Digital Marketing / Entertainment Marketing

KSI "Thick of it"

How we helped KSI launch “Thick of it” with 30M+ views within 2 weeks

As of 19th October 2024, KSI’s “Thick of it” is global 9th top song with 30 million + views within 2 weeks of it’s launch.

Project overview

Here is how we began working for such large scale website:

Someone from the team of KSI reached out to one of our partners in London. We were asked to help them build a website that would make people stay on one screen and once they would start to click their screen, they should get message after message, but it would not change the URL

And the sweet part, we were asked to do it on WordPress AND within 48 hours. It had to be responsive, no lags, screen content had to be dynamic, texts should be bold and big on every mobile device

  • Client name

    KSI / Warner Music Group

  • Project

    myapology.co.uk promotional website

  • Timeline

    48 hours from brief to launch

  • Peak Traffic

    300,000+ concurrent users/hour

Project in Figures

1

Years Ongoing

3000

Estimated man-hours

7

Team size

Technology used development framework

With our proficient team at your disposal, you can craft remarkable products that boast complete functionality, stability, and effortless scalability. This will enable you to effortlessly expand your reach and captivate a broader audience.

WordPress

Wordpress

icons8-php-96

PHP

Azure

Azure

JavaScript-logo

Javascript

  • Mobile App Development
  • iPad App Development
  • Some Other Development
  • Wearable App Development

About the project

The Cultural Moment

In October 2024, British YouTuber and musician KSI (Olajide Olatunji) was in the midst of a public controversy surrounding Lunchly, a product he co-founded with MrBeast and Logan Paul. YouTuber DanTDM had criticized the product, sparking a heated public feud. The internet demanded an apology.

Instead of a traditional response, KSI and Warner Music Group devised a guerrilla marketing campaign. KSI would tweet: “A lot has happened these past few days online, so here I am addressing everything below…” with a link to myapology.co.uk. Visitors expecting a sincere apology would instead find the music video for his new single “Thick of It” featuring Trippie Redd.

The song released on October 3, 2024, became one of the most-discussed music releases of the year. Whether mocked or celebrated, it reached #6 on the UK Singles Chart, #64 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and was nominated for Song of the Year at the Brit Awards 2025.

Challenges

Developing a mobile app to address the safety concerns of high-profile individuals and provide a quick response system during times of aggression or distress posed unique challenges in terms of ensuring seamless functionality, robust security, and real-time responsiveness.

Our Solution

Client Login and Notification System
The SPG app allows clients to securely log in and activate notifications to inform friends and designated groups in times of need.

Live Streaming and Immediate Assistance Clients can live stream their situation and receive immediate assistance from field operators allocated to different response groups.

Integration with Monitoring Centre and Admin Control The app seamlessly integrates with a 3rd party monitoring centre, providing continuous monitoring and coordination, while SPG’s admin maintains control over the app and back-end users.

Development Journey: From Vision to Reality

At one point, it was so tough to manage because they were adding too many “ooooo”s in a simple word “so”, we had to write custom code to not let the word extend out of screen so that users wouldn’t have to scroll horizontally.

From this:

To this:

The Challenge

Warner Music Group contacted us with an urgent brief:

  • Extreme Timeline: The website had to launch within 48 hours to align with the song release and KSI’s social media post.
  • Massive Scale: KSI has 40+ million subscribers across platforms. When he posts, millions click within minutes. The site needed to handle 300,000+ concurrent users per hour.
  • The “Fake Apology” Experience: The site needed to appear like a genuine apology page before revealing the music video. The experience had to feel authentic, not obviously promotional.
  • Global Reliability: Fans would access the site from everywhere. Any downtime would ruin the marketing moment and generate negative press.

The Twist

Here came the twist:

We launched on a simple http://www.dreamhost.com/ VPS hosting. But the traffic was so insane that we were getting bombarded by KSI’s team asking us to fix it fast. We were not given any estimation on the kind of traffic we would be facing initially.

At this point of time, KSI had put this on his story:

Within 10 minutes, the website was down:

We then hosted the platform on azure app service, with scalable architecture. We ran
a quick load test to replicate the behavior of the system if 1.25K users were to
request simultaneously.

This solved the issue. And the website was then serving pages for more than 300,000
an hour users all without any lagging issues.

After Release

After the song was released, we were asked to point the website to the youtube video.
Here came another problem:

We were asked to have it redirected 1.5 hours before the video was launched. But the
hosting was telling us that it could take up to 72 hours for the DNS to propagate.

Here is a thread of reddit on how KSI faked an apology with the website we built:
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1fr4u0o/ksi_really_faked_an_apology_to_promote_his/

This is the current song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At8v_Yc044Y&ab_channel=KSI

Our Solution

Hour 1-8: Architecture & Infrastructure

We chose WordPress for rapid development combined with Azure’s auto-scaling cloud infrastructure for traffic handling. The architecture was designed for horizontal scaling: additional server instances would spin up automatically as traffic increased.

Hour 9-24: Development & CDN Setup

The site was built with static asset caching, CDN distribution across global edge locations, and optimized database queries. All images and videos were served from Azure CDN to minimize origin server load. The “apology” page was designed to feel personal and authentic before the music video reveal.

Hour 25-40: Load Testing & Optimization

We ran stress tests simulating 500,000 concurrent users. Initial tests revealed bottlenecks in PHP session handling and database connections. We implemented Redis for session management and optimized connection pooling. Final tests showed stable performance at projected peak loads.

Hour 41-48: Final Review & Launch

Warner Music Group approved the final build. Monitoring dashboards were configured for real-time traffic tracking. The site went live, and KSI posted his tweet.

Our role in the project

specialization

Design

    • UX Design
    • UI Design
    • Web Design
    • Service Design
writing code automatically

Development

    • iOS App Development
    • Android App Development
    • .NET App Development
    • ReactJS App Development
Service Providing

After-Service

    • Ongoing Product Enchancement
    • Web Hosting
    • Enterprise Maintenance

Results

Metric Result
Development Time 48 hours from brief to launch
Peak Concurrent Users 300,000+ per hour
Uptime During Launch 100% (zero downtime)
Video Views (2 weeks) 30+ million
UK Singles Chart #6 peak position
Social Media Reach Global trending on X/Twitter

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Frequently
Asked Questions

Table of Contents

Creating a roadmap to guide the development process and aligning it with your business objectives. Establishing best practices and methodologies to ensure efficient and consistent development.

  • Project plans and direction
  • Defining processes and standards
  • Market research
  • Setting goals

Creating a roadmap to guide the development process and aligning it with your business objectives. Establishing best practices and methodologies to ensure efficient and consistent development.

  • Project plans and direction
  • Defining processes and standards
  • Market research
  • Setting goals

Creating a roadmap to guide the development process and aligning it with your business objectives. Establishing best practices and methodologies to ensure efficient and consistent development.

  • Project plans and direction
  • Defining processes and standards
  • Market research
  • Setting goals