It all began in 2019 when Blue Man Group ushered in the holiday spirit with a timeless PVC Teaser music video, covering festive classics like Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls. The video's performance was nothing short of spectacular. Currently boasting 6.4 million views on YouTube, it has become a staple in the holiday content rotation, consistently going viral across various channels—a true dream for social media marketers.
Despite the persistent clamor from fans in the comment sections, expressing their fervent desire for a Blue Man Group holiday album, the idea took a back seat with the onset of COVID. The closure of Blue Man Group in 2020 and the subsequent focus on reopening and revitalizing the brand in 2021 left little room for a Christmas album. However, the winter of 2022 saw the revival of the conversation, sparked by the enduring popularity of the beloved PVC Teaser video. The video received an overwhelming performance of 10.6 million total views across all channels.
Upon a renewed analysis of the video's performance and recognizing the overwhelming fan demand for more holiday-themed music, the marketing team prioritized delivering what their audience had been asking for.
Fan engagement has always been a significant focus for Blue Man Group, evident in both their live performances with audience participation and their efforts to cultivate a vibrant social media community. The objective of this social-driven holiday campaign was twofold: to heighten awareness of Blue Man Group as an established music group and to rekindle the connection with their dedicated fan base through an EP tailored just for them.
From an overall marketing perspective, we also saw this as an opportunity to communicate our added holiday show schedule, garnish additional PR opportunities and promote Blue Man Group ticket sales for the holiday season.
Despite the relative ease of digital composition, our commitment to delivering live performances led us to emphasize the recording of music in a live setting as much as possible, but time was our largest challenge. In a remarkably swift six-month span, Blue Man Group's project team collaborated with Warner Music Group to craft a 9-song Holiday EP, majority of which featured live recordings from the pvc pipe, drumbone, guitar and drums. This approach demanded extensive rehearsals, recording tests, intricate PVC pipe customization work, and unwavering dedication from every member of our cast and crew.
Putting the EP at the forefront of their social media strategy the team also produced 4 original music videos and 8 promotional vertical videos within this time. Content rolled out across all Blue Man Group's social media channels starting in mid-October when the EP released and will continue through the holiday season.
Partnering with Warner Music Group:
In a strategic partnership with Warner Music Group, we successfully launched the EP, "OVERJOY TO THE WORLD" on all major music streaming platforms, allowing us to connect with a vast global audience. Since its mid-October release, the EP has garnered an impressive 45.8k total global streams, setting the stage for the upcoming holiday season. Our primary focus extends to key territories, namely the USA, Germany, and the UK, where the majority of our most engaged social media fans are based. This intentional distribution strategy ensures that our music resonates with our core audience while also expanding our reach across diverse international markets.
Composing New Songs from Social Analytics:
Each track in the album was meticulously designed and crafted with a focus on social content. Analytical insights guided our decision-making, revealing that our Drumbone consistently excels in reaching new audiences, with a high potential for virality. Armed with this knowledge, we strategically executed a song that showcased the instrument in a novel and innovative manner—resulting in the creation of "Jingle Bones," a composition entirely performed on two Drumbones simultaneously.
We decided to create a fresh rendition of our popular Holiday PVC Teasers, as seen in the development of our "Dreidel Mashup" track. This new version features songs that are more inclusive and representative of various holiday traditions, aligning with the diverse interests of our audience and ensuring our content remains engaging and relevant. The song was also written primarily for our music video and slightly altered for audio only release.
Our 3 interlude songs, positioned to help the flow of the album, were also created to provide us with custom 30-second tracks that can be heard in our various social promotion videos and advertisements.
Christmas in July Engagement Teaser:
To build anticipation and keep our community engaged in the upcoming project, we used this topical social media holiday to tease the EP. The content consisted of a recut of our 2019 Holiday PVC Teaser along with a new video teasing one of the upcoming tracks With the goal of a high volume of comments, we kept copy suggestive and up to the viewers imagination. The videos combined received 35.9M views with 1.4M engagements.
Social Media Focused Content:
Aligned with the EP's overarching strategy as a social community initiative, the team spearheaded the production of 4 new music videos complemented by 8 promotional, organic-friendly content pieces. This extensive creation of content was a deliberate effort to provide our audiences with a visual experience, especially considering that these songs would exclusively be available digitally and not incorporated into our live performances.
The videos amassed a total of 3.6 million views across all our platforms. Notably, our fourth video, a pre-recorded yule log animation livestream, is poised for release on December 10th, promising an additional layer of engagement and immersive content for our audience during the holiday season.
Since the teasing the EP on July 25th, Blue Man Group's social media audience has added over 900k followers across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and X; 250k of those followers were gained after the official release of the EP in mid-October.
All Holiday EP-related content has accumulated a total of 39.4M views and 1.6M engagements across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok. The EP itself has been streamed globally 45.8k times across all major streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora.
