Influence Digital Influence Digital

Senbla & Terrapin – Bob Marley: One Love Experience at London’s Saatchi Gallery

Background

The Bob Marley: One Love Experience made its global debut in London in February 2022, at the prestigious Saatchi Gallery, where it was on show for 10 weeks. This first-of-its-kind experience showcased historic and rare Marley memorabilia, immersing the audience in his journey, lifestyle, passions, and influences that make up his enduring legacy. A multi-sensory experience celebrating one of the world’s most beloved and unifying cultural figures.

Our Brief

Having worked with Senbla – the London-based promoter for the exhibition – on a range of concerts and events over the years, we were entrusted with devising and implementing a social-first digital marketing strategy. Our objectives were:

  1. Build Awareness of the Bob Marley: One Love Experience brand.
  2. Engage with the existing fan base, which amasses over 90 million social media users on Bob Marley’s channels alone.
  3. Drive ticket sales. (Capacity: 150,000 for the duration of the exhibition).

Challenges

As part of developing the strategic framework and media planning, we worked out what the main challenges for achieving each of our goals would be, both for pre-launch and once the exhibition opened.

We identified the following as the main challenges:

  • We lacked supporting imagery in the pre-promotion phase, as the exhibition had never taken place before. The exhibition featured many elements we had to bring to life before the exhibition was assembled.
  • There was a need to differentiate the Bob Marley: One Love experience from other Bob Marley offerings, especially the Bob Marley: Get Up, Stand Up musical which was running in the West End at the same time.
  • The Bob Marley audience is diverse, and we wanted to make sure we targeted as wide a range of his fans as possible in the most efficient manner.
  • We were targeting a brand-new audience for Saatchi Gallery itself, which usually has a more traditional art audience.
  • There was a limited time frame for ticket sales pre-launch: November-January, a busy Festive season.

Our Approach

Creative Strategy

Our goal was to bring the One Love Experience to life digitally, making the exhibition stand out as unique alongside other Bob Marley offerings, but we lacked imagery and content at first..

Our creative approach was to apply a contemporary lens to a series of vintage content that would be well received by a modern audience while retaining a strong sense of authenticity. Our look and feel had to be engaging and relatable, aiming to create shareable content that captured the spirit of his message and music.

The exhibition showcased a new composition from renowned graphic designer Jimmy Turrell as the hero artwork. These two creative approaches helped us break through the noise and position Bob Marley: One Love Experience as the ultimate Bob Marley experience in London.

Audience Segmentation

To address the challenge of targeting the broad Bob Marley fanbase and what was a new audience for Saatchi Gallery, we developed a wide range of different interest-based segments. We also applied behaviour-led targeting to ensure we served ads to all potential customers.

Content Strategy

Once the exhibition opened, we looked to showcase the unique selling points of the experience to differentiate from other rival exhibitions. A key focus was to explore Bob Marley’s relationship with the UK and London in particular. We also created shareable content featuring the many celebrity visitors to the exhibition including the Marley family itself and those attending the VIP Opening Night.  TikTok was a key platform in our cross-channel campaign and we left no stone unturned to identify every type of potential ticket buyer,

We also partnered with 10 London-based influencers who focus on lifestyle and culture. Through this influencer activity alone, we were able to deliver 809k views relating to the exhibition across Instagram and TikTok.

Paid Media Approach

As with our content approach, we built the paid media strategy around the experience opening its doors to the public. Our choice of channels was grounded in the target audience research, as well as our experience with similar live event campaigns.

Our Results

94%

Thru-play rate

Over 2M

Users reached

Over 67K

Click-throughs

1.08%

CTR

Over 29K

Ticket Sales

Conclusion

Influence Digital successfully supported Senbla and Terrapin Entertainment in promoting the one-of-its-kind Bob Marley: One Love Experience to a wide range of audiences, across different behavioural and personality segments. Overcoming barriers, we grew the exhibition’s Instagram following by a sizable amount, and drove high numbers of ticket sales. Our innovative thinking around content and strategy introduced new audiences to The Bob Marley: One Love experience, and made it a must-see exhibition across London.