Harry Styles’ ‘Adore You’ Music Video is Easter Egg Marketing at its Finest

The unique strategy behind Styles’ Grammy-nominated music video.

‘Adore You’ was released by Harry Styles on December 13th, 2019, as a promotional single roughly a week before ‘Fine Line’ the album was dropped. Not only was the song a radio hit, but the creative music video achieved success as well, earning a Grammy nomination.

This music video takes place on an island called “Eroda” where everyone is constantly frowning. The whimsical story is about a peculiar boy – played by Harry Styles – with a blinding smile and a love for a fish that he saved one day. The extended version is essentially a short film and clearly a high-budget release by Styles’ team.

However, the most interesting part about this music video is arguably not the quirky storyline, but the advertising for it. Styles’ marketing team used a tourism campaign with ads targeted toward people who had visited Harry Styles’ website. The cryptic ads promoted travel to “Eroda”, which many eventually discovered was fictional. The ads led to a detailed travel website, listing attractions and facts about the island, many of which were Easter eggs (see my recent post explaining Easter eggs here: https://www.marketingandentertainment.com/blog/easter-eggs). For example, a tourist attraction was said to be on the corner of “Cherry Street” and “Golden Way”, predicting the songs ‘Cherry’ and ‘Golden’ released on the album only a week later.

You may have noticed that “Eroda” spelled backward is “adore”. And the site even says “we adore you” to its tourists. Reviews are also listed on the travel experience from private accounts, stating they will return to Eroda the day the song and music video ended up being released. All of these hints eventually led some of Styles’ fans to crack the code before the video’s release.

This marketing team took advantage of the curiosity of Harry Styles’ very engaged fanbase, which boosted the success of the campaign. I mentioned in my recent post how essential fan engagement is for Easter eggs to be successful and this is a great example. Without an audience’s ability to pick up on completely unexpected hints, a campaign like this would not have succeeded. This particular example was not only great for music video promotion, but it also aided the promotion of his second studio album.