Introduction

Every day, we’re bombarded with more commercial messages from more sources than ever before. The competition for our attention ranges from a subtle product placement in our favorite television show or online video to top down, in-your-face ads from car salesmen on the radio. Advertisements pops-up at us while we are online, they precede theater movies, they appear on our wireless devices, they’re on seat backs at stadiums, and they’re even in public restrooms where graffiti once covered the doors and walls. It is this competition for our attention that has driven marketers to find alternative methods to connect products and services with billfolds and credit cards.

Grassroots marketing creates a bottom-up awareness of product, or in our case, an artist, single or album. The term refers to campaigns that start with a few, passionate people, usually at a local level, and eventually spread through the masses. In grassroots marketing we energize and motivate our most loyal fan base to do much of the promotional work for us. Grass-roots marketing generally refers to a street level, door-to-door campaign of peer-to-peer selling. And the most basic element of grassroots marketing is “word of mouth.”

The terms grassroots marketing and guerrilla marketing are often used interchangeably, but there are subtle differences. Entrepreneur Media describes guerrilla marketing as “going after conventional goals of profits, sales and growth but doing it by using unconventional means.” Instead of investing money, “guerrilla marketing suggests you invest time, energy, imagination and knowledge instead” (Guerilla Marketing). Grassroots marketing is focused on energizing your artist’s fan base to take action on their behalf while guerilla marketing, which may include grassroots marketing efforts, is about using resources other than money in unconventional ways to market the artist.

The Power of Word of Mouth

Very few concepts in business are as universal as is the power of word of mouth (WOM) in marketing. Everett Rogers, in the book, Diffusion of Innovations, talks about the role of ‘‘opinion leaders’’ in the diffusion process (see chapter 2) and how these trendsetters can be used in facilitating word-of-mouth communication messages about a new product or other innovation (Rogers, 1995). His ideas are as relevant today as they were when he wrote them in the 1990s. Word of mouth is more effective at closing a deal with a consumer than any pitch from any paid medium. Word of mouth is simply someone you know whose opinion you trust saying to you, “you gotta try this!”

A recent study by Nielsen found that 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family and 77% are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends and family. As marketers, we want to encourage our loyal fans to help us spread the word about the music we are promoting (Nielsen).

From the company’s standpoint, there are several basics to developing a plan to reach new consumers through word of mouth. They are:

In word of mouth marketing for music, we want to identify the fans most likely to share their opinions with others, then be sure those people are properly educated about the product so that he or she is spreading the correct information. We also need to provide the tools that will make it easier for them to promote our product and look for the people who don’t like the product and be prepared to respond to them as well.

Among the most popular ways to effectively use word-of-mouth marketing and promotion in the recording industry is through the artist fan club. The club is a network of people who have a passion for the music of the artist and who are willing to be actively involved in promoting the career of the artist. Members of the club are regular chat room visitors, bloggers, video bloggers, message board respondents, YouTube posters, online social networkers, and hosts of discussion groups. Labels often have someone who is responsible for coordinating an artist’s promotion with fan clubs, which in many cases, has taken the place of the traditional street team. The label coordinator uses their database to give club members updates on tour dates and to initiate contests for the community built around the artist. (Harbin, 2009)

This discussion of word-of-mouth marketing is not intended to be a short course on fan club development, but the elements of it as a catalyst for “spreading the word” are among the best central strategies a label can use to draw from the strength of the idea. Word of mouth is often compared to the work of the evangelist, and fan club members easily fit the definition. Energizing them and arming them with available tools has the potential to spread positive information about the artist in geometric proportions.

Word-of-mouth marketing takes several forms. Among those are:

Word-of-mouth promotion as defined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, The Tipping Point, shows the marketer that this seemingly simple strategy can actually have a deep-rooted sophistication. He suggests there are three rules to its effectiveness. First, there is the law of the few people who are connected to many others, and who can spread the word about a product in ways that have epidemic proportions.

Second, the law of stickiness suggests that the idea shared by the connector has to be memorable and must be able to move people to action. And third, the power of context means that people “are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem” (Gladwell, 2000, p. 29) and the effectiveness of word of mouth has a lot to do with the “conditions of, and circumstances of, the times and places” (Gladwell, 2000, p. 139) where it happens.

A great deal of care must be taken to set up a word-of-mouth promotion to make it effective. The sources of word-of-mouth campaigns will ultimately determine whether the effort was effective, so it is important to keep participants reminded about the ethics of this type of promotion.

For the record label, coordinating the energy and passion for artists through their fans can generate sales. Dave Balter, owner of BzzAgent, a word-of-mouth marketing firm, says, “The key is about harnessing something that’s already occurring. We tap into people’s passions and help them become product evangelists” (Strahinich, 2005). And that is the essence of the word-of-mouth marketing strategy as it is applied to the recording industry.

Street Teams

The idea of street teams is an adaptation of the strategy of politicians everywhere: Energize groups of volunteers to promote you by building crowds, creating local buzz, posting signs, using the strength of the Internet, and rallying voters. In very practical ways, there isn’t a lot of difference between political volunteer groups and artist street teams.

For the record label, the ultimate rallying point is getting consumers to purchase the artist’s music. While many artists use street teams today, they were originally formed in order to promote music that was not radio-friendly. Without radio airplay, creators of alternative music sought other ways to connect consumers with their music, and employing street teams became an effective way to do that. And the commissioning of street teams today continues in keeping with their origins—where the Internet has its e-teams, non-mainstream labels rely on street teams to promote its roots and alternative artists. And there are occasions when the major labels will hire third party street team companies as mentioned later in this chapter. (Harbin)

For the artist, team members are “marketing representatives” who promote music at events and locations where the target market or consumer can be found. Often times, team members make up the core of the fan base of the artist and have the deepest passion for the music and message of the artist. Beyond being a fan, they can be friends with the artist too, who promote music at events and locations where the target market can be found. These places are tied to the lifestyle of the target market such as at specialty clothing stores, coffee houses, and at concerts of similar acts. A key to effective street teams is for members to understand where to find the target market of the artist and to provide tools and guidance on how to communicate to the target (Tiwary, 2002).

Street teams originally were formed as a way to reach consumers by companies who did not have the resources for mass-media marketing and to reach segments of the market which were not as responsive to mass mediated messages as they are to peer influence (Holzman, 2005). Now, major marketing and advertising agencies acknowledge street teams as an effective form of youth marketing.

Figure 18.1 Universal Buzz case study

Source: Universal Buzz Intelligence

Among the tools that may be provided to the street team members are postcards and flyers, email lists to contact local fans, small prizes for local contests, links for music samples, advance information about tour appearances, and release dates for new music. Street team members may engage in sniping—the posting of handbills in areas where the target market is known to congregate. Some labels economize on printing by emailing flyers and posters to local street team coordinators and ask them to arrange for printing.

Street teams require servicing. This means having continuing communication with key members and finding ways to say “thanks” to the street members. Volunteers for causes require a measure of recognition for their effort in order to keep them energized, and it is no different with those working for free on behalf of an artist. The first thing the label coordinator must do is to regularly communicate with core members of the team. Keep them current on the planned activities of the artist, and make them feel they are important. Provide incentives to the extent the budget will allow. Incentives can be free music, tee shirts, meet-and-greets with the artist, and free tickets.

The hierarchy of street team management begins at the label with a coordinator, who recruits regional street team captains who then coordinate at the local level. Data captured by artists through their pages on social networking sites as well as on their primary website become an important building block for street teams. Viral marketing is driven by data captured about the target market and then effectively using it to meet the needs of the artist’s fans for information and entertainment.

The Blurred Line from Grassroots to Guerilla Marketing

Guerilla marketing is another term closely associated with grassroots marketing. Whereas grassroots marketing refers to a street-level, door-to-door campaign of peer-to-peer (P2P) selling, guerilla marketing refers to low-budget, under-the radar niche marketing, using both P2P and any inexpensive top-down methods.

Grassroots marketing for large companies may involve a large budget to pay street teams. On the Internet, grassroots marketing includes placing conversational presentations of the label’s product or including the artist in discussion forums and message boards, placing self-produced videos and music videos online, and encouraging bloggers to write about your artist. This is done by recruiting fans to be on the artist’s street team or e-team.

Large companies hire members of the target market to spread the word to peers about the artist or product. On the Internet, these online street teams seek out Web locations where the target market tends to congregate and infiltrates these areas to introduce the marketing message.

Online street team members often use the following activities to promote recording artists:

1. Posting on Socials. Visiting social media sites and posting materials including music, artwork, and videos is mandatory for street teams. Major record labels use interns and young entry-level employees to maintain their artists’ presence on social networking sites. These young marketers are responsible for setting up the artist’s page on each of these sites, fielding requests from fans to be added to the social group or “friends network,” providing updated materials (music, news, photos, videos, etc.), and visiting related pages to engage in street team promotions. Some labels have teamed up with these sites to conduct promotions in the form of contests and giveaways such as encouraging fans to create their own YouTube music video for an artist.
2. Visiting and participating in chat rooms. Chat rooms allow for real-time interaction between members, whereas bulletin boards allow individuals to post messages for others to read and respond to. Because these members or users have a mutual interest in the site topic, user groups offer an excellent way for labels to locate members of the artist’s target market. Marketing professionals, as well as web surfers, often engage in “lurking” behavior when first introduced to a new users group. Lurking involves observing quietly—invisibly watching and reading before actually participating and making yourself known. Often, user groups have their own style and “netiquette” (Internet etiquette), and the label needs to learn these rules before jumping in.
3. Blogging or successfully submitting information to bloggers. Successful bloggers (those with a substantial audience) are opinion leaders, and their message can influence the target market. Online street team members will seek out blogs that discuss music and reach out to the bloggers to check out their artist and write about the music, much the same way a publicist will seek out album reviews in traditional media. Blogging, however, has the potential for street cred(ibility) that is sometimes absent in mainstream media.
4. Pitching/promoting to online media. This is much like pitching to bloggers only more formal. Under these conditions, professional media materials must be supplied to the publication, whether it’s an online-only publication or one that also has a traditional media presence. The label may supply completed articles and press releases to busy journalists who don’t have time to conduct their own research and whose decision to run an article may be influenced by convenience. See the publicity chapter in this book for additional strategies to reach bloggers and other online media.
5. Finding fan-based web sites and asking the site owners to promote the artist. We address this strategy in the section on fan-based sites in the New Media chapter. It is often up to online street team members to seek out and identify these fan-based sites. Sometimes they engage in dialogue with the site owner, but often the list of fan-based sites is compiled by the street team member and then passed along to a more senior member of the marketing team. Then these sites are managed by more experienced web marketers who can supply RSS feeds and other technical web assets to the site owner.
6. Researching sites that attract the target market and then working with those sites (see reciprocal links information in Research chapter). The following section on turning an artist’s competition into partners outlines many of the street team tasks performed in this area. The foremost task is finding and identifying where the target market can be found engaging others on the Web—what web sites do they frequently visit? Then the label can make marketing decisions about how to work with those sites, whether through advertising on those sites or setting up reciprocal links to generate cross traffic.
7. Writing reviews of the artist or album on sites that post fan reviews. Many retail sites such as Amazon allow customers to post product reviews, including music reviews. It is not uncommon for artists to ask their fans to post reviews on these sites or for a label to have street team members post favorable reviews.

Any discussion of guerilla marketing must acknowledge the contribution of Conrad Levinson. He is the author of the best-selling book, Guerilla Marketing, first published in 1984. Levinson is credited with coining the term, which generally means using nontraditional marketing tools and ideas on a limited budget to reach a target market. In Levinson’s words, guerilla marketing is “achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money” (www.gmarketing.com, 2014).

Guerilla Tactics

Guerrilla Marketing was a book and term used in 1984 by Jay Conrad Levinson. The term initially referred to the idea of implementing an unconventional system of promotions that rely on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Guerrilla Marketing is under-the-radar and often implemented in a localized fashion and the objective is to create a unique experience that generates buzz. Guerrilla marketing targets consumers in unexpected places to elicit the best reactions.

The lines between the terms Grassroots and Guerrilla Marketing have definitely blurred in recent years. And in the entertainment business, the line is more than fuzzy.

One of the main differences that people site between the two is that guerrilla marketing sometimes has a negative connotation in the promotions industry because the tactics are usually carried out without approval of the appropriate people. The new term coined for this type of tactic is ambush marketing. For instance, setting up a booth to promote an artist at a local festival would be considered grassroots marketing. If you set up a stage just outside of the footprint of the festival without the permission of the people running the event and without paying any fees to the organizing group, that would be considered ambush marketing. Unofficial sponsors of a major televised event, such as the Super Bowl or the Olympic games, will buy local or cable advertising during the broadcast in order to appear as official sponsor.

So today, guerrilla marketing is loosely defined to refer to the use of non-mainstream tactics and locations to gain attention and generate the maximum amount of buzz. We want to do something that’s going to break through the clutter and make someone pay attention to us. An important note—today, guerrilla marketing stunts can be quite elaborate and expensive.

Figure 18.2

Guerrilla marketing tactics include sticker bombing, flash mobs, graffiti or reverse graffiti as pictured here, wild posting campaigns and wait marketing like this luggage carousel at an airport obviously promoting a casino in the area. This Colgate effort and the 3M security glass display would definitely make pedestrians stop in their tracks.

Figure 18.3

Many of us are aware of flash mobs, where groups of people “look” to spontaneously create an unlikely event, like sing the “Hallelujah” chorus in the food court in the mall. This photo shows a flash mob that was orchestrated by Alphabet Photography, a company out of Ontario, Canada that creates personalized alphabet letter art. The video was produced in 2010 and has been viewed more than 44 million times, generating a lot of awareness and buzz for the company and its products.

A good example of what not to do can be found with the Cartoon Network’s 2007 campaign to promote the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The cable network planted dozens of blinking electronic devices in 10 cities. Unfortunately, they forgot to inform local authorities of their efforts. A worried resident in Boston called police thinking the devices were explosives.

Figure 18.4

The incident turned into a full-blown terrorism scare complete with bomb squads being sent in to investigate and the shutting down of Boston-area bridges. In the end, the stunt cost the head of the network his job and Turner Broadcasting $2 million in compensation (USA Today, 2007).

Basic grassroots marketing, whether you call it word of mouth, street teams, e-teams, online teams, peer-to-peer, guerilla marketing, viral marketing, or the latest term du jour, can create an environment that can set a record label’s marketing plan and results apart from those of competing artists. One of the biggest challenges of a label-marketing department is to find new and unique ways to present its artist and music to consumers. Including an element of grassroots in the marketing plan can create a plan that steps away from overused templates to add a unique element.