UKIP Calypso: Experience Pays

Earlier this week (20 October), former BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Read released a song titled "UKIP Third Party Ostensible Demarketing'.  What this clumsy term describes is the process where a product's sales are boosted by carefully managing calls to have it banned.

The 'album cover': picture from The Independent

Calypso".  Read said that the song was a harmless piece of fun, something in a long tradition of political satire.  But within hours two things were happening: firstly the song started climbing rapidly in the download charts at iTunes and Amazon; and secondly it was being castigated by media figures and politicians for being racist.  This looks like a classic case of what I call '

Perhaps this is too hard a judgement on Mike Read.  Today (22 October) he is all over the media apologizing if the song has caused offence, and reiterating that it was only a bit of fun. Perhaps: Read had first performed it at the UKIP party conference in October.  Earlier the UKIP leader Nigel Farage had been urging his supporters to buy the song with a view to getting it to Number One in the charts. A contrite Mike Read, though, said he had asked his record company to withdraw the track.

At the time of writing UKIP Calypso was still on sale on iTunes and on Amazon.  It was still available the next day.  So is Mike Read being disingenuous?  He should know better than most about the power of ostensible demarketing.  In 1984 Read as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 was largely responsible for getting an unknown Liverpool band's debut single to Number One.  He had objected to what he regarded as sexually explicit lyrics and refused to play the track.  The band was Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the song, Relax, stayed at Number One for 5 weeks.

Does Mike Read still have the winning touch?  On the basis of the first week, possibly not.  UKIP Calypso entered the charts at number 21, although this position was obtained before the announcement was made that the track was going to be withdrawn.  In the meantime, though, the controversy is keeping the piece in the news.  Provocation can be a powerful selling tool.


*** Update, 27 November.  UKIP Calypso  entered UK charts at number 43.  It had been removed from sale on iTunes some time on 24 November, while Amazon removed the track the following day. ***


Sources

• Official Charts Company, 22/10/2014, UKIP Calypso sits outside Top 20 on midweek Official Chart Update, http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/ukip-calypso-sits-outside-top-20-on-midweek-official-chart-update-3228/
• Grundy, Gareth (11 June 2011), Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax 'banned' by the BBC, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/11/frankie-hollywood-banned-bbc
• Mason, Rowena (20 October 2014), Get Mike Read’s Ukip calypso song to number one, urges Nigel Farage, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/20/ukip-calypso-song-number-one-nigel-farage-mike-read
• Plunkett, John (22 October 2014), Ukip calypso song should be withdrawn, says repentant Mike Read, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/22/ukip-calypso-song-mike-read-radio-1

Relax, don't do it: Switch off now

In ostensible demarketing, people grow to like something more when it is taken away from them. In third-party demarketing it is an outside body intervening that can cause a brand's value to soar. Parental Advisory Labels, for example, can boost sales of a CD by giving it a cutting edge that it might have lacked.

The attempted imposition of bans by regulators, backed up by the calls of moral guardians, are the stuff of legend in the music industry also.  One of the early arbiters of public taste was the BBC and its infamous Dance Music Policy Committee, whose archives date back to the 1930s.  Leigh's excellent 2007 study of these shows how the corporation objected to innuendo and direct reference to sex, drugs, brand names, blasphemy and other taboos.  

Frankie Goes to Hollywood: image from LastFM.com

What happens when a piece of music gets banned? ‘Relax’, the debut single from Frankie Goes to Hollywood was banned shortly after its release in 1984 by the BBC, the single going on to reach number one and stay there for 5 weeks (Gareth Grundy writing in The Guardian, 2011).  It was a similar story for other classic pieces, not just ones censored by the BBC: the Evil Dead, Serge Gainsbourg, the Sex Pistols, Louis Armstrong, Frank Zappa, the Beatles, Billie Holiday and Pink Floyd all succeeded despite – or perhaps, because of - officious regulators or censors (Neil Spencer writing in The Observer, 2005).   

What better way to be noticed in a crowded marketplace, what more effective way of establishing the cutting edge credentials of a piece of culture than to have it withdrawn? see Stephen Brown's excellent piece in Harvard Business Review, 2001).  Ostensible demarketing exploits the principles of psychological reactance. In music it works by provoking Taste Guardians to talk the outrage, and then exploiting any subsequent ban.


References
Brown, Stephen (2001), “Torment your customers (they'll love it)”, Harvard Business Review, October

Grundy, Gareth (2011), “Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax 'banned' by the BBC”, The Guardian, 11 June
Spencer, Neil (2005), “The 10 most x-rated records”, The Guardian, 22 May

The Power of provocation: Third party ostensible demarketing

In Third Party Ostensible Demarketing (quite a mouthful), a brand owner attempts to provoke the regulators into banning something - a piece of advertising, for example.  This is what easyJet did in 1996 - their marketing director at the time describes it in his book Gorilla Marketing (Anderson 2010).  When it comes to advertising you produce a piece of provocative copy and then let it loose: if you can get some controversy going first then the regulators are more likely to act.  It can be quite straightforward to provoke the 'taste guardians' - church leaders, certain political figures, etc., and the mass media has a role in whipping up controversy also.

So, what happens if  your advertisement is banned?  No problem, you put it onto Youtube or Facebook with the label "The one they tried to ban".  The undisputed master of this is Paddy Power.

How advertising is designed to be banned: from the book
'Ostensible Demarketing', published by Routledge 2013

In the book 'Demarketing' there is a model of how this works. It shows how in the case of an advertisement, the key is to tip off 'taste guardians' that this ad is about to appear.  They in turn press for a ban, which makes the news and boosts the ad's visibility.

It is not just advertising that is boosted through banning.  Books, films, music and other cultural products gain extra publicity and credibility when third party regulators get involved.  Once again, the product is exposed to 'taste guardians' who call for a ban.  The controversy boosts sales for very little cost, and even if it is withdrawn the principles of psychological reactance kick in.  This theory describes how when something you enjoyed is removed you tend to long for it still more.



Reference

Anderson, Tony (2010), Gorilla Marketing, London: Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd

Warning: Parental Advisory - buy this!

Parental Advisory Labels are used in the music industry to warn customers that the music they might be considering may contain profanities, blasphemies, sexual references or other unspecified transgressions. They started to be introduced in the US in about 1985 as a form of demarketing, designed to discourage the young and vulnerable from purchasing the product.

John Denver was sceptical about the value of
Parental Advisories

There is some anecdotal evidence, though, that the PAL system actually encourages sales, and that many would-be buyers actively seek out CDs with the warning in place. This kind of behaviour is understood by psychologists who call it psychological reactance. It is also understood by parents, particularly those with teenaged children, who have learned that the easiest way to encourage their youngster to do something is to forbid it.

At about the time the PAL system was introduced a US Senate conducted a hearing into the issue of lyrics in popular music. The normally mild-mannered folk musician John Denver was called: some of his well known pieces like Rocky Moutain High had incorrectly been tagged as being drug-related. Denver surprised senators when he explained that the labelling system would probably be counter-productive:

“That which is denied becomes that which is most desired, and that which is hidden becomes that which is most interesting. Consequently, a great deal of time and energy is spent trying to get at what is being kept from you.” (US Senate 1985: 65-66)

In other words record labels could artificially and quickly boost the street credibility of their bands by ensuring that their recordings were given the Parental Advisory sticker.

Reference

US Senate (1985), Record labelling: Hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Ninety-Ninth Congress, First session on contents of music and the lyrics of records, Washington: US Government Printing Office