So, just how possible is it for a modern promtion company to manipulate the market to buy their product?
Well, let me tell you a little story...
Getting Started With Talent Show Promotion
Imagine your promo company started by setting up a television based talent competition with national coverage. Eventually international, but that comes later.
That automatically gets you lots and lots of promotion just by being broadcast. That is of course the tip of the iceberg. You also go for magazine articles and interviews, coverage by news programs. Fans get behind individual performers, which of course you harness in many ways. For example by setting up the ability for the fans to select the winner by voting on the phone line (which of course you earn a few milllion based on this alone), you set up a website where fans can talk about their acts. Magazines and TV magazine shows have their own chat rooms spreading the buzz too. Lets not forget the social networks. You create a Facebook page so the fans of the show and fans of the acts can interact and be kept up to date.
Sound familiar?
Onto The Next Stage
Yet again you can start releasing recordings of the winners and make a lot of money there, add in releasing recordings of final contestants and a tour of the competitors. Releasing free videos onto a YouTube channel provides some basic viral spreading content, food for the social networks.
This all sounds predictable. You know the message is going to be pushed, pushed, pushed, but at this point manipulation of the market is understandable (if in your face). Is this the extent of what you can do?
Of course not!
Creating Competition and Using It
You underline competitiveness between contestants, creating controversy, polarizing fans, creating more conversation, more buzz, more activity. This increases phone voting with fans voting for people they don't/do like with a frenzy to demonstrate for one singer, against another.
So you develop consecutive independent love hate polarized competitiveness with other acts. They all benefit too with the "Keep ******* from winning!" going strong. In fact highlight an act you would nevver want to win because that motivates the public to vote for even the worst, most terrible acts. Freak show style promotion is used.
This is ideal as there is an "anti-show" campaign running and this gets all the people who hate the show to phone in and vote for these acts to win, ensuring you make even more money!
The Competition Winner! But Wait...
This of course works right up until a winner is announced and you are faced with trying to get a Christmas number one single.
Of course you have had the biggest promo campaign in the country rolling for several months so you definitely have an advantage. You have lots and lots of fans that you can contact fairly easily through TV, radio, internet, magazines to the point you saturate the market place.
How can you squeeze even more from this?
Squeezing Out Some More Money
By underlining some acts that your act will compete with! It pulls out your fans in force to buy the song! fantastic!
So you develop a love hate polarized competition with this other act. They of course benefit too with the "Keep ******* from Christmas number 1!" going strong.
Facebook wars ensue with "make them No.1" and "keep them from No.1" campaigns dominating the network (or at least some neighbourhoods).
This is all done in a very visible way with misdirection being used to keep the target moving in regards the public being certain what is going on, or that they may in any way be being manipulated!
Chinese Bloggers
But wait! Surely there are ways to maximise even this? To make the word spread further?
Of course there is. You can, behind the scenes, hire people to set up blog profiles to blog about what is going on, people to set up facebook pages and interact on social networks. These people are professionals. They can set up multiple "character" pages. Male, female does it matter? They are after all just personas.
This collection of people heighten the excitement, add to the buzz and fuel debates, especially the love / hate campaigns and the freak show campaign. It's simple. They start a campaign, or find a small campaign that normally wouldn't have gone past 10 likes and turn it into a national campaign. It seems everyone and their dog are talking about this show and it's artists!
Surely there can't be that many people doing this though? Well in China alone there were 10 million english speaking students working in this industry and that is only one of the countries with a significant english speaking tech savvy populus.
Of course you have a huge budget, and the investment in 1 million bloggers setting up many accounts and personas really isn't that large in comparison to the return on the investment.
Feeling manipulated yet? These people are not buying records or downloads so there is no direct manipulation of the charts! Amazing isn't it?
Of course your persona bloggers are involved in both campaigns, to the extent that your promo company controls both ends (within a margin of error). No one knows! Ideal.
I mean would you feel manipulated by all this?
But I Want More Money!
But wait, you've missed an opportunity to earn money. Back at the christmas single competition... that's it.. you'll have a share in the market of the anti competition show act so that NO MATTER WHO PEOPLE VOTE FOR OR BUY, YOU WIN!
You're Rich! Richer than rich.
And you all live happily ever after. The End.
Manipulating The Market
Would you feel manipulated by this level of market control by this ficticious show? By this level and type of promotion?
Of course the only way to not be a part of it, to vote against it is not to watch, not to like on facebook, not to phone at all, and not to buy the records.
At least, this for the cynically minded is how it is possible to do such a thing and bears no resemblance to any actual shows or how they operate. This sentence is of course not added to stop someone trying to sue me but it does have that handy side effect. *whistles*
The Lesson For The Independent Musician
There is a lesson here for the less money grabbing promoter. Coordination and timing are so important. Modern campaigns run across multiple media types. Don't rely on people to form opinions based on just the music. Interact, talk to them and don't be afraid to encourage them to help you in your quest to further your career.
Where you draw the line is as much an ethical decision but lets be honest, for many it is simply a financial decision. What is outlined above is an example of what you are up against when you compete against at least some larger organizations.
When you are only interested in the beauty and integrity of your own music it is however a bit of a body blow. At least you might think that if there were great opportunities that so far yo uwere not taking advantage of correctly. More on this to come for the musicians among you.
To Sum It Up For Fans
If you are a fan and stumble across this I encourage you to forward this on so that your fellow fans can be equally well informed!
If you find this article interesting, useful, informative etc then please share it! Like it! Like my blog and please post comments :)
