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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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December 22, 2004
Guerilla marketing for patriotic country song busted
So there's this waning midlevel country singer named Chely Wright, Best New Female Vocalist in 1995, with her biggest hit "Single White Female" in 1999.
She is not inclined, however, to go quietly into that good night. She's got her a new bubbling country hit "The Bumper of My SUV." The bumpersticker in question has to do with supporting the troops.
Granted, this song sounds as if it were a South Park parody writing itself like Escher's hands, but it's been doing okay coming up the charts with local radio stations reporting strong grassroots requests. Many of them come from listeners wanting to dedicate the song to brother, husband, dad or son in Iraq.
Problem is, Ms Wright's fan club (run voluntarily by an old pal) has been caught at engineering these phone calls to radio stations, with a core group of a dozen or two people making lots of phone calls, and encouraging her fan club members to do likewise.
Now, so far that's not so bad, though some would frown on it. There's nothing wrong with encouraging your fan club to call local radio, and even out of town calls are really only marginally bad.
The bad part, though, is that the idiots running the fan club site are absolutely openly suggesting (in a special password protected section of the site) that people call in claiming to soldiers or relatives of soldiers.
The Tennessean broke the story, including these quotes directly from Wright's fan club website:
* On Nov. 22, ''Chuck'' urged team members to call several Kansas City radio stations and ''tell 'em your husband is a marine — whatever it takes.''
* On Oct. 30, ''Chuck'' said he had called about 40 radio stations under the name ''Sgt. Steve McKay.''
* On Oct. 28, ''Chuck'' posted this message: ''Sob stories and just telling how this song has affected u r going to work best. This song is what they call a reaction record and we need reaction.''
* On Oct. 25, ''Chuck'' suggested fans log on to military message boards and talk up the song. ''You can also fib a little and say you are in the armed forces and how this song needs to be heard — u get the picture,'' he wrote.
Now this is a shame. I appreciate a hardcore cynical guerilla marketing campaign like few people. I only started liking Milli Vanilli just when they were busted as frauds. Hey, a made up sob story to a DJ isn't going to hurt anything.
But dang, they've killed themselves. As far as this song goes, they've not merely shot themselves in the foot, but pretty much right in the head. They've lost not just credibility, but public goodwill.
This situation is pretty much like when Bart Simpson was caught yanking the town's chains by playing poor little Timmy at the bottom of the well. Wright's people have defrauded the public, if only in the most minor way, by playing on some of the most sensitive emotional issues in the culture. It's just the kind of thing to make people HATE you. I'll be pretty surprised if Chely Wright has any further professional career as a country singer.
I've got more of a sense of humor about it, but having stuff like this on your website or in any form of document is just unbelievably stupid. Did you think no one would ever find out, and shove these quotes up in you? How could you be so DUMB?
Suggest that fan club members call up radio stations. Suggest that they mention loved ones in the military. That's fair enough. And if a few rogues with no military relatives took a clue to maybe make up a little story, no harm really done.
But now all this great guerilla marketing effort sits dead in the water. Now even the regular grassroots calls of actual soldiers calling in will be discounted, presumed fraudulent.
It's a danged shame.
posted by Al at 12/22/2004 11:39:00 PM
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