Welcome back to Promoed! As we near the end of another week, we have an exciting edition of our newsletter lined up for you.

In this issue, we had the privilege of chatting with Jeremy Furze, the manager of The Teskey Brothers, who takes us behind the scenes of their highly successful chart-topping campaign.

Jeremy provided us with such valuable insights that we decided to share them over two editions of Promoed.

So be sure to join us next week for Part 2, where we'll continue the awesome discussion.

Also, in this week’s edition:

• Instagram's Threads.

• Tomorrowland and TikTok Team Up.

• Soundcloud Rolls Out More Features.

Inside The Teskey Brothers' Chart-Topping Album Campaign: Part 1

Last month, Australian duo The Teskey Brothers released their third album, ‘The Winding Way’, which debuted at #1 on the ARIA Charts. This week, with some help from the band’s manager Jeremy Furze, we’re sharing the first installment of our two-part feature on the album campaign.

The campaign has seen the duo share standout, organic assets, including a unique music video concept. They’ve also embarked on an international tour, which has seen them perform to tens of thousands of fans across Europe and the United Kingdom, and there’s more dates in Australia and New Zealand to come.

A Trio of Music Videos

During the album rollout, The Teskey Brothers shared a three-part video series to accompany their singles ‘Oceans Of Emotions’, ‘Take My Heart’ and ‘London Bridge’. Furze explained that the idea came from the band’s desire to minimise the time they spent on video shoots while their schedules were filled with album mixing and tour preparation.

“We had come up with an album rollout of five singles pre-release and they were staring down the barrel of five individual video shoots which was a problem.

“While working at UNIFIED, I had once seen Luke Logemann co-ordinate three Northlane videos in just a few days to maximise production resources, so I thought why not make an extended piece for the three lead singles that Sam and Josh can feature in, but only need to put aside one day to shoot their scenes?

“I floated this vague idea with director WAM Bleakley who listened to the songs, had a brief chat with the band and then dove in headfirst and somehow managed to pull it all off in six weeks. He and his team improvised a lot, tapping into the lives of real people (both actors and non-actors) to build the characters and narratives in real time as the shoot went on. It was amazing to see it come together.” Furze said.

Working Alongside A&R

The campaign for ‘The Winding Way’ has produced plenty of engaging content for The Teskey Brothers’ fans. Furze explained how finding the right balance in collaboration with A&R managers helped achieve this.

“We have been lucky to work with A&R managers who trust the vision of the band and are not excessively hands-on in the asset creation process. The global label set up is Ivy League (ANZ), Decca (UK, EU) and Glassnote (rest of the world) so there’s a lot of interested folks across those teams which could easily suffer from ‘too many cooks’ syndrome but fortunately it hasn’t gone that way.

“We look at creative briefs and budgets together but at the end of the day the band has been largely encouraged to create and deliver things the way they want, which in turn affords their collaborators a nice freedom too. I think you can tell from looking at each video we’ve made that it’s quite an organic process.

“That said, Marihuzka Corneilius (Ivy League) has been an incredibly helpful sounding board. She has played a big role in harnessing the low-key Teskey vibe that has fed through all of the content. Sam Mumford (Decca) and Daniel Glass (Glassnote) have wonderful ears and are super supportive, but also know when not to get in the way, which is a very valuable skill,” he said.

Release Month

Ten days ahead of the album release, The Teskey Brothers shared their Australian and New Zealand tour dates. They also shared advanced copies of the album with a selection of indie record stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, offering fans an exclusive opportunity to hear the new release a week early, in-store.

Overseas, the band spent release week performing at Holland International Blues Festival, Glastonbury Festival and making in-store appearances across the United Kingdom.

“We did three in-stores (Brighton, Bristol, Nottingham) plus an ‘out-store’ in London at the Pryzm venue in Kingston. It’s cool over there because fans are very used to the in-store thing and get behind it. We did about 3000 pre-orders total in UK and I think about 60% of those were driven by the instore game, so it definitely helped a lot.

​​”I thought our efforts were commendable but it turns out many UK based artists are doing up to 10 instores to drive their numbers up. It’s a slog and I have mixed feelings about the UK chart in general but the guys enjoyed getting around and meeting fans.

They also continued to share teasers across their social media, including behind-the-scenes footage from their festival appearances and studio sessions, content specifically filmed for their Australian and New Zealand fans, and a visualiser for ‘Blind Without You’.

To be continued…

Join us next week for Part 2 as we delve further into this campaign. There’s plenty more to come on ‘The Winding Way’, including how the band and management handle social media, how YouTube became their top platform, and much more.

^{Written by Olivia Gliku}

In Other Marketing News

Instagram's Threads: Instagram has unveiled its latest venture: Threads, a new app designed for sharing text-based content.

This Twitter-like platform allows users to follow and engage with friends and creators who share similar interests. Threads is built off Instagram, meaning you need an Instagram account to use it.

The app's unique selling point for brands and creators is the auto-follow button, which prompts users' new Thread accounts to automatically follow all the accounts they follow on Instagram.

Additionally, Threads plans to connect the platform to ActivityPub, the decentralized social media protocol. This means creators will be able to stop using Threads and transfer their accounts and content to other platforms that support the ActivityPub standard.

As of now, Threads has garnered 30 million sign-ups.

💡Insight - There is a lot of buzz surrounding this launch, both inside and outside the music business. It's hard to imagine that consumers, as well as artists and teams, have the bandwidth for yet another social media platform.

Will it go the same way as Clubhouse? It's too early to tell. We will certainly give Threads a try and encourage others to do the same. However, keep in mind that if you sucked on Twitter, you won't suddenly dominate Threads just because you can easily bring your Instagram audience with you. Be prepared to actively participate in conversations and engage with your audience.

Tomorrowland and TikTok Team Up: Tomorrowland, the mega electronic music festival, has announced a new partnership with TikTok.

The collaboration entails live streams of 24 performances by renowned DJs such as Steve Aoki, Afrojack, and Armin Van Buuren on the TikTok platform.

Viewers can expect behind-the-scenes content and in-app playlists, along with a search hub and activations to engage the community and build excitement for the festival.

The #Tomorrowland global hub on TikTok will serve as a central destination for fans to access festival content, artist livestreams, and music from the event.

With the #Tomorrowland hashtag already amassing over 2.8 billion views on TikTok, the partnership aims to expand the festival's global reach and provide an immersive experience for music enthusiasts.

💡Insight - When one thinks of music festivals live streaming partnerships, YouTube would be the first app that comes to mind. But It seems competition in this space is heating up and there is a race to secure premium video content. Good move by TikTok here.

Soundcloud Rolls Out More Features: Soundcloud has recently announced an array of new partnerships and features aimed at offering artists new opportunities.

Collaborating with Squarespace, the platform now enables artists to secure music-themed domains for their online presence. Soundcloud has also partnered with Discord, providing artists with a complimentary three-month subscription to the premium service.

Additionally, the platform has joined forces with Rap Plug, offering artists access to a comprehensive selection of free courses. Lastly, Soundcloud has formed a partnership with Adobe Premiere Pro, granting artists a notable discount on the renowned video editing software.

This is in addition to the new First Fan feature also rolled out this week. The algorithmic based feature will recommend tracks to fans most likely aligned with the artists music.

💡Insight - More interesting tools and services being rolled out by Soundcloud who are gunning for the DIY artist market.

Learn

Threads 101: Threads is all the talk online today. Things are moving fast so here is a great article from Future Social (another great newsletter) to bring you up to speed.

Threads 101: a strategy guide for brands.

ICYMI

Catch up on our recent stories:

• A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Boy & Bear's Independent Album Release

• The Marketing of Peach PRC's Chart-Topping EP

• Behind Arlo Parks’ ‘My Soft Machine’ Release

Lead Writer - Olivia Gliku
Editor and Publisher - Nick Lynagh

Promoed is created and published by Habit Music Pty Ltd.

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^{We acknowledge the Turrbal people, the Traditional Owners of the land on which we stand, and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.}