Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Leonard Cohen's previous album (January 2012)
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scocoh
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Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by scocoh »

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Last edited by scocoh on Fri Jul 20, 2012 10:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
da2008
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Re: Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by da2008 »

I've no idea. I just bought the album from a record shop because it was a new Leonard Cohen album. I only heard the interview that Leonard gave to Jarvis Cocker two days ago. Never listened to any song previews.
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tomsakic
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Re: Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by tomsakic »

Oh, there was a marketing?

Leonard's office insisted only on free streaming in its entirety, me thinks - and that is a great idea. Leonard always thought that you cannot stop coyping on internet, and he was right, whoever likes the music, will buy the CD. I think that strategy is now usual with Sony, later they streamed the whole Springsteen CD, and every week I see something in similar vain (like complete streaming of the new album by Air etc.)

Nevertheless Sony's outrageous attempts and pre-sales, I'd say the album sells well despite their effort and only due to internet-caused self-disseminating methods... Before we would call it "word of mouth" but nowadays it was enough to put a song on Soundcloud - in few hours 10,000 plus websites in all languages had it linked as "new song from the legendary Leonard Cohen". Not to mention the WHOLE album being streamed...

Leonard *is* the self-promoting institution, and with the 2.0 internet he has no borders... Even last week he made it into the top news here in Croatia with new tour announcement, without any real input from any marketing - agencies simply took the news off the wire. I'd say that enormous success of the world tour was also due to the internet and fact that each new show, claimed as "perfect" and "religious experience", went into YouTube and spread the word and generated even greater expectations from the next concerts.

In 1988 e.g. the local reviews were similarly raving... But back then, Leonard would come to e.g. Roskilde Festival, sing for screaming audience, everybody would cry, but the next day the tour company would travel further, reports would stay local and in foreign language... and nobody would know. Today it's immediately twittered, Facebook, sms, YouTube'd etc. and Google translates it all...

You can check, btw, the old VHS clips from Roskilde 1988 I put on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDCEC1BDE26D0BF18 It shows that 2008-10 tour experience was not so surprising to those who followed Leonard for years.
Vicomte
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Re: Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by Vicomte »

tomsakic wrote;
You can check, btw, the old VHS clips from Roskilde 1988 I put on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDCEC1BDE26D0BF18 It shows that 2008-10 tour experience was not so surprising to those who followed Leonard for years.
Sorry tomsakic but that is not how I remember the audience reacting at the London concerts, do you have any other countries for the "I'm your Man" tour that were like the link you gave? I saw San Sebastien concerts and they were not like your link either. Plenty of generous applause but not anything like in Denmark.
I guess it all started for me sometime around Christmas 1967 and now, goodness me, it's.........2018 and over fifty years later.
No one ever listens to me. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record.
Neil from The Young Ones
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tomsakic
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Re: Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by tomsakic »

I am not speaking only about the audience reaction, but the reviews of the shows and more private experience people have after LC show. Much accounts I read or heard from all tours since 1972 mentioned words like "spiritual", entracing etc. If you read some old tour reports, you could be mistaken that it's about 2008-10 tour. It's just that when LC came back from the tour in e.g. 1988, nobody in Sony HQs or US cared or knew how good he was... And they did not record the shows except the closest one in Canada, and there was no YouTube and easy way of circulation (beside fan-limited illegal video tapes from audience) to know it... You need only to recall how big feedback every re-run of Austin City Limits got - with each re-run thousands of people would discover Leonard or call TV stations to learn the name of that singer. I am just trying to make a point that internet made all this new 2008-10 success possible and changed it all. And of course the complete lack of any originality in contemporary music industry, because of what people are turning to "old sages" since Johnny Cash's last American albums, and now to Leonard, Waits, old Dylan. They have wisdom, integrity, and experience to tell about.
Vicomte
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Re: Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by Vicomte »

Sorry, I must have misunderstood your point when I read this:
In 1988 e.g. the local reviews were similarly raving... But back then, Leonard would come to e.g. Roskilde Festival, sing for screaming audience, everybody would cry, but the next day the tour company would travel further, reports would stay local and in foreign language... and nobody would know. Today it's immediately twittered, Facebook, sms, YouTube'd etc. and Google translates it all...
I see what you mean about the internet but sorry, I took it also that you felt the rest of the tour was like the Denmark concert but wasn't widely known, due to there being no internet and I only made my remark on the fact that none of the concerts I saw on the I'm Your Man Tour were like the Denmark gig.
I guess it all started for me sometime around Christmas 1967 and now, goodness me, it's.........2018 and over fifty years later.
No one ever listens to me. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record.
Neil from The Young Ones
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tomsakic
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Re: Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by tomsakic »

It is interesting to check new films made recently, with this success, about the old tours, e.g. Bird on a Wire (about 1972 tour), or Murray Lerner's Isle of Wight 1970 documentary attached to the 2009 release of the concert... The lenght of the show, the structure, the entranced audience, all seems like a pattern for 2008-10 shows experience. And similar are accounts of 1970 tour members at Heck of a Guy blog: http://1heckofaguy.com/2012/02/14/love- ... pid-cohen/
Vicomte
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Re: Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by Vicomte »

I am not totally sure what you mean but speaking personally and that is all I can do, I see no resemblance, of the fans in particular from L.C concerts of the past, such as the I.O.W (which was only part of a far larger picture) and any others I have attended from then until the 2008 tour.

Can you elucidate as to how you think they formed some kind of pattern, please?
I guess it all started for me sometime around Christmas 1967 and now, goodness me, it's.........2018 and over fifty years later.
No one ever listens to me. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record.
Neil from The Young Ones
John Etherington
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Re: Old Ideas Marketing Strategy

Post by John Etherington »

Returning to the original question, I found the whole aggressive marketing campaign totally off-putting, and also completely unecessary for something that was a guaranteed best-seller. It had all of the most grotesque qualities of moden life where everything has to be immediate...gimme gimme gimme!...more more more!...tweet tweet tweet! When "Show Me the Place" was first launched they were asking for everyone's first reactions to it (never mind the context). What I wonder, did they do when they had accumulated this information? Then there was the bombardment of ads in the papers...here it is "the must-have spiritual commodity of the year"!

I resisted the madness as best I could, only listening to three songs once before the release of the album. Then, when I played the album for the first couple of times I wasn't sure about it...initially it sounded rather samey and a bit tuneless (I was of course wrong). However, several people I know seem to have had this initial reaction. I suspect that many people who listened to the streaming may have felt the same, and (since instant-gratification prevails) would have dismissed it after one listen. Thus, the preview option (and early availability on youtube) most-likely went against it.

Personally, I would have kept the whole thing hermetically-sealed until the day of release. I like the idea of the musical quest...in the Sixties, people would travel from one side of London to another, just to hear a blues record! It seems much more meaningful when someone gravitates to a piece of music through an inner psychic need. Without any of the hype, and with only a few reverential mentions on John Peel's late night radio show, "Songs From a Room" still managed to reach No.2 in the album charts.

I'm beginning to sound like a grumpy old man...it must be the writing course I did with Charles Shaar Murray!
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