It is no wonder why Lady Gaga remains a major heavy weight on social network. The 25 year old singer and song writer is not a stranger of success on web. Her recent album “Born this way” sold more than 8 million copies across the world and received three Grammy nominations which included “Album of the year”
Troy Carter, manager of Lady Gaga, who was behind the mega success of this album, used Social media to the core to reach out to her fans. Let me first say about Carter to you: growing up in a rough part of Philadelphia, Carter moved to LA to be a part of Will Smith’s entourage.
Though he initially wanted to be a rapper, he realized that he as pretty bad at it. Will smith’s manager James took him as an assistant and later moved on to California and sold his company and went bankrupt a year later. It was then Vincent Herbert, carter’s friend who introduced Lady Gaga to him in 2010.
The Social Network
After seeing the advanced screening of the movie “The Social Network”, Lady Gaga expressed her idea of creating a social network that is similar to the one she saw in the movie for her fans. She already had a huge fan base in Twitter.
Carter was ready to do it for her. But then he later found out that the gap between technology and music was way too long. He had to crack the code to bring them close and he tried it.
So when a post on Lady Gaga’s page read “Gaga seeks Geeks” the response was numerous. All the team wanted was to build a real engineering team that would be able to connect with maximum number of people across the world and drive interest in every platform.
The Gagaville
While every singer was tweeting or posting about their album, Gaga’s team were in to real action. The social network game developer Zynga created a game called Gagaville allowed users to unlock the songs that were yet to be released when they finished their tasks.
This left a huge impact on her fans. Almost 13 million users downloaded songs playing this game and this strategy which targeted only the audience was a big hit. Using your fans as a big marketing asset will help you in the long run. All a fan wants is a complement on their works from their favorite celebrity. They are not expecting the star to get out from the car. They just have to remember your complements.
Fame and Marketing
Fame and marketing has almost everything in common. With almost 10 million Twitter fans (she is the first person to have this much followers in her account) and 33.7 million fans in Facebook, it is no wonder that she is the limelight. It’s all about connecting the dots in the music industry that is over-crowded.
The one thing that she is doing extremely perfect is thanking all her fans. When she has a concept, she works towards it and makes sure that it is executed well. As a performer, she has never disappointed her fans. Each time, she comes with a different costume or music or an elaborate set design.
Littlemonsters.com, a community created for Gaga enthusiast that is powered by backplane initially had 50,000 members. Though there were bugs that had to be fixed initially, she went on and communicated with her fans worldwide. She later added some suggestions to the site which were incorporated afterwards.
Having the right people on your side and an amazing talent will take you high. She is true to her brand and she does whatever she has promised. Whether you like it or not, Lady Gaga is indeed a clever marketing genius.
She is reaching out to the people by using social media. More and more celebrities are now realising the potential of social media.
I personally don’t like her style and music. But she is one of the best when it comes to brand management. I agree that she is a marketing genius.
I’m with you on this Frank. I’m not her fan of music. But I am a fan of her marketing strategy!
I am a fan of her music. Well to be honest not of all her music. There is definitely some good stuff there though. Like the You and I Metronomy remix or the born this way remix from the last remix CD.