After almost 30 years since he last had a number one, Rick Astley, 50, beat BRITs Critics Choice Award-winner Tom Odell, 25, with his Adele title inspired number one album 50. 

Even with his record company BMG allegedly being outspent three to one on promotion, the “Never Gonna Give You Up” crooner astounded the music industry and media world across the country by outselling Odell’s Wrong Crowd by just 3,700 copies. 

Rick Astley’s immaculate online campaign did not only include day-to-day posting but actively conquered new territory for the singer, which turned the chart race around in favour of the pop-sensation.

The 80s pop legend jumped on the latest Snapchat trend – a geo-tagged filter was set up by Be-Hookd for his Banquet Records in-store to garner a younger audience to make noise sharing selfies and videos ‘wearing’ Rick’s signature quiff.  

In the week leading up to release, media company Be-Hookd helped Rick Astley host an album listening party on Facebook Live in HD audio, allowing fans to listen to a high quality version of the album ahead of its official release. The album listening party was enjoyed by thousands of people live worldwide and within less than 24 hours had reached over a million people organically. Be-Hookd received word from Facebook’s Head of Entertainment Glenn Miller about the activation being a huge success.

Further to this, Rick's social media team at Be-Hookd jumped on digital trends and created reactive content for the ‘50’ singer to share. A fitting tweet placed at half time during the England vs Wales game of David Beckham at Eva Longoria's wedding singing along to Astley’s biggest hit, and after Rick’s unexpected twerking on ITV's Loose Women, Be-Hookd immortalised Rick's twerk as a GIF immediately after, tweeting it to @loosewomen with a link to purchase the album to increase sales.

Be-Hookd enlisted the help of Rick Astley’s official fan community via two fan driven campaigns. On Twitter super fans helped drive awareness via the hashtag #RickAstley50 and Facebook fans supported the campaign by changing their profile picture and cover photo.

The celebrity support by Danny O'Donoghue (The Script), David Hasselhoff and Capital FM’s Craig Stevens, Astley received via Twitter within release week boosted awareness of his comeback further, leading to a plethora more celebrity tweets of support after the number one was announced from the likes of Gary Barlow, Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams and many more, fuelling his successful comeback and reign of the album charts.