“Yo VIP!” Says a sorry Vanilla Ice
I must confess that myself and pretty much all of the FACTOR168 team, with the exception of the inexplicably prudish and our resident Luddite Michael, are great fans of the Virgin brand and the way they go about marketing themselves.
Smart, brave, savvy, edgy, timely and consistent with the cultivation and management of their brand personality. This time, Virgin Mobile have stepped forward with a fabulous cross-medium event marketing idea. Nice one.
The idea has crystallized itself in a carefully engineered popculture ‘movement’ called Right Music Wrongs – which neatly dovetails into the Virgin Mobile branded V Festival.
When you have a precious spare moment, check out the super short manifesto on their website and the entire rational becomes… well crystal clear.
For those that are happy to take my word for it -in a nutshell, Virgin Mobile argues that music should not be about quantity, as in how many tens of thousands of MP3 tracks you own but rather how good your tracks are. And of course it may all come down to personal tastes and preference. And this is best illustrated by those musical hits that have sold in the gazillions (which is a lot even on Duran Duran’s Planet Earth) of copies but the question posed is – does quantity equal good?
Bands with their songs are put forward by the readership of the website and the faithful are invited to review each candidate and determine whether they are indeed guilty or innocent… of musical crimes against humanity I’m guessing.
But I digress. What this website has done for Virgin Mobile so effectively is squarely targeted its youthful, tech-savvy, and opinionated target demographic. In establishing the website, there was a progress marketing strategy of raising the profile and participation of the website through a mix of advertising mediums and starring one of the most famous of potentially guilty one hit stars.
The ‘star’ engaged to kick off this campaign was the high recognition (and I suspect relatively cheap) and some say cringe worthy world’s ‘first’ white rapper Vanilla Ice with his global hit “Ice Ice Baby”.
The Virgin Mobile guys and gals brilliantly reinvented him as a cause célèbre of epic proportions as means of activating their audience. Seems to have worked.
People flocked to the website to cast their ancient Roman inspired thumbs up or thumbs down… and much to the surprise of everyone, Australia declared Vanilla Ice innocent of all charges. A masterstroke in their campaign was to have the forgiven Vanilla Ice come out of ‘retirement’ (although I can reveal that he wasn’t actually that retired or retiring… I saw him in of all places a Hong Kong nightclub performing two years prior… very odd) and star… well contributed a featured performance at Virgin’s proprietary music gathering – V Festival.
Below is one of the successful video clip trailers featuring Vanilla Ice seeking forgiveness for his popculture crimes and inviting people to cast their votes at the website (oh and kinda slowly slowly be indoctrinated into a Virgin Mobile world). He apologizes…well for pretty much everything, all the while his instantly recognizable track is beating in the background. Product and brand awareness raised, traffic was strong to the campaign website.
I voted innocent and I still love this song to this very day… yes i know. I also like MC Hammer so there you have it. Oh shush. Check out the homepage and my vindication with the majority judgment of his innocence. Yay… curse you Virgin Mobile, I’m getting hooked! Word!
I’m wondering if Virgin Mobile has replicated this successful Australian event experience to their overseas operations and V festivals? I had a look at the website and it is fun and a time killer but I’m not so sure how much more legs (ie novelty factor) this concept might have – another year or so before the next ‘big’ thing?
I must check the website out to see if MC Hammer and Kenny G were both brought to ‘trial’. In reading Vanilla Ice’s blog it seems his association with Virgin Mobile has given him a new lease of musical life although his metal rocker punk type music (read – noisy and cluttered) probably won’t do much for his old fan base.
man he’s aged poorly, still like his songs but