As far as Chely Wright was concerned, it was a fairly logical idea. The country singer was about to release a pro-military dirge, The Bumper of My SUV, and, like all acts, she wanted to get her tune played on the radio to help push sales. Wright is not signed to a major label and does not have a huge promotional budget, but the singer, who was voted Top New Female Vocalist by the Academy of Country Music in 1995, does have fans. Through her website, www.chely.com, Wright's team rounded some up and asked them to pester radio stations about the tune, writes Jim Carroll.
So far, so familiar. It's a common tactic, using street teams of fans to inflate an act's profile and hype a release. It worked for Wright too - this grassroots promotion led to increased radio play for her clarion call in support of US troops in Iraq. The tune rocketed up the Billboard country and airplay charts and became Wright's biggest hit since Single White Female in 1999.
But what marks Wright and her fans out for special attention are the weapons of mass deception which they used for promotional purposes. A select team of Wright fans were encouraged to pose as members of the armed forces or their families when they contacted radio stations asking for the record to be played. They would call or email stations around the US, posing as marines or close relatives of military personnel, and telling sob stories about how much the record meant to the boys in the field or the folks back home.
The campaign was rumbled when one of these super-fans gave in to her guilty conscience and contacted the Tennessean newspaper to express her concerns about what was happening. It led to Wright sacking her longtime fan club manager and saying she was "shocked, saddened and deeply upset by this unethical behavior". It didn't stop the single in its tracks though: Bumper of My SUV has been topping the Billboard Country Singles Sales chart for the last few weeks.
There will be more Chely Wrights because nearly all radio stations now use email and text to provide cheap interactive elements to let the audience have their say. Indeed, many radio shows now depend to such a huge extent on their interactive bells and whistles to provide playlist and show inputs that it has become relatively easy and foolproof to use the process to hype an act.
It may not necessarily work for a bunch of unknowns, but bands who've had a couple of releases under their belts can, if they're smart enough, effortlessly manipulate these interactive channels. Fan websites, in particular, are where the seeds for such soft marketing campaigns are sown.
For a fan, helping to push their favourite band by calling or texting stations is seen as a way of somehow getting close to the act. For the act, it's a promotional tool where there's much to gain and very little to lose, aside from a few signed CDs and T-shirts to be thrown to the hard-working fans.
Yet, when concerns are raised, changes are made. A recent Guardian investigation into how Universal Music used teams of schoolkids to hype new pop acts led to the music company shutting down these street teams. The teens and tweens who were doing their bit for McFly and V didn't feel that they were being used and the company's marketing department certainly had no qualms about what they were doing. But it's obvious that someone at Universal baulked at the implicit suggestion of exploitation in the Guardian article.
Yet, as the Chely Wright saga showed, it's radio stations which face the biggest challenges. How do you decide if a flood of phone calls indicates a genuine public demand for a record or that the hype merchants are at it again? The next time you hear a radio DJ droning on about the huge amount of emails or texts received requesting a certain tune, just remember Bumper of My SUV.
