Rob Manuel

Picture the scene: It’s 1996 and I’m playing on the interweb and I find to my astonishment a complete copy of the KLF’s How To Have A Number 1 The Easy Way. Being a huge fan of their music and their odd arty stunts, I print it off and read it at home.

It blows my tiny mind. Possibly the most inspirational book I’ve ever read. I immediately start screaming at friends, “Let’s make a number 1 record. I know how to do it.”

Fast forward 5 years and the author Bill Drummond republishes the book and it’s available to buy on Amazon.

I buy it. Why? I love it. I want to own it. And I want to re-read it in a form that’s easier to manage than 80 pages of A4.

Do I have a point? Yep. I reckon the main buyers of the sick joke book will be buying it as a present. “Uncle Bill likes foul jokes. This will work for Christmas.”

But how does Uncle Bill’s nephew know that this book is the one to buy? Well, maybe he’s already read it, for free, on the interweb.

Other examples of ‘free as advertising’:

* Oprah Winfrey gives away cars to every member of the studio audience. This was covered round-the-world in every newspaper you can imagine. The cost of placing advertisng in these publications would greatly outweigh the cost of the cars.

* Nizlopi gave away their JCB video for download on the website. After being emailed round the world, they get a UK top 10 hit.

* Arctic Monkeys. Ah bollocks. I’ve done them already. Er.. I vaugely remember Shaggy having a hit after the song being widely traded on the P2P networks.

Anyway. All this hinges on the premise that “what you are giving away is something that people want.”

It hinges on you believing and trusting in your product. And I believe in sick jokes. Rah.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2006 at 11:03 am and is filed under sickipedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.