Music Industry Swipe File: January 2019
Social Media Advertising from Weezer, Ariana Grande, and Alice Merton
Welcome to the first Music Industry Swipe File of 2019! For those that are new, the Music Industry Swipe File is a monthly column where I break down the social media advertising of (mostly) major label artists who have access to marketing teams and budgets that, in theory, are the best in the business.
Aside from this being interesting to music marketing nerds like myself, I try to present this information in a way that is useful to artists with fewer resources. Social media and affordable content creation tools have made promoting music to large audiences more accessible than ever before. Of course, it’s also easy to waste money in an attempt to reach a large audience.
This month, we take a look at Weezer’s advertising and e-commerce strategy for their upcoming album, Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” advertising (and some surprising data practices from Linkfire), and a European awareness campaign for German-Canadian-English singer and songwriter Alice Merton.
Weezer: Social Media Advertising and E-commerce Strategy
Weezer is set to release their upcoming album, The Black Album, in March and have been pushing a long-lead pre-order campaign since November. The customer journey for this is relatively simple.
Step 1: Social Media Ads
Of course, there are other ways that Weezer is sending their fans to their e-commerce store, but, as always with this series, we’re focusing on social media advertising.
Weezer is running a selection of Facebook and Instagram ads that are all similar…but with variations on copy, photos, and calls to action. This is a great strategy to figure out which combination is the most compelling advertisement to their fans.
Click here to see all of the ad variations that Weezer is using on Facebook.
Assuming that Weezer is targeting their existing fans with these ads, they are pretty cut and dry: show fans that new merch is available and they will click through. A more creative, engaging approach would be to have a video that includes music from the new album or Rivers Cuomo talking directly to fans.
The only glaring objective issue with these ads is that the copy for Instagram newsfeed ads has a finger pointing down for the pre-order link when the link is always above the copy on Instagram newsfeed ads.
Step 2: E-commerce Store
Once a fan clicks on one of these ads, they end up here: https://weezerwebstore.com/
Weezer’s web store is built on Shopify. I’m a big fan of the Shopify platform as it’s a great way for independent artists to build professional looking e-commerce stores and it makes installing Google Analytics and Facebook Pixels very easy, even if you have no coding experience.
The store is where things get interesting. To start, the flashlight, poster, long sleeve shirt, and gray t-shirt that are featured in the ad are not in the store. Maybe they’re on other pages of the store? Nope.
As always, I like to see what pixels are tracking visitors as we go through the store. Weezer’s team has installed a Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, and a Google Ads Remarketing Tag.
When a visitor clicks on an item, a second Facebook Pixel appears and the original pixel records that page view as a “VantageViewContent” event, allowing the marketing team to segment ads to people that have viewed that page.
Also on that page is an opt in for a Messenger bot.
The first time that I went through this process, I missed this. However, it must have pulled my Facebook account from somewhere (maybe a previous log in on another Shopify store?) and the check box was pre-checked. Despite not noticing this Messenger opt in on my first run through and not actively opting in, I received this in my Messenger inbox:
This was a little jarring to receive, since I did not intentionally opt in for this. Also, this message did not come from the official Weezer page, it came from the “Weezer Store” page which has 10 likes. If I didn’t already know that this was the official Weezer store, I would be concerned that I had entered some information on a store designed to phish Weezer fans.
Ariana Grande: “7 Rings” Release
As one of the biggest pop stars in the scene, it’s reasonable to expect that Ariana Grande is going to receive the premium treatment from Republic Records’ marketing team. That said, one week after Grande’s “7 Rings” single release and two weeks before her full album release, the social media advertising is surprisingly minimalist.
Ariana Grande’s marketing team is running only two ads at the time of writing — a gif-style graphic with music behind it and a story-sized clip of her music video.
Both ads direct traffic to a Linkfire pivot page: https://arianagrande.lnk.to/7rings
I’ve spoken before about how pivot pages are useful for retargeting audiences and tracking what streaming platforms fans use (despite having high bounce rates and being a copy and paste approach to marketing). What I’ve only just noticed after looking at dozens of these pages is that in addition to the artist, label, and marketing team’s retargeting pixels being embedded in the page, Linkfire also includes their own Facebook pixel and Google Analytics pixel on each pivot page.
Linkfire’s Facebook Pixel ID: 399736106876066
Linkfire’s Google Analytics Web Property ID: UA-87198801–1
What does this mean? This means that Linkfire is collecting data on fans of all artists that use the service. Right now, artists across the musical spectrum — from Ariana Grande to Ryan Adams — are using Linkfire to promote their releases. This allows Linkfire to create retargeting audiences of fans of various genres. Are you promoting a budding pop star that wants to efficiently reach fans of Ariana Grande that are likely to click through to listen to a song on Spotify? Linkfire has the ability to serve ads on Facebook and Instagram to those fans without Ariana Grande’s permission. I don’t know for a fact that Linkfire offers this service, but they are definitely collecting the type of data that would enable it.
Compared to most people, I am pretty understanding about data collection and the good that it can do not just for artists and companies but for fans as well. However, I think it is very deceitful for a company to collect data on an artist’s fans when the fans do not realize that they are using a service that is not controlled by the artist. I talk about this in depth in the November 2018 Music Industry Swipe File. Nowhere on Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” pivot page is the Linkfire name or logo used. Yet they are still collecting data on traffic that can be utilized by unrelated artists. Linkfire mentions this practice in their privacy policy, but your average consumer is not likely to take the time to find that information.
Alice Merton: “Mint” Release
Unlike Weezer and Ariana Grande, Alice Merton is not a household name. However, she’s been building a strong following in Europe over the past three years and released her debut album “Mint” through Mom+Pop records on January 18th.
Looking at her social media advertising, there’s one big difference between Merton’s ads and those of the larger artists we’ve profiled today: her ad copy. Unlike the short, action-driven, and “clearly written by a label” ad copy of Weezer and Ariana Grande, Alice Merton’s copy is long enough to require a “See more” button on mobile.
“3 years we’ve worked on this. 3 years of blood, sweat, emotions, tears and heartfelt love have gone into my debut album. I really hope you guys enjoy it, it’s the beginning of my journey and I can’t wait to show you the rest 🙂”
Merton’s video is simple; a mash up of her previous music videos with a text overlay. Like Ariana Grande, Merton’s ads send traffic to a Linkfire pivot page (again, with Linkfire’s own retargeting pixels installed).
Final Thoughts
- There’s a clear trend across the ads that I’ve covered over the past few months in the Music Industry Swipe File: underwhelming creative and a surprising depth to the data collection practices. I wonder how much more effective these ads would be if, rather than simply announcing that something is available (which is a common theme this month), they told a story or appealed directly to the audience that is being targeted?
For Weezer, would an iPhone video of the band unboxing the various vinyl splatter variations have a bigger impact than a product photo? Probably. Would it cost anything additional to create? No. - To indie artists — you can see the creative benchmarks that larger artists are setting. It costs you the same amount to reach these audiences. What you lack in name recognition, you can make up for in creativity. Not all ads have to feel intrusive.
- Data tracking and retargeting are not bad. They allow artists to reach fans that are interested in what they have to say. I wholeheartedly recommend that all artists invest in building retargeting audiences of people that are interested in them. Put ads in front of that audience that provide value to the viewer and help them become bigger fans. Retargeting can be a win-win situation for both the artist and fan.
- Small change to the formatting. Rather than spending a month monitoring ads and publishing my findings the following month (i.e. writing an article about December ads in January), I’m publishing articles about ads the month that they’re being run. This hopefully makes the articles more relevant at the time of publishing and is why there was no December 2018 Music Industry Swipe File.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this article (and read far enough to see this footer!!), I hope you’ll leave a comment and follow me to be notified of future posts.
Dan Servantes is a marketing consultant at GHStrategic. You can reach him on Twitter (@drservantes) and via this form.
