Marketing communications: The Beatles

Expressing the work of the worlds most famous artists for a decade

The brief

We are privileged to work with the world's leading entertainment brand, The Beatles, and enjoy a special relationship as a creative partner of the band.

We have been responsible for the creative expression of the band's work since their return in 1990. This began with the retro-look "Live at the BBC", then in '95 expressing the band's recording history in the unique "Anthology" package, and finally the iconic symbolism of "1" in 2000. In between that we have tucked in personal work for the individual band members.

The solution

The Beatles are number 1 in every music poll so the creative approach for '1' was minimal. The key was to create an iconic device that could link together a worldwide marketing campaign. We applied this to the CD package, a global marketing, sales and merchandising campaign above-and below-the-line.

'1' was number 1 in 32 countries, has become the fastest selling album of all time with 21.5 million units sold in the first year alone.

"The image is central to all our activity and has ensured the album achieved the broad commercial reach and appeal we wanted."
Chris Windle, Vice President of International Marketing, EMI Records