Campaign: Social media management and support for album campaign
Timescale: February 2010 – February 2011
Reference from Client: “Rising Digital are efficient and professional. They were a pleasure to work alongside during the Gorillaz campaign and we wouldn’t hesitate using them again in the future.” – Sabira Hud, CMO Management.

In January 2010, we were lucky enough to receive a call from a close contact asking us if we’d consider ‘helping out’ with a campaign for the new Gorillaz album, ‘Plastic Beach’. This was to be our first involvement with a major label… Parlophone EMI.

Objectives
- Ensure all Gorillaz social media networks were up to date with fresh content on virtually a daily basis
- Feedback comments and conversations taking place on all Gorillaz social networks to management and label regularly
- Work to secure blogger coverage as and when necessary

The campaign
Regarding strategy and planning, this account was very much based on detailed weekly agendas/check lists that for the most part were started and built long before our involvement. Every now and again, something like this project may come up. It’s not necessarily about you leading the way, but if you can offer 100% support, occasional ideas, and make sure the bread and butter elements are nailed, well, you become an asset to the team. Aside from offering up suggestions on how to improve the use of social media, and a couple of good shouts during mini-update meetings with management, this project was all about doing what was asked bang on time, in an organised and thorough fashion. We became the content support part of the team very quickly, and everyone from L.A to Sydney knew we were on call to help, pretty much any time that was necessary. Yes, there were some very late nights, some dodgy auto-tweet lessons learned, and plenty of early starts, but when you’re all in it together… well it’s just… it is what it is… it’s not like you’re getting up at 5am to write a finance report. You’re getting up to contribute to the marketing of one of the most successful and progressive bands of this century. As our close contact said before we agreed to get involved: “…….at the end of the day Seb, it’s the bloody Gorillaz, how amazing is that?!”.

Within the Plastic Beach project, as well as the album, we worked the singles, videos and remixes for Stylo, Superfast Jelly Fish, Melancholy Hill and Doncamatic. In terms of the big’uns, we supported the bands performance at the O2 London, headline sets at Glastonbury and Coachella, as well as a full world tour.

In terms of our input on this, we really can’t take too much credit at all. On the musical front, well, it speaks for itself, and on the creative front, Jamie Hewletts studio are simply unbelievable to work with. The label and management also… everyone was totally on point with this, and based on iTunes sales in major territories, I’d say the whole thing was a tremendous success. One little thing we did get going was the ilike.com page, which now proudly sits with more than 2million fans… happy days hey?!

Here’s just a taster of the sheer awesomeness we had the joy of marketing….