A brand new music culture report by Prism Sport + Entertainment and VML powered by Audiense data
About
VML
At VML, over 300 years of experience is combined with cutting-edge technology to drive innovation and growth. As a unique fusion of creative agency, consultancy, and technology powerhouse, VML delivers end-to-end solutions across communications, commerce, CRM, CX, data, and more. The goal is to create meaningful consumer experiences and foster a culture of connection and inclusion.
Challenge
One of the primary challenges faced by VML London and Prism was the oversimplification of the concept of "super fans" in the music industry.
Brands often treat super fans as a homogeneous group, overlooking the nuanced differences within various fandoms. This misinterpretation makes it difficult for brands to effectively engage and monetize these diverse audiences.
Additionally, traditional survey data provides only a snapshot of audience behavior, failing to capture the dynamic and multifaceted nature of social interactions and preferences.
This limitation hinders a deep understanding of fan communities, which is crucial for targeted marketing strategies.
Solution
To address these challenges, VML and Prism collaborated on a approach to dissect and understand music fandoms.
They developed a comprehensive methodology that utilized diverse data sources, including social media interactions, search data, and WPP’s BAV. By leveraging tools like Audiense, they were able to capture every interaction, click, and like, providing a more complex and detailed picture of fan behavior.
This approach enabled them to identify and analyze over 600,000 fans across 45 different artists, revealing more than 200 distinct fan communities. This insight allowed them to understand the unique characteristics and preferences of each community, providing a foundation for more effective and targeted marketing strategies.
Results
The implementation of this innovative methodology yielded significant and impactful results.
- VML and Prism were able to uncover surprising insights, such as the distinct differences between the fan bases of seemingly similar artists like Kendrick Lamar and Future. These insights demonstrated that engagement strategies need to be tailored to the unique preferences of different fan communities.
- The report generated considerable interest both within VML and from external clients, leading to new business inquiries and enhancing the agency’s ability to deliver scalable and evergreen solutions.
- This approach not only improved the targeting and effectiveness of marketing campaigns but also highlighted the value of detailed audience segmentation, ultimately driving greater engagement and brand loyalty.
Why not let the team behind this success speak for themselves?
“What's really great about Audiense and in particular why we chose to leverage it here is really how it enables you to understand your audiences at a deeper level. Standard survey data is really fantastic, but it's only gonna give you an understanding of the audience at one moment in time. It really won't let you go any further, whereas social data is so much more complex. It picks up every interaction, every click, every like, and that tells a completely different story, which is super important for when you're trying to understand culture and particularly understand artists”
Victoria Hoyle
Social Insights Director at VML
