As shown by the previous post about One Direction's website, we can see that a lot of marketing strategies have been used to ensure for a large reach, targeting core and secondary audiences. They've used a 360-degree campaign - targeting audiences from all directions - incorporating web 2.0 and using interactivity as it's main way of reaching out. Their website acts as a hub; giving audiences every bit of information they will ever need to know, as well as linking them to their official Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Shop. This type of social networking and merchandising are key features of their website, targeting their audience online via interactivity.
Also mentioned in the previous post was the 'Bring 1D To Me' campaign, involving fans to get creative and online to allow the band to travel to their country. Campaigns like this are incredibly useful and powerful; creating international fanbases, ultimately leading to more fans, tracks bought, and money.
Another competition which I printscreened in the previous post was 'Meet One Direction with Nokia!'. By collaborating with the large phone company Nokia, One Direction are not only getting more exposure by endorsing their product, but Nokia are also getting a lot more attention due to One Direction fans, making this mutually advantageous. The campaign going on at the moment is the Find The Phone interactive quiz, where we watch a video of the boys secretly passing a Nokia phone around, and we have to guess which member of the band is holding it at the end. If you get 2 or more of the answers correct, you get to enter the competition to meet the band. This creates an interactive, fun game for fans, as well as advertising the Nokia C3 and C2-02 and also getting other audiences to get to know more about the band. We get to see the fun, cheeky teenage side of them, and also get to learn their names at the end of each round. Below is a video showing all the rounds of the Find The Phone game:
Another great campaign going on is the One Direction/Nintendo campaign, with the boys endorsing the game Pokemon: Black/White. For this campaign, we saw many TV adverts of them playing the game and talking about why they loved it, and they were showed on many channels such as E4 and ITV1, during shows such as Glee and Britain's Got Talent where they could target the right audience. Below is the first TV advert that was shown, showing the boys playing the game and talking about how much great fun it is to play. From this we get a fun yet laid back vibe - a mood many of us would want to be in. We see the fun and friendly competition the boys are having, targeting the main gaming audience of teenage boys, but also their parents too. Again like the Nokia adverts, we get to know more about the band and how they are behind the scenes, showing them in a likeable view.
This 'behind the scenes' view was also enhanced by the 'Pokemon Diaries' campaign which was online, which involved Nintendo to upload a new video of the boys every week. They included more behind the scenes views of the band that the fans wanted, yet still promoting the game with the boys playing it and hanging out with Pokemon mascots. This campaign was mostly targeted at their (pre)teenage female fans as you had to wath them online, meaning you had to know where you could find the videos to watch them in the first place. Plus, the videos include a lot of behind the scenes footage such as the boys getting their hair and make up done, having fun together and overall looking really good, attracting the female audience into the world of gaming and Nintendo.
Finally, to complete the marketing strategy and campaign, it was most important for the boys to get proper exposure, and not just in adverts and online. One Direction were guests on various talk shows such as The Alan Titchmarsh Show, Alan Carr: Chatty Man and This Morning, and had many CD and book signings around the UK, teaming up with stores such as HMV and WHSmith.
They have also been featured in many different magazines, doing exclusive photoshoots and spreads for magazines such as Sugar and Fabulous (the magazine from The Sun).
As we learnt from our reflective lesson during class, we learnt that a large part of marketing was down to PR, and making sure that all the publicity they were getting was good publicity. We learnt that say if a tabloid (for example, The Sun) got a bad story about them which they did not want to be leaked, their PR company would not just pay them with lots of money, as after all, tabloids need stories. Instead they would give them exclusives and free CDs, attracting customers to buy the paper. (So you never know, when One Direction did that cover for Fabulous magazine, it could've been because The Sun dug something up which wanted to stay buried!)
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