Show Us Your Best Smile | Marketing In Soca
There’s definitely more to soca music than just releasing a song and putting it up on YouTube. Artists have been working hard to promote their tunes for the season. Song promotions for the season have definitely been beyond the traditional means such as radio tours and press releases.
The Launch of the “Smile” Filter
Voice and his team took a different approach to pushing “Smile,” a Kaiso release that flooded the airwaves in early December. Following the launch of “Smile,” Voice and his team reached out to Rondell Paul of The Royalty Club to promote his release on social media. It was then the Instagram filter was born.
“The inspiration came directly from the artiste, Voice, and the concept of the music video and album art, where he showed faces painted with the flags of different Caribbean countries,” says Paul.
“Around that same time, the Royalty Club was granted access to Facebook’s Spark Augmented Reality beta program on Instagram. Given the opportunity to be the first agency in the Caribbean with access, it was natural for us to execute something that we thought would be groundbreaking as our very first filter. The Instagram’s Augmented Reality (AR) camera filters are being used daily, so why not allow their fans to engage with the brand using this new space?”
Want to add a caption to this image? Click the Settings icon.
The Results
After it was sent out on social media, close to 7,000 instagram users had used the smile filter on Instagram and over 102,294 saw it on the platform.
The Takeaway?
Based on his experiences Paul warns that artists will need to build their own methods of promotions. “Don’t underestimate the power of building your own channels. Grow your own fan base on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter while driving traffic to your own streaming platforms. Doing this would benefit you greatly in the long run as compared to paying for promotion through someone else’s channel.”
Did you try it yet? Test it out for yourself:
https://www.instagram.com/a/r/?effect_id=1108707962632205
Learnings from Rondell & The Royalty Club:
“Once you’ve gained a following, start developing engaging ways to keep them using the same digital platforms. Immersive media offers a fun and interactive way to do this. Augmented Reality filters aren’t limited to just face filters, you can overlay the cover of your song with digital layers.”
About The Royalty Club:
As a digital media production company specialising in immersive media and experiential marketing, their goal is to seamlessly combine the physical and digital worlds into one, providing our clients with innovative and effective solutions. They are spearheading the push for soca artistes and carnival promoters alike to launch their own camera filters.
Looking for marketing ideas to promote your soca song? You can contact them here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theroyaltyclub/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/theroyaltyclub
Email: royaltyclub@royalty-club.com
