Interactive Award: Edition´10

Before we describe the case in 600 words, we'll give the summary in 140 characters - in true Twitter style: "The Gas Bros used Twitter to promote their album, gave away old & new songs for free and always added a link to their HQ: http://is.gd/5sFVf"

The Gasoline Brothers and their Twitter campaign – sharing and promoting music in web 2.0 style

The Gasoline Brothers released their critically acclaimed debut album Hm! in 2006. The release of their 2nd album Tsk! was planned for October, 2009. The challenge: how to ‘resuscitate’ their old fanbase and get the attention of other music lovers and the press after 2 years of silence?

The Principle: make it free, share & promote. Use Twitter!

The Gasoline Brothers' 1st principle: let the music be available for free to as many people as possible. Why? The only way you can get people to like your music is when they’ve actually heard it. Those who like it are potential concert-goers, merchandise-buyers and CD-buyers. And in the Internet-age: they are likely to tell other people. There’s the essence of The Gasoline Brothers’ campaign: they used just about every useful interactive tool to get the word out in the street.

Twitter rules!

It's easy to give away your music online, but how about sharing and promoting it? The Gasoline Brothers used Twitter as their primary means of communication with old and new fans, journalists and bookers. The band created a big network of fans and music journalists. A lot of people discovered their music via Twitter. Many of them ‘retweeted’ The Gas Bros’ messages, introducing their own followers to the band as well.

Anything you can talk about, you can tweet about. Anytime there was something to give away, The Gas Bros used Twitter (and their website, their blog and other social media) to get the message out. For example, they decided to give away their debut album for free and promoted it via Twitter. Months before the release of their 2nd album, they started sharing new stuff via Twitter, e.g. a new video, the album cover, new songs and so on. The Gas Bros made sure that there was a blog post to back up every tweet, so that people could click a hyperlink and find more information. Their website http://www.gasolinebrothers.nl and their blog http://blog.gasolinebrothers.nl served as the traditional 'headquarters', with Twitter being the tool to show the way to these headquarters.

Pre-release: the Moerenhout case

The Gasoline Brothers are pro-cycling fans. So when they tweeted with Dutch pro-cyclist Koos Moerenhout, he asked them about their music. The new album had not been released yet, so the band pointed him to the free download of their debut. Moerenhout loved the music and told his entire Twitter network about it. Many Tour the France riders started listening to the band, thus creating a real Twitter hype (documented in many Dutch newspapers). The band also offered Moerenhout to record a song for him if he won the Dutch championship. Which he did. The song - strategically released one month before the album release - got a a lot of publicity: all major Dutch papers wrote about it and RTL TV News did an item about it.

Album Release

The release party took place at EKKO (Utrecht), but the band also organised a webcast of the show - people at home could watch the concert for free. They partnered with music community 3VOOR12, who broadcast the show live. Also, all tweets about the show - tagged with #gasbros - were displayed next to the webcast. A highly original and fun way to let people experience the show and have them share their comments. The result: over 200 comments and pictures shared on Twitter!

Free album downloads

One week prior to the new release The Gasoline Brothers distributed their new album for free on established torrentsite Mininova, using Twitter to promote it. With stunning results: 34.095 downloads for Tsk! The consequence: lots of new listeners & fans, all over the world.

Thanks for reading,
Age Versluis (www.twitter.com/ageversluis)
HKU Music Management student and Gasoline Brothers fan

P.S.: This summary was also created by one tweet. By a Gasoline Brothers fan who thought this was a really cool case. Goes to show the real power of engaging fans using ‘new’ Web tools.

P.S. II: 600 words aren't enough to describe all the web 2.0 campaigns The Gas Bros initiated. We didn't even mention the iPhone and Android apps, nor the Gas Bros computer game.

Sources

- http://www.gasolinebrothers.nl
- http://blog.gasolinebrothers.nl
- http://twitter.com/gasolinebrother
- http://blog.gasolinebrothers.nl/uitzending-gemist-re-watch-saturdays-release-show-online-and-much-more/
- http://www.mininova.org/tor/2993912 (link to the free Mininova download)
- http://www.mininova.org/com/2993912 (the link to the comments and many thank you’s from downloaders)
- Dutch marketing web site Molblog about The Gasoline Brothers as a Web 2.0 band: http://www.molblog.nl/bericht/hoe-the-gasoline-brothers-als-web-2.0-bandje-fans-bereiken-en-beraken
- Many blog posts on award winning Dutch music blog http://eerstehulpbijplaatopnamen.blogspot.com

Andre Wierenga, Roel Jorna, Mathijs Peeters, Leon Geuyen

http://www.gasolinebrothers.nl

http://blog.gasolinebrothers.nl

http://twitter.com/gasolinebrother

http://twitter.com/gasolinebrother

http://eerstehulpbijplaatopnamen.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Gasoline%20Brothers%20doen%20het%20zo