Clients

“This project [Bach Cantata Pilgrimage] ranks as one of the musical events of the decade.” The Observer

John Eliot Gardiner created his own record label in January 2005 with the first two volumes of live recordings from his monumental Bach Pilgrimage Tour. The launch of the label attracted widespread international coverage, including a news story that occupied the whole of page three of the Guardian. Successive titles in the series have proved to be best sellers and have won many awards, including Gramophone’s Record of the Year in 2005.

The label has proved so successful that new recordings of other repertoire have also been made. These include a recording of the Pilgrimage to Santiago project – a programme given at various staging posts on the way to Santiago de Compostela - and a live recording of Mozart's Symphonies Nos 39 and 41 on SDG's On the Night label. The latter is a recording of the first half of a concert at London's Cadogan Hall which audience members were able to buy as they left at the end of the evening, an event captured live on BBC TV’s News At Ten programme.

Albion Media is responsible for working closely with the label’s network of 39 distributors around the world to maximise sales and promotional opportunities. Albion has also originated a series of online initiatives, such as creating and maintaining Soli Deo Gloria’s pages on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Dilettante Music.

Case study:

Albion Media clients for:

• Public relations
• Marketing of Soli Deo Gloria record label

THE BRIEF TO ALBION MEDIA
Albion Media’s relationship with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Soli Deo Gloria dates back to 2005 and the launch of the label. The brief, which originally covered public relations, was expanded in 2008 to include UK marketing and coordination of international sales and marketing for Soli Deo Gloria releases. The label had already established a reputation – aided, of course, by Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s renown – but a strong commercial focus was required for releases to achieve their full international sales potential. Albion Media now works closely with the label’s network of 39 distributors around the world.

APPROACH and ACHIEVEMENTS

Public relations
The PR campaign for the launch of the Soli Deo Gloria label in 2006 resulted in extensive coverage that reached beyond the specialist media and arts pages, including a report that occupied the entire third page of The Guardian. A high media profile has been maintained since then.

In the traditional UK media, Soli Deo Gloria discs feature regularly on BBC Radio 3’s CD Review, while every release to date has been reviewed in the national newspapers; they are also consistently recommended by specialist magazines such as Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine (Volume 27 of the Bach Cantatas won the magazine’s award for Best Choral recording in 2009), International Record Review and Classic FM Magazine. The labels releases are also regularly reviewed in increasingly influential online media such as TheArtsDesk.com, Musical Criticism, Classical Source and Music OMH.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner himself is a mainstay of the specialist classical music media – for instance, he featured on the covers of both Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine in 2008, but Albion Media’s creative approach has placed him and Soli Deo Gloria across other media. For instance, his work as an organic farmer inspired articles in the Observer’s monthly food magazine, in the prestigious Country Life magazine and on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today.

Record label marketing
After Albion Media’s first year coordinating the label’s international marketing, sales had outperformed the market in major territories such as UK, Germany and Japan and had shown a marked increase in many of the smaller international markets.

Albion Media’s work includes a range of online initiatives, such as creating and maintaining Soli Deo Gloria’s pages on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Dilettante Music.

For the release of the Brandenburg Concertos in October 2009, Albion Media commissioned a four-minute video which has been added to the release’s page on Amazon.co.uk and to other websites across the world. September 2009 also saw the launch of Soli Deo Gloria’s own channel on YouTube and the fruition of a carefully planned online campaign for the Brandenburg Concertos; over the months before the release date this campaign spread virally on Twitter, classical music forums and blogs, creating anticipation for the new recording.