Maintaining Self-Righteousness while still making Money

Nine Inch Nails. A band who has built their name on fighting the establishment. They don't care if you like them or their music. On the other hand, they still want to make a living.

NIN new record, "Year Zero" is a concept album centered around the end of the world. Trent Reznor, lead singer, has utilized cross-media integration, social networking and Internet media to create buzz and generate excitement for a record that most people will never hear and slightly fewer people will even enjoy

"It all started with a concert T-shirt that came out in February. The T-shirt featured a hidden code driving fans to a Web site called "I am trying to believe." Following the launch of the Web site, USB drives with "leaked" songs were found at bathrooms in concert venues. Encoded digitally in some of the leaked songs as a spectrogram were images and phone numbers, all of which detailed a mysterious hand or wiretapped phone calls and other secret phone numbers revolving around the topic, as well as leaked bits of the first single, "Survivalism.""

Following these "leaks," a trailer for the record emerged online, followed by leaked songs being played on radio stations in the middle of the night, and the beginnings of a press junket for Reznor, where he described the artistic elements surrounding this next release.

The integration of this promotion is the most intriging. It's beyond integration- fans have been experiencing NIN since before the record was even released. The most interesting aspect being that NIN was able to remain true to its fans- no Myspace banner ads required. NIN truly understands what its fans will respond to as shown with this marketing.

Media Post Article
Wikipedia Entry


-AdvertisingLHath