Digital Marketing: Rammstein Rock Band

Can we take the example of Rammstein? As Ease Agency, what channels did you use, to market their new album?

With Rammstein, it’s a very special case, I would say, because they’ve been around for a very long time. Their last record was out 10 years ago. The leap from a 2010 record to a 2019 one, was huge, because they did tour, but they didn’t release any new records. What was most important to us was that we keep the brand of Rammstein and the visual identity that is very strong and that they have established over the years, but make it modern at the same time and make the most of all the opportunities that there are right now.

We partnered with the label, which is Universal, but we carried out most of the digital strategy which was, obviously, the entire tool box of visual marketing, such as YouTube ads, Instagram ads, Facebook ads, newsletters. Also important for them is that they have a huge fanbase and we think we did a great job at retargeting people who went to the tour and who bought merchandise, which is also a big stream for them.

Then, important for us, was to have some sort of physical element, as well, because the physical sales for Rammstein are still huge. That’s not the case for every band but, for them, it is. They sold more than half a million copies, which is extremely rare, these days. We wanted to have something on point of sale, which is MediaMarkt in Germany, or HMV in the UK, where people could come and buy the physical product, to have something that is fun for them. We created a 13-meter-long match, because the match is the cover of the record. There is no photo of the band; it’s just a match. The album is called Rammstein and the visual identity is the match. We rented a truck that went from one town or city to another, and people could follow it over a GPS and could see where the truck was going. They could go there, obviously buy the record, but also take selfies with it, so we would have the ability to distribute into the online world, as well.

We would have amazing footage of that; we’d have some new pieces of content marketing of where the truck was going and what people were doing with it. That was a nice offline touch to it, I would say. What the label usually does, in these cases, is put big billboards across Germany. Outside Germany, we only did a digital spend. We like to combine everything from a brand perspective and they just announced their tour in the US, which is pretty exciting, because they haven’t been there for many, many years. Together with the tour marketing campaign, we branded a zeppelin, which is quite unusual. Obviously, a zeppelin is a very German thing. Think of Hindenburg and think of the 1920s, 1930s. We branded a zeppelin that flew across LA and some other cities, for four days, to promote the shows. We always like to have a physical element that demonstrates how big the band is and how massively they like to see themselves, or to create a distance, in a way, and a mystery among the band. They are not really the ones that come to hug fans after the concert. They are more like, this is Rammstein and you’re here, which is part of the brand, so that’s important when we carry out any marketing strategy, as well.

Would you say that the offline is still very important today, in driving branding for artists?

Obviously, with Rammstein, we were in the luxury position that we had a lot of budget to work with; that’s not usually the case. Let’s say you are more of a medium-sized band or a newcomer, you want to have the budget planned out as effectively as possible. In that situation, I don’t want to say that online marketing activities are more effective, but at least it’s more trackable. You can see that you spent X amount and this is what came out. This is, obviously, important for a lot of people who deal with tighter budgets.

However, I think the offline experience, in concerts or festivals, is something that most bands don’t really leverage on. Let’s say a band had 20,000 people come to an arena and, somehow, interact with the brand, they would be very lucky and they would make the most of it. That’s not what happens at concerts and festivals these days. They come in and they go and you don’t even know who these people are.