Album embedding? Mos Def’inately

The NME reports that Mos Def’s new album ‘The Ecstatic’ will be released via T-shirt. Each shirt has a hang-tag printed with a URL and a unique code allowing the purchaser to download the music from the album and will be priced at $39.

This seems to be a good idea for promoting the album through Word of Mouth – with blogs, magazines and news talking about it due to it being a fairly unique and interesting idea. The tactic may also help to increase physical sales of the ‘product’ as people may buy the T-shirt as a souvenir or keepsake, although it will definately not stop the illegal downloading of the album.

As free streaming/illegal downloading continues to increase  promotions and tactics like this will inevitably become more common as artists will need to profit more from peripheral products/services than from the music itself. Equally, in economic terms, if something doesn’t cost anything, but is used as a ‘loss-leader’ to sell something else, then you can simply consider all the costs of production as marketing.

With the price of $39 the Mos Def album could be regarded as coming free with the T-shirt.

Classic Mos Def…

Piracy as a tool for promotion

In a interview with THEMIXTAPE Don Diablo recently pointed a benefit of piracy that i had previously not considered, that of as a benefit and promotional tool for touring in areas outside of current marketing boundaries. The DJ is another artist being honest about illegal downloads and the inevitable demise of the current form of the industry, as this excerpt shows:

How do you feel about the illegal downloading of music?
I am used to it now (sssssst, don’t tell my record company!) and see a lot of advantages to it as well. People all across the globe can get my music, even when a single or an album isn’t even released officially in that specific territory, which allows you to tour there anyway.

Have you/do you download music illegally?
Hell yeah, of course!

What does the future look like for the music industry?
People will keep on listening to music, I have no fear of that. I guess in the end all record companies will turn into management companies that do a lot more than just pressing and promoting records. On the other hand a lot more bands will just release their music on the internet themselves or eventually even give it away for free.

Behind the scenes #245 Downtown L.A.

- Superpoop

Music piracy ‘can help inspire’

With all the debate and overexageration regarding illegal downloading and music piracy it is good to see an artist being both honest and realistic. As the lead singer of the Fleet Foxes Robin Peckfold believes sites like Napster have been good for the music scene and in an interview with the BBC he has said that it makes it easier for musicians, including himself, to discover lots of classic music that can influence and inspire them.

“As much music as musicians can hear, that will only make music richer as an artform, I’ve downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records – why would I care if somebody downloads ours? That’s such a petty thing to care about”

I think the underlying point here is that music piracy can, and does, help give people access to more music and more choice. As ‘free’ music will always be available the problem/opportunity is now for marketers to offer more than just a ‘product at a price’ in order to compete. However immoral or illegal ‘free downloads’ are,  they are inevitable and impossible to stop or police successfully and marketers in the music industry as a whole needs to quickly react and evolve.

Quote of the Day

Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it. Plan more than you can do, then do it.

Marketing Campaign: Guerilla Gardening @ Addidas

Grun (German for ‘green’) trainers are a collection from Adidas that they hope will better the environment by ‘efficiently utilizing the natural resources of this world’, and is their foray into environmentally aware / sustainably created products. The trainers themselves are made from 100% recycled plastic soda bottles, rubber, and others materials that otherwise would have sat in a landfill for eternity.

The marketing campaign acknowledged that environmentalism is a mind-set, not just a selling point, and the campaign kicked off with some “Guerilla Gardening”. For all intents and purposes, it’s graffiti with plants. The aim is to take a neglected, off limits urban space and turn it into a thing of beauty – be it with spray paint or with grass. Adidas gave away free packets of seeds with the idea that they can be used to make a seed bomb. Seed bombs were initially dreamt up as part of the Guerrilla marketing movement, as a form of nonviolent political direct action. Basically you mix seeds with compost and clay and chuck them on to buts of urban wasteland. “Vandalise the city with nature” and subversively transform the landscape like a patch of wildflowers colonising some corporate urban non-space, as a life-enhancingly anarchic practice.

Adidas has used this organic push and put it into more traditional marketing channels – like these green billboards made mostly from living plants and flowers:

Adidas presumably sell lots of shoes and has an appealing brand and widepread distribution – more than many ethical clothes brands – so maybe them doing some green environmental stuff has a significant effect. And if subversive actions like seedbombing are a good idea then isn’t it a good thing for them to be spread through the communication channels of mainstream commercial culture?

Quote of the Day

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

Charles Darwin – English Biologist (1809-1882)

Barack Obama in iPhone XXX Sextape Scandal

Headlines are important. They are like a book’s front cover or a CD’s album cover. They are an articles first impression on the reader.

And unfortunately, like in this instance, not necessarily true or relevant to anything. The first thing you need to do when writing a blog post, email or web page is to snag your reader’s attention. If they’re skimming through their RSS feeds or searching on Google, you need them to notice your post; if they’re checking their inbox, you need your email to stand out from the crowd; and this is where your title comes in. The title of your article or blog post (or the subject line of your email) should intrigue them and give them a reason to stop doing whatever it is they are doing and read what you’ve written. Ideally, your headline should also communicate a benefit to the reader, letting them know they stand to gain something of value by reading on.

Roles of the Headlines:

• attracting attention
• luring your reader into the copy
• making an incredible offer
• building credibility
• selling your product (10% of readers make decisions based on headlines alone).

Writing killer headlines is hard work but worth it, as studies show four times as many people will read your headline as will read the rest of your message.