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Davin Williams
September 3, 2008
Early afternoon
Early August, 2008, I decided that in the near future I wanted to drop a Street Album.
I was fresh out of the hospital (from having a leg infection called Cellulitis) and I had been away from music for a couple of weeks.
Once I was out the hospital I heard a couple songs that inspired me to start rapping (instead of just singing) because of the genius behind the music. The songs were VIC - "Get Silly" and Lil Wayne - "A Millie".
Let me explain...
VIC's "Get Silly" was a dance track, but he used a weird voice technique that we used to use as children. He took us back to the basic...sorta...ha ha. It was weird, and to be honest, I didn't like the song when I first heard it because it was so much different than other music.
Lil Wayne's "A Millie" is a freestyle! ha ha. But that's not the most interesting thing about it. It caught my attention when he asked me (the listener) a question and then told me about his experience....
"Man, I hate a shy chick,
don't you hate a shy chick,
yea i ate a shy chick,
she ain't shy no more, she changed her name to my chick"
I respected that...even though the content was kinda vulgar.
Anyway, I started recording as soon as I got out the hospital (I couldn't walk so I sat to record) and quickly finished 10 tracks (in a week or two). That was the easy part...
I had already had about 10 RnB songs completed also so I thought, "Why not create a RnB/Rap cd?"...
So then there were 20 songs...10 RnB, 10 rap...
Then it was time to get the graphics and the marketing plans drawn up.
The graphics were pretty simple, nothing too fancy...completed in a week...
The marketing plans took the most time to draw up, but the campaigns we were going to run were going to be very professional...
{Because EMP is built on creativity and innovation, we will post our Marketing Campaign plans below...giving our competitors our techniques will only force us to come up with better ones...}
The EMP Street Album was supposed to drop September 5, 2008 in different areas...we weren't going to put it in stores or anything because we don't have the funding yet but we were planning to take traditional approaches such as selling in malls, on street corners, at gas stations, etc.
Before the release of the EMP Street Album, we wanted to generate a huge (online) buzz for it. We wanted people to come looking for us rather than us going to them to try and sell...and so here's what we came up with....
There would be at least 4 campaigns running (for at least a week) together....
· Text Campaign
· Myspace Campaign
· Facebook Campaign
· Email Campaign
Text Campaign
What we were planning to do is send around a text message asking, "Is Empty KC's hottest singer?...find out at myspace.com/empty816..."
The goal of the message was to generate curiousity and interaction...we wanted people to be involved...that's why we asked them a question...so they could come find the answer and tell the next person..
We were planning to have at least 10 people send out the message to at least 50 contacts in their phone...that would lead to 500 people initially being reached...and if only 250 of those 500 people sent the message to 50 more contacts that would be a far greater reach [12,500 people]...(but keep in mind that some of those people would text people that have already been reached by the message and that would lead to a double-exposure [I'll explain that another time...ha ha])
Basically the Text Campaign would lead people to Myspace...and that's where the Myspace Campaign would take over...
Myspace Campaign
Prepare for this one...
Myspace allows people to interact with other people. You can create pages and throw all kinds of information about yourself on there...right?
We were planning to utilize:
· Top Banners
We wanted to have fans/friends of Empty to post a top banner (created by us) that said something like, "Official Fan of Empty...visit him at myspace.com/empty816"...
· Profile Pics
With these, we wanted to have everyone who is a part of EMP Music (and a few fans) change their profile pic to one of Empty. It would (ideally) be a flashing gif image informing viewers that the street album was available.
Imagine waking up one day and browsing and then seeing so many pages with this flashing gif telling you about this artist and his "Street Album"...ha ha. You'd check it out right?...
· Comment Boxes
A common approach to get many people to see an add is to post it in friends' comment boxes...but if you post on an artists' page and you're taking attention away from them, then they will surely delete it.
We would be posting on EMP Music artists pages and friends' pages only.
· Status
ha ha ha....we would change the status to say something silly like, "Blah Blah is listening to Empty's Street Album..." ha ha...it's all about exposures...not exposure....EXPOSURES....
· Photo Albums
We would have Empty (me..ha) running around taking pictures with random girls and crooning. The goal was for them to upload the pics and tag me in the album...When people see you being "real" and if they see you with someone they know...that makes them get "closer" to you...people buy from people that they "know"...ya know
Facebook Campaign
Facebook has a lot of applications...I don't know how to use them yet but we were going to take advantage of a few strategies that are pretty easy to implement...including the Status bar and the photo album strategies...
· Groups
We wanted to create 2 groups...one before the release...and one after...the groups would be named "Ready for Empty's Street Album" and "Listening to Empty's Street Album" respectively...just to add an exposure to the EMP brand through Facebook
· Walls
This was going to be sort of like Myspace Comment Boxes but it would be text and preferably a joke...something funny to add value to the readers' day...but somehow, we wanted the joke to incorporate some kind of awareness-building for the Street Album
· Video
There are people posting videos on Facebook (Victoria, etc...ha ha) and that's a good look...it lets the viewer see you being you...people like "people"
· Notes
On Facebook, you can write notes and tag all of your friends it...{Thanks Dub-Tre}...didn't know what we were going to do with this ability but we wanted to add an exposure here...
Email Campaign
Through email, we wanted to send a few of our friends a copy of one of the "single" songs (Everyday, Lasting, On Da Move, This Thing We Have) and a small thank you for listening. We also wanted to send a link to the Myspace page just in case they wanted to here more...
{Everything sounds good...yea? So what was the big problem? Why did all of this not happen? Why is the Street Album not going to be in everyone's stereos and CD Rom drives in their computers? I'll explain...}
In the middle of August, 2008...my computer registry was corrupted by some virus....I don't have internet at home but I did save webpages on my flash drive a lot. I used to bring them home to view them...
Anyway, the computer started jumping to the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) whenever I tried to Boot it...
Luckily I had saved all of my songs to an MP3 player...but I still needed to retrieve the Graphic from the hard drive...so i repeated slaved my HD in my brother's (Dj Dub) computer..moved some files over to my system32/config folder...and was able to save the graphic to my flash drive (a newer one)...
...in doing that, I wasted a lot of time...about a week's time...
The graphics were printed and I thought I was back in the game, until I tried to boot my computer again...it started going back to the BSOD...sad....
I then had to look for somewhere to burn discs...
Long story short, I didn't have any backup plans...I never thought anything could go wrong...
I found my Windows 2000 CD and Serial number and installed that a couple of days ago...but all of my programs reset...I don't have:
Paintshop Pro 8
Propellerhead Reason 4
Arcsoft Show Biz
and those are my POWER PROGRAMS...
man....
If you remember Windows 2000, you know that it's nothing like Windows XP...you have to go download drivers and all kinds of crap when you want to hook up USB Midi Controllers and Camera's and whatnot...
I tried to download some Service Packs yesterday (skateboarded everywhere) but the library computers said something about a high security alert!
My screen resolution won't reach what it used to (something like 1200 x 768 i think) and now i only have 16 colors. When i had Windows XP i had 256 million! So you can imagine how my programs look...
I do have my FLStudio 4 Program so I should be able to make some instrumentals...
Slowly but surely, I'ma get back to where I was...I won't let this stop me...the September release isn't going to happen like I planned but I learned a lot...