Nemzzz: Rent's Due Album Launch

Creating excitement through innovation in OOH

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is a powerful tool for promoting entertainment releases, offering brands and artists a unique opportunity to engage with their audience in high-traffic spaces. OOH activations can captivate audiences with large-scale visuals, immersive experiences, and surprise elements, making them ideal for promoting music releases, film launches, and live events.

For Manchester-born rapper Nemzzz, his second mixtape Rent’s Due was promoted through an innovative OOH campaign featuring a tram wrapped in promotional artwork. This innovative, high-visibility mobile activation, which included a live performance by Nemzzz on the tram, generated excitement and connected with fans in a unique and memorable way.

Objectives 

The primary objectives of the campaign were:

• Celebrate and Promote the Mixtape’s Release: Generate excitement in the run up to the release date of Rent’s Due and then celebrate its arrival through an innovative OOH campaign, to encourage people to buy and stream his music.
• Engage with Fans: Provide a memorable, interactive experience by incorporating a live performance on the tram.
• Support the Launch Events: Reinforce the mixtape’s launch with a striking and unique OOH presence in Manchester, Nemzzz’s hometown, making the release feel personal and locally connected.

Strategy and Execution

The campaign centred around a full tram wrap in bold visuals for Rent’s Due, transforming it into a moving billboard that traversed key areas of Manchester. Trams serve as a great platform to maximise reach and impact in Manchester, whilst a full tram takeover, creates an immersive experience, especially for the live performance. This mobile OOH activation ensured high visibility for the mixtape in the artist’s hometown. To further engage with fans, Nemzzz performed live on the tram, delivering an exclusive set that added an unexpected surprise for those on board.

JD Sports and Nemzzz’s team heavily leveraged social media to capture and share engaging content, including behind-the-scenes footage and teasers, to build anticipation. On the day of the album release, exclusive Nemzzz-branded Metrolink payment cards were given out, adding a tangible and collectible element to the activation. Social media platforms like Instagram, and TikTok were utilised by brands connected to the album launch to amplify the campaign’s reach and generate buzz, whilst user generated content created an organic viral moment.

Online Excitement from Outdoor Activity

The wrapped tram campaign successfully demonstrated how OOH can be used in creative and innovative ways to build excitement around an entertainment release. By blending traditional outdoor advertising with live performance and strategic social media content, the activation created a dynamic and interactive experience for fans. The album saw significant commercial success, debuting at number six on the UK albums chart and the top position on the UK R&B album chart, whilst creating momentum significant traffic.

The limited-edition Metrolink payment cards added an extra layer of exclusivity to the launch, making the activation feel even more personalised, and creating valuable keepsakes for Nemzzz’s fans. This campaign showcased how OOH can push creative boundaries, offering fresh and impactful ways to connect with audiences and drive engagement around major entertainment events.