Church of the Customer Blog
« A different type of Apple evangelist | Main | I'm not getting a Dell »
September 26, 2005
A different type of Apple evangelist
When dedicated evangelists band together to spport the object of their passion, some corporations take notice.
Take, for instance, Fiona Apple. Even though it's been six years since her last album, this singer-songwriter has a rather passionate fan following. When an unauthorized copy of her new work was released on the Internet earlier this year, Apple figured that Sony would scrap the project. "Who is going to give me money to make songs that are already out there?" she asked.
That's one perspective, certainly. To Apple, the future of her new album looked bleak. To the contrary.
A group of fans banded together this summer to create Freefiona.com, a grassroots campaign designed to pressure Sony to release Apple's album. As the New York Times tells us, "Hundreds of foam apples were sent to the company, and in January a dedicated band of protesters, led by the Free Fiona founder Dave Muscato, stood outside the Madison Avenue offices of Sony BMG chanting, 'We want Fiona.' "
It worked. Sony will release "Extraordinary Machine" next week.
It seems there are two lessons to this story:
1. Napsterizing one's knowledge or intellectual property can work, even for music. When Apple's songs were smuggled out onto the Internet, it fueled word of mouth. The RIAA will have us believe that napsterization destroys careers and leaves musicians penniless. To the contrary! It helps reduce the more deleterious effects of obscurity. For Apple, it fanned the flames of fan desire for a new and "legitimate" release.
2. If you focus on stirring passion or connecting emotionally with customers, fans or clients, citizen marketing or activism on your behalf can occur. Apple's highly personal songs do that with fans, and there shouldn't be any reason why a dentist, headphone manufacturer, delivery service or a thousand other organizations couldn't do the same thing. Especially when the stakes are high.
Other blogs that reference A different type of Apple evangelist:
Have anybody heard about the new iPod model with a perpetual battery?
http://blog.detectivemarketing.com
