Viral Marketing is a really effective Marketing Strategy.
Quoting Wikipedia:
Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.
It can often be word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it can harness the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.
Viral marketing sometimes refers to Internet-based stealth marketing campaigns, including the use of blogs, seemingly amateur web sites, and other forms of astroturfing, designed to create word of mouth for a new product or service.
Often the goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via “offbeat” stories worth many times more than the campaigning company’s advertising budget.
The industrial band Nine Inch Nails eventually learned Viral Marketing for their new album Year Zero
The website that started it all
On February 12, 2007, fans found that NIN’s most recent merchandise designs contained highlighted letters that spell out the words “I am trying to believe”. It was discovered that iamtryingtobelieve.com was registered as a website, and soon several other related websites surfaced, describing a dystopian vision of the world some fifteen years in the future. Many events reported on these websites take place in the year 0000.
In addition a phone number has been released (216) 333-1810 that contains a conversation between two people around the time of the album’s theme. It was apparently decoded from the same USB drive as the leaked song “Me, I’m Not” . It runs about two minutes.
The Other Sites
- I Am Trying to Believe.com
- Another Version of the Truth.com (audio clip 1, audio clip 2, audio clip 3, forum)
- 105th Airborne Crusaders.com
- Consolidated Mail Systems.com (main site)
- Be the Hammer.net
- Church of Plano.com
- USWireTap.com (Account #71839J)
- Art is Resistance.com
The “lost & found” USB keys
Near Valentine’s Day 2007, the track “My Violent Heart” was purportedly found on a USB drive in a bathroom at a NIN show in Lisbon, Portugal. It quickly circulated the internet and gained notoriety on Digg. Another USB drive containing “My Violent Heart” was also purportedly found in Madrid, Spain, suggesting that these are planned “leaks,” and part of the overall viral marketing campaign for the album.
A clip of the chorus to “Survivalism” can be heard by calling the telephone number 1-310-295-1040, which was found by joining discolored numerals on the back of a tour t-shirt.
On February 19th, “Me, I’m Not” was found on a flash drive in Barcelona, Spain, much in the same way that “My Violent Heart” was in Lisbon, further suggesting that the leaks are intentional. To further back up claims of intentional leaks, it should be noted that the mini-site for Year Zero may contain hints to the above mentioned leaks through a series of digital blurs located over the tracks in question.
Also included on the flash drive was another .mp3 file that, when analyzed through a spectrogram, revealed another phone number, 216-333-1810 which is a 911 call of the incident described in U.S. Wiretap Account #71839J.
The Presence
The last few seconds of the leaked “My Violent Heart” file is static (white noise); spectrogram analysis reveals an image resembling an arm extending down with fingers at the bottom. This arm is known as “The Presence” according to MTV.com.
On February 22, 2007 a teaser trailier was released though the Year Zero website and featured a quick glimpse of a blue road sign that says “I AM TRYING TO BELIEVE” and a distorted glimpse of “The Presence”
A new way to deliver experiences?
It’s not an album anymore. It’s an experience. Songs, lyrics, sites, buzz, hype… real events that leads you to the concept of the album. This is true “multimedia”. Nowadays, with cold compact discs and un-material mp3 files, we need to find new ways to deliver “experiences”. This is virtual reality.
What to expect?
The buzz and the hype are there.
Is Trent Reznor a genius?
Is it just Marketing?
What are we looking at?
Update 01
Rolling Stone noticed the whole stuff and wrote a nice article about it. Seems like the Year Zero Project is Way Cooler Than Lost.
There are other interesting places around the web you can surf to find out more: the NIN Wiki is an updated wiki site containing lots of info about the ongoing Year Zero Research.
