YOU know all about how Lily Allen harnessed the yoof power of MySpace to turbo charge her career, with the result that the inane teen chat site is now seen as a crucial marketing device in breaking a band. Well it was for a while anyway, now it's so over and the focus has moved elsewhere, writes Brian Boyd
A lot of this is down to bands getting sniffy about the MySpace phenomenon, as in the way Arctic Monkeys are keen to distance themselves from the site. When it worked, though, MySpace allowed for good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth recommendations. But then malcontents such as Billy Bragg started raising awkward copyright questions and swiftly removed all their songs from the site.
The crucial aspect of MySpace was that it guaranteed that vital teen to young adult audience - which is why record companies got so excited about it in the first place. For the past few months the search has been on for a new net-based venture to promote music. Now one has been found.
Coincidentally, Lily Allen is the first musician to feature in this new marketing drive.
MSN Messenger, Microsoft's instant messaging service, is a huge draw for 18 to 24 year-olds, and an estimated 11 million people use the service in the UK and Ireland. These figures have not gone unnoticed by Allen's label, Parlophone, and they have just created a customised MSN Messenger campaign for the singer which they say "offers the perfect platform to consolidate and increase Lily's loyal fan base while ensuring she remains true to her online roots".
Parlophone are using Lily Allen "Themepacks" on the messaging service. These provide people with customised Lily Allen emoticons, backgrounds and dynamic display pictures. Messengers can also send Lily Allen "winks" during their instant messaging conversations.
"This campaign offers fans even greater online interaction and accessibility to Lily Allen content while also bringing Lily to a new audience," says a spokesperson for the service. "Lily has enjoyed incredible success and exposure with the ongoing Parlophone multi-media campaign. Incorporating a branded MSN Themepack into the marketing mix will drive momentum and further promote Lily's work."
Which is all very well, but this reeks of "replica marketing", where something which worked somewhere before is now tweaked a little bit and slapped on to a new format. There's a contrivance at work here that just wasn't there in the early days of MySpace.
There was no campaign associated with Allen's initial rise. Her label were pushing her to record her first album in a "hit factory", but she baulked at the idea. She took the original demos that had got her signed in the first place and uploaded them on MySpace, adding regular updates as the amount of people visiting the site increased. These songs were e-mailed around at a ferocious rate, so much so that she registered on the music industry radar months before her album came out. She was picking up plenty of press attention and the demos themselves were being played on mainstream radio stations.
By the time Alright, Still was released, she was already a well known name. Somewhere along the line, some marketing department obviously put Allen down as someone who was an internet trendsetter - hence the MSN campaign.
There's a massive difference, though, between people discovering something for themselves and having it thrown at them as a rubbish-sounding Themepack. Emoticons, dynamic display pictures and "winks" ... what have they got to do with Allen's music? MSN Messenger believe that "these are exciting times for online as we see new avenues for advertising and ground-breaking campaigns evolving. Our aim is to strive to produce innovative campaigns through which advertisers can creatively communicate and captivate consumers. We look forward to seeing more music artists using MSN Messenger to reach out to their fans".
If by ground-breaking campaigns, they're talking about tat shoved on to an instant messaging service, they're sorely mistaken. Instead of reaching out to fans this will more likely piss them off.
Don't expect a rush of bands to jump on board the new Themepack fad until Allen's progress, or otherwise, can be calculated. Hopefully, she'll be the first and last musician to annoy people with her silly emoticons.
bboyd@irish-times.ie
