You know what really grinds my gears?
(You can ignore the Family Guy reference if you like.)
I feel like the striking majority of musicians these days are not embracing their creativity – not in the music itself (there are some phenomenal independent artists and bands breaking these days), but the marketing strategies used to promote their music. To be more specific, I’ve noticed quite a bit of resorting to the now-standard social media networks, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and the like. Using these tools presents a band that is completely transparent to its fan base and the media, but in doing so, you have to ask yourself:
1) Is publicizing your every move what you really want to do?
2) Is it going to help you stand out?
I am not saying that having a connection to the public through social media is not advisable, because it’s clearly a tried-and-true promotional strategy and measure of a musician’s popularity. However, I am calling for a renaissance of creative music marketing, utilizing new technology and innovation in conjunction with social media tools. One of the problems I see with using social media using the popular model is over-transparency without interactivity: you’re keeping your fans in the loop with your every move, while they aren’t given the opportunity to respond except for a MySpace comment that probably won’t actually be read by the artist, for instance. If fans get bored of your tweets, they start to fall off the map, like Kayne West’s respect after this year’s MTV VMAs. Finally, by restricting yourself to social media, you’re inherently restricting yourself to those who use those respective social networks. (How can you share your tweets with British youth if they don’t use Twitter at all, according to this article?)
Developing an innovative concept or strategy for marketing yourself is not only significant in allowing you to stand out amongst your musical peers, but also allows your fans to maintain their interest in the band with new, cool ideas. Here are a few great examples I’ve come across recently, and you may be able to take some ideas and make them your own. I’ve also got some ideas up my sleeve, which I’ll discuss further in the Lounge.
Technology and guerilla marketing at its finest: Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero alternate reality game
Trent Reznor is one of my absolute heroes, and this idea supported that. For the band’s 2007 release, Year Zero, Reznor worked with 42 Entertainment, an innovative marketing firm, to create an alternate reality campaign to promote the album. The album had an overriding concept of a dystopian society 15 years into an alternate future, and 42’s campaign sought to create an entire environment in the real world, using web technology and viral marketing strategies. This included projects ranging from creating fake websites to hiding USB drives with new songs in the bathrooms of random NIN gigs across the globe. This example was an absolutely massive project, but think of the possibilities of creating some sort of alternate concept to follow your music and keep your fans constantly begging for more.
True interaction with fans: Remix contests, etc.
Nine Inch Nails has done quite a bit of this too, as well as artists like Radiohead, Mariah Carey, Depeche Mode and Boston locals Passion Pit. This is a great way to get fans to actively reinterpret your music – not only will this give them something fun & exciting to take on, but it can give you a good idea of what kinds of musical ideas your fans are looking for in your music.
Free content for your fans is always a good thing, too, as many bands have figured out. Sharing early demos of new songs, live performance videos, or your favorites list with your fans is a no-brainer these days; a step further than that makes you stand out. While the Gorillaz aren’t made up of real people, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, the masterminds behind the project, created a fully-interactive website portraying the “home” of the virtual band. Everything from the hidden crevasse in the garage to the Napoleon Dynamite poster in 2D’s bedroom is interactive, and you can spend hours on the site just exploring the house. It clearly took a lot of creative work and man-hours, but it’s incredibly cool.
Some good, clean (or not) notoriety
In this industry, new bands and artists seem to be coming and going fast. One of the reasons that pop artists like Lady Gaga can survive today’s harsh major-label climate is her wardrobe. Fans and haters alike can agree that Gaga’s wide variety of clothing (if that’s what you want to call it) has given a fresh new approach to visual style in music.
The point I’m getting at is this: her outlandish attire is what allows her to stand out. This isn’t the first time a band has gone from mild success to celebrity due to some notoriety or mystery surrounding him; look at artists like Prince, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Manson, or even Lindsay Lohan. Led Zeppelin fans are constantly intrigued by stories of satanic messages in band’s recordings.
There’s dozens more examples I could mention here. You totally don’t need to become a recurring subject of the tabloids, but creating a sense of mystery surrounding your band may be a good way to spark the interest of new fans looking for a new band to follow.
This marks the end of my rant-of-sorts; I’ve continued this discussion at the Lounge to post some tips, ideas and other thoughts about creative ways to market a band there.
Brandon
