In this week’s Programming To Win column, knowDigital President Sam Milkman teaches us what radio programmers can learn from the marketing campaign for Madonna’s latest album, MDNA. How did Madonna and her team use social media and technology to promote the album and what did they do right and wrong along the way?
By Sam Milkman, knowDigital President
Sam Milkman
All of us are continuing to grow in our ability to communicate more effectively with our audience in social media. It’s a learning process for sure, and a continuous one. We’ve learned that it’s all about “engagement” —getting closer to people, bonding, and really being social, rather than selling and promoting. One way to sharpen our skills further is to look at how other entertainment brands are constructing their social media strategies to see what we can learn from them.
Recently, one of the biggest Pop icons of our lifetime, Madonna, dove into the social pool for the very first time. Studying her MDNA social media “promotion” offers a number of lessons for radio stations as they refine their digital strategies. For her MDNA release, Madonna’s marketing team pulled out all of the stops, mounting a marketing push that included both traditional and digital media. Beyond her Super Bowl performance, traditional radio promotions and television advertising, Madonna heavily promoted the MDNA album through an elaborate digital campaign and social media blitz. That campaign, however, failed to deliver substantial music sales in the long run after what looked like a very promising first week. We imagine that Madonna’s team hired all the best “social media experts” for this project. Did those experts really help Madonna express herself in this new world, or did they make some sort of social blunder? More importantly, what can radio learn from her experience?
Lesson #1 – Twitter is a conversation, not a one-time pick-up line
Madonna’s social media blitz included her first appearance on Twitter. Looking to pick up some music buyers, she tweeted for just one day only but promised to answer each and every fan question. Our question is whether this tactic generated an authentic connection with fans, or whether Madonna’s team misunderstood how consumers really use this platform, “shouting” there rather than engaging in real interaction with today’s music fans.
This certainly comes off as a social blunder. It appears Madonna couldn’t shake her 1980s values when she signed up for Twitter. Twitter isn’t like staging an event in Times Square and inviting MTV and Z100 to broadcast live. Twitter isn’t a megaphone; it’s more like a whisper. It’s not a place for shouting. Rather, Twitter credibility is built over a long period of time. You don’t just show up at the party and grab the microphone. You have to get into the groove. You start a conversation subtly, and if you have something relevant to say, like-minded people “follow” you. Madonna didn’t follow those rules of engagement. Instead she came across like a virgin on Twitter, undermining her modern Pop icon credibility.
So as your station Tweets away, make sure it’s conversational, relevant and interesting. Don’t be “that guy” at the party that annoys everyone with irrelevant chatter, loud outbursts or boring stories. And be patient—in the same way your loyal listener base wasn’t built overnight, loyalty in social media also takes time.
Lesson #2 – Social media is totally transparent; you can’t be everywhere at once with the same message
Madonna also tried to be everywhere at once. Although you would think that being in consumers’ line of sight everywhere they turn would be a good thing, in the digital age it can come across as disingenuous to bombard the digital (especially social) media platforms. In addition to Madonna’s Twitter session, she had a one-night livestream interview with Jimmy Fallon on Facebook, sold her digital album in partnership with Smirnoff, Fab.com and Spotify with special versions and/or reduced prices on each, debuted an iPad app and ran contests on Spotify and Flickr for concert tickets. All of this might have worked fine had she not gone from zero to 100 miles per hour in her social media engagement in quite so obvious a fashion. All the digital marketing dollars in the world can’t buy you love or authenticity and today’s savvy consumers ultimately saw right through these social media ploys to the profit-driven purpose. Being seen as a Material Girl this time around wasn’t a good thing. So as your radio station makes its presence felt in social media, don’t bombard everywhere, and don’t invest all your time and money there. Don’t come across as the desperate guy that tries the same pick-up line in every bar. People are smart—don’t overdo and don’t try to dupe them with overt digital dazzle.
Lesson #3 –Stay true to your brand
Another misstep that undermined Madonna’s authenticity: she agreed to dress up her “Girl Gone Wild” video to meet YouTube’s content restrictions. After YouTube restricted her “Girl Gone Wild” video due to some quite sexified content, her team created a cleaner version to follow the rules (likely to avoid missing out on the promotional benefits of this ultra popular platform). That cleanup job would have been okay for most artists, but when your brand image is built on being the queen of breaking the rules, following the rules made it look like she’d sold out even more for the sake of promotion. Can a girl legitimately go wild when she censors herself?
You’ve got to follow the same rules with your radio station. If you’re the badass rock station, you better talk that talk on Facebook.
Lesson #4—Be authentic
Did any of us really believe that any of Madonna’s digital hype was her true voice? To me, Madonna is sexy, the girl at the party you always wanted to meet, dangerous, exciting, and always pushing the borderline. Her digital voice needs to reflect her core values and attitudes. I would have loved to have gotten a slightly drunken, naughty text from Madonna in the middle of the night that provocatively mentioned one of the songs on the new album. Send that text to guys and a much different version to women with a little advice on how to turn on your man with another song on the album. That’s authentic Madonna, that’s her real DNA in my mind and would have gotten me to pay attention!
Lesson here? Authenticity is closely scrutinized in social media, and for listeners to feel you are fake can wreak havoc on your station’s brand rather than help. Strike a bona fide pose as you find your digital voice or you will get called out on it.
Lesson #5 –Love doesn’t live here anymore—in the digital world, prep for the haters
Social media is not just a place for people who are crazy for you. Like it or not, crimes of passion are a two way street so unfortunately people who passionately hate on you have just as much of a voice in social media forums as those who cherish you. Madonna recently found this out the hard way. Prior to her concert in Paris, her team sent out an invitation to her followers to tweet about it using the #MDNAParis hashtag. During and following the short and allegedly mediocre performance, the hashtag was instead inundated with angry messages and insults. Harsh reminder of human nature.
So what is the right response? Instead of letting down your guard and responding emotionally to the haters, keep it together and give a good strategic response if you feel one is in order. Otherwise, simply learn to expect and ignore the hecklers just as you were taught in grade school on the playground. Even more importantly, although nobody’s perfect, don’t push social media with a heavy hand unless you are 100% confident in what you are promoting. Which leads us to our final lesson….
Lesson #6 – It’s the product that matters dummy!
Digital and social promotions aside, the MDNA album itself may not have lived up to consumer expectations. Remember that the album was offered for free with purchase of Madonna concert tickets—and it appears 180,000+ ticket buyers chose not to receive it. Same thing for her recent concert in Paris. After a huge promotion of her concert in Paris being offered as a live stream on YouTube, she cut her performance short and did not impress fans during her time on stage. This resulted in significantly more dislikes than likes on YouTube and created such a backlash that comments had to be disabled on the site…not exactly the look of love they’d hoped for.
And the lesson here for all of us is that the product has to be great. Being liked by 125,000 listeners is cool, and certainly worth something, but don’t forget it is what’s on the air that matters. If that isn’t great, nothing you do on Twitter is going to save the day.
Open your heart, give ‘em all your luvin’, express yourself, tell bedtime stories, cause a commotion, but always be true blue with your digital voice…or your station’s brand may not live to tell.
Sam Milkman has managed media-related consumer research companies for a number of years, including Music Forecasting and mediaEKG. Previously, Sam held a variety of leadership positions in the broadcast industry, including programming and operational positions at radio stations in New York and Philadelphia. Sam was operations director of WXRK (K-Rock)/New York, research director of WHTZ (Z100)/New York and PD of WMMR/Philadelphia. He can be reached at SamMilkman@knowDigital.com or 215-438-3826.
