Oprah and the Black Eyed Peas with A Viral Marketing Lesson 110.0
Quickie Thoughts!
Hearing Black Eyed Peas’ “I gotta feeling” blaring in the background at the 2009 US Open tennis tournament turned on a light bulb in my head. It taught me two things: firstly, a technique (I will call PAIRS) for designing the architecture of a viral product and, secondly, that viral product architecture can be constructed as a non-rival, partially excludable bundle in Romer space. I can do a song and dance for joy at such a sublime lesson in innovation from a master.
At the 24th Season kickoff for Oprah, the Black Eyed Peas created a flash mob with their song “I gotta feeling.” I have posted the link for you at the bottom of this post below.
In Romer space, the song is an example of a partially excludable good owned by the Black Eyed Peas on which they have a value lock as intellectual property. With this lock, the song in a CD is the physical carrier of their creativity, a near perfect way to recover value with every sale.
The dance, done by the flash mob, is the non-rival component in Romer space bundled for FREE(!) with the song via promotional activities like the Chicago affair. As the You Tube video below will tell you, the Black Eyed Peas designed the dance to match the lyrics. So how’s that for an attempt at viral marketing. Read my post on marketing with the Internet at the post on FREE by Chris Anderson of WIRED here.
In effect, hearing the catchy song. “I gotta feeling,” invites you to dance. And dancing in a flash mob with friends for FREE to such a tune, invites you to buy the CD so you can enjoy with your friends.
In fact, this is not the first time Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas used FREE in marketing. Together with other artist friends, he also put together a catchy song, “Yes we can,” for Barack Obama during the campaign that became an anthem for the young.
With “I gotta feeling,” it cements Will.i.am in my mind as an innovation master, like Steve Jobs. He also has both the talent and marketing mojo to succeed in the entertainment space.
Unfortunately, the php program for this blog does not allow a direct link to the large (39MB) You Tube file of OPRAH’s 24th Season Kickoff with The Black Eyed Peas. Here is the link to “Yes you can”. You may return to SYNTHESiST after watching these videos.
