Given its dual role of single support and album announcement, the social campaign for “Battery Lane” was robust, built from the ground up with an inverted pyramid approach. The goal was to create a genuine air of mystery and excitement about what was to come through ethereal, evocative posts, slowly teasing more and more until release. It started with archiving all posts on Zack’s various social media feeds to create a blank slate, signaling a major artistic shift to the viewer; whatever it is, something is happening.
From there, we developed and deployed video packages to each of his feeds over two weeks, starting on November 17th and ending on the single’s release on December 4th. The first week combined key out-of-context imagery from the video with moody stems from the song. The final piece hints at what’s to come: Battery Lane.
The following week consisted of four video pieces that offer more concrete images of Zack performing acoustic snippets of the song in various locations in the apartment complex, as well as the sign for the street itself with the release date. The final piece builds upon the design language of the campaign by using a key shot from the video in its entirety, with each of the music stems building atop one another, finally previewing the song.
These pieces also established the pre-save element of the campaign in the posts’ text, serving as calls to action.
Two days before release featured a re-edit of the song, visually establishing the core conceit of the video while giving viewers their first true preview of “Battery Lane.” The piece is longer to account for this earned interest.
Finally, the day before release saw a re-edit of the song’s chorus, acting as the first of seven total instances of the snippet deployed across social media, setting it up as the “earworm” of the campaign. It ends with Zack’s friends and neighbors applauding his performance of the song, setting up viewers for the video’s opening images.
Post-release saw the deployment of clips from the video, tour posters, vinyl announcements, and the performance video of “Battery Lane” from our “Live & Direct” series, all utilizing the chorus of the song to get us to those seven instances of the ear worm.
The Impact
The full leveraging of Zack’s social media presence in promoting “Battery Lane” was a major success. The song boasted over one thousand pre-saves (unheard of for this tier of artist), while it and the video garnered the most organic engagement of any Zack Keim release. The video also helped position the song for success in online media.
The highlight of the campaign was Zack “going back to” the apartment complex to debut the video for its residents, many of whom were featured in it.
I’m told it was quite the homecoming.