Dig out your soul
Issue 11 | July 2009
Agency
BBH New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer: Kevin Roddy, Creatives: Pelle Sjönell, Calle Sjönell
Production Team
Head of Broadcast: Lisa Setten, Senior Producer: Julian Katz, Production Company: HSI Productions: Directors: The Malloys, Directors: The Malloys, Executive Producer: Rebecca Skinner, Producer: Dawn Rose, Director of Photography: Sam Levy
Date
January 2009
Background
With most album launches, the music starts in a studio and ends up on the streets. If the songs are good, street performers adopt them and adapt them.
BBH New York reversed this process, launching Oasis’ new album, ‘Dig Out Your Soul’, on the streets before the album was released.
Idea
Oasis travelled to New York City and taught a number of street musicians to play four of the new songs on the album. After learning the Oasis songs, the street musicians then performed them at locations throughout the City including Times Square, Penn Station and Astor Place.
News of this was seeded on Oasis fan sites.
At the same time, NYC & Company, New York’s tourist authority, created a page on their website where fans could use Google Maps to find out where and when there were live performances of the music.
They were encouraged to shoot their own videos and upload them to a dedicated YouTube channel, before, finally, an 18-minute documentary, shot by The Malloys, was released on MySpace. This followed the street musicians learning the songs from members of Oasis and then performing them.
Photographs of the band teaching the songs and of the musicians performing them were also uploaded to Flickr.
Results
The launch propelled the Oasis album to number one in the UK and Italy, number five in the US (the band’s first Top Ten showing in the USA since 1997), and top five spots in Japan, Ireland, Switzerland, France and Australia.
Our Thoughts
This is one of those brilliantly inclusive ideas. Oasis, their fans, New Cork City and the street musicians themselves, they all got something out of the project apart from just money. The idea is bigger than the Malloys’ beautiful documentary. It started within social media, with a buzz about what was happening, then it got onto the streets with live performances before going back into the digital space in vlogs and blogs. The idea is also bigger than a stunt in the Big Apple in that it got Oasis-heads around the world intrigued, involved and inspired to buy.
For me, this is one of the seminal campaigns of 2009. In the old days, Warner Brothers would probably have just put up some posters. Today, it’s not just that they can do something different, they want to – and need to.