Augmented Reality

Digital Music Event Marketing (1)

I don’t really post my own work to this blog, but before Christmas I did a bit of work with Betapond who are based here in Waterford, on a music related project. The brief was simple; marketing ideas, using digital and online channels that would engage the audience in new and exciting ways. A tall brief, but exciting.

For a lot of the ideas I found myself using the three step method of finding something, re-engineering it for context, and then adding something new and better to the concept to make it unique. I wrote about this process last month.

In two periods of roughly four hours duration I bagged about 16 ideas ranging from small little ‘touches’ to stuff that’s never been tried here in Ireland. I’m going to post what ideas I can here. So without further ado;

1. Announce the line up on Social Media channels:

Do away with the traditional media and announce the line up first through Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Set the date and time for the big announcement and let everyone know.  This will drive up fans, followers and subscribers, and after all, these are the people buying the tickets. Once you have them signed up they will be able to get all their news directly.

2. Rock N’Roll Race

A simple online scavenger hunt… with a big twist. Over five days release clues that will win one person a massive money can’t buy prize. Why ‘money can’t buy’? Firstly, to maximise interest in the competition and, secondly, to ensure maximum exposure to the twist which will be the big talking point. At the end of this promotion, the players will be talking about the brand, so the more players the better.

Clues are released on music related social media outlets at midday each day from music blogs, to the profile pages of acts playing the event. In order to keep the mass of followers, each answer is posted on the ‘events’ Facebook profile page once it is been guessed. This will mean that everybody following the competition will know all the clues by the fifth day.

On the Friday release a link to a page that has a live webcam. The live webcam shows a briefcase that contains the ‘money cant buy prize’. The previous 4 days answers, when put together, give clue to the location of the webcam. Here’s the twist: the prize is doubled so there is now two first prizes. The first person to guess online where the briefcase is wins one, and the first person physically to that location wins the other.

But the location of the webcam can be anywhere. So there’s a world of options; maybe the briefcase is at the end of a Crystal Maze style obstacle that someone must navigate, maybe it’s in the middle of a giant maze… all of which would make perfect viral fodder. However, the webcam could also be located in the outside broadcast unit of a radio station media partner, so once the location is guessed online the rest of the story plays out live on radio. Then maximise exposure and publicity post competition through traditional media outlets, the press, radio and TV. Release what footage is created as a viral and use this as a massive buzz generating publicity stunt.

3. Augmented Reality Tickets

Just say this event had had the potential to sell many thousands of tickets. Why not print an AR code on the ticket? On a specific page of the event website customers show the ticket to the camera and…. and what do they get? There’s plenty of options, how about a personal thank you from an artist playing the festival? Or how about tie in with a label and an artist who has a new release on the way. The artist thanks the viewer for buying the ticket and then plays their upcoming release. I mean how unique would that be, and imagine the captive audience that would watch this piece of AR due to the novelty aspect? Also the PR people hype this up to the max! Tickets go way beyond their usual function and becoming talking points amongst fans and non fans. Especially in Ireland where AR is still relatively unknown. See the clip below for something similar done for a business card.

Thats three ideas for now. I’ll post some more in the coming days.

Related posts:

1. Digital Music Event Marketing (3)
2. Digital Music Event Marketing (2)
3. The Future of Social Network Marketing?
4. When Music Virals Came of Age
5. Augmented Reality: What it Means for Marketing

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