After the marketing strategy of Isles, Bicep followed this with an audio-visual experience streamed live to the world on Friday 26th February.
The third part of this edition of The Blueprint breaks down how Bicep successfully brought the rave to fans living rooms by performing their second album live for the very first time.
If you’re new here, you might want to read Part 1 and Part 2 before you continue.
The blueprint to success is right in front of you, you just have to look in the right places.
Bicep Live
Let’s make one thing clear, Bicep Live was a pre-recorded stream with such high production levels it should be considered a film.
Bicep thanked the full crew behind the production in a social media post tagging 18 people, alongside their management This Is Music, Ninja Tune and ticket platform Dice.
This one stream could have had around 30 to 40 people working on it. When you consider most artists only use one camera to stream, this is one hell of an effort to create the best experience possible.
Fan Involvement - The Home Setup
Throughout the whole campaign, Bicep has involved its fans every step of the way. In another social media post, Bicep advised ravers at home to create the best setup possible.
“BIG SCREENS AND GOOD SPEAKERS ARE RECOMMENDED.”
When you go all this effort, it is clear that you are hoping to create a special experience for your viewers.
Fan Involvement - User-Generated Content (UGC)
In another notable moment, their advice for fans was to share their home setups for the stream on their Instagram Stories. Here is another example of Bicep encouraging user-generated content from their audience in this campaign.
Fan Involvement - The Countdown
The key part of the whole Bicep Live marketing strategy was the countdown. Virtual ticketed events get the most sales in the last few days of the campaign. Ten days before the stream, both Bicep and Ninja Tune counted down the days by breaking down the key moments of the stream into bite-size content.
On Twitter, videos were shared in a landscape format as you would see on the stream and on YouTube. On Instagram, the assets were repurposed to 15-second clips to fit the most engaging mediums of the app – Reels and Stories.
Bicep - X - The Music Video
One of my favourite tracks off the album is ‘X‘. Green, blue and pink rectangular strobes flashed across the screen while multiple different camera angles saw Andy and Matt performing the track live in the background. Never has knob-twiddling looked so artistic.
The footage of ‘X’ is now on Bicep’s YouTube as the official video for this track. This allows fans to continue the conversation about the stream on the internet's biggest video search platform. It also shows fans who didn’t purchase the stream a six-minute clip of what they missed.
Bicep Live - Return on Investment
A ticketed live experience is the perfect ‘Build Once, Sell Twice’ online product. With a ticketed event, you are limited by capacity. Virtual live events have no capacity limits. Let’s say Bicep and Ninja Tune sold 10,000 tickets for this event at £14 each. That’s £140k to split across the teams in the middle of the pandemic. Hopefully, this income could be used to save some people's jobs.
In one final push, Bicep and Ninja Tune also announced fans will be able to rewatch the stream for the next two weekends. New customers can also purchase the stream if they missed out the first time.
This whole campaign is the blueprint to follow in the future. This is how to market an album and monetise it with a live event both online and off. Pandemic or not.
Thanks for reading.
Andrew at Socially Sound 🧢
