In the spring of 2013, Swedish indie band, Shout Out Louds were slated to launch their new album Optica. As it had been over three years since their last album they wanted an idea that would get people talking about the band again. Using their first single Blue Ice as a sampling mechanism, our brief was to develop an idea that would appeal to current fans but pique attention of prospective ones.

The challenge was to reach a global fan base on an indie band budget.

Our solution was to carefully target influencers in social media within several relevant culture groups, and give them the opportunity to sample the band’s first single before anyone else. The catch: They had to make the song themselves out of ice.

We sent ten Ice Record kits to fans, bloggers and media types with the hope that they would share their experience with their community.

First we assembled the ice record kits. Each kit had a personalized letter from the band with instructions on how to make the ice record. Every element of the kit was highly considered to provide an exclusive, multi-sensory.

We then packaged them very carefully to ensure they would get attention once delivered to the recipient. Each of the ten kits were dispatched on November 20th 2012, one week before Blue Ice would be available for download to everyone. By November 29th, the Shout Out Louds were one of Hype Machine's 'most blogged artists' and the project continued to spread throughout December, January and February.

The response exceeded our expectations by tenfold. As the project’s circulation amongst social media increased, we picked-up even more influencers around the world, ultimately extending to mainstream media including broadcast television in the US, Sweden and Japan.

A week after we sent the Ice Record kits the Shout Out Louds were among Hype Machine’s most blogged artists. The project was picked up by design blogs such as Fast Co Design and Design Boom. At the time of this submission, we had received over one hundred million media impressions from social media alone.