Hoxton Lab is the old Electric Ballroom just on the corner of Hoxton Square that hosts gigs, club nights, drinking and so on. They are promoting their myspace profile by painting it across the front of the venue.
It's right next to the world's largest myspace advert which kind of reduces the impact but its still a pretty radical approach to myspace friend-finding and brand building. Does it also indicate that myspace is still cool in Hoxton?
It's been a while seen we looked at the myspace graffiti phenomena in Shoreditch - 6 months ago it was all about promoting your profile on myspace, these days its mostly anti-myspace stuff people are writing. Maybe the club promotors haven't caught up yet?
These were all taken at the brilliant Casa Blue on Brick Lane - the best drinking place in East London.
One aspect of flyers and posters for clubs is that they often feature a roster of logos at the bottom from record labels, co-promotors and so on that are supporting the night. This provides some co-branding which helps give the night credibility. Anyway, it's interesting to see that myspace has started appearing as a co-brand at the bottom of some of the club posters out and about in London - see below. The photos are geotagged if you want to try and spot them yourself in East London.
The conclusion - Tila Tequila may be pissed off with myspace, but club promotors still see it as a valuable brand they want to be associated with.
So this has got to be the world's largest myspace advert - its a massive billboard at 333 club on Old St. (There's got to be an easy way of showing a google map or something for all these locations - if anyone knows how give us a shout in the comments).
What is this worth in free advertising for myspace/ News Corp!? A massive advert in the heart of the coolest place in London, reaching thousands of hip, young people wearing extremely tight jeans every day. Can you see any other brand getting free advertising like this? Basically, this shows the power of the X-Factor in social networking sites - myspace has it, and that's what makes it so valuable.
Life's too short and too fast to waste on weighing the difference between good and bad risks. In poker lingo, the best way to determine what your opponent's hand is is to keep on betting till he lays it down. You win, you win big, you lose, well, at least you had fun. That's exactly the same principle we considered when we decided to join the Flashmob, and boy did we win big.
So as promised, we went to the mobile clubbing flashmob event at Liverpool St station last night. AMAZING. If you've not been to a flashmob event before it really is quite an experience. We got there about 7 pm and there was a great buzz of anticipation in the air - the police guarding the station were really freaked out because they could tell something was going to happen but didn't know what. Anyway by 7.20 you could see people collecting under the clock, some in full raving gear. At 7.23 people started going through the crowd getting people ready for the countdown and telling them to get their ipods ready and at 7.24 it just went mental - suddenly loads of people were there all dancing.
What was really surprising is that everyone was really going for it - there were people with signs saying "TUNE" etc and every now and then a massive cheer or "wOOt" would go up. The flashmobbers had taken over a good half of the station including the stairs and it was great seeing people come out the tube to see a full-on silent rave going on. There were people breakdancing, ball-room dancing, the lot.
Here's some vids:
Breakdancing
Crowd cheering
here's a cool pic - there's loads more on Dontstayin
Anyway, if you get a chance to go to a well-organised flashmob do it - there's something quite brilliant about the whole concept of gathering a massive group of people together like that.
Kingsland Road Shoreditch Pt 1
Ok here's the first in a new series - going to create some spots for promoting your myspace profile and see what the response is... Here is the first one on the board where we found the stuff by CC artist just at the bottom of Kingsland Road - Click here for the Google Map.
On Sunday put up a Graffiti request for myspace profiles:
Already two responses!
One from Jack Guiness http://www.myspace.com/jackguinness
One from Jack and Ginger http://www.myspace.com/jack_and_ginger
Update here's what they say about myspace:
"We like the promotion tool that is myspace. As dj's and band promoters it's made life easier and quicker to locate good bands, contact them, arrange a gig, promote it to all our 'friends' and as a result the quality of the evening goes up, better bands and bands you would never have heard of in the normal channels of PR. are now getting a stage that they would not normally have had or would have had to work a lot harder to get."
Seems that everyone is myspace crazy right now in Shoreditch - Updates to follow with further progress
# 10 Put a poster in your neighbourhood coffee shop with your myspace name on it
Found this one at Coffee @ on Brick Lane - the best coffee shop in London imo. The place is a great place to put flyers and posters due to the upfront clientel and location.
Found a poster inside advertising a night of Swedish music called tack tack tack and their myspace profile at http://www.myspace.com/tacktacktack - they have 4500 friends on there... Update: here's what they have to say about it:
"When me and my partner Jason came up with the idea of the night MySpace seemed like an obvious way to promote it. In terms of viral marketing it's the dog's knackers... + it's a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to maintain than building a website outright.
We have a very cool friend called Ruth Moog who completely redesigns the page every month to keep it fresh.
As for the 4500 friends thing.. I guess seeing as what we are doing is pretty unique every band / record label in Sweden requests to be friends with us when they sign up to MySpace. Interestingly enough, in December/January of this year practically the whole of the Swedish music industry got onto MySpace."
Here's the money shot:
Right this series is getting long so going to have to work out how to restructure the series list... here's the the rest for now:
# 9 Draw some art work on the wall and sign it with your myspace name
# 8 Put a massive sticker with your myspace name on it on a phone box
# 7 Print your myspace name on some old fashioned A6 paper flyers
# 6 Include your myspace name in a Police Wanted poster
# 4 Get your myspace profile name on a poster on the outside wall of a trendy bar in Shoreditch
# 3 - Get your myspace name in a magazine distributed in a trendy bar in Shoreditch
#2: Add your myspace name to a flyer distributed in a trendy bar in Shoreditch
#1 Write your profile name on toilet walls in trendy bars in Shoreditch
# 9 Draw some art work on the wall and sign it with your myspace name
Here's a brilliant example of the power of myspace promotion at work, found at the bottom of Kingsland Road in Shoreditch. The artist CC http://www.myspace.com/ccfrenchartist did some brilliant female figure pictures on the boarding on the opposite side of the road a while back and now he's done it again - this time with a myspace signature at the bottom:
Here's a closeup
Check out his myspace site - lots of good art work in a similar style.
# 8 Put a massive sticker with your myspace name on it on a phone box
# 7 Print your myspace name on some old fashioned A6 paper flyers
# 6 Include your myspace name in a Police Wanted poster
# 4 Get your myspace profile name on a poster on the outside wall of a trendy bar in Shoreditch
# 3 - Get your myspace name in a magazine distributed in a trendy bar in Shoreditch
#2: Add your myspace name to a flyer distributed in a trendy bar in Shoreditch
#1 Write your profile name on toilet walls in trendy bars in Shoreditch
