Disintermediation: that is one word that defines the impact of social media on the movie music and publishing industries. The ability of various social media platforms to allow movie and music brands to directly reach their target audience has continued to reach amazing proportions with stars like Lady Gaga having 12,924,111 followers on Twitter alone. I had previously posted about the five principles of making videos go viral, highlighting the factors that can turn a product or service into word of mouth/mouse marketing. This has also had its effect within the Nigerian internet space with Nigerians and foreigners going gaga over two of Nigeria’s top Twitter stars and members of the Mo Hits crew – Dbanj and Don Jazzy.
Since the release of the duo’s Oliver Twist single (first under the Mo Hits records /G.O.O.D Music label) on August 12 2011, social media fans have not rested. The record label decided to release Oliver Twist with a twist – releasing the song and asking fans and followers to create their own music videos and upload the videos to YouTube and sending a link to their official email of the competition (details here). The Mo Hits Crew is setting the stage for a viral product.
What lessons are there to learn from this bold move?
Tapping into Consumer Motivation:
As the Dbanj brand is known for, it is coming with its own sex appeal. The strength of the campaign taps into two of man’s strongest consumer motivations – Money and Sex.
Tapping into the lyrics of the song, YouTube is already busy flagging some of the videos with the (rated 18 status), of course most of these videos have most page views with one of them having … The Mo Hits crew has also promised to reward the first 5 winners with prizes ranging from $2,500 to $500 (differences of $500) and a feature of the top 10 in the final developed video to be released later in the year. The top 50 entries are also to receive free Koko mobile handsets.
Give People Ownership:
Since the competition launched, the social media space hasn’t rested and people have been busy and the response has been astonishing, rookies have turned actors, comedians and dancers going from outdoors, indoors to backyards; even Eldee has create done to support the release – from the controversial and funny to the dramatic. The Mo Hits crew had actually created a sample of what they were looking for (presently with 46,837 views on YouTube alone).
A search for the keyword “DBanj Oliver Twist Youtube videos” yielded 46,700 results in 0.20 seconds. The Google trends haven’t rested. The Oliver Twist DBanj name is presently trending on twitter and top forums like Nairaland are in on it. The social media release also coincides with the release of the song as a downloadable tune on MTN caller tunes
This approach is an impressive strategy of letting the people gain ownership of the Oliver Twist video, imagine the number of actors, participants and curious people who will wait for the results and will watch the final release of the video. Much more interestingly, we will wait to see the sales figures of the album when it is finally released.
