Sacrilicious Marketing

Everybody is so caught up in the idea of blog to book deals, but really when you look at the Internet fame deals recently they have more in common than just blogging. They are mostly consumer centric, driven by the micro content phenomenon and appeal to the Gen X/Gen Y demographic. Now, let’s dissect that statement.

Top 10 Best Micro Content to Fame Deals

Recent Micro Content to Book/TV Deals

1.     Shitmydadsays (TV Deal)

2.     Fakeapstylebook (Book Deal)

3.     Fmylife (Book Deal)

4.     Texts From Last Night (TV Deal)

5.     F U Penguin (Book Deal)

6.     This is Why You’re Fat (Book Deal)

7.     Chuck Norris Facts (Book Deal)

8.     I Can Has Cheezburger (Book Deal)

9.     Stuff White People Like (Book Deal)

10.  Fail Blog (Book Deal)

Resource: Exploiting the Blog to Book Deal: A Guide

Resource: From Blog to Book, How 6 Authors Did It

1. Consumer Oriented

When you think of publishing fame do you think Seth Godin or JK Rowling? Seth has penned 12 best sellers but only sold 20 million copies, has an ad network/wiki called Squidoo and a social network called Triiibes. On the other hand, JK Rowling has penned a mere 7 bestsellers, sold over 400 million books and yet her fortune exceeds $798 million, ranking her the 12^th wealthiest woman on earth… The difference? Mr. Godin writes to marketing professionals, businesses and entrepreneurs while Ms. Rowling writes to a family friendly consumer audience of children and adults. What this should tell you unequivocally is that producing something you can market to the mass consumer market is more profitable than producing content you market to the business market.

Resource: Squidoo: Seth Godin’s Purple Albatross?

2. User Generated Content

The user generated model has really taken off within the micro content community with Fmylife and Textsfromlastnight. Each has successfully built a very robust and engaged community of commenter’s, voters and contributors. The product is simple. Hilarious situational humor coupled with a standardized format. The lesson? Find a universal situation or topic that all people can relate to and experience and open a micro forum where they can share their experience and interact with other similar experiences. The Fmyscript script can help you create just such a forum. It’s your responsibility to come up with the situation, the standardized format and populate the first few posts then spread the site among your inner circle. With any luck and good idea, it should go viral quickly.

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Popularity: 50% [?]

I think the music industry owes a big hand to the Lady that brought back superstardom in 2009! Lady Gaga gave one hell of a performance with Elton John at the 2010 Grammy’s. Just a wonderful celebration of music and celebrity.

Popularity: unranked [?]

EMI, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony pull YouTube’s Teeth Out by Deindexing Their Video Content and Placing it on Their Own Proprietary Networks, Hulu and Vevo.

As music labels, film studios, newspapers and other traditional publishers struggle to survive in the ever changing landscape of the Internet and it’s “free content” model, 2009 ushered in the world wide war against free content. Most pundits initially looked upon Ruppert Murdoch’s “Crazy Eddie” strategy of de-indexing all News Corporation content, including both the New York Times and The New York Post as a bullying tax collector strategy of old that would not suit the new media model. But, as it turns out, it worked! That content has value. Google and Bing wanted it badly enough to pay for it. And over the past few months, as the model has shown increasing promise, most major publishing houses including those in film, television and music have taken note and found ways to work similar deals. While Sony, Universal and EMI have launched Vevo a video music network with the help of their YouTube/Google partnership, Warner Music Group joined it’s mother company, Warner Bros in the long list of music, film and television companies embarking on deals with Hulu. The end game solution for publishers is to de-index their existing video and textual content from major hubs including search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and YouTube, publish it exclusively on their own networks and charge the engines for access to index that content and push traffic back to their own networks. The value for the publishing houses is that now they have a central and controlled domain where they can aggregate all their copyrighted content. This means that publishers are now generating income for the indexation of content and pushing traffic in bulk back to their proprietary sites where they can sell advertising. It allows they greater control over their copyright information and, overtime, will help them to build large scale branded networks to feature their data on. Essentially, these publishers are building their own on demand TV, Radio and News networks where they not only generate revenue from advertising but also from the indexing of their content. This should be both a boon for publishers and content producers.

Resource: Hulu Tops 1 Billion Streams per Month!

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Popularity: unranked [?]

When it’s simply not enough to release a raunchy sex tape, try becoming a true Twitter Whore and selling out for 10,000 per tweet to advertisers like Bumpit and Shoedazzle. So, not only does this girl act like a shameless whore in real life selling out her family to reality TV, her body to Golden Shower Sex Tapes but now, even her Twitter page to sponsored tweets. What concerns me most is that she is clearly skirting the FTC laws that require bloggers to clearly label sponsored posts and endorsements.

Personally, I really can’t respect any advertiser that thinks the credibility and trust value of someone like Kim Kardashian warrants $10K per tweet.

Resource: Twitter stunned Kim Kardashian earns $10k a tweet

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Popularity: unranked [?]

So reminds me of middle school! I was a huge fan of Tori Amos and the Little Earthquakes album! Tori Amos will perform a live concert and chat live with fans on Friday, Dec. 11 at 3 pm (EST) via my client LadyFate. Check her out. It’s Christmas Music with a Twist!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Amid the launch party of YouTube (Google), Sony and Universal’s 300 million dollar music video premium content site, Vevo, Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) was overheard saying, “Vevo will “revolutionize the music industry by finally allowing it to make money online.” Now, while I have been waiting some time for a Hulu like solution to the music industry, the revenue models for the new network are flawed in that they only put money back into the pockets of major acts, leaving smaller, less established artists still in the cold. As expected of a Google/YouTube property, the revenue model for Vevo is advertising, merchandising and ticket sales. With the primary focus on rich video content from Sony and Universal, and hailed by insiders like Universal CEO Doug Morris as an “MTV on steroids, Vevo will serve content mostly from major artists and WMG has yet to add its content to the project, so it feels “light.” But I expect Warner will follow suit and we can already see Vevo is hit hard with traffic evidenced by its bugginess last night. I believe Sheryl Crow said it best, “Nothing will ‘save’ the music business, but every little thing helps. And anything that puts money in artists’ hands for the work they do is a good thing.” And that’s exactly what Vevo is, something that is helping but not the great white hope that the industry needs. Labels are still losing money while major artists’ income grows as more and more of their revenue comes from ancillary sources, labels can’t touch like merchandising and live shows. Last night served as a cool reminder that the industry is struggling but still alive and actively seeking new revenue streams while beginning to embrace the freemium content model. I wish Vevo luck!

“What we’re really doing is taking back control of everything…this is really like MTV on steroids, Universal CEO Doug Morris told CNet. We’re starting with that kind of audience. But now we’re in control of it. We don’t have to go through a middleman anymore.”

As Music Industry Struggles, Artist Income Grows

What Vevo means for the Premium Content Trend

@ Vevo Launch: Google’s Schmidt: The Music Industry Will Finally Make Money Selling Music Online

Popularity: unranked [?]

So pleased to be able to preview Selby’s brand new music video, FAR here on Sacrilicious. Enjoy and special congrats to Bahnz and the boys on their NBC appearance, the video and the new label!

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Sacrilicious is proud to announce our new music industry God of client. Tony Michaelides is a well known former publicist to Matchbox 20, U2 and David Bowie. With more than 30 years in the industry and known throughout as “publicist to the stars” we are helping this Brit launch his book and speaking project called “Insights from the Engine Room” along with Lady Fate. Check him out.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Here’s my review and SnazL feed for the 2009 American Music Awards.  Taylor Swift and the still dead Michael Jackson walk away with armfuls of awards while Billboard darling and super act, Lady Ga Ga gets snubbed due to new AMA rules that disqualify artists nominated the previous year from awards for the following year. However, the crowing jewel of the night was the hilarity that ensued when J. Lo fell on her ample ass mid dance routine. Good thing twinkle toes has enough cushion for the pushin’ to break her fall.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I deal with a lot of baby bands. Every once in a while I come across one that makes me want to share. The Enemy Lovers is exactly that sort of band. Take a listen for yourself and you will be reminded of U2, Black Crows and Kings of Leon with a hint of Dave Mathews. The lyrics are moving and deep and driven from the rich history of two brothers, Tim and Steven Scroggs. Sons of a southern preacher, each bring a depth of soul and musical talent to the band that you generally hear from more seasoned artists. Musically impressive in that Radiohead kind of way but catchy enough to want to hum along to. I love the first song, Coming Down – it has a cow bell. Come on, you can never have enough cow bell!

I’ve been lucky enough to work with Tim and Steven on their Internet presence. Recently, I’ve been helping them develop a stronger, more feature rich and usable website and social media presence. What struck me most about this band is how committed to their success they are and how involved they wanted to be in the process. Tim was a huge asset, helping to guide and contribute to the look and feel of the site. I love that they were concerned about the usability and authenticity of their online brand. That level of brand awareness Tim brought to the table was something I rarely see in artists. Being able to work directly with an artists to carve out an online brand that suits their band and presence was an amazing experience and I am eternally grateful to the Scroggs to giving me this opportunity to help more fans connect with them and their music.

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Popularity: unranked [?]