https://foals.co.uk

Foals had some creative ideas for their new website in the run-up to the release of their third album; ‘Holy Fire’. The key idea was based on the Konami Code where we would strip everything down to a simple holding page that could only be unlocked through specific codes.

Tom Brown from Sinewave designed a great concept that hinged on using the five letters of the band’s logo as a rolling combination lock. Isle Interactive did a stellar job developing the site. We wanted to easily add new codes and content so I suggested using the site’s existing CMS to create new pages with a 5 letter url. When a visitor enters a code the system checks to see if a matching page exists and displays the page if it does.

We quietly launched the new site on a Friday afternoon and fans tried an array of random words until the band sent 5 individual tweets with one letter each. HRCPT unlocked the start of the campaign. Entering the code revealed a full screen image of the previously unseen album artwork while a loop played on repeat in the background. I used Soundmanager to play the loop and ensure that it also worked on mobile devices. Clicking or touching the image would pause or resume the audio loop.

A few days later we revealed the second code. Sam Stubbings discovered that one of the architects behind the Royal Albert Hall conveniently had a 5 letter surname, so FOWKE was the perfect code to reveal details and pre-sale information for a concert in the iconic venue.

The third code, VEKSD, revealed an incredible Tom Vek remix of the new single ‘Inhaler’.

Every page I’ve added behind a code had to be carefully styled and aligned to fit in with the Foals brand. I also had to be sure that the content pages were all mobile friendly. I added a link to the Inhaler video and embedded the YouTube video for Inhaler as a fullscreen player on foals.co.uk/video.

Keep an eye on Foals’ social networks for codes as more brilliant content will be revealed throughout the campaign.

Update:

It seems a lot of people are ending up on this page looking for some codes.
You can now find a full list of access codes on the Foals website.

Here are a few good ones:
VEKSD
SKUNK
LUNAR
12H00
T333D
TWIFE
X1865
CCTV1
CCTV2
CCTV3
CCTV4
BBCSX

Follow Foals on Facebook and Twitter to get all the latest access codes