Rascal Flatts

Problem

In spring 2006, Lyric St. Records and Rascal Flatts were preparing to launch the follow-up to the band's multi-platinum Feels Like Today album. The new album, titled Me and My Gang, was eagerly anticipated by the entire country music world, but most anxiously by the band's loyal fans. Lyric St. Records' marketing team contacted Gupta Media with a common problem. How could they effectively reach and entertain Rascal Flatts' most ardent fans, drive street date awareness, capture purchase intent and, finally, turn those fans into ambassadors?

Approach

Working closely with Hyfn, Lyric Street Records' interactive design agency, Gupta Media designed and executed a search engine advertising program that used a two-phase approach. The first phase was designed to reach the most interested fans; those that were searching for the band without publicity appearances. The second phase cast a wider net, and was designed to capture new fans that were driven to research the band by publicity, radio airplay and other appearances

Rascal Flatts Media Player

In order to track the success of the media plan, Hyfn implemented their post-click tracking service Hyfntrak, which tracks users interaction with the Rascal Flatts' media player in real-time. Gupta Media utilized this tool to measure post-click performance in three distinct "buckets" - engagement (as measured by audio listens), purchase intent (as measured by "buy" button clicks) and viral activity (as measured by "send to a friend" actions).

Phase 1 of the search engine marketing program launched three weeks before the album's street date. At launch, the campaign included 15 different veins of interest that were centered around Rascal Flatts' current single, their past albums and hits, the band's name and the individual band members' name. The ad copy centered around enticing searchers to listen to the album by visiting the media player. Once on the media player, visitors were able to listen to four new songs from Me and My Gang, watch their video and view multiple links for more news and community building.

As the release date approached, Gupta Media's team of analysts constantly refreshed ad copy, added new veins of interest and optimized bids to maximize the value of the media spend. For instance, Rascal Flatts performed What Hurts the Most, their hit single, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In anticipation of the performance, Gupta Media's team ran ads targeting Tonight Show-related keywords and asking them to "tune in to see a live performance". As soon as the performance was over, the ad copy was changed. The new ad copy instructed searchers to "learn more about Rascal Flatts and hear 4 songs for free!". This type of promotion was repeated for an additional 20 live performances and publicity appearances.

Results

It quickly became clear that Lyric Street Records, with Gupta Media's help, had launched Rascal Flatts into another level. The album was #1 during release week, selling over 721,000 copies. The first week sales figures were the highest for any album in 2006. Rascal Flatts held onto #1 for three more weeks, pushing its 2006 total to 3.4 million albums and is currently platinum 4 times over. Finally, Rascal Flatts ended the year as the #1 selling artist for all of 2006! How did Gupta Media's media strategy help? Ashley Heron, Rascal Flatts' marketing manager at Lyric Street Records, said that our "search engine marketing plan was the most effective marketing program they utilized" for the launch.

Ashley was not relying on his gut or instinct, Gupta Media was able to deliver measurable results. Using Hyfntrak data, our campaign delivered over 135,000 visitors to the Rascal Flatts' media player, with our program being the #1 referrer.

Those highly-engaged users listened to over 710,000 audio streams, which is more than 3.6 streams per user. They also showed unbelievable purchase intent, clicking on the "buy now" button more than 15,560 times - almost 1 out of every 9 visitors wanted to buy the CD immediately! Finally, we were successful in turning those users into ambassadors, as 27,200 of our initial visitors either revisited themselves or shared the media player with their friends and family.

So, what did this cost Lyric Street Records? About $0.11 per visitor.