One of the songs on our Spotify playlist is Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers ‘Learning To Fly’. The lyrics are more appropriate to our time in 2021 than when they were first written:
Well, the good old days may not return
And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn
I’m learning to fly (Learning to fly)
But I ain’t got wings (Learning to fly)
Coming down (Learning to fly)
Is the hardest thing (Learning to fly)
Well, some say life will beat you down
Break your heart, steal your crown
So I’ve started out for God knows where
I guess I’ll know when I get there
As you can tell, we are starting the year philosophically. 2020, the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, ended with a lot of businesses, and plans, failing. One thing about humanity is that after failure we get up and try again, most of the time. As Sir William Churchill reportedly said, “Success consists of moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.
Before Christmas, we saw an invitation by Talk About Digital to share digital PR failures. In the spirit that (mostly) there is no such thing as bad publicity, we responded with a ‘failure’ that we enjoyed creating and learned from, and that wasn’t a total failure. It was an attempt to help a music act to ‘go viral’ by staging something historic.
The resulting post is here. Our contribution is below.
Digital PR Failure 3 – Viral exposure is never guaranteed
In-and-post tour PR for the ‘superb’ Billy Walton Band from New Jersey.
The hook – taking the band onto the deck of the Radio Caroline (the boat that rocked movie inspiration) to play, making them the first US band in decades to do so.
The content – video of band touring the ship and playing and being interviewed by DJ Steve Anthony and interviewing him in turn. See below:
and:
The aim: to leverage the unique history of Radio Caroline via video to raise the profile of the band.
The outcome: some music and non-music press, some airplay, but no viral move for either of the two videos
Reasons the campaign failed (lessons learned):
- There is no guarantee with viral. It can happen when least expected, or succeed when not dreamt of. That was known before we started
- Poor lighting and music recording sound. The video team were inexperienced and unpaid, so their efforts were greatly appreciated, but there were those drawbacks
- Lack of a significant and attentive social media base for the band and Radio Caroline to share this from
- Absence of other promo and context. Looking back, lead in ‘this is coming’ warm-ups and trailers and, later, snippets for various social media and out takes would have helped.
Hindsight is indeed a wonderful thing. Looking back, I am proud of this and so too are the band of doing something so interesting and historic. It is still a source of joy. There is more than one kind of success.
A month or so on, in 2021, we’re glad we did shared this. The band has a new album out, the aptly named ‘Dark Hour’, available via Amazon (and perhaps other sellers) in the UK. Thank you to Talk About Digital for the opportunity and to the other four PR’s who boldly shared theirs.
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