Goals

As a new artist breaking out with his debut album, the goal for Charles Bradley's worldwide campaign was exposure. Furthermore, given that physical sales for R&B/Soul artists are usually much higher than digital sales, we wanted to specifically drive digital sales.

Tactics

Leading up to Street Date, we focused on growing Charles Bradley's social media following, so we would have a solid fan base to communicate with throughout the campaign. To do so, we premiered his first single "The World (Is Going Up In Flames)" on the urban tastemaker site Okayplayer.com and offered a free download of the song in exchange for an email address via Topspin's E4M (email for media) widget. The widget was also added to his Facebook and Myspace pages.

Interactive campaigns to draw attention to Charles Bradley included securing a premiere of "The World (Is Going Up In Flames)" on IFC.com; implementing a "Like" campaign on Charles Bradley's Facebook page for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of "The World"; landing the Video of the Day for "The World" on AOL Spinner as well as premiering the album on AOL Music and AOL Spinner, including a featured interview with Bradley and Tommy Brenneck, founder of The Menahan Street Band.

Following the release of the album, The Orchard landed iTunes' Discovery Download of "The World." Zune France and Zune US both featured the track, attracting worldwide attention, and Walmart offered the free track on its website. VEVO also featured "The World" music video.

A highlight of the campaign was Charles Bradley's performance at The Orchard's South by Southwest (SXSW) showcase. It was among the most highly attended and talked about events at SXSW that year, and was taped by Carson Daly, who broadcast it on Last Call with Carson Daly two weeks later.

Our Interactive Marketing team put together an NBC Charles Bradley Live "The Feast" feature, which aired on TVs in the back of taxi cabs in New York City and on NBC Nonstop (local NBC channel in tri-state area), and was featured on The Feast website. This feature triggered a huge spike in social media fans.

• At the close of the campaign, Charles Bradley's Facebook Likes had increased five-fold, and his monthly active users increased by 350% thanks to the E4M widget email collection tool.
• Landing the iTunes Discovery Download for "The World (Is Going Up In Flames)" doubled sales for that week.
• Digital sales accounted for approximately 50% of all sales, the highest digital/physical split we've seen for the R&B/Soul music genre.