Countdown to Bieber’s Return
Deconstruct how visuals contributed to a recent marketing campaign (ie. Movie release, album launch, etc.)
They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Using visuals as part of a marketing campaign can be both beneficial and lucrative for a company or celebrity. A picture can help incline people to pay attention to what your brand or you personally are trying to tell your audience. Visuals can help better explain, or leave room for your audience to interpret what you are trying convey.
At the end of July, 2015 Justin Bieber announced on social media, that he had a brand-new single coming out. After 3-year hiatus, this announcement was a big deal to the music community, and fan base alike. Bieber got himself into a lot of trouble over those 3 years, creating a debauched name, and some of his fan base had been lost. This “come back” was a chance for him to clean up and start all over; with new music, and a new image. His publicists worked hard to create a new “image” for him. There was a lot of negative media and press about the singer prior to this marketing campaign making it more difficult to create a positive outcome for the singer, bringing fans back and positive coverage about him.
Justin Bieber had the right idea in mind when deciding what medium to use to announce his upcoming album. He decided to use visuals to get the public’s interest involved. Justin and his team were very clever, With the help of other famous celebrities, to use in conjunction over the full campaign; various celebrities held signs counting down the days until his comeback single was released.
From August 1 to August 28, 2015 the countdown till Justin Bieber took over the radio stations again with a new hot single took over social media. The intent was to make it exciting and bring hype to the 1 month release. Each day fans would get excited not only for the single release, but which celebs they would see, announcing another day has passed and there are “blank” amount of days left before the single drops, excitement to say the least!
Interesting and exciting people from all walks of the celebrity world took part: models, singers, actors and even celeb animals. Some of the interesting and eye catching visuals were the videos of James Cordon using comedic relief, pretending not to know the name of the album, and Ed Sheeran doing a cover of the song while announcing only 17 days until the release. High profile celebs like Mariah Carey, Kylie Jenner, and even the man who discovered Bieber… Usher. Many of which are friends and even celebrity fans of the singer. In total, there were 77 celebrities that contributed to the clever marketing campaign that was Bieber’s comeback to music.
This campaign was a true success. Who remembers Justin in his hazy time, getting in trouble? NOT ME! Bieber’s new album was a huge success, so the hype must have created a new fan base along with the old one. Making a comeback is hard enough as it is, but if you have a friend base like Bieber, you’re bound to succeed. That is exactly the case for Bieber, he has done it again and again. Using social media, visuals with a huge eye appeal (celebs) all work together to create the perfect marketing campaign.