Home » About Verridian » Blog » Noises from the Colouring In Department - 80's Hair Metal and the Social Media Revolution

Noises from the Colouring In Department - 80's Hair Metal and the Social Media Revolution

Last updated on Wed, 03/02/2010 - 15:53. Originally submitted by verridian on 29/01/2010 - 15:38. post comment

Plymouth 1991, I was at the tender age of 20 taking a date to the relatively new Plymouth Pavilions to see that fabulous 80s hair metal band Extreme play. I’ll be frank with you, more so than I was with her, I had effectively tricked her into seeing the band by implying that their recent chart success with the folk ballad ‘More Than Words’ was pretty much the style of the band we were going to see and not the Californian Funk Metal Fusion combo that they really were. It’s true, I am slightly ashamed to admit that I lied and listened to hair metal bands. I shiver thinking about it.

Anyway this is not that confessional, it’s about what happened once we got inside the venue.

After the initial shock that the girl experienced about how many “‘heavy rockers’ liked that sort of folk music”, (her words, not mine,) we grabbed a beer and headed into the main standing area. The Pavilions had just opened, so I took a little time checking it all out. I was a little surprised, looking at the balcony at the number of young girls, accompanied by older women. Amazed is a little of an understatement actually, I stood and gawped for a good few minutes.
 
And then I realised what had happened. ‘More Than Words’ probably articulated how all of these young girls felt about their current squeeze. Being raised by responsible mothers, grandmothers, carers, meant that they were not ‘going to any sort of concert on your own young lady’.
 
Thinking this through now, how would anyone over the age of 40 have found out about what they were letting themselves in for by accompanying their daughter, granddaughter or niece to an Extreme gig?
 
This isn’t about ‘the good old days’, but this was before the internet, and I do understand that if any questions had been asked about the band, the single would have been whipped out and onto the record player before you could say Ozzy Osbourne doesn’t really eat bats.
   ‘See Mummy, Grandma, Auntie Mabel, it’s really nice and I do love Jimmy, Donny, Clark Kent so very much. Can we go? Please?’
 
So, the stunt that I had pulled on my date, had been pulled en masse on I reckoned about 200 older women; hence the reason that I was stood there gawping for such a long time.
 
It amazes me that today so many companies have a similar attitude toward social media. It seems to range from ‘Not for me’ to ‘It’s the answer to all my questions’. Any sort of real understanding seems to be the LAST thing on peoples list when it comes to using social media. It has also become really apparent that the ‘magic bullet’ these companies perceive, is not
 
  1. Going away,
  2. Populated and used by a bunch of rubber necked people who don’t shave yet or
  3. Nearly as magic as they think it is.
 
It’s true that a lot of companies that we deal with here have embraced the social media revolution; we train ways on how to use it into a number of companies, but for all of the companies that use it, there are three that don’t, or at least don’t understand what it is. Don’t quote those figures, I made them up, it’s anecdotal.
 
There are so many misconceptions about Social Media, and its use within the marketing mix. There are equally as many books on the topic, but a couple of myths worth exploding are
 
  1. Social Media is a fad
  2. Social Media is free
  3. Social Media is fool proof
 
Social Media, it means everything and nothing at the moment and it’s experiencing a bit of a paradigm shift. Do a search on Social Media and you’ll be directed to pages on Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Social media should be defined as interacting and sharing either virtually or physically. It should describe pretty much everything that we share socially, through a number of channels, but actually it’s mostly about blogs like these, or 140 characters on what Stephen Fry had for breakfast.
 
But it’s not going away, and is certainly becoming a more respectable way of engaging people with your message, if it’s done right.
Social Media may very well appear to be free at the point of consumption, it costs nothing to set up a Tweet, a channel on YouTube or a Facebook page, but one of the most important things to avoid is setting up an empty room. Don’t waste your time setting up a Facebook page, telling all of your customers about it, writing two or three inspired posts and then leaving it dormant for 12 months. You will need to spend some time, a lot of your time, or dedicate someone else’s time to updating and rejuvenating your social media presence, this costs money and there is nothing else to say on that. So why bother? Well for its numbers alone it makes a compelling case, although with big numbers comes big responsibility. In order to use it properly, a clear understanding of what you can and can’t do is absolutely necessary. The good news is that it’s a new channel, and if it used in conjunction with other channels it can work wonders. Its consumption is passive, and with the best will in the world for the smaller company no amount of pushing is going to force the message any harder.
 
You can advertise, but I have yet to see any compelling case being made for it, unless you’re at the top of Interbrands list you will get lost in the crush. You can broadcast within social media, but in order to be as impactful as possible you absolutely must entertain, inform and engage.  It is called earned media for a reason.
 
Anyway I digress, the opening act for Extreme that evening was another Californian Funk Metal Combo called King o Da Hill. They were great fun, and as soon as they started playing the girl turned to me with her mouth aghast and I understood in that one instant that a second date was probably not on the cards. The band played about 5 tunes, and towards the end of the last track, the singer walked to the front of the stage to introduce the band, huge cheers from us in the cheap seats, they were really entertaining, and caught up with the moment the singer screamed into his microphone,
 
            “Da Roof, da roof, da roof is on fire.”
To which as one we bellowed back
            “We don’t need no water, let the @£$%^*&£$ burn”
 
Genius, Ivor Novello winning stuff, the song finished to an enormous cheer, and the band ran from the stage. The lights went up, and as I looked behind me I noticed that the entire balcony seating area was virtually empty, completely cleared of the teenage girl / grandma combination who had found themselves at the wrong gig, at the wrong time of their lives. My night similarly was cleared of the girl. You win some, some you don’t.
 
Funny how social media seems to follow the same set of rules.
 

Bookmark with: