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?
Ryan Jones is interested in marketing and good causes. He currently works in Global Brand Management at Procter & Gamble and resides in Geneva, Switzerland. 