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Rage Against the Machine Saves Christmas - Facebook Campaign Leads to Surprise Viral Victory The ageless metal-rap rockers, Rage Against the Machine, are making noise again, and this time it's by pure accident. The political-driven rock group hasn't released an album since retiring back in 2000, however, they surfaced last week on the UK's biggest radio station, BBC Radio One, to talk about how they suddenly emerged on the UK pop music charts for the much fought over "Christmas Number One" title for 2009.The UK "Christmas Number One" title has normally been held by the UK series, X Factor, winner - a version of American Idol produced in the UK. For four straight years, the "Christmas Number One" winner has been held by the X Factor winner, and this year it was Joe Mcelderry, who was expected to win the title for singing the Miley Cyrus song "The Climb." However, a Facebook inspired campaign that was launched by UK resident Jon Morter as an entertaining (joke) protest against the mainstream pop that in most ways does dominate music charts across the globe these days. Morter's Facebook group "Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number 1" quickly grew to 800,000 fans, and was overspread with users who pledged to buy the track to help push the band to the top of the charts. The Facebook Group currently has more than 970,000 members as of Dec. 20. The mainstream news picked up the story after the first two weeks of December when the Facebook group, which launched in the beginning of December began to grow quickly, and while going offline many times during the beginning days of December, prompted some to make several claims of foul play - however it didn't slow the Rage Against the Machine victory. And once Joe McElderry's track was released in a hard copy on CD, unlike Rage Against the Machine, the X Factor winner from the UK began to close the gap on the suddenly popular American rock band and their 1992 produced single "Killing in the Name Of." On December 20, BBC Radio One announced the final winner, and thanks to a surge of downloads via blog posts, Facebook comments, and Twitter tweets - the infectious campaign influenced social media channels and led to a Rage Against the Machine victory. As announced in an interview with BBC Radio One before being announced winners, the band said if they did end up winning, they would play a free concert in the UK in early 2010. Analysis Breakdown Starting in the beginning of December, from Dec. 1 - Dec. 11; while the Facebook Group was going on and offline sporadically, the number of social media mentions among Twitter, Blogs and Facebook were small in numbers of original posts to users' profiles. However, after December 11 when the group went back up live, it kicked over dominoes that sent tweets, blog posts and Facebook updates soaring in numbers. The mainstream news did not pick up the story until December 14; with social media leading the majority of the charge based on the following data: (In the following charts, only the keywords "RATM" & "Rage Against the Machine" & "Christmas Number One" & "Joe McElderry" were used in this analysis. All data was taken from the social media monitoring tool Radian6. The dates of Dec. 1 - Dec. 20 were used in this analysis.) Twitter, Blogs, & Facebook (46,337 posts):  Mainstream News Posts (3,565 Posts):  Twitter Posts (26,664 Posts):  Blog Posts (18,129 Posts):  **The charts above include only a limited set of data, due to a number of other keywords that could have been used in Twitter, Facebook Updates and Blogs; keywords like "Rage"; which were too broad to analyze more specifically at the time of this posting. The above posts do however represent the trending to their exact details.Social Media Extras: The campaign also led to the creation of a separate mini-site that housed the interview with RATM and BBC last week, a separate Twitter account and an already established YouTube channel that held the video seen above where the band performed their smash hit, "Killing in the Name Of" live Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009 on BBC Radio One. Microsite: RATM/BBC Interview Twitter Account: @RATM4Xmas; 2,698 followers YouTube Channel: A user-created channel that garnered two YouTube awards during the week of Dec. 14 -20; #61 Most Viewed Channel in the UK & #14 Most Viewed Directors Channel in the UK Conclusion It is really nice to see the effect a viral marketing campaign that had no direction, but was more led by a crowdsourcing effort to push a final result -putting RATM at the top of the charts. It normally takes many dollars to create such a buzz in the matter of a few weeks, and this was done with nothing but spirit and passion for the push to the top - led by users with little outside influence, and all with the help of social media! Labels: Facebook, Rage Against the Machine, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Viral Marketing |
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1 Comments:
Nick -
Thorough analysis and some pretty cool information. The treat for me, though is seeing Radian6 used this way (for a band I happen to dig), and the insights that came from it. Thanks for including it in your research and analysis!
Best,
Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra
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