Can Your Brand Handle a 'Leak'?
Via Base Camp Communications:
In the Feb. 08 issue of Wired Magazine, [Talking Heads singer] David Byrne interviews Radiohead front man Thom Yorke about Radiohead’s recent experiment in new album release strategy. In a nutshell, Radiohead “leaked” the album then let fans choose how much to pay for the right to download it. The interesting part of this isn’t the commerce side, it’s that Radiohead was tired of the new album release “games” and knew they had the fan base to try something different.
Read the following excerpt (it sounds remarkably similar to the strategy “gear reps” in the outdoor, bike and action sports industries prescribe)…and think about if your brand/band has the fan base to try something similar:
Byrne… OK. I’ll start by asking some of the business stuff. What you did with this record wasn’t traditional, not even in the sense of sending advance copies out to the press and such.
Yorke: The way we termed it was “our leak date.” Every record for the last four — including my solo record — has been leaked. So the idea was like, we’ll leak it, then.
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