Title	LISTEN WITHOUT PREJUDICE
Brand	SONY MUSIC UK
Product/Service	LISTEN WITHOUT PREJUDICE
Category	F11. Excellence in Audience Engagement & Distribution Strategy for Music Content
Entrant	TRAILER PARK London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	TRAILER PARK London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	TRAILER PARK London, UNITED KINGDOM
Additional Company	SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT UK London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Peter Liffen	Trailer Park	Senior Creative
Charlie Johnson	Trailer Park	Creative Director
Alex Normanton	Trailer Park	Designer
Dave Roberts	Trailer Park	Managing Director

The Campaign

George had a non-conformist, controversial style and nothing demonstrated this better than his refusal in 1990 to promote ‘Listen Without Prejudice’ or its singles. MTV was king, video budgets were soaring, but George played by his own rules, insisting on producing a disruptively simple execution for first single ‘Praying for Time’ – that wouldn’t feature him … or anyone else. It simply featured the lyrics, animated on a stark, black background. The impact was huge – its simplicity and purity of message stood-out against the hectic backdrop of music TV. To remain true to George, and to engage his passionate fans, the same creative approach would lie at the heart of our campaign. We would showcase the original ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ message behind the album, in the same disruptive, brutally simple fashion – relying on the power of words, with minimal sound ... and nothing else.

Creative Execution

The campaign ran across TV, OOH, Print, Digital Display and Social. Launch spot ‘Prejudice’ ran in Channel 4’s “George Michael: Freedom” film - challenging viewers with a series of seemingly disconnected, monochrome words and statements (which often engender prejudicial reactions), before revealing their connection to George, closing on the word ‘Musician’. Juxtaposing ‘Prejudice’ was ‘Superlative’, an execution which, rather than challenging viewers to confront their preconceptions, simply celebrates Michael for his artistic & personal contribution. High impact press executions ran as pairs in Metro, as well as in high footfall OOH sites across London. Over fifty different rich media banners also supported the release on key music platforms. Most critical to the campaign was social – we created 24 different versions of the TVC for George’s social channels, optimised for each platform - from 9:16 vertical videos for Snapchat, to 1:1 for Instagram & cover videos for Facebook.

The campaign hit the spot – striking a balance between shocking, humorous and emotional. Fans embraced its honesty and took to social to applaud its sentiment – they also shared the executions, whether photographing their TV screen, or snapping a cross-track poster. Only a week after release, #withoutprejudice had generated 15.3m impressions on Twitter, our cut-downs had been Shared over 6,000 times on George’s Facebook page and their equivalent on Instagram had over 50,000 Views. Our fan ambassadors had done George proud – our advertising had become content and the message behind the album spread far and wide. So far that, a week after its release, on October 27th, the UK Official Chart Company announced that ‘Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1’ had had gone straight in at No1 in the Album Charts – 27 years after doing so for the first time. We think George would have been proud.

On Christmas Day 2016, the world lost a legendary musician and artist. Whether as one half of 80’s super-group ‘Wham’, or as a record-breaking soloist, George Michael’s contribution to music and the arts is unprecedented. This is the story of a disruptive, yet respectful campaign - created to harness the power of George’s fans and take an album back to No1, twenty-seven years after its original release.

We knew that if we could engage fans in a ‘loud & proud’ celebration of George, they would act as very vocal, highly influential ambassadors for the cause. However, to do this, we’d need to channel our ‘inner George’ and challenge every music-marketing convention. The campaign would launch a week prior to release with a simple, disruptive execution, born from our ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ creative idea and specifically designed to elicit a response from the audience (regardless of their fandom). Using #withoutprejudice, social conversation would self-moderate, with fans explaining the message to non-fans. This would be followed up on album release day with a contrasting execution with a more upbeat, joyous tone – bringing old and new-fans together to celebrate George the man and the musician. Where possible, to maximise impact, we would look for opportunities to run both executions together in simple juxtaposition.