If New Media Philippines can give an award for best innovative marketing for a band, we would give it to 30 Seconds to Mars! It’s not just their music that’s epic, the band was a marketing juggernaut in hyping up and promoting their album “This is War”. We’d have to say that these guys are light years ahead compared to a lot of other bands in their genre. This article will attempt to break down everything that they did great.
Band Background
30 Seconds to Mars is an American rock group that is formed by Jared Leto (yes the actor—Requiem for a Dream, Alexander, Lord of War), Tomo Miličević and Shannon Leto. Prior to their recent album (This is War), they have already produced 2 albums and garnered International Recognition and were or have been nominated in various music award giving body (MTV, VMA, etc.).
The production of This Is War is particularly interesting since during its production the band underwent a tremendous $30 million dollar law-suit with then label Virgin Records in mid 2008. With that strain above their heads they still pushed through with writing and producing songs for this Album. The bold move here is that 30 Seconds to Mars, after winning the settlement, still decided to turn to EMI (parent label of Virgin Records) to have the record made!
Of course they were pretty much given free hand in crafting their music and it is the direction of singer/songwriter Jared Leto that really made this record phenomenal.
The Direction
The direction was simple – they owe it to their fans to have the record produce hence, what better way to pay tribute to people who love your stuff than to involve them in the whole album-making process.
This gave way to the band’s initiative meet-up with the fans called The Summit. The Summit is a gathering of 30 Second to Mars fans (also known as the Echelon) to get an update on how the album is progressing and…get this, to be part of the album by recording various sound bites by the fans for the album!!!
Since this was held in one venue, the band recognized that not a lot of their fans were able to attend; hence they took it upon themselves to create a Digital Summit where they involve their fans around the world to reenact what transpired during the Summit, record it then send it over to the band.
The enormous chorus made 30 Seconds to Mar’s songs richer, more vibrant and…well…epic! This is Love!
The Promotion
To pay further tribute to the growing number of Echelons, the band promoted their fans. When the album launched, 30 Seconds to Mars created 2,000 different album cover inserts with their fans on each cover!
Imagine 2,000 fans doing hard promotion for you! I’m pretty sure people whose pictures were at the cover bought more than twice to give to their friends and loved ones. Now that’s ingenious marketing right there.
If this wasn’t enough, 30 Seconds to Mars involved their fans in the creation/production of their music videos.
In crafting music video, here’s what front man Jared Leto has to say: “Our rule as a band is, when we do videos — which, I don’t often think of them as videos, more as short films — let’s make sure the experience is amazing.” [Montgomery, James (2009-10-13). "30 Seconds To Mars Go Epic With 'Kings And Queens' Video". MTV Networks. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1623727/20091013/30_seconds_to_mars.jhtml. Retrieved 2009-10-13.]
In their recently awarded video (2010 VMA best rock video of the year), Kings and Queens, 30 Second to Mars once again showed their prowess by crafting a collaborative video with the band, a group of night riders/ cyclists and Los Angeles as a backdrop.
But the one video that I major major loved is their video (or film) on Closer to the Edge. This one is fairly simple to produce since most of the materials are shots from their concert series, however the focus isn’t the band, but the fans. And we see this as the fan videos became bookenders to the video as well as smartly placed segments within. The copy made the whole film seem like a love letter to the fans.
Check the video out. To use existing footage and create something still epic, there is a genius in 30 Seconds to Mars that is truly addicting!
Cross Promotion
30 Seconds knew where to properly promote their music by partnering with EA’s Dragon Age: Origin. The song This Is War was first heard on one of the teaser trailers of this multi-platform game. At first I thought, that was cool, the guys at EA found a suitable song that matches well with the trailer, lo-and-behold that this is the official song for Dragon Age: Origins as it plays during end-credits.
The song is a stand-alone but if you’re not a big fan of the band and love the game, you’d think the band literally wrote the song FOR the game itself. The problem with some music artist cross-promoting their songs in popular video game franchises is the disconnect between the song and the game. But every so often there comes a marriage of pure genius and This Is War delivers.
The Transformation
I love how the band recognized transformative marketing by making each consumer touch points (music, blog, facebook account, video, live concerts) into an experience involving their fans. In This Is War, it’s like he’s a general gathering willing and passionate soldiers –very much exemplified in the song Vox Populi where fans sing the line “This is a call to arms, gather soldiers, time to go to war; This is a battle song, brothers and sisters, time to go to war!”
With this, the band created a deeper relationship with their core fan group. The whole musical process now becomes a dialogue and in turn creates a loyal pool of subscribers willing to rally up for whatever cause the band feels the community must make. Seth Godin would be proud as how this band used ideologies from Tribes, to Purple Cow all the way to Linchpins as 30 Second to Mars brilliantly shows that by making good and honest connections, being 100% passionate in their craft and shipping out relevant material is key in this download-all-you-can-for-free industry.
In response to the bands endeavor of involving them, I found this awesome video of fans responding to 30 Seconds to Mar’s call to arms.
Author’s note: The information shown here were taken from publicly available material via various websites and Wikipedia links. If any information stated herein is false and/or inaccurate, the author wishes to apologize in advance and is amenable to rectifying any statement shown here.
Great idea for their part. Ang fans ang lakas nila. The same with that celebrities here in the country has to say. Ang tao ang nagloklok sa akin kung nasaan man ako ngayon. It’s only right to take care of the people since they are your god. Success or failure is in their hands. If I’m part of the summit group, i would feel happy and more supportive if the band is reaching out to us more.
Wow!
I do not know this guys, but I learned so much from your blog about marketing. These guys are geniuses.
Thank you for spending your time to give us valuable inputs.
There’s an optimism to their music that made me do research on the band more. To date, simply listening to Closer to the Edge gives such a euphoric feel and to know that it’s the fans faces that these guys were thinking off is just…wow in all epicness! :p
Check them out in FB.
Thanks Jef! This is all Colin.
I really like the fan pic album cover… I wonder how much it cost them to print all those out.
Good investment methinks
Just checked the video for Closer to the Edge. It might have been blocked off by EMI. Try this link instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLqHDhF-O28
Enjoy!
They are good and their promotion makes them better. By promoting their band using videos they are the best! Because some word of mouth are not enough to convince public.
Their plan is wicked and the results were insane. I so envy their digital marketing strategy. What a plan! It isn’t just the ordinary contest nor shoot your fans somewhere but instead, they made their fans work double time promoting them without them realizing it. The album covers was a great idea, who wouldn’t want to get their face on an album. These people will quote and quote tag their friends to buy the album, hence, more popularity, more sales.
This is insane. I wish I have a killer plan like this to do with my brands.
Great post!
The genius here is really and honestly recognizing the fans as part of a collective collaboration. I’ve checked some of their concert clips in youtube and it’s amazing how Jared Leto preps his fans before he sings (like making them chant certain portions of the song first so they know when or how to say/sing it) and the success and failure of the song is somewhat linked to how the fans would react. Like in one case the crowd reacted poorly and the song didn’t come up as epic as it would be but in another instance when the crowd were doing their part everything just came into place and you can see the energy in Jared’s singing and how that becomes a dialogue for the fans.
In the same way with brand marketing, when we include our customers as part of the brand matrix (and not as just consumers) and we spark a real dialogue between them then we can create a much more relevant brand with relevant products for these people (in turn it will be them sharing the brand and not the marketers anymore). If you think about it, all 30 Seconds did was give their fans the tools to make the band sharable by their core fan group and in the end, isn’t that what social media is about?
I agree. I actually think it is a ripple effect. It wasn’t a one way interaction. The plan was executed in such a way that it will happen in phases. Such as
1. Gather the fans in the summit
2. Interact, make them do what you ask them to do
3. Connect
4. Then upload the videos, fans who were there will tweet it.
Great, desired response 1 – achieved!
Part II.
1. Printing of the album cover with over two thousand faces of fans. Brilliant.
RIPPLE Effect again.
2. Fans are too giddy to see their own face on the cover, they buy a lot of it.
The fans were the buzz, therefore, they spread the word about them being on the cover.
RIPPLE effect. Desired response 2 – achieved.
Then the video was created, tons of music videos. Their a few seconds to fame was a big deal. They repost the link, tweet it around and boom –
desired response 3 – achieved.
And that didn’t end there, they responded. Hello fan videos. Free mileage again. Isn’t that another ripple effect? Boom, another desired response – BONUS!
I think brands should really work harder like what this band did. Their well executed plan created wonders.
Dagnammit!!! Not a big fan of the music, but I love the strategic thinking. I am reminded of the Burger King face burgers, but this time the medium made more sense! Thanks for this Colin!
Hello. I think the line you quoted is from the song called A Call To Arms and not Vox Populi.
Yeah, thanks for clarifying that. I just checked the track listing and it did say A Call To Arms. Weird cause in some links they call this Vox Populi. :p oh well.
hahaha.
Still, it’s a great song! ^_^
Why do we need a tribe? Seth Godin explains
http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/09/27/Seth-Godin-Mixx.aspx
Even Conan O’Brien had his picture in one of their album covers. haha.
Hi! can you please update this post para maisama yung VyRT last December. I was lucky enough to purchase the online tickets para mapanood ng live yung last concert nila sa NYC. thanks Carlo. I loved reading this!!!