Brenton Chin's Blog

As a long-time Apple fan, I was browsing through my iPhone’s music section, where I discovered a strange album that I did not recall loading onto my phone. It turned out that this “strange album” was in fact U2’s latest album called “Songs of Innocence”. After doing a few Google searches, I learned that the U2 album and Apple had made a deal for the album to be automatically pushed for free onto every single Apple device – whether or not the Apple user liked it or not.

Firstly, I think this is a very innovative way to market an album, as I don’t recall anything of this nature having been done before. I believe that consumers expect more from marketers nowadays, and that the more innovative a marketing strategy is, the more engaged viewers will be. U2 making this deal with Apple is totally unique, and I think as a result the general public will view U2 as more relevant, cool and more modern – which are great traits for a band like U2 to have.

I think that the fact that U2 was able to pull this off speaks miles to how marketing in this digital age has transformed over the past decade. The days of traditional marketing using traditional forms of media like TV, print & radio are now becoming less important and less impactful. Instead, marketing is gravitating more towards a new frontier – digital spaces, which offer the ability for marketers to target more niche demographics.

A good example of this phenomenon the marketing behind music albums, such as Justin Bieber’s. Upon the release of his album “Journals”, he uploaded a new song from the album onto YouTube every week leading up to the album’s official release date. This definitely was a great way to spread awareness and increase hype for the album, as many of his social media followers tweeted and posted about their excitement and anticipation during the coming days before the album launch.

Another great example is Jay-Z, who promoted the release of his book “Decoded” by placing all 320 pages of his book “Decoded” in various blown-up sizes on very unexpected surfaces throughout the United States. These locations included rooftops in New Orleans, a pool bottom in Miami, and on cheeseburger wrappers in New York City. All of which were captured in photographs and spread throughout the web.

Take a look at how Jay Z’s marketing campaign unfolded 

Traditional forms of media are becoming a thing of a past. Marketers seem to be generating hype around launches by creating online & offline campaigns that offer an element of shock value and uniqueness. These innovative campaigns seems to be working well and appear to be capturing the attention of people in this digital age.