douglasgresham.co.uk

Killing In The Name Of is the UK’s Christmas number 1, taking the usual X-Factor mediocrity down a peg, at least temporarily.  It ended up with just over 500k sales to win by 50k, and is the first single to claim the top spot through downloads only.  It’s not a revolution on either point, though; what’s far more interesting is the nature of the Facebook (and later Twitter) campaign that got it there.

Let me first clarify what I mean.  In terms of an actual chart battle, clearly this wasn’t representative; in fact, given the various ways we came up with to play the system most effectively – in particular pushing the easiest/cheapest places to get the track, as well as a means to download it multiple times for free and have it count – I’m reasonably sure that more people bought the X-Factor track than bought RATM, and the difference was made up by multiple purchases (I bought more than 1 copy).  I don’t doubt more people than were involved in the effort dislike the recent predictability and the populist blandness Cowell et al inflict upon us, but this wasn’t about a numerical advantage.

This is significant as it means the defining factor in the victory was the Facebook campaign.  I know a bunch of my FB friends (and people I follow on Twitter) were pushing the campaign, and I plugged it once too.  It’s been described as an organic campaign, which is kind of true.  The couple who started the campaign (Jon and Tracy Morter) certainly weren’t pushing this to make money, although they had started a similar campaign the previous year to get this ditty to #1.  Using that experience they grew the Facebook group that was the nexus of the campaign to huge numbers with a little help from folks like Peter Serafinowicz (275k followers) and others plugging it.  It spread like wildfire leading up to the first day of the week that counted, and everyone was coordinated to buy it then, gaining plenty of attention in the mainstream media.  There was also a final push on the Saturday, as it transpired that RATM was behind, and it seems to have dramatically increased the sales then.

So what do we learn from this?  Well, first off, grassroots social campaigns work.  It certainly helps to have a little experience in running them – and they do need run, they don’t just happen by themselves.  Having a cause and a target date you’re working towards allows you to build towards a crescendo, which differs from the release and slow burn small-starting viral campaigns I’ve seen around newer content, but you need to really strike a cord with many many people to make that work.  It’s still not clear to what extent mainstream exposure should be a end goal of such campaigns – clearly enough sales were obtained on day 1 to get attention, but it’s hard to say if victory would have been possible without it.  There are still players that are disproportionately influential, and that’s always (to my knowledge) as a result of a pre-existing fanbase – which makes sense, as Facebook/Twitter are communication platforms first and foremost – and this influence is valuable, particularly if you’ve built an actual relationship with your fans (if and how quickly one would lose such influence were it abused is still an open question).  Finally, being able to accurately track the state of a social campaign very much influences its effectiveness, so measurement will continue to be hugely important.

With regards to X-Factor, I suspect the whole reality show model will continue to be the major popular music vehicle going forward and as music sales become less relevant to the industry.  People are clearly willing to pay for the level of involvement that the phone-in vote gets them, it’s the only profitable, unpiratable Connect With Fans + Reason To Buy model the existing labels have come up with, and it fits the same build-to-crescendo style of marketing as the RATM campaign.  I’d expect to see even more of it going forward, but hopefully now other artists won’t run in fear of providing an alternative while it’s going on.