"It's been appearing everywhere and looks like it might take off as a viral in its own right," announced one recent missive. "Let me know if you would like more info about the anonymous London hedge-fund managers and the well-known TV composers who are actually behind the song!" Cheers...
Entire industries have been built on developing viral campaigns. Movie and games companies lead the way with clever, funny and attention-grabbing ideas. These are shrewd campaigns which normal web users will instinctively Fwd to their friends. Predictably, aside from occasional successes like Wiley's Wearing My Rolex playing over footage of Macca and Heather Mills, the music industry's attempts to embrace this technique have been chronic, and a video clip sent from Band A's PR with the subject line "Here's a Band A viral clip" isn't going to win many marketing awards.
Here's a recent press release for Mötley Crüe's piss-poor Crüefest: "JVC Mobile Audio premiered a viral video featuring Josh Todd of Buckcherry and Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach having an 'experience' in a car surrounded by the latest JVC audio/visual technology, a cast of hot babes and a ton of soap bubbles." Well done, JVC. Well done everybody.
A few months ago I witnessed the painful sight of a PR employed by music download service We7 posting a plug for the service on an internet forum. We7's business model is to offer free music downloads, as long as downloaders also listen to an advert. The ad revenue is then passed on to record labels. By funding legitimate downloads through advertising We7 offers hope to an ailing industry, but by advocating a sneaky free plug on a messageboard kept online thanks to ad revenue, the company has talked itself out of its own business model.
Bands and singers are often launched with campaigns in which forums, MySpace pages and websites are bombarded with covert spam. Of course, labels and managers have been the source of "fan letters" to magazines and radio stations for 60 years but, tragically, the entirely innocent practice of grown men posing as 13-year-old girls may soon come to an end.
From May 26, it will become a criminal offence for brands to seed positive messages online without making their origin clear. It shouldn't be too much of a problem in the world of pop, though. All it will take is for the music industry to be transparent, honest, and to treat its consumers with respect.
What could possibly go wrong?
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