18 MusicWeek 30.03.12 INTERNATIONALONEDIRECTION
A British boy band taking the US by storm is news in itself – but One Direction’s Stateside breakthrough is of such significance that it has changed the way Sony UK works in international marketing. And it could even change the face of the music industry itself
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ANALYSIS BY PAUL WILLIAMS
O
ne Direction were last week rightly saluted as the first UK band ever to enter the Billboard 200 chart at No.1 with
their debut album. But it is another breakthrough of theirs that will have far greater consequences on how the music industry operates. According to Sony UK chairman and CEO
Nick Gatfield: “They are the first act to properly break globally through social media.” And it is a claim he does not make lightly, but is one based on the results of a perfectly-executed online campaign that found the Syco act the subjects of fan adulation in a number of overseas markets – including the US – long before they had received any coverage in traditional media or any of their records had gone to radio. The decision to place social media at the heart
of the campaign was no accident, but in Syco managing director Sonny Takhar’s assessment an absolute necessity. What he concluded was the usual route of trying to break the band at radio first internationally was not realistically an option because it would have had to have been achieved in an environment in which the market believed boy bands were over outside the UK and X Factor artists did not successfully travel beyond their home territory. “We were told it was a genre that had died 10
years ago, so we were compelled to make this on our own by trying to get fans engaged with other fans around the world and give them ownership and let them discover One Direction themselves,” he says. What resulted was an online strategy that is
fast becoming a benchmark in how you use social networking to break a new act worldwide. Rolled out firstly in Europe last October, the Bring 1D To Me devised by Sony UK’s head of digital
ABOVE The boys in the band: from top – Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson
RIGHT A Rush and a push: One Direction broke through supporting Big Time Rush
marketing Genevieve Ampuduh pitched fans of the group against each other through the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Tombola as to why the band should visit their country. It resulted in visits to Milan, Stockholm, Munich and Amsterdam and absolute pandemonium as thousands of fans turned out to try to see them in city centre appearances. “We were national news and this was for a band
that hadn’t been at radio and had had no mentions in the traditional media at this point so the only way fans could have discovered them was through social media,” says Takhar. This strategy was then adapted for the States as
Bring 1D To US, which Modest Management co- founder Richard Griffiths – whose company manages the band – says was about “getting the fans connected to each other and getting excited about the idea of One Direction coming to America”. As this created such a groundswell of interest in
the band in the States even before their US record company Columbia had gone to radio it meant in the week of its Stateside radio debut What Makes You Beautiful managed to sell 132,000 downloads. This landed the band a No.28 debut on the Hot 100, the best start on the chart by a British act since The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony entered in 13th position in March 1998. What that late arrival on
the airwaves now means is that, although the first album Up All Night last week sat at No.1 on the Billboard 200 with 176,000 sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan, their US radio story is still only at a very early stage. “What is exciting is
that if you look at the airplay chart we’re rising
up it on a daily basis, but we are eight to 10 weeks away from our peak on American radio, which is staggering. And we’ve only done one television show, which is the Today Show,” says Griffiths, although appearances on Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards (March 31) and NBC’s Saturday Night Live (April 7) are soon to follow. The success of the social media strategy has
been so great that Gatfield says it has changed the way Sony UK now works in international marketing, including resulting in the appointment of a full-time digital head to work in that team. He also suggests One Direction’s social media success has highlighted a shift in American radio’s importance in breaking music. “Radio is losing its dominance there and
people are discovering music on their own through social media,” he says. Another vital factor in One Direction’s US
chart-topping achievement has been the involvement of Nickelodeon through Columbia Records chairman and CEO Rob Stringer and chairman/COO Steve Barnett. This led to the group undertaking a 10-date tour of North America between the end of February and early March supporting Big Time Rush (below), a quartet who star as a boy band on a show on the children’s TV channel. “Columbia
Records really deserve a lot of credit for what’s
been achieved,” adds
Takhar. “Steve Barnett and Rob
Stringer saw how this band had broken in the UK and recognised that
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