The fourth in a series looking at useful app’s for bands and artists to make their Facebook page more attractive to fans. So far I’ve looked at iLike, Freeload and Headliner.FM. This post looks at Band Page by Rootmusic.

Rootmusic’s Bandpage

Out of the app’s I’ve looked at so far this is similar to iLike. It builds a tab within your Facebook page to showcase everything about your band. From music to videos, bio’s, photo’s, contact details and gig info – it really does provide an all in one solution. There’s some really nice touches to band page too. The user interface is sleek and attractive. If you move from audio to playing video the audio track will be muted automatically, when you finish watching the video, the audio track picks up where it left off. The tab also features a Facebook wall where fan’s can leave comments and, a Twitter feed. Bandpage also takes advantage of the viral elements of Facebook to help promote the tracks you have through wall posts and sharing with friends.

One of the aspects I do like about BandPage is the editor, which is simple and easy to use.

Thats the free version. For $1.99 a month a version that offers more features to customise your tab is available. This is freemium, but how more reasonable can you get than $1.99 a month? This clip shows just how much more of a visual bang you get for two bucks.

Once you set BandPage as the default landing tab it becomes a powerful marketing tool to persuade new fans to like your page and, keeping it updated, gives existing fans ongoing content to keep them interested. The BandPage editor is very straight forward meaning you don’t need any technical know-how to produce something great looking, especially in the paid version which is very reasonably priced.

The main difference between BandPage and iLike is the latter caters for a wider number of social networks all from within the one dashboard. So you don’t need to log into Facebook and Twitter and Myspace to update all three. BandPage doesn’t offer that function, but is that a really a deal breaker?

This is the third part in a series of posts looking at how to market music on Facebook. Part 1, looking at some basics and the iLike service, is here and Part 2, looking at Freeload App, is here.

Headliner.FM

While the last two posts have looked at ways bands can try gain more fans by working on their own, Headliner.FM allows bands to work together to boost their fanbase, revolving around the exchange of ‘Band Bucks’ an in-service currency used to trade promotional messages with other bands fans amongst the 27,000 strong pool or artists using the service.

When you join Headliner you are awarded Band Bucks based on the number of fans you have (this service also connects to Twitter and Myspace accounts). Your bucks will grow in tandem with your fanbase, or if other acts join the service because you have referred them. It’s amongst the 27k userbase where the Band Bucks come in use. Essentially this is a promotion service where you send out messages to the fans of other bands, called ‘shout outs’. These other bands aren’t selected at random, but chosen based on genre of music or location. The other band can then decide whether or not to post that message out to their fans, who in turn can choose to like the message or not. If the other band do post the message they get paid from your stash of Band Bucks, and of course if you do a shout out you get paid in Band Bucks.

Quick Pro’s & Con’s

The pro’s to this are the unique way you can contact bands that might have fans who could potentially also be into your music. The ‘shout outs’ can be promotional in nature, pushing deals, competitions, free downloads, ticket discounts, merchandise whatever you think might be of interest. There’s a limit of three requests per day for these shout outs, and with Band Bucks there’s at least some control over this preventing the service from being over-run with spam. Also since the service integrates with Twitter the promo messages can only be 120 chartacters in length plus a shortened URL. So they’re short but sweet. And for bands with no idea of self control 120 chars is plenty.

I’m not sure if this sits in with the pro’s or con’s. It’s promoted as a free service, while it’s actually a freemium service (free with paid for aspects). Don’t get me wrong developers do have to make money and it’s an interesting enough product that can at least be road tested first. The three tier service offers a basic package with analytics for free. At $30 a month the Pro package offers better analytics, the ability to reach more fans, schedule messages to post later, and geo targeting meaning you can reach local fans (the free version only offers genre targeting). At $50 a month the upper tier offers better analytics, ability to reach even more fans and the running to be in a featured artist. By far the $30 pack seems the best deal, but it really depends on what you get out of it.

What could be useful with a service like this is to target the fans of towns your band is visiting, or using your tracks and videos as free downloads for fans of other bands to try out. Even trying to be more creative with the messages might get you in front of more eyeballs. 120 characters might not seem like much but if you find the right hook, ensure your Facebook presence looks professional and has plenty of content to show how good your band are, then getting potential new fans will certainly be a lot easier. You’re not going to conquer the world with this service, but it might get a few more likes.

The first part in the series looked at the page basics and the iLike Music Tab application for promoting your band on Facebook. You can read it here. This post looks at a new viral distribiution app called Freeload.

Freeload

Freeload is a new Facebook Application that launched in December. To add it to your Facebook page will cost you five cents under $100 to purchase, but there’s a couple of features that might make that initial outlay well worth it.

Firstly the purpose of the app is to distribute a piece of content – audio, video, artwork or even a software download. Whenever a user downloads the content their email address is collected and added to an exportable CSV file. In other words you get a point of contact for someone who downloaded your content, very useful for follow up marketing, especially if this person is a fan of your music

The app will also push notifications to a users wall when a fan downloads the content. This might grab the interest of some of their friends to also download the track. Such a feature can help the download go viral, it won’t make it go viral, but it has enough features that might encourage click throughs and some extra downloads from friends of fans. See the ‘download now’ link on the notification below, it could be fairly persuasive don’t you think?

Download Delivery

However, one of the best features for the app is the download delivery. You can make the download available right away, set a future date to make it available, or only make it available after a certain amount of fans have clicked the unlock feature. So you could decide to release artwork after 50 fans have ‘unlocked’ it, a single after 200, a video after another 200 and so on. When fans click the ‘unlock’ feature a message is posted to their wall. Again this might get a few more downloads. With this feature I think it’s all about finding the right balance between the value of the free content to the band and the value of the incentive for the fans. With the right balance, where there’s a perceived value to the content, and the fans recognise the number of unlocks as being achievable, then they may just help promote your page in order to reach the required fan numbers and their hands on the free content. In other words if they want the music, and there is a realistic target of fans needed to unlock the content they may promote your download for you.

You could ask them to promote your page directly by tagging your page in a status update. I’d choose this well ahead of ‘suggest to friends’ as thats a fairly useless feature IMO. But don’t turn the status update into some promotion or contest, that’s forbidden under Facebook guidelines and could get your page shut down.
Off The Shelf V Bespoke App’s

Overall it seems like a decent enough application. For those without any HTML/FBML knowledge this is a cost efficient way of distributing content. When forking out for these kind of Facebook services – off the shelf applications such as this are a fraction of the cost it would take to have a developer build a bespoke application. While Freeloader may not do everything you want, or look exactly how you want it, $100 is small change when compared with $3K or more you might have to pay for a developer to build it how you want it. Unless of course you have 3K to spare, why would you spend it on a Freeload imitation?

It has some nice marketing features that could help push the fan growth of a page. Giving away random free stuff can work for and against a page. If a biscuit manufacturer gives away free samples people will ‘like’ the page for the free samples, some may stay fans, some may leave. But for bands this is slightly different. You may not like the taste of the biscuits and leave, but with music no two tracks are ever going to be the same so you might hang around for more free music – unless you totally detest the songs. Which, lets face it no matter what kind of band you are, or how good you are, not everybody will like your music.

Hard to believe it’s May already, 2012 is just flying by. In April we welcomed and said goodbye to April Fools Day and Easter for another year, neither occasion features in the campaigns below. There’s plenty of good stuff from Ikea, McDonalds, TNT, Pum and a bunch of others. As always iIf you have seen something else worth including add it in the comments below.

TNT Benelux: Push The Red Button
There’s life in the old flashmob yet, as this brilliant execution by TNT Benelux demonstrates. Take that singing flashmobs, all you need is a button to add drama!

Ikea
I feel like I’m writing about Ikea every single month, and it’s hard not too when they keep coming out with clever ideas. Whatever Ikea do, be it real life installations somewhere, on TV or in some digital format the brand neatly joins the dots between between innovative and delivering tangible benefits for the viewer without ever resorting to gimmicks. Are Ikea the most innovative brand in the world in terms of marketing? Here’s this month’s proof.

They can do something new and fancy in an interactive video

do it in a web banner. How 90’s of them.

Agency Work

Agencies like to throw out good ideas they’ve created without any brand attached. Agencies are always looking for clients, ways to show off and ways flex their creative muscle – without the restrictive ties of a client brief. Last month three ideas caught my eye;

A Spotify Powered Poster

An in-agency challenge to ditch the lift and take the stairs. Using NFC to find those climbing the most stairs.

The Likebelt allows you to check in anywhere, all you need is a belt and the thrusting motion of a young Tom Jones. Although this reminds me of Jotly the take the pi** app that allows you to rate anything… that eventually became a real app..
Tug Of Store
This idea feels like its not fully finished. At it’s core is a ‘hot or not’ shopping site. You can see how others are rating the products, with links to buy said products. I expected a fast paced scan through the latest collections from some designer, with a Facebook integration that add’s a social layer at least. But there isn’t, also you rate the products by giving them 100 clicks – yes you have to click the mouse about 100 times before the next product appears. In a time when sites are trying to reduce the number of clicks between visiting and purchasing on a site, Tug Of Store gives that concept two big fingers. It’s a great idea that isn’t fully teased out yet.
tugofstore

McDonalds
Two cool executions from McDonalds. The first is from a Polish train station, where McDonalds have integrated their menu with the timetable. Not only can you see how long until your next train, but also how many McDonalds products you can consume within that time.

A reflective billboard only visible at night – to highlight the local branches are open 24 hours. This isn’t the first time McD’s did something a bit different.
Puma: The Worlds Fastest Purchase
It’s interesting to see how technology is seeping into everyday actions. In this instance Puma have gamified shopping, the faster you are to make a purchase, the greater the discount. It’s not exactly new, but putting it into an actual store certainly puts a new spin on it. Plus the store can turn probably turn over a greater number of customers in a normal day.
Magnum Pleasure Hunt 2
I also liked this, and it’s the first sequel of the month – Magnum’s Pleasure Hunt. You might remember this from last year, it’s basically a game across the internet that incorporates real pages. You can play it here.

In the Neatherlands they took the idea a step further to incorporate an AR app, that allowed people to play it in real life. It would be nice to find out how much of a success this AR campaign was. Bueller? Bueller?
TippExperience Two
It’s like the first one, which was great, but it doesn’t really break new ground so it doesn’t feel as great. But hat’s off too everyone involved for taking what is a very unsexy product and making people talk about it.

Smart Car: Ping Pong & Twitter Ad
The Smart Car brought us two interesting things this month, Pong updated with cars being used as controllers.

They also had this very different Twitter Ad run in Argentina, it’s a kind of cartoon in the Twitter-stream . Volkswagon did something similar on Facebook with their Flipbook and what looks like a never ending stream of photo’s..

Personalisation: Trident, Heineken, Channel 4, Durex, Citreon
Trident gum in the US promised the ‘Fun’ audit, it’s an Intel ‘Museum of Me’ type thing that try’s very hard. Access it here.

Brian Badonde, (you might know him as the funny one from Facejacker) released his Bacebook Bapp, which I can only assume is tied in with a new series of the show. I really tried to like this.

Heineken’s design challenge also came to an end, as did Durex’s Naked Box. I’m not sure how many entries there were for the latter, or how it performed, or indeed who came first, (ok, I’ll stop), but Heineken had 30,000 er… entries (soz!) and it’s a brand who are phenomenal in their Facebook comm’s, even if I disagree with their all in one global page.
While all getting people to design packaging and then make it for them is a win-win concept, the brand has to be able to put in as much effort in producing the finished product as the entrants did. So little did Heineken or Durex realise that Citreon was about to rain on their personalisation parade with the launch of the first Facebook crowd-sourced car. Yep design a car that Citreon will put into production, and bring it to market next year. First I want doors that open like they do in Back to The Future…Oh there’s small print – “ you can only choose the number of doors, the interior and exterior colours”.
Possibly topping Citroen in the underwhelming stakes is this Mercedes-Benz campaign from Germany. The premise is this, you can use any car key to open the doors of a Mercedes-Benz Viano on a digital projection. Nice idea. Out pops a variety of characters from the Viano (a van) in the projection, some of them funny, some are entertaining – all to highlight the space in the vehicle. Good communication of brand message. If your Viano is empty when you click your keys – you win a Viano ‘experience’. Unfortunately the ‘experience’ extends to a lift in a van – a thrilling experience if ever there was one. The video is worth watching if only for the family trying to feign excitement at the end “Oooooh, what’s this… a button on the inside of the van”. Unfortunately it doesn’t add drama.

The first post outlined how Cadburys arrived at their decision to integrate social media into their marketing strategy. This next part will give an overview of their progress since then and how social media has been a success for the Cadburys brand.

The Cadbury strategy thus far has had three different approachs;

– ‘Glass and A Half Full Productions’ have been quirky and used to promote the Dairy Milk line

– Nostalgia and social networks have been a key component of the Wispa strategy

– For the Creme Egg brand, aimed at a younger audience, Social Media has been fully embraced to produce an absorbing and inventive approch to marketing.

Glass and A Half Full Productions (2007 – Present)

Three television adverts have been produced under this banner, namely the award winning Gorilla, followed by Trucksand the most recent Eyebrows ad.

Gorilla has been a massive hit on Youtube clocking up over 5 million hits in its first year alone. It also spawned hundreds of remixes uploaded to the video website by viewers, one of which featured Bonnie Tylers ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ which was subsequently remade by agncy Fallon and broadcast on TV. Polling agency Yougov noted that this advert reveresed the decline in public opinion of the Cadbury brand. The company also reported sales increasing by 9% compared to the same period 12 months previous (in 2006).

Queen provided the Soundtrack to Trucks, the advert that had the impossible task of topping its predecessor, certainly a tough act to follow. While trucks looked more expensive it didnt quiet grasp the imagination of the public. Due perhaps to the massive interest in Gorilla on Youtube, Trucks made its debut on the video website a full 24 hours before its first television broadcast. A subsequent advert with Bon Jovi’s track ‘Living On A Prayer’ was also released.

For the third advert in the series Cadbury returned to their roots. Eyebrows featured two kids, another great retro soundtrack and a bizarre eyebrow dance. The advert had much in common with Gorilla, a simple yet creative idea that did once again grab the publics attention. Within three weeks the advert was viewed over 4 million times on Youtube, that was twice as many as Gorilla at the same stage of that campaign. Cadburys have also launched Jivebrow ’09, a competition to discover the 18% of British people who are eyebrow ambidextrous.

The three adverts have worked due to a number of factors, a certain amount of nostaliga is present as each advert has featured a song that is at least twenty years old. The two most successful adverts have demonstrated creativity wins out over budget. While high profile telvision premier’s (all debuted during different versions of Big Brother) have helped to generate ‘buzz’ and driven viewers to Youtube to view the adverts again. It is the social media video website that has been instrumental in prolonging the life span of each advert and in the case of Gorrilla produced a second version of the ad for television. Each online view for the brand is free, while the success of Gorrilla and Eyebrows has also proved to be a publicity hit for the firm generating tons of free online and offline PR, to the extent that consumers, the media and the advertising industry eagerly await the next advertisement in the series.

I’ve been asked to give a talk at the upcoming Bizcamp event in Waterford in June 12th. Its the first Bizcamp event in Waterford following on from successful ones held in Dublin and Limerick. The concept is ‘by entrepreneurs, for entreprenurs’ with multiple sessions of talks, each lasting no more than 20 minutes with a further 10 mins Q&A. The plan is to cover a wide range of topics on the day, so people depart having learned something new, come up with new ideas and some new contacts. The event takes place on Saturday June 12th next from 9.30am in Arclabs, which is based on WIT’s Carriganore campus (map below) and it’s entirely free.

My talk will be looking at the use of Facebook for business. It will be more practically driven than my last presentation, Market To Me (slides here), as in the aim will be to give the audience ideas on how to begin or improve their social network marketing strategy.

You can register and get more information on the event here, they are also still on the lookout for speakers so if you would like to get involved check out their site. Strictly NO sales pitches!

Info on speakers confirmed so far here

Googlemap to the location below. From the city centre, go out the cork road to the Holycross roundabout, take a right, the next left, the next right, yes it is a small country road, and the entrance to the driveway will be signposted on the right hand side.

Full Press Release:
Bizcamp event comes to the South East to inspire and support entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs, innovators and people with ideas in the South East region are invited to get involved as both speakers and learners for an upcoming conference with a difference.

Organised BY entrepreneurs, FOR entrepreneurs, Bizcamp South East is the first event of its kind to be held here in the South East on June 12th. Based in the Arclabs Research & Innovation Centre in Waterford, this day long event follows the model set by previous events held in Dublin and most recently Limerick with great success.

Peter Grogan, Director of Emagine Media and Bizcamp South East organiser said: “With a growing unemployment rate in the South East, we rely on the successes of innovators and entrepreneurs for our future economic success and prosperity. We are asking people from the South East to come to Bizcamp and learn and share from each other.”

“The Bizcamp event is deliberately NOT about sales pitches, we want to hear about skill sets you wish to share, to lessons learned, to valuable experiences gained within your business.”

Bizcamp already an exciting panel of speakers lined up, but organisers still want to hear from people in the region who would like to present a short talk.

Speakers will give a short 20-minute presentation, with 10 minutes for open discussion, on a topic of their choice. Bizcamp is not necessarily a ‘techy’ event and topics will vary from starting your own business, to marketing, to presentation skills, to design, finance, web & social networking and stress management.

Continuing the theme of innovation and entrepreneurship, Tom Corcoran, Centre Manager introduces Arclabs as the Bizcamp South East venue; “ArcLabs is all about encouraging, mentoring and supporting innovative and ambitious early-stage business ventures. The centre has all of the leading-edge facilities that companies need and expect, but much more than that – it is an exciting networking community, driven by entrepreneurial spirit in which businesses can thrive and become successful.”

Bord Gais (An Irish Gas & Electricity provider) are no strangers when it comes to trying out new ideas in their marketing communications. To announce their foray into the electricity market in 2009 they spoke to bloggers ahead of the mainstream media to get their take on it all. That was incredibly well received. Earlier today they announced the launch of their new iPhone App, Think Beyond. The free app, available from today, allows consumers to check account balances, billing dates and transaction history for their electricity and gas. A future version will allow customers to monitor usage of power in the home.
So how do you go about launching an app like this? Think of your target audience – people with smartphones. They don’t necessarily have to be Bord Gais customers, but providing such a useful app may make non customers consider becoming customers. This is combination of early adopters, office/desk/pc bound who will gladly give up some time for a reward. So how can these people be reached in a way that generates buzz, ‘beyond’ what would be achievable in traditional media? Design a bunch of activities for them to take part in, offer some really cool prizes, use Twitter for its real time updates, it’s ability to post photo’s, and use those taking part to help spread word of the app and competition virally amo
ngst a much wider audience.
eoinos announces on Twitter they will be giving away €1,600 in iTunes vouchers and 4 iPhone 4’s. This advert also appeared in today’s press. Note they used the advert to use a member of staff’s account and to promote their Facebook page.

As tweeted by eoinos today “Ok folks this hour to be in with a chance of winning the iPhone or Vouchers, all you have to do is download our fingerprint image and set it as your iPhone wallpaper and tweet a screenshot making sure to tag tweet with#thinkbeyond”.

This task was iPhone specific. But by setting up the hashtag and getting respondents to tweet their task they were also promoting the competition to everyone that followed them. That’s viral marketing. This task closed at 12.45 and the winner announced at 1pm.

Task 2: 1.10pm

From eoinos “So thats tweet or email picture of you next to one of our ‘Get in touch with your account’ ads to be in draw, remember to tag #thinkbeyond”. At this stage #thinkbeyond and eoins were trending in Dublin on Twitter.

Task 3: 2.30pm

From eoinos “Ok for the 3rd hour all you have to do is create or draw or paint etc the words ‘Think Beyond’ in a creative way and tweet or email a pic”. This produced some really creative entries like how about this video entry from finianmurphy

The level of entries at this stage were so good and the competition was running so over closing time was extended to 4pm. Some of the runners up are below, and more entries at the end of this post. The judges requested more time before announcing the winner of the iPhone 4 for this round so the winner will be announced at lunchtime on Friday.