Marketing Wizard.
It’s not the beginner’s luck she was counting on. Since her first album 19, she has been studying the audience and marketing her songs effectively. For example, her album 25 was held on for weeks before handing over to streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Music. But there was instant streaming of her album 30.
However, it is just the tip of the iceberg and further, we will explain the entire “marketing career” of adele.
Early Career: 19 and Marketing
When adele started her career, she used to write blogs on MySpace. We could say, the aged veteran of Facebook.
There she understood what most people required and how did audience reacts and wanted the content to be served. We could easily say that she has always been up her game on social media platforms. We can also see, she understood the role of social media marketing back when this term was undiscovered. When most music directors ignored people’s opinion- she marketed on it.
Related article: 7 creative ways to use videos on Social Media
Career Over the Years: 21-25
We know, adele takes long breaks between her albums. After 21, people were expecting some news on her next release. She strategized on it. 3 major strategies worked this time.
a) The 30 second teaser between X factor
A 30-second lyrical teaser of ‘hello’ was shown between X factor. It was a plain black-white background with white lyrics on the screen. There was no mention of adele or even the song. This left people in curiousity of whether adele was releasing her new album. An inevitable “hype” was build amongst the people.
b) The Collaboration with Prominent People
Adele cracked the phenomenon – to be popular, we need to work with popular. She made visit to various late night shows in both UK and USA.
We saw her partner with BBC and Graham Nortan. By pulling off a prank and impersonating a contestant by using prosthetics. The video alone received over 40 million views on Youtube.
We see her later come in with Jimmy Fallon to capture the USA’s audience. As she sang hello with music just from classroom instruments. That video created credibility in her fans. It gained over 30 million hits on youtube itself.
c) Releasing ‘Hello’ as a single
To create buzz for her new album, 25, Adele released Hello as a free single. She also refused to offer her album via streaming services such as Spotify and Apple music. By releasing the best song on the album for free, she built anticipation for the album. Hello created a social media pandemic and fans were left longing for more music. 25 became a commercial success due to this simple, yet very effective strategy. According to Billboard, over 8 million album copies were sold in the U.S alone.
The Marketing Madness- 30
After taking a long break – Adele reappeared on Saturday Night live saying – “My album’s not finished, and I’m also too scared to do both… I’d rather just put on some wigs… have a glass of wine or six and just see what happens.” This short comment in her pure comedic style helped us guess when her album may be released.
a) The monuments
Before her album ’30’ (as we now know) was released- many monuments around the globe projected the number 30. Just a single number, without the mention of Adele or a new album. Although fans were already in speculation this added more to their interest.
We saw the projections everywhere from Edinburgh Castle to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to the Colosseum in Rome and feature the number 30 in two different typefaces – the 21 cover album and the 25 cover album. We also know her for naming her albums after her age- Which made sense since she was 33.
Another Twitter account confirmed that the people associated with the projection were contacted by Sony Media. Also, it was one of the most expensive deals signed with Sony.
b) Subsequent Social Media
Adele changed her profile photo to a new turquise pattern once the hashtag #Adele30 started trending on Twitter. The British singer even went as far as to update her bio to a link where fans could sign up for more information.
We know Adele for her authencity. But she knows to get ahead she needs to follow the smart celebrity tactic of Instagaram live. She jumped to her 42.4 million followers to answer fan questions and to play a short snippet of her recent single “Easy On Me” to help continue to market the song.
This resulted in a more ‘Adele’ environment and people desperately waited for her album.
The Results
Was everything actually impactful? We can see it for yourself.
- 9.75 million streams of “Easy On Me” on its first day of release.
- Over 87 million views on the Easy On Me, music video in the first 5 days of its premiere.
- Over 42.4 million followers on Instagram
- 25.3 million YouTube subscribers
- Over 1.1 billion streams on “Someone Like You” on Spotify
The Take-Away
Let’s see the learning scope of ours
a) Understanding our audience– Adele accused it. She changed with the trends. We need to understand where our target audience is. How can we market them? Since most of us are on Social Media, we need a strong marketing strategy over there.
b) Creating the element of curiosity – People need to think about your commercials and marketing after they have seen them. This creates a need to want it. It creates an impact on our sub-conscious mind.
c) Being Authentic– We need to be original in our ideas. A video that shows our ideas, perspective and values. The same templates can not be used. All the marketing should be different and tailored to our needs.
d)Understanding the right timing- If we take our decisions in haste, it will result in bad results. It’s like the old saying – hit the iron when its hot. We need to understand the role of right timing.
e)Professionalism- We saw Adele have just the right text all over. The right duration of teasers. These works can only be done by professionals. The columbia records won the award for the same.
Since most the businesses are taking over Social Media. Social media is a hub of videos, photos which are professional and fun in nature. To market the best, you need to have the best video product.
Related Article: Top Marketing Challenge that Videos Solves Best
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