Posted on November 30, 2007 in
Causes
Ok, back to bum rushing the charts and leveraging social networks for buzz + good. Just to recap, Black Lab (an unsigned band) decided on Mar 23 to generate some serious buzz by asking the world to support their “cause” and buy a track on iTunes on the same day. The thinking was that they could effectively push the song to the top of the charts and gain some online buzz and incremental PR. They also donated some of the proceeds to a cause.
Results were:
iTunes Rock Charts
US: 11
Canada: 10
Netherlands: 2
Germany: 12
Sweden: 7
Portugal: 31
UK: 71
Australia: 35
Austria: 25
Denmark: 40
Finland: 42
Ireland: 54
Italy: 30
New Zealand: 56
Norway: 23
Switzerland: 42
Overall Top 100 Songs Chart
Netherlands: 15
Norway: 55
Canada: 53
US: 99
Germany:98
Sweden: 98
Cracking the top 10 in rock and almost cracking the general top 10 in the Netherlands was amazing stuff and proved to many in the online conversational marketing community that this type of activity was viable. Recently, Joseph Jaffe http://www.jaffejuice.com/2007/10/chronicling-bum.htmlconducted a similar buzzcause action that brought his business related book, Join the Conversation to #26 overall in the amazon charts (#2 in business behind A. Greenspan). I participated in Jaffe’s buzzcause action back in Oct. Jaffe put the call out to his entire community that they should all buy his book on a certain day (like Black Lab had done for their track). He wasn’t really pushy about the campaign, but he did communicate to his podcast community about how passionate he was about the original bum rush campaign. He mentioned that Black Lab’s campaign was a model of how you could leverage the power of the online social community, the power of dialogue, and the power of partnership. On the day of the campaign, he made himself fully available to his community and took a lot of audio calls. He put the audio calls and comments on his podcast. Jaffe donated affiliate proceeds to charity…I believe he said he was going to verify the charity donation, but I must have this post. Anyway, I wonder who will be next to take up the bum rush cause?
Posted on November 28, 2007 in
Causes
And why not? I wanted to throw up a bit more about bum rush the charts today, so I was just in a moment of music hallucination and I decided to briefly pop by iTunes. After a few moments of searching, an excellent cause related initiative popped into my view finder. The album is aptly called causes1 and 100% of the proceeds go to Darfur. Specifically, proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam America– Causes 1 is a compilation album with some Indie greats like Death Cab for Cutie. The album has received solid reviews from Pitchfork and other music review sites. I don’t know much about Waxploitation, the label that released the album. I stopped by the website and it seems they have a committment to putting out cause related music as there was a sign-up screen for future cause related album news. It appears that this compilation is a limited edition (only available for 3 months) so lets all pick up a copy of this one quickly. Dafur is a real tragedy. The global community has pretty much bungled its response to the region. No one really knows how many people have been killed there since the conflict started in 2003…mass graves, violence, hate, sadness. A very unhappy tale…
Posted on November 27, 2007 in
Causes
When I started this blog, one of the first things I realized I had to write about was a very cool online cause related marketing campaign called Bum Rush the Charts. While the objective of this campaign was certainly more focused around generating much needed online buzz for a little known band…the cause part was also great. http://bumrushthecharts.blogspot.com/
Here is basically how it worked…a band called Black Lab seems to have collaborated with IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance) to test the power of the online social networking community by asking people around the world to buy a certain track on iTunes at the same time. 50% of the proceeds were donated to a scholarship fund. The results were not bad. I will talk more about this in my next post.
Posted on November 25, 2007 in
Causes
Welcome to m-cause, a new blog exploring the world of causes, marketing, & sustainability. We will profile companies & people looking to change the world for good with their products and services. The blog will also lean toward new and alternative marketing news, so it is fitting that the first post is about Google.
Google currently offers free adword campaign for non-profit organizations. Non-profits in science, tech., education, global public health, environment, youth advocacy, and then arts can participate in the free Google program.
The Google campaign is (of course) a win for Google and a win for the non-profit. The non-profit gets some free advertising and Google introduces non-profits to adwords. Google hopes to win a few non-profits converts after showing them how efficient they can target potential donors with adwords.
I am interested in how much these 3 month campaigns are worth. I guess there would be some negotiation involved here.
If you have participated in any of these programs, it would be great to hear how much campaign support they are offering for a typical 3 month period.
Ryan Jones is interested in marketing and good causes. He currently works in Global Brand Management at Procter & Gamble and resides in Geneva, Switzerland. 
