Upon making their second album (Oh No) the band decided to take a different direction creatively with their music video “A Million Ways”. The video featured the band in their back yard performing a dance choreographed by lead singer Kulash's sister, Trish Sie. By August 2006, the video had become the most downloaded music video ever with over 9 million downloads. They then out did themselves when they created the music video "Here It Goes Again" featuring an elaborately choreographed dance on treadmills, also directed and choreographed by Trish Sie. This video was viewed by over one million people on the media site YouTube in the first six days and to date has over 52 million views. What the band hadn’t realised until after releasing the videos was that they would become what is called “Viral Marketing”. Viral marketing is when a video, picture or anything that can be found on a pre-existing social networks abruptly has a surge in popularity and views which inevitably increases brand awareness. What is so special though about this type of marketing is that no-one knows or truly understands how or why this phenomenon occurs on the internet; and yet Ok Go are able to do it not just once but again and again!
Ok Go’s “A Million Ways”
Ok Go’s “Here it goes Again”
Ok Go’s “This too Shall Pass”
Ok Go’s “White Knuckles”
The second and what could be considered a less ‘by luck’ marketing technique is what I can only call original internet marketing. What I mean by this is not the stereotypical situation in which a band uploads their music to MySpace and suddenly gets ‘discovered’; in fact they have used clever and original ideas to market themselves. One way is by creating an audience on the video sharing site YouTube; this has allowed them to upload official music videos, updates and whatever they decide to create and directly inform their audience of new video releases via YouTube’s innovative subscription gadget. By continually creating content for the site Ok Go have successfully created an online audience that follow, watch and buy their products regularly. To add to this the band also advertise with their YouTube page new albums, and post about the original, limited edition, collector’s items they personally make and sign; only people who use the internet can purchase these items and the information about them are only released on the internet. This use of the internet to market their products means that they can interact with their audience better, more frequently and at a lower cost than with conventional advertising. So far this unusual type of marketing has proved extremely successful with albums remaining at a constant in sales and merchandise being sold continually through the internet.
update video about ‘The Mother of all Packages’
Ok Go’s Official Merchandise page selling Limited Edition items
So in conclusion the band Ok Go use modern techniques to market themselves to their audience through original music videos off which many become viral and therefore advertises to an even larger audience than many modern adverts do. Also by being active with the online community they have been able to successfully advertise to their loyal followers and continue to make profits. It’s therefore almost inevitably obvious that I feel Ok Go have been extremely successfully not only as a Band but as a business. Don’t believe me? On the 9th of March 2010 The Band no longer felt the need to be signed to EMI and left to create their own label ‘Paracadute’. According to them this “is really just a way for the boys to continue doing what they’ve always done. Which is whatever they want”
‘Ok Go Announces New Label’ Video
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