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We’re gonna learn about marketing through emo music today, but first… what could I write for you? I’m thinking through the future of Future Social—deciding what sort of pieces to write, and who I’m writing for, and what’s most helpful for our industry, and going through yet another existential wonder about how I can bring more value to you.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how I might be able to help more marketers. You can reply right to this email—I read ‘em all.

But hey, let’s talk about Linkin Park after a quick word from our sponsor.

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How Linkin Park used creative strategy to solve their most important moment

Bands are brands. Bands are products. Bands are companies. Those statements might give muscians the ick, but it’s reality. And one of my favorite bands of all-time just pulled off an incredible creative strategy + content roll-out that’s a masterclass in repurposing.

Let’s talk about how Linkin Park used clever social media strategy to:

• solve a major “business” issue

• address negative sentiment in a creative way

• reveal a new lead vocalist

• build a deep content catalog

• launch a best-in-class livestream

• and a whole lot more.

The History

Linkin Park sold over 100 million records with Chester Bennington singing his heart out. The legendary rock vocalist’s colossal screams shared heart-wrenching lyrics, often touching on depression, suicide, addiction, and mental health. Those themes were binding for fans—“In The End” is up to 2 billion streams now.

Bennington took his own life in July 2017, the same day the band dropped a new music video. Bandmates, family, & fans (including me) were devastated. After a touching star-studded tribute show, the band disbanded. No more shows. No new Linkin Park songs. It really seemed like we’d never hear from the guys again.

Then, after a 7 year hiatus, we heard some rumblings about a new vocalist. A female vocalist, in a scene that’s not always welcoming to women. Someone who’d sing the songs of the fans’ fallen hero. And that’s as much as we knew for a long time.

The “Business” Challenge: How do you replace a beloved vocalist?

The band quietly made their choice. Emily Armstrong would be Linkin Park’s new vocalist. They spent over a year rehearsing while keeping the secret, debating the best way to introduce her to the world.

Fans are fickle. Legacies are important. Linkin Park would have to answer many, many questions if they wanted to come back.

• Is it still Linkin Park without Chester?

• Would fans accept any new singer after 17 years of Chester?

• Can anyone actually sing Chester’s parts?

• Should Linkin Park only tour the old songs?

• Should LP write new music? If so, when?

Some fair, some doused in emotion, but all bound to happen, and all of real consequence to the band’s future.

The Creative Strategy: Show, Don’t Tell

What’s the best way to make fans fall in love with their new singer?

To not let the fans know who’s singing until they can actually hear them sing, both online and IRL.

It was the only way to head those questions off, but more importantly, get people excited. That single moment—the first time a fan hears the new vocalist—is the moment to share what the future will hold.

That’s incredibly hard to pull off, mostly because people can’t keep their mouths shut. Everything leaks. But somehow, they kept many huge moves under wraps.

The Big Execution: a live-streamed concert reveal

It was decided. A one-hour live-streamed concert would be the big reveal, simultaneously giving fans:

• The new singer performing before we knew her name

• A full hour of Linkin Park playing their hits

• A brand new song

• An album announcement

• A world tour announcement (with just a week’s notice!)

• A music video drop

Let me take you through how it played out.

A mysterious countdown timer made sure we knew when the event would happen… even though we had no idea what the event actually was.

We tuned in as Linkin Park opened their set with a new song, “The Emptiness Machine,” playing a whole verse and chorus with just 5 members on stage before the fierce blonde walked up a minute into the track.

We weren’t given a name. We just watched an unknown new member belt out huge vocals.

The YouTube chat (and my emo music group chat) were frantic as everyone tried to identify her. At the end of the song, Shinoda shared Emily’s name before the band burst into their classics like “Numb,” “Somewhere I Belong,” and “One Step Closer,” giving Armstrong the chance to show us she wasn’t just worthy, but exceptional.

And it worked. Fans latched on. I teared up twice.

That alone was a fantastic example of smart, simple, incredibly well executed creative strategy. But where I geek out is how that one big content execution built an entire content library and served as the commercial for what’s next.

Social Executions

The best part of long-form livestream: they’re content creation opportunities. Most of your audience won’t make your live event, so redistributing live content through social is essential. Short-form vertical cutdowns for Instagram and TikTok can get exponentially more views than the original livestream. And Linkin Park understood the assignment.

Song cutdowns into short-form vertical

Individual verses and choruses of songs from the livestream went hyper viral on social. Look at the band’s Instagram Reels grid after the show. Look at those view counts, then remember the livestream only had 10 million views.

The cutdown of the new line-up performing “Numb” became the most viral with 66.2 million views and 484,000 shares across IG + TikTok. It became the shareable version of “have you heard Linkin Park’s new singer?”

@linkinpark

Numb.

Re-posting short-form vertical content a second time.

New age TikTok musicians often will make dozens (if not hundreds) of back-to-back TikToks featuring the same 30 second chorus. Linkin Park wisely adopted the same re-posting strategy, dropping different angles of the exact same verses as additional short-form vertical content over the following week.

Check this grid from the band’s TikTok. Most of these are songs posted twice. That first video of “Numb” that did 66 million views? Yeah, it did an additional 26 million views on the report. A 39% increase in views by just posting again.

Letting the livestream live on as long-form YouTube content

Miss the concert? That’s okay, you can watch it whenever you like on Linkin Park’s YouTube. Most of those 10 million views likely came after the live-stream.

Dropping the new song + music video immediately after the concert

Shinoda announced on stage at the livestream that the new song was immediately available on Spotify, along with the music video over on YouTube. For a band, a song is equally product and content, and giving fans the proper version as fast as possible to latch onto was vital. Which, of course, was also turned into short-form vertical versions, too.

An All-At-Once Content Strategy

Remember that big list of things revealed?

Most marketing plans would try to split those up as “beats,” making each their own moment, but Linkin Park gave it to us as one huge drop—incredibly smart, in my opinion. This moment was high PR, high views—why hold back very important info for another beat when you’ve already got every eyeball?

I could wax on and on about little tactical details from that big day, but I wanna quickly highlight their next major beat as well—the second new song.

A 2nd new song in partnership with Riot’s League Of Legends

Linkin Park activated their own fanbase in the best way possible with their live-stream—so why not fire up an entirely different audience for their second single?

Riot Games loves to partner with musicians for “official songs” for various campaigns, moments, and tournaments. And uh… their fans really latch on. Look at these view counts.

What better way to drop song # 2 then becoming the League Of Legends Worlds 2024 Anthem? Complete with an animated music video in Riot Games’ signature style? With

But even within this song, there’s clever creative strategy!

Shinoda didn’t rap on “The Emptiness Machine,” which raised questions about the band’s future style. Never fear, he unleashed verse after verse on this one.

Even smarter—the song features an Emily scream that surely was an intentional comparison to Chester. The former vocalist’s 17-second scream on “Given Up” is the stuff of legends—and Emily unleashed her own 17-second scream on “Heavy Is The Crown.” And fans immediately noticed.

@fellbrink

Yes Emily, this is indeed what we asked for😍 @Linkin Park #linkinpark #linkinparkfan #emilyarmstrong #heavyisthecrown #fyp

Marketers, the lesson here: our thinking can be applied to every industry, and every industry has valuable thinking we can use with our brands. Don’t just look at your competitors for inspiration. Look at artists, and other verticals, and other industries, and bring them to yours.