How important REALLY is online word of mouth? How could an online community of music consumers use social networks to oppose an international music franchise and make British music history?

‘Rage against the X-Factor’: it was real; it happened in real time, and it had a real impact!

CASE Insights reviews the music campaign launched by Jon and Tracey Morter from Essex who showed Simon Cowell that they, their friends and their friends-friends certainly have much more than the X-Factor.

The X-Factor is a franchise originating in the UK in 2004, devised as a replacement of Pop Idol. Produced by executive producer Simon Cowell and his company Syco TV, X-Factor is franchise spanning 24 European countries.

The format sees aspiring pop artists and performers drawn from public auditions compete, with finalists being voted for by the viewing public for a recording contract and publicity. Despite, being highly criticised as exploiting aspiring music artists and for it’s lack of artistic integrity, it has been a hugely popular reality TV show watched by millions.

The UK Christmas Number 1 selling single is Britain’s most hotly-contested music chart of the year. Compiled by the Official UK Charts Company, for the past 4 years Simon Cowell‘s X-Factor winners, from Shayne Warne, Leonia Lewis, Alexandra Burke and JLS, have dominated the Christmas charts. However, this came to an end in 2009 with one of the most exciting and anticipated music chart battles ever in the UK. The British public sick of the manufactured artists widely supported and promoted a social web campaign to ‘Rage against the X-Factor’.

Fed up with the possibility of yet another X-Factor Christmas No. 1., Jon and Tracey Morter from Essex, started a protest campaign through a Facebook Group. They promoted the sale of their favourite single ‘Killing in the Name’ by artists Rage Against the Machine (RATM) as a possible contender for the 2009 No. 1 Christmas chart position.

‘Rage against the X-Factor’: Through over 1 million Facebook fans, over 50,000 YouTube search results and endless Twitter chatter, individuals encouraged their friends, followers and fans to buy a download of the single by rock band, RATM by the end of Saturday 19^th December (23:59pm).

The aim: to firmly contest conventional marketing techniques by publicly bringing down a major players mass media campaign through online social networks and word of mouth (WOM). Jon and Tracey felt passionately and wanted to stop the domination of the Christmas music charts by X-Factor manufactured artists and in that make a statement about the power of online WOM and marketing ethics.

The results: ‘Killing in the Name’, the single by RATM, officially released over 15 years ago, spent very little on it’s marketing activities, yet in December 2009, in one week, they sold over 502,672 copies of it’s single, beating X-Factor winner Joe McElderry by approximately 50,000, making it the 2009 Christmas No.1 in the UK.

In taking the title for 2009, ‘Killing in the Name’ also set two new landmarks for the music industry. It became the UK’s first download-only Christmas number one and notching up the biggest one-week download sales total in British chart history.

This has been matched with numerous fake websites, dozen of mock twitter accounts, hundreds of new blog posts, and thousands of YouTube entries for the single – Killing in the Name. The No. 1 search result on YouTube has received over 12 million views and been rated by 40,000 visitors. HMV’s Gennaro Castaldo said “This is a truly remarkable outcome and possibly the greatest chart upset ever”.

The campaign also raised through Just Giving over £93, 000 for the charity, Shelter.

In response: RATM announced on 19th December 2009, that they will be holding a FREE concert, a massive ‘Thank You Gig’ in the UK in Spring 2010 to celebrate the victory of the people’s campaign.

Marketers (and Simon Cowell) can learn a great deal from this social web campaign and how reality TV shows, audience voting systems and mass media ratings are not necessarily reflective of wider societal opinion and consumer choice.

WOM has always been a very important channel in marketing, but now coupled with increased reach and awareness because of digital social channels, it is by far the most powerful channel in marketing today.

For the digital immigrant or newcomer and the marketing traditionalist, take note: “The RATM campaign shows that marketing through the social web is about being real, in real time and having a real impact!”

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The core distinguishing character of the social web to more linear electronic resource such as TV, Radio, Print and even Web 1.0, is the degree of involvement the user plays in generating and sharing content than ever before. This is why we love it! But do they actually control their content?

It might be user-generated, but is it really user controlled?

Let’s say our organisation decides to use social technologies in their marketing activities or build a social network where our customers, consumers and stakeholders can share and interact. Where a dialogue and conversation can evolve. Where we as a company we can engage with the community within which we coexist. Sounds great!

But as a user or participant in this community, can I really choose how that content is displayed? To whom it is shared? and What the very nature of that content is? Or does someone else control this, for what ever purpose, or aim or objective they have?

This is very much dependent on the nature of the properties of an electronic resource – the technical, structural and experiential properties. And these properties are contingent on who designs, builds and develops it!

Not the user who might use it. Despite the user being the most important node for network sustainability. After all they do create the content.

Properties of Electronic Resources

Electronic resources such as the social web comprise technical properties (hardwired, mechanical elements) that enable structural properties of a resource, such as how interactive it is how vividness etc. This in turn influences the experiential properties – user perceptions and experiences such as ease of use and utility.

Source: Page (2009)

For example, if I design the functionality of a system or network in a certain way (the technical properties), I can influence the degree of control a user has over what they can do with the system or information in the system. This is known as a structural property called ‘pacing’.

Pacing can varying in degree from being controlled by the designer/marketer. We call this externally paced. With more control being given to the user, thus is considered more of an internally paced system.

For many broadcast delivery systems such as television, these are external pacing where the transfer speed and the information sequence is controlled by the advertiser and network- with minimal influence by the receiver of the information (audience).

Turn on your television, select a channel—how much control do you have over the order in which you receive the information and the speed at which you receive it? Compare this to watching a rental video or a DVD. With print media, users have a larger degree of freedom of choice of the order and time allocated to the information, which is why print media are regarded as more internally paced than broadcast media.

User Control and The Web – Who is Pulling the Strings?

Although the concept of information/media control has been around since the 1960′s the development of computer and network-based communication technologies like the Internet and Web has increased its relevance.

With resources like database technology upon which Google and Amazon are based, users have a larger degree of control over the order in which they access information and the amount of time they take to process it.

The social web on the other hand, has an increased capability to enable both external and internal pacing with a common example being the difference between ‘user generation & customization’ (internally paced) and ‘system mediation and personalisation’ (externally paced).

Let’s look at Myspace and Facebook. Myspace is designed to enable more user customisation, not just in content display and sharing, but also in design and functionality, with a lesser degree of system mediation. Facebook in comparison, adheres to more terms and conditions of the use of their network, limiting user control in functionality and design, but enabling it in content generation and sharing.

If I don’t like either of these offerings and their control over my content, I can create my own … a blog through WordPress, a wiki through PBWorks, a social network through Ning and define my own ideas of who controls both the system and it’s content … or as is technically possible through these systems.

So I suppose the closing questions of this blog post are:

• As a participant/user I need to consider who inherently has control over the content I generate? The designer, system developer, the management or marketer … they can add, remove, publicise or ban my content at the click of a button.
• As a designer, developer, management or marketer … how much external and internal control does my community expect or want from the system, and how much am I prepared to give?

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