Behind The Campaign: Alex Warren
US singer-songwriter Alex Warren first came to prominence as a founding member of The Hype House, the TikTok-centric creator group based in Los Angeles. From here he started releasing music and signed with Atlantic Records. Torsten Luth (EVP of international at Atlantic Music Group) and Hope Bozzo (senior marketing manager, EMEA regional marketing at Warner Music Group) explain how the Nordics became a trigger territory, where a steady run of singles built momentum into the global success of ‘Ordinary’, and why content was based around personalisation and localisation.
Table of Contents
- Actionable takeaways
- Signing him and establishing him as a musician
- The Nordics and Benelux become trigger territories
- Amplifying activity, and localising content, in the Nordics
- A steady run of regular singles
- Chapter 1 and the explosion of ‘Ordinary’
- ‘Ordinary’ takes on a life of its own and more tracks slipstream it
- Album release and post-album activities
- The long build
Actionable takeaways
Compiled by Music Ally’s team of marketing experts, these condensed action points are to help you get started and apply them to your own work:
- Use non-US markets as live testbeds, not rollout afterthoughts: Treat trigger territories like the Nordics and Benelux as early signal generators that shape global campaign sequencing.
- Physically embed artists into local culture to accelerate belief: Short, intensive in-market trips focused on language, settings and cultural cues can fast-track authenticity and fan adoption.
- Align release timing with geographic presence: Releasing singles while artists are physically touring or promoting in key markets materially strengthens chart impact and momentum.
- Let emotional narrative dictate release cadence: Maintain thematic consistency across singles so personal storytelling compounds over time rather than resetting with each track.
- Design activations around artist comfort, not influencer logic: Large-scale, surprising IRL moments can outperform creator collabs when they align with the artist’s personality.
- Treat breakout hits as engines, not endpoints: Actively slipstream follow-up tracks and collaborations behind a global hit to convert attention into a broader catalogue habit.
Signing him and establishing him as a musician
For someone who built their profile on TikTok and YouTube as a general creator, establishing a career in music is not a given and, in many cases, can count against you. This was a slow but steady transition, giving tracks space to breathe. From 2021, he released a number of tracks, before signing with Atlantic.
Torsten: I met him for the first time in November 2023. He had never played a show [before]. He was making music, and he was very interested in being an artist. One is either an artist or isn’t, but at that moment in time, he was well known for his influencer work and no one knew about his music. Atlantic Music Group signed him and we started to release music in February 2024.
The Nordics and Benelux become trigger territories
A new pathway is emerging for acts within certain genres, like Warren, where initial uptake happens in the Nordics and then spreads through Europe, creating streaming momentum that eventually leads to a US breakthrough.
Torsten: We discuss with our affiliates what the music is and who the artists are. It became very clear from the beginning that the Nordics and Benelux saw high potential for his music.
There’s something in how music in this genre travels. There is him, there is Benson Boone and plenty of others like this. It starts in the Nordics and goes into Benelux. From Benelux, it travels into Central Europe, spreads into Australia, six months later the UK comes on board, and then it spreads. There’s a graph that shows that.
Once we heard from the Nordics, and once we got their feedback, we were definitely planning the campaign along those parameters [of following the country-by-country strategy outlined above]. That showed from everything that we did from day one.
Hope: Because I work with the EMEA markets, we call the Nordics our incubator. They are a trigger market. Especially with this genre, we go to them first to have some preliminary conversation. Do they see this becoming big? How can they become early adopters?
Torsten: Just to put this all into perspective, I’m not talking about what the US did. Of course, the US did try to break the artists on their side. All the tools originate in the US and the US is doing its thing. But the reactions happen in those markets first.
“we call the Nordics our incubator”
Hope Bozzo
Amplifying activity, and localising content, in the Nordics
With his impact in the Nordics growing, the campaign doubled down on the region, bringing him into the market there and working on ways to localise content.
Hope: After single one, our Nordics team flagged that this was going to be big, and they needed him in-market. The biggest [question] in order to break artists is: what is the artist willing to do? Can we fly him over even to do some promo?
It was not just [about him] meeting partners. From a content standpoint, placing Alex culturally in the Nordics to lay the foundation was crucial. He did a two-week promo trip, starting in the Nordics, and then went to Germany, the Netherlands, and then the UK. He really showcased the localised content, which was crucial to then setting things up.
Having him back again within a six-month period also was really strong, where he did his first run of shows. He had an album being launched when he was in market.
Thorsten: The first step was this promo tour in Europe. We shot local content and we did fan events. He had never played a commercial show [before this], but he sat down with the fans and played his music to them. We had very excited people all over Europe lining up outside of venues, trying to meet him and listening to his music.
We then put another single out that fitted in with the narrative of what he was doing on TikTok. He’s an orphan and he talked a lot about that. He was singing songs that were very emotionally relatable to those fans that knew about his life.
We continued to put out singles that fitted into this theme, and he went back and continued to work with these markets.
A steady run of regular singles
The campaign run up to his official debut album was long, but there was no real let up in the release strategy, with new tracks appearing every few months to steadily build on what had gone before.
Thorsten: There was a steady run of singles. ‘Carry You Home’ was the first of the ones that really spread. It was a hit in Holland, it was a hit in Norway, it spread into places like Canada. He entered the global Spotify chart.
We were then working towards the You’ll Be Alright, Kid (Chapter 1) album that came in September 2024 and the European tour that, by that time, was sold out.
‘Burning Down’ connected. By that time, the phenomenon was spreading. It was [getting] New Music Fridays all over the world. The first Hot Hits playlists were coming in. From February to September … he was someone people were talking about and people were excited about. Whatever we did, people wanted to see it.
Hope: We did a fan event in Amsterdam around the album – and also a sold-out show there. We did a Q&A with one of the radio broadcasters in Amsterdam. We had flown in some fans as part of a contest, but everyone else was local.
Fans were giving him gifts and sharing personal stories with him. Because Alex is so personal and open about his life, it attracts this audience and fans who could relate to him as a friend. He’s like a cathartic entertainer.
In September 2024, he was playing 500-cap venues. It was super early days, but the fandom and that connection was already so strong. It was only going to get stronger in the months later.
Thorsten: He wasn’t just posting content. He wrote songs that people really related to. And he hit a nerve and the zeitgeist with these kids like no one else. He could do it on TikTok with his content, and then with his music and live on stage.
Chapter 1 and the explosion of ‘Ordinary’
The campaign was initially conceived as an album in two parts, but Chapter 1 in September 2024 mostly collated what had been released before in one place and this proved to be a powerful launch pad for ‘Ordinary’, the single that truly broke him globally.
Thorsten: It was supposed to be two chapters, but that fell apart along the way. The first album was called Chapter 1, and then the second part, that we released seven months later, wasn’t Chapter 2 anymore. It became You’ll Be Alright, Kid.
He went out on another European tour. We had scheduled ‘Ordinary’ [as a single] and that’s when things really went through the roof.
There was a Nordic children’s choir that was singing his songs when he arrived in Norway. There were giant cutouts of him taken through Nordic cities and through Europe. In England, he did a performance at Warren Street Tube station and thousands of people came.
The tour sold out immediately. By that time, ‘Ordinary’ was a worldwide phenomenon. The record went to number one in a lot of countries.
The record came out, it did really well, and a few weeks after its release there was a big Love Is Blind sync. That just catapulted it everywhere. It went to number one in the US.
Hope: Because we had brought him earlier into Europe, we had already laid the groundwork in promo. I really give our markets credit for being creative and also knowing Alex and what he would want to do. That’s where those creative ideas came from, with the Nordics and the big cutout of him and the UK doing the Warren Street show.
Alex would rather have more large-scale creative activations. That’s what worked best. He doesn’t want us to just pitch him: can you do some content piece with this creator? He really thrives with those ideas and surprising him is what generated that engagement and viral success. That’s a big takeaway.
When our local teams in the Nordics and the Netherlands are looking to research what to do when he’s in market, they look at his interests. They try to make things personalised for him. So his time going to the Nordics is going to be more personal and look different to what it would look like with our Netherlands team. Personalisation is really key in having this more thoughtful approach.
Thorsten: Personalisation and localisation, so he’s always seen in the context of where he is.
‘Ordinary’ takes on a life of its own and more tracks slipstream it
By some distance his biggest track, but one that created a pathway for more tracks to follow it rather than becoming an end in itself.
Thorsten: ‘Ordinary’, in a lot of countries, was the biggest song of last year. On airplay and streaming, it was the number one song in a lot of countries.
Obviously you [respond to this momentum and go] after this song, but you continue to put out [more] music. We didn’t slip. We put out ‘Eternity’ afterwards and worked that. Then we worked ‘Bloodline’ with [country singer] Jelly Roll, because it’s very important that you keep working songs, that you keep introducing new music, and that you keep giving people new things.
You’re not just living with this ginormous song and the job’s done. You need to continue to release music, and you need to continue to do interesting things to keep people engaged.
Album release and post-album activities
The global success of ‘Ordinary’ took his career to a whole new level and everything was done to maximise opportunities in its wake.
Thorsten: ‘Ordinary’ was in February, the album was in July. In May, we put out ‘Bloodline’. We released ‘Eternity’ in connection with the album. By that time, we had two or three tracks in the global Spotify charts. ‘Ordinary’ was top five, top 10 or number 1, depending on what week we were in. Then the others just added to it. And then the album came out and was a huge success.
He played Alexandra Palace [in London, in July 2025], which was his biggest show at the time. His 2026 European arena tour was announced at that time and sold out straight away. The US dates sold out straight away. The tour [Little Orphan Alex Live] starts in April and he will be hopefully coming with more music.
The long build
Warren became a refinement of new ways of working and breaking acts within particular genres.
Thorsten: It took a year to get to ‘Ordinary’, then there was another nine months of work and the album came out [18 July].
It was 18-20 months of Alex Warren.
Hope: What we noticed was that any time he released a single it was always almost when he was in these [key] European markets. We found some great correlation with him releasing ‘Ordinary’ and then he was on tour, and then it started charting in our trigger markets in Europe. When he had done those smaller shows in September [in Europe], he had released ‘Troubled Waters’ and ‘Burning Down’. That correlation was strong and helped for the success of what was to come.
Thorsten: We also learned that there’s a path of breaking artists in this way. We certainly proved that point. Benson Boone ran quite similarly. There’s Mark Ambor. There’s this way that this music travels. You can follow that path. If you have the right music, the right songs, then it’s a good way of becoming successful.
