For the rollout of Harry Styles chart-topping, Grammy-nominated sophomore album Fine Line, Columbia Records used fan data as the foundation of a global, mysterious ad campaign that drove new and unsuspecting fans into a digital frenzy by turning the imaginary setting of a unreleased music video into a global tourism campaign. Before associating our efforts with the artist, the campaign trended #1 on Twitter worldwide, and eventually leapt from digital screens to the real world when Harry was asked if he was responsible for Eroda on The Graham Norton Show.

Heading into Q4 2019, we had to awaken Harry Styles fans with the hint of his first new music in over 2 years, a significant amount of time away from the spotlight in an increasingly condensed, streaming-driven marketplace. Add to that, the pressure of sophomore release and a fan base in transition from Harry’s early days in One Direction. Not only did we need to authentically engage Harry's core audience, but we needed to build a platform to appeal to a wider audience, particularly considering the more mature, classic-rock indebted sound waiting around the corner.

The campaign launched in Oct 2019 with a cryptic global snipes campaign featuring a key lyric “Do You Know Who You Are” and Harry-trademarked acronym “TPWK” (Treat People With Kindness - also a song on the new album). Locations were selected based on Harry’s top streaming markets. Fans recognized the acronym, and quickly found our Harry-themed, digital message generator. Through the site, we began collecting fan data that would help inform the global strategy for Fine Line. But this data wasn’t enough to fuel a campaign, and our creative breakthrough was still to come. Insert “Adore You”, the official lead single for Fine Line, featuring a whimsical, Dave Meyers directd music video that took place on the fictional island of Eroda. After an early look at the video, we began devising the most extensive tourism campaign for a place that doesn’t exist. The island of Eroda.

The DYKWYA generator was crucial in two ways: site pixels built an active retargeting pool we could utilize across social platforms and the Google suite, and social sharing functionality drove a spike in followers across Harry's dormant social handles. These sources became our global universe. In total, we identified +8.5MM fans around the world, and began to devise a media plan focusing on markets with the highest level of engagement, considering site traffic and social activity. Once we finalized our Erodian brand identity, including a glitchy, anachronistic website, social channels, and physical collateral, we began targeting fans across 4 continents and in 6 languages, inviting them to celebrate fake holidays, catch mythical fish, and stay at unsearchable locations on the island. To increase intrigue and expand the scope of the campaign, we also targeted ARG and gaming fans with a pop music affinity qualifier (as applicable) using social platform data.

The fan, data-driven journey began in October 2019, when our global OOH campaign led fans to doyouknowwhoyouare.com. On site Facebook, Twitter, Google, Snap, StackAdapt and Tumblr pixels allowed us to track the most plugged in fans. We also had access to Harry’s social accounts on these channels, and his historic CRM list built during the last album tour. We collapsed these audiences in each ad management platform to dedupe our core audience within each admittedly-walled garden. Our goal remained the same: capture the attention of Harry’s biggest fans by bombarding them with ads throughout their digital consumption habits. We even created an audio spot and served it to Harry's listeners on Spotify. After two days, a Twitter thread investigating Eroda went viral. From there, we pivoted targeting to include gamers, fans of major pop stars, and lookalikes of our own campaign to achieve as much exposure as possible.

Eroda trended #1 worldwide on Twitter before Harry’s name was ever mentioned or explicitly connected to the campaign. Fans created bootleg merch, posted Eroda tattoos, and drove the social handles to nearly 600K followers overall. In the following weeks, Fine Line became Harry’s most successful launch, topping the Billboard 200 for two weeks and earning one of several Grammy nominations for Music Video of the Year for “Adore You”. Fine Line was named the 4th most streamed album Worldwide on Spotify in 2020, and fans are still tweeting about Eroda to this day.