Marketing Case Study - Weezer

The point of a marketing campaign for an artist to generally maximise their income potential. This is because it creates an awareness of the artist / record label; helps to sell tracks, tickets and merchandise in general; to create the artist's brand identity; and gives audiences a preview of the band so that they want to buy into the band.

As Weezer is a signed and popular band, I believe there are 3 main sources of income that they get to fund their marketing campaigns:

1. Epitaph Records: their record label should give them large advances based on their popularity and therefore, their income potential which should be boosted by a marketing campaign.
2. The Memories Tour and other live performances: since the rise in streaming and downloading music for free; there has been a decline in track sales; consequently a larger percentage of income has come from ticket sales from fans who would rather pay for that than an album.
3. Endorsement: in most photographs I found of the band, I discovered that they get given customised instruments (such as the one pictured above) to play. Additionally, they have formed partnerships with other companies such as YouTube (where they post their videos) and Bravado (who creates their merchandise).

As a modern band, their current marketing campaign wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago:

• The band has the usual features of a modern music marketing campaign; music videos, album cover, website, updates on social networking sites, radio play (on BBC 6 Music), merchandise, live performances, reviews, etc.
• What makes Weezer's marketing campaign unique is their "YouTube Invasion". Recently, they worked with 15 different popular YouTube videomakers to create 15 videos featuring the original artist and the band.
• Below is just one of their collaborations, this one with "The Key Of Awesome"; a 'show' that produces comedic music videos weekly.
• This campaign allows the band to have a good marketing mix: they reach a large international audience but also narrowcast to fans of those paticular shows.

Clearly, their genre of music and target audience is very relevant here. As an alternative rock band, they have a large audience of 13-24 year olds. As this audience frequently uses the internet for various reasons, they have a lot of online marketing such as internet adverts, the "YouTube invasion" and the media on the website. As an alternative band, a lot of their marketing has also been quirky, especially when you consider their album cover design:

Jorge Garcia (AKA Hurley from "Lost") is the main image on the album cover, "Hurley"

To see the website case study for Weezer, click here.