Only a few months after releasing their debut album, and as the hype was calming, they released an EP: Who the Fuck are Arctic Monkeys. It was an intermediate release between their 1st and 2nd album. These are the lyrics of the last track on the EP ( You don’t have to read the lyrics… read on if you like):
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Who the Fuck are Arctic Monkeys
We all want someone to shout for
Yeah, everyone wants somebody to adore
But your heroes aren’t what they seem
When you’ve been where we’ve been
Have I done something to trigger
The funny looks and the sniggers?
Are they there at all, or is it just paranoia?
Everybody’s got their box
Doing what they’re told
You pushed my faith near being lost
But we’ll stick to the guns
Don’t care if it’s marketing suicidal
Won’t crack or compromise
Your do-rights or individes
Will never unhinge us
And there’s a couple of hundred
Think they’re Christopher Columbus
But the settlers had already settled
Yeah, long before ya
Just cos we’re having a say-so
Not lining up to be playdoh
Oh, in five years time, will it be
“Who the fuck’s Arctic Monkeys?”
‘Cause everybody’s got their box
Doing what they’re told
You pushed my faith near being lost
But we’ll stick to the guns
Don’t care if it’s marketing suicidal
Won’t crack or compromise
Your do-rights or individes
Will never unhinge us
(La la la la la, la la)
(La la la la la, la la)
(La la la la la, la la)
All the thoughts that I just said
Will linger round and multiply in their head
Not that mad to start with
I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed
It’s not you it’s them that are wrong
Tell ‘em to take out their tongues
Tell ‘em to take out their tongues…
It’s not you it’s them that are wrong
Tell ‘em to take out their tongues
Tell ‘em to take out their tongues
And bring on the backlash!
It’s not you it’s them that are wrong
Tell him to take out his tongue
Tell him to take out his tongue
It’s not you it’s them that’s the fake
I won’t mess with your escape
Is this really your escape?
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When they released this EP, they were heading towards a time where normally the hype surrounding sudden success stories would settle, setting the stage for the next big band. The way the story goes these days is that hyped up bands break though with their first album, tour the world, work on their second album, do a few DJ sets here and there, make a few sales on their second album and slowly fade away.
It seems like Who the Fuck are Arctic Monkeys was really for the core Monkeys fans: They were showing contempt for the casual main stream listeners and for the way things go in the, destined to fail, old music industry way of doing things. The song wasn’t going to hurt their mainstream popularity… cuz the screaming girl, who has just won a Radio one ticket to see them, won’t know of the record anyway (it hardly got any airplay cuz it was over 5 minutes long - was that deliberate BTW?).
The band were touring America when the EP was released. It didn’t seem like they wanted to tour the states, they didn’t want to be another typical Brit band tying to “crack” the large American market, appealing to American kids who think they’ve found something new from watching Saturday Night Live:
” And there’s a couple of hundred
Think they’re Christopher Columbus
But the settlers had already settled
Yeah, long before ya”
They didn’t want to alienate their core fans; the main culture around the act. They wanted to stop selling.
The record’s main message was that they want to keep writing music, discovering new styles and keeping the creative wheel spinning, and not worrying about the record label wanting maximum short term return on investment by whoring their creditability and reducing their shelf life. They don’t want to write deliberate hit attempts aimed at Radio 1 listeners, even if by not doing so they are committing what they refer to as “marketing suicidal” (i.e. refusing a lucrative marketing opportunity).
But “sticking to the guns”, is NOT “marketing suicidal”: quite the opposite really. Also, I don’t think there will be much of a major “backlash”… they probably know that.
The Arctic Monkeys are the only new band I know of who have executed the perfect marketing strategy in this new era. I don’t care if it was planned intentionally or whether it just happened, but it seems that everything that has happened to them follows the advice of top “new marketing” experts. I am going to demonstrate this as follows:
Oh BTW, this whole thing about Myspace making them big in no time is a whole load of crap. It had nothing to do with that at all.
#1 Let’s Start with the Product - The Music
They put together a new cocktail of music styles. That is how new styles come out: a mixer of two or more styles. They combined an indie sound, dance like grooves, and hip hop rhymes. They pretty much took the best out of each style. Kids love the indie sound but a lot of indie lyrics are a bit crap or don’t mean anything. Kids love dance grooves - dance makes you dance, but most dance tracks these days comprise of one or two sentences (”call on me, Valarie “), you cant sing a dance song without sounding like an idiot. The best thing about hip-hop is the rhymes - I find it difficult to listen to a whole Hip-Hop album without looking up the lyrics and enjoying all the phrase spins, and all that.
Take the best of three worlds and put them together, you’ve got Arctic Monkeys.
Seth Godin is one of the well known modern marketing thinkers out there. He would call Arctic Monkeys’ music a: Purple Cow. Basically, cows are boring, but if you drive past a purple cow you would stop and have a look, cuz it’d be remarkably different.
I am sure that the Monkeys weren’t the only ones to come up with this fresh style. But if they were one of many similar artists, I wouldn’t be surprised if the others did have right product but blew it with the way marketed it (or the way they were told to market it)
#2 Marketing the idea like a common cold outbreak
Viral marketing (or word of mouth) has always existed. A lot of folks are raving about it because of the internet. All the internet does is that it accelerates the effect of word of mouth: things spread more effectively on the net. Things spread in more than one direction at the same time…
…But you’ve got to have the virus first before it all happens. A lot of bands try to force spreading the word, but it never spreads cuz there’s nothing to spread. In the case of the Monkeys they had something pretty infectious; a fresh idea.
The Idea Virus is a concept by Seth Godin: Create a remarkable product, find your virus spreaders - the sneezers (the hip people looking for new alternative things who are always talking about it), concentrate on a small demographic that you think you can dominate, give the sneezers the virus for free, move away from it all and just concentrate on your product.
The Monkeys found their sneezers, they gigged in the right places (a lot), they concentrated on a small demographic (unlike bands who gig everywhere they can without building any sort of traction in one place), they gave out their music for free on CD (only to those who came to their gigs, not on Myspace, i.e. they gave their CD’s only to their sneezers), and they continued gigging and making new material.
People were talking about the Arctic Monkeys, Sheffield was saturated with the hype. Gigs were sold out. I heard about them through a conversation with a mate. His story was that he managed to make a tidy profit out of selling tickets for a sold out gig on eBay. Stories like these were everywhere. There was a time where office workers used ask one another questions like:
” have you heard of those Arctic Monkeys, are they any good?”. And they wouldn’t have heard a single track.
Phrases like:
“bloody Arctic Monkeys!” were recited everywhere. Even the oldies heard about them.
The core fans liked the music, and trend followers liked stories.
The whole “Myspace” thing had hardly anything to do with it. Their Myspace profile wasn’t even created by them. It was created by a fan. Myspace was only a place for people to listen to their songs. The hype was there before, the foundation were laid already. If it wasn’t Myspace in 2004, it would have been Napster in 2000.
If Sheffield was a balloon, and the Arctic Monkeys were the air in the balloon; the air reached a critical volume after which it exploded. Suddenly they were known everywhere in such a short time. The magazine writers wrote and the DJ’s spoke. The trend was everywhere. Many bands fall into the mistake of blowing air into 1000 balloons at the same time: Nothing happens.
They got a million pound record deal, with which they released an album, and hardly spent anything on publicity, I’m guessing. Talent TV show winners get million pound deals too; as far as I know they hardly get anything out of it.
#3 Feeding the Core
They keep fueling the rocket that launched them in the first place, their “escape” - as in the above song. That EP was for the band’s true fans and not the trend followers. The release of the EP was very low key.
They sometimes play randomly in Sheffield, without any prior notice. They performed on new years eve in a bar in Sheffield. They showcased their new album by doing a surprise gig at the Leadmill, Sheffield, that no one was supposed to know about. Funny that cuz everyone knew about it. It was a classical example of the “don’t tell anyone” phrase being passed around. Suddenly, everyone had a story tell and everyone knew about their new album before any of the new tracks hit the airwaves.
Some big artists pull publicity stunts (that you hear about in the mass media) before releasing something: drug related normally. George Michael, Keane, Britney Spears, etc. I am not saying that they are all intentional incidents, but they do happen at the right time. This is whereas the Monkeys make an appearance in The Harley pub in Sheffield, where all the cool 20-something students and young professionals go on a Friday night… or in Tesco on West Street, etc. The funny thing is that hardly anyone bothers them, and you don’t see any photographers around. It’s all cool and people get used to it.
They certainly keep their original fans sweet. Make’em feel a little special. The result? A refueling of the word of mouth mechanism.
I don’t think they have shifted as many albums as, say, James Blunt has. Their first album wasn’t a big seller in America. Their second album was number one here for a few weeks, but isn’t shifting that many copies overall. But the question is, did they spend much money at all? I think they have achieved what is much more important than short term album sales: They got big without selling out. This ensures a long “career” for them. They have credibility and they can keep going.
You didn’t see them on Top of the Pops, they don’t go to the Brits, you certainly don’t see an advert on ITV (with Zane Lowe or Jo Whiley’s voice over) advertising their album.
There IS such thing as bad publicity.
So… I find it difficult not to believe that the above series of strategies all just happen to them, and that luck was on their side.
I remember once watching Sheffield’s regional news back in 2005 the day they were doing a small gig in South Yorkshire. The news presenter was saying that the band’s “father” said they will not be doing anymore show interviews. This came after their interview with Channel 4’s Pop World, when Simon Amstell was taking the piss (as he normally does). The impression people got was that they wanted to move away from the media and that they are a little inexperienced and “shy” when it came to interviews. Everyone knows that Simon Amstell tries to take the piss all the time, and maybe this was a perfect opportunity for them to justify their refusal of appearing on anymore main-steam media interviews. This is where, really, refusing to take part in mass media interviews is hardly “marketing suicidal”, it is marketing genius. And who’s the so called band’s father?
Maybe you’re thinking: “If the marketing strategy executed by the Arctic Monkeys is crystal clear and makes sense, then why is it that other indie bands can’t achieve the same level of traction by doing the same thing?”
The answer to that, I believe, is that every element of the above strategy has to be satisfied. Otherwise the whole thing fails. Musicians come up with fresh material all the time, but they do not know how to market. Some bands try and achieve viral marketing when they have no substance. Some bands fall into the trap of signing to the first deal they get from the majors before creating any sort of good following, not knowing that by doing that, they’re killing them self.
The way it goes these days (and it all depends on your style of music and target audience) is that you either:
Open your self up to the mass media, clutching onto every chance you can get to boost your album sales. By doing so, you would have to have a high enough budget behind you (million pound deal is not enough) and constantly change your style, becoming a trend follower (Madonna, Justin Timberlake, etc).
If you become a hyped up band on a million pound deal, surrender your self to the media, and expect to last long, you’re probably kidding your self.
Or you keep coming back to your core fans, do not seek any publicity generated by mass exposure. Only seek organic publicity generated by your core fans and never alienate them. Then work hard, really hard… create a constant stream of new records. Show people that you’re not about making big hits, you’re just about making music.
Back to the above lyrics. “All the thoughts that I just said, will linger round and multiply in their heads”, refers to all the speculations generated and the whole “they got big cuz of Myspace” thing. I would like to think that my above analysis has logic, and not just a series of meaningless statements.
Here are products that have a lot of common with the Arctic Monkeys:
Iz El-Bahnasy
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7.7 million square kilometers. The total area of the US of A is 9.6 million square kilometers. The population of the UK is about 61 million. The population of Australia is about 21 million. The population of USA is 302 million.