Rage Against The Machine
Surely the biggest PR story of the festive season was the one that saw Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name Of take the Xmas #1 spot. In doing so, they trumped Joe McElderry to the position, leaving him the first X-Factor winner not to take the festive top spot since the competition began. At first glance, it might seem as if a well orchestrated PR campaign was in place to propel a song that contains the F word 17 times to the top of the charts. But look closer and it’s much more interesting than that.
Simon Cowell
The story here is not about who sold what or who made how much money (many have pointed out that both acts are on labels funded by the major, Sony), it’s actually about how a track with no physical CD release, no formal publicity campaign and no coercion by either label or band, came to outsell a song backed by the frankly enormous PR machine behind The X-Factor (including the hugely influential figure of Simon Cowell), a major record label and a physical and digital release primed specifically for the Xmas market, a tactic which had secured the Xmas #1 spot for the last 4 years running.
The answer to that question is predominantly and almost without doubt, Social Media. The campaign began when Jon and Tracy Morter set up a Facebook group, Rage Against The Machine For Christmas No.1, decrying the predominance of X-Factor Xmas #1s and urging people to buy the RATM track in protest. Now, the Morters had already tried the same trick last year (failing to usurp X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke with Ricky Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up), so what made the difference this time around? Firstly, the choice of song cannot be ignored. Where Never Gonna Give You Up was only ever likely to elecit an ironic response from a small band of followers, Killing In The Name Of is a song which provokes passion, is a million miles from the produced pop of the Cowell brigade, is anti-establishment, hugely offensive to radio programmers and middle England and features an awful lot of swearing. The perfect antidote to the clean-cut, perma-grinning McElderry then. Battle: On.
With the vital elements in place, it was left to social media to do the rest. Early support from comedian Peter Serafinowicz on Twitter exposed the campaign to his 250,000+ followers and the rest was history. Facebook group numbers swelled, Twitter chat became dominated by the campaign and the whole thing took on a force of its own. By the time big names like Paul Mcartney had added their weight to the campaign, it was all over the UK press, radio and online. At this point, the band themselves became involved, appearing on BBC Radio Fivelive (which you can hear on Youtube, although it’s not safe for work, obviously!), delivering a brilliantly curtailed, censorship-busting, swear-fuelled performance and promising to pay all royalties to homeless charity, Shelter, and to play a free UK concert in 2010 if the song hit the top spot. Which it then, of course, did.
You might not like the song, you may disagree with the politics but it’s hard not to feel impassioned by the story behind it. This really was People Power in action, driven by nothing other than a desire for change. And that process was made possible by the power of social media to spread a message, to motivate people and inspire them to act.
About the Author
Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett is a Social Media Analyst for Social Media Library, responsible for developing the content within Social Media Library. Paul lives in a world of blogs, blogs and more blogs, scouring the web and plucking out the juiciest information he finds. Previous to this, he worked as a Music Press Officer. He is also a freelance writer, writing for TV and editing a music title, SWN Magazine.
Paul blogs extremely infrequently about stuff that he does and once blogged about cheese, maybe he will do again some day. Follow him on Twitter @paulbarnett1.