Electronic music’s most legendary mix CD series and its associated record label, Global Underground, has just completely relaunched its online presence, with Alchemy Content now providing regular editorial feeds and social media management for the brand.
GU was way ahead of the game in terms of building a passionate fan community on its site over a decade ago, but little much had changed about the basic site design over the years.
The brand new Globalunderground.co.uk has a completely fresh visual identity, a strong new Heritage section telling its history via those infamous City Series mix CDs, less intrusive but more comprehensive e-commerce for buying music and merchandise, plus new Tours, News and Forum sections to make the most of the strong community, rather than hiding it away as before.
The famously acerbic regulars on the GU forums have been quick to make their opinions felt, but the 2-way conversational approach of the new site is already paying dividends, opening up a real dialogue with the loyal fanbase to help provide the facilities they actually want. It’s a really exciting project that should see the label fully take advantage of today’s digital media tools to build upon its amazing international following.
Alchemy Content will be producing short regular magazine-style content and social media activity for GU, with the next big milestones being the return of the club residency at London’s Ministry of Sound on March 6th and the annual WMC party at Mynt in Miami on March 24th.
When it comes to customer service, brands that are 100% ‘digital natives’ seem to do it so much better that the older ones. There’s really no excuse for this. We’re many years into the digital communications revolution now. The mantra of being conversational, honest and accessible to customers really ain’t that new.
Over recent weeks I’ve had 2 very different customer service experiences. Admittedly pitting the boutique online printers Moo against electronics behemoth Sony isn’t really a fair match. But online, every brand should be ticking these essential boxes in the same way, or risk rapid damage to their reputation – whatever their size.
Moo: Good
We use Moo for our business cards, and the latest batch came back with a slight cutting error. Finding out how to contact customer service was stupidly easy. Every step of the transaction had already been reported by automatic email. The box contained re-order codes, a helpful returns sticky label and the website is clear from clutter, making navigation a breeze.
I sent an email, got a response and the reprints we on my desk at no cost – financial or emotional – to me, the customer. (Makes you want to write a positive blog post by way of a thank you, really).
Sony: Not Very Good
Meanwhile, the door on my Sony camcorder suddenly wouldn’t close, with or without a Mini DV cassette in it. Seeking assistance for this was the polar opposite experience. Googling the error code produced reams of forum posts slagging off Sony, this apparently common fault and their inability to communicate with customers on it other than charging them a lot of money to fix it.
Trying to find Sony’s own customer services for any official info was painful. Searches under a number of different terms pulled up variously unhelpful results: North American only help centres, drop down ‘help’ menus that didn’t list my particular camera model, vast FAQ pages.
Digital Content Strategy
A proper digital content strategy would see Sony not only simplifying and promoting the path to reach them direct, but also managing and reacting to the user comments about their products on other sites. It’s ridiculous that no representative from the company has contributed to those forums. Their reputation is being raked through the mud on there unchecked. The commercial missed opportunity is there for all to see.
Ok, so Moo may have a little too much Innocent Smoothiesque folksiness about them for some tastes, but all that chumminess is just a presentation style that works well for their type of business. The same principle of effective and rapid customer service can be handled in a totally corporate way with equally good results.
Help Them ‘Get It’
It all goes to show the huge culture shift that is going to have to take place very rapidly at ‘old’ companies as the general public increasingly seek answers to their issues online. It’s unfortunate but unsurprising that the brands that really ‘get it’ are those built for the new digital space.
At least helping all the others catch up presents a wealth of opportunity for a new breed of media companies. As ever, seeing it unfold around us is a very interesting process. Even though I still haven’t worked out how to get my camcorder to close.
ARMIN VAN BUUREN
DAVID GUETTA
ABOVE & BEYOND
SEBASTIAN INGROSSO
SANDER VAN DOORN
GARETH EMERY + More to be announced…
Nearest Tube: Elephant & Castle / Charity Donation: £10
The votes are in and the numbers are being tallied as dance music readies itself for the biggest awards night of the year. We can now reveal that The Top 100 DJs Poll Party powered by Trackitdown.net will take place at Ministry Of Sound on Wednesday 28th October.
2009’s party is the biggest yet – with a line-up to match. Armin van Buuren, David Guetta, Above & Beyond, Sebastian Ingrosso, Sander van Doorn, and Gareth Emery will be taking to the decks, with more names to be announced shortly.
The ceremony itself will be held around midnight. In addition to the award for the No.1 DJ, awards will also be presented to the highest DJ in each genre, the highest climber, and the highest new entry.
Held annually as a charity event, this year’s beneficiary is the Royal National Institute For Deaf People (RNID). Donations will be taken at the door.
Please note, the Top 100 DJs Poll Party sells out every year and always turns into a roadblock – make sure you arrive early to avoid disappointment.
BE AT TV TOP 100 DJS PARTY BROADCAST
Be At TV is the world’s first web TV community for global clubbing; connecting fans of electronic music with the world’s top DJs, bars, clubs and live events. www.be-at.tv broadcasts exclusive audio-visual content – from multiple camera angles and in HD – for its members to access wherever and whenever they want and for free. The b@ community means you can personalise and even upload your own content and meet like-minded clubbers.
Partnering with DJmag this year, b@ will be broadcasting the whole Top 100 event the next morning at www.be-at.tv. Its the only way that music fans who can’t be there can catch entire sets from the DJs topping this year’s poll. While those lucky enough to get in can capture and share their best bits through video tagging.
ABOUT THE TOP 100 DJS POLL
Since the early 1990’s, the Top 100 DJs Poll powered by Trackitdown.net has grown to become the biggest annual event in dance music. Inclusion in the illustrious ‘100’ is the dream of every DJ, from rising stars to the likes of global heavyweights such as Armin van Buuren, Tiesto, David Guetta, and beyond.
The Top 100 DJs Poll now attracts hundreds of thousands of voters from every corner of the globe, reinforcing the fact that dance music is a truly global culture. To put it simply, there is no other music-related poll like it in the world.
The Top 100 DJs Poll is a public vote where voters are given the chance to name their Top 5 favourite DJs in order of preference.
Alchemy Content is working the digital/social media campaign for the poll.
Alchemy PR is running the traditional press and TV campaign.
Alchemy Radio is handling radio promotion of the event.
We’re proud to say that Alchemy Content was a winner at the Mobile Content Awards 09 on Thursday night. Our work on the Ministry of Sound Clubbers Guide to Ibiza iPhone app saw us take the Silver Award for ‘Best Handset Application’, with the Financial Times taking the Gold.
This was great recognition from the mobile industry that our custom editorial production and management services are exactly the kind of innovation they wish to see more of on handsets in the future. As providers of all kinds of digital content and proponents of an editorial ‘feed culture’ this couldn’t be a more appropriate accolade, so we were very pleased to collect our award with Tom Bulwer representing MSHK/Ministry of Sound.
The final winners in the Best Handset Application category were: Gold – Financial Times for FT iPhone App Silver – Alchemy Content / MSHK for Ministry of Sound Clubbers Guide to Ibiza iPhone App Bronze – Airborne Mobile for Homes on Mobile Phones Real Estate App
Great Feedback
While we’re banging the drum for the app, we’ve been particularly pleased with the feedback from users too. Here’s a sample of the kind of emails we’ve received:
“The app is brilliant. I used it in July and check it most days over here in the UK too. And these competitions are excellent!” Isla
“The iPhone app has been REALLY useful even in the run up to the holiday and I am sure it will be even more useful once we are out there.” Mark
And a couple from the iTunes App Store reviews, where the average rating is 4 out of 5 stars:
“This app is SO good! Totally essential if you are on your way out there, you lucky git!” banarydan
“I don’t normally ever write reviews but I got this 2 weeks before I’m due to go, was a bit apprehensive whilst downloading but it’s well worth it. Tells u all that is going on in the main clubs and how to get there too, and other studff like news and what’s on tonight… seriously get this.” Mamba man
Thanks go to Patrick Hagenaar for the original commission and Elliot Bowes at Active Guru for the development. If you’d like to speak to Alchemy Content about managing a content based mobile project like this then we’re ready to help and full of new ideas. Here’s to more awards and content innovation…
On Saturday 12 September at London’s Roundhouse Jem Finer (of The Pogues) directs the firsxt ever live performance of a section of his epic work Longplayer.
It will consist of a 1,000 minute section from its 1,000 year duration. A tiny fragment from its great expanse, Longplayer Live will be played by a 26-strong all-star orchestra on a unique 20-metre wide instrument effectively a giant bronze age synthesizer, with highly resonant singing bowls for tone generators and humans for power.
Based on Jem Finer’s graphic score for 234 bowls and six players, the concert will start at 08.20 am this Saturday and finish the following morning at 01.00 am.
This year’s Artangel Longplayer Conversation takes place in the adjoining Roundhouse studio, an epic relay of one-to-one discussions inspired by the philosophical implications of long term thinking and related issues.
Jeanette Winterson will begin the 12-hour talking marathon featuring leading writers, filmmakers, scientists, academics and technology activists. These include Cory Doctorow, Marcus du Sautoy, Sophie Fiennes, Daniel Glaser, Bonnie Greer, Mark Haddon, Susie Orbach, Robert Preston and David Toop.
Alchemy Content has been providing social media marketing for this unique event. For a special discount of a third off the ticket price, click this link to the Roundhouse and use promo code 144.
Alchemy Content are very pleased to announce that our Clubbers Guide to Ibiza iPhone app project for Ministry of Sound has been nominated for a 2009 Mobile Content Award.
The app is up for ‘Best Handset Application’, facing some healthy competition from the other nominees in the category including the Financial Times, Mobile Money Services, Airborne Mobile Inc and UMU Limited.
Feedback on the app has been overwhelmingly positive and the live feeds of news, special offers and over 50 free guestlist places a week have really captured the users imaginations.
The nomination is a great result for one of our key projects in this, our first year of operation.
Check out the promo video and download the app if you’ve got an iPhone. There’s still plenty of time to fly over for the Closing parties in September!
We’re currently working with exciting new band Burn The Negative on their digital content strategy.
The guys are playing at festivals every weekend throughout the summer and are active social media users, so we looked for a way of making the most of their stories to grow their fan community.
We designed a new ‘feeds’ section on their website which pulls in anything posted on their Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace etc in a nice real time feed.
Lifestreaming like this is not exactly new, however many artists have leapt onto the social media bandwagon quite randomly, sending their fans off to Facebook groups or Twitter profiles, then blasting out/repeating promotional messages across all these networks (often next to ads for which they receive no revenue), without paying attention to their own ‘shop front’ on the web.
Not long ago, many even spoke of abandoning their expensive flash websites in favour of simply pointing everything to MySpace. In retrospect (and really, at the time too) this should never have seemed a good idea.
We think that using each network for a specific type of content, then filtering everything back through the central hub of an artist’s own website, makes much more powerful use of all these great tools. It also gives a better sense of a single fan community than idle, spammed and poorly branded pages elsewhere.
The feed allows us to easily pull out the photos and tweets from each road trip, using the cool Storytlr tool, to tell a short story that is instantly compelling, visually attractive and easy to use. It’s even geo-tagged so you can plot the bands travels on a full screen Google Map.
All digital content is best served up at the top level as a feed, but how this information is aggregated and presented is vital, otherwise quality content will simply be lost in all the noise.
With an ever growing array of social media platforms requiring a presence, artists and brands need to find new ways of bringing these together as part of a coherent strategy for their own websites and mobile apps. Then, rather than struggling to keep up, they can really start to connect with their whole fan community.
Pioneer’s excellent video blog DJsounds has been going for a few years now and is a great example of how to use AV content to promote a brand.
It’s obviously particularly apropriate for Pioneer, who are busy bluring the lines between audio and video in the DJ booth, which explains their early adoption and enthusiastic use of video as the prefered method to speak to people online.
The brand maintains a major presence in Ibiza, and were sponsors of last month’s International Music Summit, where they thrust a mic in my face to contribute to this summary of the 3-day event.
This is a major project for us as it perfectly demonstrates the innovative use of digital platforms and content feeds that we provide as key Alchemy Content services.
The application has already been causing a stir for avoiding the gimmicky functions that are currently littering app-land and focusing instead on a suite of really useful features including:
Vicinity-based island guide – we provided fully researched reviews, images and GPS
coordinates for 150+ of the best bars, restaurants and clubs around Ibiza.
Daily news feed – Alchemy Content is producing a stream of stories throughout the
summer covering the day’s big club events, gossip and useful info updated direct to the app in realtime.
Special offers – we are coordinating relationships with venues and promoters to
feature a range of discounts, offers and competitions exclusive to the app, saving users money during their holidays (turning their phone into a ‘loyalty card’) while offering business owners a totally new opportunity to attract customers via ongoing deals or instant call-to-action bulletins.
Other features include a regularly updated club listings feed & ticket sales (via phone or web), plus details of free wifi hotspots (to avoid roaming costs), first aid centres, taxis and petrol.
We designed the app around live content rather than as a static guide to retain users interest before, during and after their holiday. Ibiza is all about gossip and fast-paced changes to parties, making it perfect for rolling out a next generation app project like this. The aim is for a phone to replace the guide book, listings magazine, flyer, discount card, VIP pass and more.
Already sitting happily at number 16 in iTunes Top 20 Paid Travel Apps Chart in it’s first week and with a UK TV ad campaign about to start, we’re confident that the app will quickly become the standard digital media platform in the world’s nightlife capital.
Buy the app now for £1.79 and please contact us if you’d like to know more about our complete application development and content service for iPhone and other mobiles.
The story broke on Friday that Paris Hilton had been involved in a bit of a DJ booth bust-up at Miami’s Winter Music Conference. The first major account of the incident came from Paris herself in her MySpace blog, and her tale of the brawl involving her boyfriend Doug Reinhart was rapidly picked up by the celebrity media machine.
However DJ Steve Angello, an Alchemy client, had quite a different take on the events. So we swung into action with a rapid damage limitation campaign, with Matt putting out a statement to all key media.
By constantly monitoring all the online activity, we were able to not only respond effectively and fast to the negative news reports, but to turn the issue to our advantage, securing worldwide coverage with 150+ online stories in the process.
An interesting week for sure. And a totally genuine reason to use ‘Paris Hilton’ in the title of a blog post rather than being one of those poor, desperately misguided SEO scams. Result!
