Narleyy — “To Whom It May Concern” feat. Quez Cantrell & Starlito

DSP Growth Case Study & Campaign Recap

Role

Artist / Campaign Strategist / Creative Director

Focus Areas

DSP Strategy • Audience Targeting • Rollout Execution • Regional Marketing • Creative Campaign Development • Streaming Analysis

Overview

“To Whom It May Concern” became one of the strongest-performing releases in the catalog through a rollout strategy centered around regional audience identity, storytelling-driven creative execution, and platform-specific listener behavior analysis.

The release featured Starlito and Quez Cantrell and was positioned to resonate heavily with Nashville and Southeastern audiences through cultural familiarity, artist association, and regional storytelling.

Rather than relying on paid advertising, the campaign focused on organic audience engagement, rollout timing, and culturally relevant content designed to strengthen listener connection and increase engagement quality across platforms.

Campaign Objective

The primary objective was to create a rollout that felt authentic to regional audiences while maximizing engagement through storytelling and audience familiarity.

The strategy focused on:

• Increasing regional engagement density

• Strengthening listener retention

• Driving organic interaction and shares

• Improving first-week engagement behavior

• Reinforcing artist identity and familiarity through rollout content

Creative Rollout Strategy

The campaign centered around Starlito’s original stage name, “All Star,” a name strongly recognized within Nashville culture and long-time fan communities.

To support the rollout, I developed:

• Motion graphics

• Campaign artwork

• Storytelling-focused Instagram content

• Regional audience positioning

• DSP rollout coordination and metadata management

The core rollout asset was a short-form Instagram skit written and produced by me featuring Quez Cantrell.

The skit took place inside an auto body repair shop where the storyline revolved around balancing work responsibilities with music aspirations. During the conversation, Quez references “All Star” as a potential feature suggestion, creating a culturally familiar moment designed to resonate specifically with Nashville audiences already familiar with Starlito’s earlier identity.

The objective was to make the rollout feel conversational, authentic, and rooted in regional familiarity instead of relying on traditional promotional content alone.

Artwork & Visual Direction

The artwork concept was directly inspired by the title “To Whom It May Concern” and the emotional structure of the record itself.

My creative interpretation was that each verse felt like a personal letter being written from each artist’s perspective. To visually reinforce that concept, the artwork was designed to resemble a sheet of paper filled with handwritten notes, sketches, and personal markings connected to each artist’s identity.

The cover artwork featured manipulated portrait photography edited in Adobe Photoshop to resemble hand-drawn pencil illustrations. I also scanned my real handwriting into the artwork for the title treatment to make the presentation feel more personal and authentic to the song’s concept.

Around each artist’s portrait were custom doodles, handwritten notes, visual references, and selected lyric fragments written in my handwriting to reflect themes, phrases, and personality traits connected to each artist and verse.

The goal was to make the artwork feel emotionally personal and visually tied to the storytelling structure of the song rather than functioning as standard promotional artwork.

Campaign Performance

Instagram Storytelling Skit

• 5.8K+ Views

• 213 Likes

• 45 Comments

• 31 Shares

Motion Graphic Rollout Assets

• 4.5K+ Views

• 130 Likes

• 35 Comments

• 47 Shares

DSP Performance

Spotify

• 3.8K+ Streams

Apple Music

• 2.5K+ Plays

Geographic Listener Concentration

Strongest listener activity occurred across:

• Nashville

• Atlanta

• Chattanooga

• Memphis

DSP Analysis

From a DSP analysis perspective, the release demonstrated stronger replay behavior and retention activity on Apple Music, while Spotify performance responded more heavily to concentrated engagement activity and regional interaction.

The campaign outperformed surrounding releases because multiple factors aligned simultaneously:

• Regional audience familiarity

• Storytelling-driven rollout execution

• Artist identity positioning

• Organic audience interaction

• Platform-specific listener behavior

The rollout reinforced that stronger release performance is not driven by content alone, but by how audience psychology, cultural familiarity, and platform behavior work together within a campaign strategy.

Strategic Takeaways

If expanding this strategy further, I would focus on:

• Increasing pre-release save intent and audience conditioning before release day

• Expanding storytelling-focused rollout assets across short-form platforms

• Concentrating engagement efforts in strongest listener markets

• Leveraging DSP and Shazam analytics to identify geographic expansion opportunities

• Structuring release timelines around early engagement velocity and audience interaction patterns

• Developing platform-specific rollout strategies tailored to listener behavior differences between Spotify and Apple Music

Key Outcome

This campaign demonstrated how culturally relevant storytelling, regional audience understanding, and DSP-aware rollout execution can strengthen organic engagement and improve long-term listener retention without paid advertising spend.