No Doubt gets buzzed from viral videos

Perez Hilton played a part in the circulation of viral videos aiming to build buzz for the upcoming reunion tour of No Doubt--their first collaboration since 2003. 

The use of IMC in building online buzz for their tour has been extremely relevant to one of their missions for the show: to bypass Ticketmaster and get tickets to fans via their website at an affordable price. According to standard Ticketmaster procedures, the band receives 10% of the available tickets, and No Doubt took the very best 10%. The only way for fans to get the tickets was directly through their website, so the use of viral videos made sense to keep the campaign digital. According to Perez's report:

 

"No Doubt were granted 10% of the tickets for each show and sold them directly through their website, completely bypassing Ticketmaster's outrageous service charges.

"The impetus is to have people who want to be in the building to be the people buying the tickets — not speculators," Jim Guerinot, No Doubt's manager, tells reporters. "We've done it before and it works."

Fan club members were required to pay a $15 dollar fee, but with the charge came access to the band's entire digital audio catalog as well as stickers, magnets, and iron-ons promoting the new tour!"

For fans that take advantage of the ticket promotion via the website , they will also be given no Doubt's entire digital background, which according to to a statement from the band, they thought would be "a cool way to get people to listen to our music and stoke them with a great deal at the same time." 

In studying IMC, we've primarily focused our attention on consumer packaged goods--at least I have throughout my own projects. Even though No Doubt's music can be considered a consumer-targeted product, this is a cool way to use digital media to market the tour directly to their biggest fans. The ones on their website, waiting for the latest info on the tour. Smart stuff.