(Social Media Monitoring Presentation Pt. 1) Avenged Sevenfold and The Stage

Background

"It’s pretty much completely aggro. It goes in all sorts of aggressive directions and melodic directions".

This was one of the first times that a member of Avenged Sevenfold commented on The Stage back in December 2015. 

On October 28, 2016, under almost unpredictable circumstances, the band revealed The Stage to the world.

Avenged Sevenfold, also known as A7x, is a Heavy Metal band that started back in 1999 in California. 

To this date, A7x has released seven studio albums, with The Stage being their latest release.

Setting up The Stage

From a marketing perspective, The Stage is Avenged Sevenfold's product. 

What made this product release stand out was its departure from a traditional album release style.

A7x decided to release The Stage almost unexpectedly, without giving many details prior to its release.

"We just really didn't tell anyone, we didn't tell family members, or good friends, we just... I guess we really didn't have the urge to do it. We were just really confident with the music, and happy with what we were doing."

Many questions come to mind. 

How was A7x able to pull this off? What did this marketing effort look like? Was it successful?

Presence in Social Media

Before diving into the specifics about The Stage, lets quickly look at the band's following on four social media platforms:

Roughly, A7x has over 23m followers between Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

Now lets focus on The Stage in the context of its non-traditional release format and social media presence. Here are three key points:

1. "Voltaic Oceans on December 9th"

In the middle of October 2016, just a few days after the band released a single called The Stage, A7x had Chris Jericho, best known as a WWE wrestler, post about their new album under the name Voltaic Oceans and quickly take down the post, to make it seem as if it was a mistake. 

This quickly went viral across all social media platforms. 

The Stage was receiving worldwide buzz and attention under a fake name, and little did we know the album would be out a few days later rather than on December 9th.

2. "A MUST SEE live streamed event for fans across the world that you will not want to miss"

On October 20th, 2016, just a few days after Jericho "mistakenly" revealed A7x's new album, the band announced that there was going to be a special event on October 27th. The post received much attention on Facebook and Instagram:

The announcement of this event received thousands of "likes" and comments, yet this announcement and the event itself did not make any direct references to the new album. 

It turned out to be a livestreamed show, in which the band played five songs, one of them being The Stage, which had been released as a single two weeks before:

Thousands of viewers joined the stream, which now has over a million views on Youtube. The video for the livestreamed performance of The Stage has over two million views on Youtube.

The livestream show happened just a few hours before The Stage was released as an album digitally and physically on October 28th, 2016. 

On one hand, thousands of fans watched the event and wondered if it had anything to do with Jericho's reference to Voltaic Oceans. 

On the other hand, A7x was about to release a full new album and it was still a secret during the time of the livestream.

3. “This record is evolving. There are things we’re going to be adding to the record as time goes on, and it’s still going to be part of the record."

Just a few days after breaking the charts with The Stage, A7x talked about another surprise during a podcast with Jericho, the same Jericho that disguised The Stage with Voltaic Oceans. 

The band announced the digital addition of seven songs to The Stage, to be released throughout 2017.

"For us, the idea of turning an album into a living piece of art and adding new installations is really intriguing. It expands the journey."

And they did. 

Between June and September 2017, A7x digitally released seven songs, six covers and one original, which they considered to be part of The Stage Experience.

Lets take a look at how two of these seven additional songs, "Dose" and "God Only Knows", were received on Youtube and Facebook:

Overall, Dose and God Only Knows and the other five tracks were well-received throughout social media.

To make The Stage Experience more complete, A7x announced that a Deluxe Edition of the album, with the inclusion of the additional songs and unreleased live versions of songs, was going to be released digitally and physically on December 22nd, 2017.

Even though The Stage Experience was officially complete with the release of the Deluxe Edition, A7x has continued the experience in 2018 with The Stage World Tour, which kicked off in the US this spring and will continue in Europe starting June.

The Data Behind The Stage

While these previous remarks provide us with much insight about the social media campaign efforts behind The Stage, lets look at some specific data tools to further help us answer some of our questions:

Using socialmention, we can see that the general search, "the stage avenged sevenfold", sorted by "date" and results "anytime" leads to some results. 

Here were the top "keywords" associated with our general search:

Lets get more specific. Using socialmention, this is the data that comes up with the search, thestageworldtour, sorted by "date" and results "anytime" :

Here are some of the "keywords" :

The more specific we get with keywords surrounding The Stage, the more accurate the results seem to be. 

Based on this socialmention information, it is clear that The Stage has a strong presence in platforms such as Twitter. 

Here are some recent mentions to the general search, thestageworldtour:

Using Google Trends, lets consider how some similar searches stand out in social media:

Using the general search, "the stage avenged sevenfold", and the custom dates from when the first single was released until now, we can appreciate how popular this specific search was in terms of interest over time. Clearly, it was very popular in late October and early November.

Lets get a little more specific. Using the same general search, lets consider interest over time between October 13, 2016, the day when the single was released, and November 3rd, 2016, a few days after the full album was released:

Without a doubt, interest over time was high on the day the first single was released and reached a score of 100 on October 28th, right when the album was released.

In consideration of The Stage Experience, lets look at how "Dose" and "God Only Knows", the two songs that we looked at earlier, and "Wish you were here", another song in The Stage Experience, compare on social media from the time they were released in 2017 until this date:

As we can appreciate, interest over time for each song was the highest when they were first released. 

It is interesting to see that "Dose", the only original song out of the seven, was the only song out of these three to reach a score of 100 in terms of interest over time.

To better understand our thestageworldtour results from socialmention, lets try out the general search, the stage world tour on Google Trends:

In a similar manner to some of our previous findings, we can see a consistent interest over time. 

The interest over time reaches its highest value on this search around October 2nd, the day that A7x announced the first round of dates for The Stage World Tour.

Final remarks: The Stage Experience

Rather than focusing on pre-ordering efforts and releasing more than single, A7x kept a low profile with their album release and took a main, digital-based approach when it was time to release The Stage and the additional songs.

Based on the examples and data considered, here is a advantage vs disadvantage consideration about the whole The Stage Experience from a marketing standpoint:

ADVANTAGE

• Avenged Sevenfold, as a band and as a brand, increased its social media presence and engagement with The Stage Experience. Whether we look at their Instagram or Facebook, the band is actively sharing new content every week. This is consistent with their non-traditional release approach, as they are focusing on digital platforms.

DISADVANTAGE

• Many fans have stated that, while they appreciate the use of social media and the focus on digital platforms, it is just as important to be consistent with physical copies of the album. Some fans who bought the physical copy of  The Stage when it came out have pointed out that it was not convenient to have to buy another physical copy of the Deluxe Edition of The Stage to physically have the seven additional songs.

With The Stage, Avenged Sevenfold became one of the first mainstream heavy metal bands to test the grounds of a non-traditional, 21st century approach to releasing a music album.

It will be interesting to see how The Stage Experience evolves throughout 2018 and beyond. 

We will see whether A7x decides to pursue a similar marketing approach in their next album.

We will also see if other bands within the Metal and Rock communities decide to take a non-traditional, TheStagesque approach to releasing music.