Case Study: Celebrating 10 Years of Band History

Executive Summary

This year marks 10 years that Galway-based We Banjo 3 has had one foot in Irish music and one foot in Americana music, seamlessly combining the virtuosity and precision in each genre’s traditional disciplines with the artful song-craft and infectious live performance of today’s musical landscape. The band’s two sets of brothers—Enda & Fergal Scahill and David & Martin Howley—share a musical intimacy that emanates in the rolling banjos, soaring fiddle and mandolin runs, and bright and vibrant guitar strums that swirl around propulsive vocals and perfect harmonies. 

Challenges

The question posed was how to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the band, the milestones and tell their unique story while celebrating the fans? The answer - a commemorative 10 year microsite and a broader digital strategy. 

Creating a timeline and a usable archive of information and assets presented the first challenge. While major milestones including releases were easily recalled and accessible, memories outside this scope required a deeper dig. We started with building out a rough timeline and then asking the band to help fill the gaps. From there we took to the internet and existing band file storage, looking for video, audio, articles or other content which could help visually support the story on the site. 

Telling the unique story of the band presented its own challenge. We wanted the microsite to be expansive enough to give a nod to all major milestones, while being small enough that it felt purposeful and celebratory. 


Solution

Initially we anticipated that the microsite would have it’s own URL and be hosted on a separate domain, but in the end it made more sense to host the microsite on the existing band website, and ensure that the URL naming structure was supported by on-page SEO on every ‘blog post’ within the timeline. This was done as the intention was that the micro-site would be ‘hosted and linked’ within the primary domain for at least twelve months.

In determining how we told the story we explored the potential for a map, a timeline, and a blog, before ultimately settling on a combination of a blog timeline. This ensured that each ‘post’ would have its own URL that could then be shared on the band’s social platforms and in email marketing, driving traffic to their website (during what was also the peak promotional period time frame for their new album ‘Open The Road’).

Overall the goal was to celebrate the “WE” in We Banjo 3, i.e the collective community around the band. This fan-driven band has a lot of love and support over ten years to celebrate and we wanted to establish that narrative throughout the commemorative site and official messaging.

Any 10 Year anniversary is made from many, many, many… moments together. Some fleeting and insignificant, some incredibly meaningful and defining, and lots of good, great, and yes, difficult times in between. This commemorative 10 year website and broader digital strategy was a poignant culmination of all of the moments that came before for this very special band, and their exceptional fan base.

Audience Demographic

  • Location: US and UK
  • Age: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44
  • Gender: (M/F) 31.32%, 68.68%

Key Results (Campaign)

  • All 10-year microsite URL's appeared within top 35 landing pages of website traffic May- August
  • 0.78% average organic Facebook post engagement rate (the 2022 average Facebook engagement rate 0.064%)
  • 5.61% average organic Instagram engagement rate (the 2022 average Instagram engagement rate is 4.7%)
  • +40% email Open Rates and +5% email CTR for all emails containing 10 year content.
Using Format