Ed Sheeran’s ‘Divide’
Visuals play such a huge role in marketing, especially now more than ever before. As a society that’s shifted from reading long articles, to extremely short tweets, the marking efforts have come to adapt to our own media habits. This is where visuals come in.
Visuals are especially important for establishing a brand. It allows the brand to become identified through their visual aesthetics, their logos, and even the colours of their company.
We’ve seen countless times where visuals played a role in establishing a brand, or creating greater awareness of a brand. I noted the Oreo Superbowl ad from 2013 (check it out here). This ad, which was made within 5 minutes of the power outage, went viral, and ultimately, contributed to their marketing strategy overall.
I’d like to take a look at a more recent and relevant marketing campaign. Ed Sheeran released an album on March 3rd of this year, and his marketing campaign consisted mainly of visuals and interviews.
Before I begin with his latest album, I want to dive a bit into his previous albums that led up to where he is today.
His first album was released in 2011, and is called “+”.
Three years later, he dropped his next album “X.”
Most recently, he dropped his album ‘Divide’ that came out on March 3rd, and has already broken records around the world.
Let’s take a look at his marketing campaign for this album, and how his visuals contributed to his overall success.
He first began his marketing campaign on January 1st, when he announced that he’d be dropping new songs that same week. (I’d like to just say that there was absolutely no better way to starting off the New Year than this. It’s been a long time coming, folks.) Ed made his announcement in such a simplistic way though, which in a way, was almost expected of him. He simply waved and smiled at the camera, and held up a piece of paper that said “New Music Coming Friday!!”
To watch the video, click here.
This simplistic announcement held so much meaning behind it. Ed Sheeran was planning his return to the music industry, and he wanted to make sure the world knew.
The video sent his fans into a frenzy, and while the momentum was still going, he dropped a video the next day — again, on Facebook. It had the words “Shape of You” and “Castle on the Hill” which we now know are the first two singles off his album.
To watch the video, click here.
From watching the video, we know 3 things — his first two lead singles, the words are in shapes that formed the divide symbol, and the colour motif — black and blue.
These visual cues are so important when considering the overall marketing strategy. This was just the beginning of his visual motif that he established for this particular album, and would be how we’ve come to be able to recongize it on the spot with no contemplation.
To tie in the visual efforts with his album, Ed made statuses that simply consisted of this — “÷”
It left fans putting two and two together, and ultimately, we learned that the album itself would follow the themes of his previous albums — X (released in 2014), and + (released in 2010).
He followed up with posting videos that just had lyrics, and only lyrics. However, he maintained the motif that he established with the release of the lead singles — a blue background, and the same font.
For that video, click here.
We get the idea now. He worked his way by dropping big news unexpectedly, dropping teasers of songs to get his fans hyped up, and he did it so simply but effectively.
He maintained his colour theme — black and blue. He made sure his visuals were simple, but still got the message across-“÷”. Finally, he dropped these visuals unexpectedly, keeping his fans on EDge until he released the album.
Everywhere you go, you’re bound to see an advertisement for Divide that has the symbol, and the colour motif. You’ll probably associate it with Ed Sheeran, because really, what other artist is so successful with establishing a brand for himself through albums that have math symbols?
This just added to his overall success of being able to have such simple visuals that don’t speak for the complexity of his entire album. He’s an incredible artist that’s able to think his marketing strategy through, and knows what works for his audiences. He plays off of it, and it works.
Know any other brands that are able to build their brands through visuals? Let me know in the comments below, or tweet me at @skxndil!
