Dive Brief:
- To promote Eminem's newly released album, "Revival," Interscope Records and Deutsch created a campaign resembling a pharmaceutical ad for a fake drug called Revival, as the treatment for Atrox Rithimus, a made-up illness named after the Latin phrase for "bitter rhyme," according to Adweek. The campaign featured a website, videos, billboards and toll-free phone messages.
- The campaign made no mention of Eminem by name, but was rife with references to the rapper, including a backwards "E" in the Revival brand name and the closing line, "I won't waste my one shot," alluding to his song "Lose Yourself."
- Eminem's team, including manager Paul Rosenberg, subtly dropped hints on the true nature of the campaign, including posting an Instagram photo of an Eminem album with an image of the fake-drug ad for Revival. Fans soon uncovered the truth and began posting about it on social media platforms, like Reddit.
Dive Insight:
The campaign for Eminem's album bets on the rapper's loyal fans to understand the inside joke, a strategy that hasn't yet been widely used in marketing because the goal is usually to reach as wide an audience as possible. However, this is the second notable instance of a brand using the strategy in 2017, pointing to how some marketers are intentionally crafting campaigns for only their most loyal customers or fans and then betting on them to spread the message organically.
The other recent example was KFC, which quietly followed only 11 people on Twitter, six named "Herb" and the five members of the pop band the Spice Girls. This was a reference to the chain's original recipe using 11 herbs and spices that went unnoticed until one user caught on and revealed the discovery in a tweet. The strategy paid off for KFC as that revelatory tweet had racked up nearly 320,000 retweets and more than 700,000 favorites less than a week after it was posted on Oct. 19.
Eminem is the latest artist to use crafty techniques to tease a new album and generate buzz ahead of its release. Earlier this year, Maroon 5 partnered with Vivoom to create a user-generated content strategy ahead of the release of album "Red Pill Blues." Fans could guest appear in the music video for the single "Cold" and on a digital mockup of the album cover. The goal was to get fans to create and share content about the band and its new release, and it was reported that the campaign garnered 250,000 video shares and a click-through rate above 11%.