Engagement Marketing done the Ministry of Sound way

I've been chairing the Marketing Mobile Telecoms event in Lisbon, where a breathtaking presentatino by Ministry of Sound has me virtually applauding. This strikes to the heart of this blogsite and our book, Communities Dominate Brands. How do we move from the age of interruptive advertising to engagement marketing? Let MoS show us the way.

For those who might not know this mostly UK/European brand, Ministry of Sound is a dance aspirational brand. They have night clubs/discos, there are Ministry of Sound DJ's, music videos, custom mixed dance music, CDs, etc. If you are young and into clubbing, you'll know Ministry of Sound. Like they say - those who consume Ministry of Sound products and services are not ashamed of the brand.

Enter engagement marketing. So Ministry of Sound has released a new dance song and video. I am sorry, it was such an obscure band that even though I think of myself a bit of a dance freak still in my age, this was totally new to me, so I don't remember it now (I'll dig it up and let us know). Whatever. Most dance music acts seem to live very short careers, few manage the long term life of say a Fatboy Slim far less cross over to the mainstream like a Madonna.

So there is this new totally unknown dance artist, and there is a new video. Ministry of Sound wants to promote it. They decide not to do the traditional interruptive advertising and marketing of the music industry, but rather engage with fans. This is what they did. They invited fans to take the song, and a cameraphone, and record a video of themselves dancing to the song. Then upload the video to a few selected video sites like YouTube, Google Video, MSN Video etc. After that, Ministry of Sound would track whose video of that song gets the highest ratings and viewings. Those fans, whose videos are most watched on the video services, will win an all-expenses paid party trip to Ministry of Sound Singapore !

Ultracool. If the target age of Ministry of Sound customers is 16 - 24, many of these would love to jetset to a party on another continent, but mostly just dream about it. Perhaps the nearest would be a discount airline special fare to Ibiza here in Europe, but Singapore? Way too expensive.

Now, all you need is to have one of the most watched (or highest rated) videos on a video site, and you win!

Note - this is first of all, Communities Dominate Brands. This is engagement !  Secondly this is consumer-created content. Third, this is advertising - every user-generated dance clip will promote the actual artis and get airplay of the song !. It is brilliant licensing of the song - the fans are encouraged to use the song obviously as the soundtrack to their video. It is viral - of course fans will spread this clip to all friends, and invite friends to come and vote for them at the video sites.

This is how advertising turns into content. Not some slick TV advertising company produced hyperexpensive TV spots, run at some targetted TV shows and cable TV channels, hoping to promote the band and song. No, now we get a community to engage, co-create, and actively market the band and song.

Brilliant !  I will find out what the artist was, and we will here also track how the song does on the dance music charts. I only wish I could join Ministry of Sound Singapore to celebrate this innovation in person (hint-hint ha-ha)

Comments

[David Cushman]

Thought you might be interested in this:

http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2006/10/first-post-brilliant-bit-of-marketing.html

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi David

Yes, very good. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Tomi :-)

[David Cushman]

Tomi; how's this for how horribly wrong it can go when some ad agency thinks it can engage with a community using the tools they use themselves?
http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2006/10/youtube-ads-really-annoy-ones-community.html

[Billy D. Aldea-Martinez]

MOS has proven the power of Community Marketing using Web 2.0 technology as the main platform to deliver and embed their marketing campaigns.

More business's should study their effective strategies.

[prada]

Mi piace il tuo blog così tanto, e ci sono solo alcune differenze con gli altri '. Spero ci saranno cose più meravigliose nel tuo blog. Felice ogni giorno!

[Lancel]

Merci pour cet article, je la partage avec mes amis sur Facebook.

[Abercrombie]

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