Prominent, genre-defining musical artists have often employed expensive and extensive digital marketing campaigns in recent years that have ensured blanket exposure to their material across digital platforms. This totalistic approach to marketing seems to overwhelm at enormous scale—providing an almost ubiquitous familiarity with their output among tens of millions of music consumers worldwide. It is a strategy that has been utilized by marquee artists, such as Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and many more.
It would seem that record labels believe in and wholly implement the principle ‘mere-exposure effect’ marketing. This is an approach so widely used that consumers now expect it before major albums are released. In 2016, however, Radiohead applied a disruptive new strategy to reinvent this longstanding trend. In a deeply saturated music industry—replete with multi-million dollar campaigns—Radiohead decided to delete their own website and social media accounts to promote their new album. By ‘going dark’, the fans started growing concerned. The amount of social media impressions grew exponentially. Radiohead sent out enigmatic direct mail pieces and kept silent on the digital front. After 3 days of going offline, the band opened their Instagram account to release a 15 second teaser video for their new album ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’. Radiohead had created suspense and a uniquely crafted element of surprise. Shortly after this, Radiohead released music videos, culminating in the eventual release of a new album. Ultimately, this was a successful marketing strategy on the basis of fan engagement and social media impressions.
Although this idea seemed novel to the music industry, this is not the first time the approach of ‘going dark’ has been used to generate commercial interest. In 2014, Taco Bell launched their marketing strategy known as the ‘Taco Bell Blackout’ where they shut down all of their social media accounts with the exception of Twitter—the only trace remaining the hash tag ‘#OnlyInTheApp.’ The ultimate goal of Taco Bell was to shut down their social media accounts to necessarily drive their fans to their new app. Hashtags regarding Taco Bell’s disappearance started trending, and the social media impressions grew. The strategy worked, in two days Taco Bell ranked #22 in the American Apple App store and #1 in the sub-category of food and beverages. Although Taco Bell utilised the ‘blackout’ to promote their app, Radiohead proved that ‘going dark’ could be used for releasing music as well.
Although this idea of ‘going dark’ seems to be an effective strategy, it is likely to work under certain relatively limited, circumscribed conditions. Firstly, there has to be a large fan base for people to notice. Radiohead, a band known around the world, currently have over 810K Instagram followers, 1.79M twitter followers, and 11.9M Facebook likes. with such a prominent social media presence, there is no wonder that followers started to notice they had disappeared. Secondly, ‘going dark’ must align with the brand’s (or in this case band’s) image and ideology. Radiohead, who have released their most recent albums independently of large record labels, have been known for being innovative and breaking the established norms of the music industry. For example, in 2007, Radiohead released an online album to the public where the consumer could pay what they wanted for it. From then on, customerscould expect non-traditional forms of music distribution. In addition, Radiohead’s image as counter-cultural, anti-establishment, and avant-garde featuring prominent themes of anti-capitalism, idealism, and challenging norms are commensurate with unconventional non-corporate, ‘anti-marketing’ forms of self-promotion.
It is not surprising that Radiohead sought to repudiate the normative trends of marketing today - their "going dark" allowed them to generate enormous publicity while still maintaining their crucial sensibilities of valuing idealism over profit.