Fred & Augustus

Executive Summary

Since making their acclaimed debut in 2013 this North Carolina-bred four-piece has captivated audiences with their finely layered vocal harmonies, graceful fluency in the timeless musical traditions of their home state, and a near-telepathic musical connection that makes their live show especially kinetic.

Challenges

While enjoying strong follower and engagement numbers on key social platforms, there were a  number of roadblocks that were restricting growth for the artist online.

Content pillars were not in place, and while posts were actively scheduled for initiative-specific marketing campaigns they weren’t necessarily strategically driven. Further, there was little to no paid media spend being attributed to campaigns - something which helps open the awareness gates and promotes broader reach and engagement for the artist’s presence on those platforms. 

Additionally, while playful in nature and whip-smart, the group held varying degrees of distrust for social media, indicating that gaining their trust and confidence in strategies would be key to their ‘leaning’ into the platforms and actively engaging with the strategies.

The immediate goal was to create strategy and purpose behind social posts, define the content pillars, and actively move audiences between (and across) platforms to help promote growth. Longer-term, the goal was to grow social media followers while gaining the artist’s trust.

Solution

With no real strategic posting schedule in place, the immediate solution was to begin creating initiative-specific roll-out strategies. This was to include a purposeful posting schedule that would create awareness for releases, livestreams, merchandise, and the artist’s fan club. Eg. If the posting schedule was release-focused, it was built to include pre-release, day of release, day-to-day, and post-release strategies for sharing news, and engaging fans. 

Paid media budgets were also defined for key initiatives: for a release strategy budget would include awareness campaigns for past catalogs, pre-save, and out-now campaigns, as well as any additional tactical ads, determined necessary such as boosts to key posts.

By defining the artist’s content pillars gradually over time, we were able to create a point of differentiation in their social posting. An artist should never post about just one thing (music) - and with that in mind, we knew it was key to the artist’s social growth that what the artist would stand for and talk about beyond music was well-defined.

With the foundations of strategic posting schedules, paid media budgets and content pillars in place it became easier for long-term content campaigns to find their natural groove. Especially as the album continued to track post-release, finding new fans and continuing to delight existing mega-fans of the bands.

Overall as a result of these implementations over a six-month period, Instagram grew 4.24%, Facebook 16.47%, Twitter 2.12%, Spotify 11.86%, and YouTube 23.94%. A Twitch account was also launched resulting in 98.21% growth on the platform, and the artist is more actively leaning into engaging with their growing online audience.