So you might have heard about the band Nine Inch Nails’ new album, Year Zero, and the campaign they’ve put together to promote it. Up until now, it’s been a bunch of weird websites linked together along with some swag, USB drives left in bathrooms and phone numbers. Kind of a “connect the dots” approach to engage loyal fans… and some pretty cool stuff.

Well, according to Launch Radio  Networks, the band INTENTIONALLY leaked some songs from the new album when they left them on computer hard drives at venues on the band’s Euro tour. The fans found them and posted them on the web for others to download and trade. Just like the band thought they would.

Here’s where the story gets good. Remember that organization that sued the crap outta anyone and everyone they could get their hands on back in the Napster days? That’s right, it was the Recording Industry Association of America. Well, they got wind that people were posting the NIN songs on the net and had their lawyers send out cease-and-desist letters to the websites where the songs were posted.

The best line from the article was from an industry source and sums up the entire mess quite nicely: “These f***ing idiots are going after a campaign that the label signed off on.” This is where I laugh so hard I get tears in my eyes.

One lesson here is to make sure your right hand knows what your left is doing. In other words, COMMUNICATE. Marketers are supposed to be in the communications industry. But make sure that communication carries on internally, too.

The other lesson is to let go. Once again, someone is so concerned about keeping control that they don’t even stop to ask some simple questions. Stimulus. Pause. Response. Or, in this case just fly off the freakin’ handle. Yeah, that always works out well.

Boneheads.

(Tip of the hat to Blabbermouth.net.) 

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 5:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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