I hope you donât mind I add to this with a quick translation.
In the intro they talk about his job in general. The guy was brand manager for 1D (and probably other acts) for Warner Sony in the Netherlands. (Warner is his current job.) He talks about 1D fans or any fans from any bands with quite a bit of respect and doesnât take the bait from the interviewer to make fun of them.
Some general comments he made before he started on 1D as a specific example: âI will never have trouble marketing music thatâs not my taste, because who am I to think I know better? If itâs not your taste, doesnât mean itâs not good. If people love it, donât look down on it.â
About One Direction: [quotes as accurate as possible]
âWith One Direction it was very specific. We had a group of five girls, they were part of the Street Team, they were almost marketeers themselves. Not because they had the training because they were very young, but they knew the target group like nobody else. That began with 20 girls and it became 40,000 girls [I imagine he means 20 fans who became 40,000 fans]. They were constantly in contact with the fans.â
Interviewer: Did you invent the Street Team?
âNo, if I remember correctly, it already existed. My colleague Wouter Jansen had contacted them, and I took over when I became brand manager of 1D. I contacted them to see how we could build on this. I mean, I can decide from my ivory tower what theyâre supposed to like, but Iâd rather hear it from them. And we did really cool things. We created a pop up store in Utrecht based on their input, we did fan events, we took over a cinema in Ede [weirdly small town but OK] for 8 hours, doing a live stream with the band [1D day I guess?], purely based on their ideas. Those were all big hits, not because we were so genius, but because the girls said âwe want thisâ.â
Interviewer: So you contacted these girls and they were in your office on Monday morning?
âThey were in our offices every few weeks, yesâ
Interviewer: And you talked, had drinks? [lame joke about lemonade. bc underaged, sigh]
âYeah! Brainstorming. I think thatâs important and we still do that with other bands and other target groupsâ
Interviewer: So did they do this so they could meet the band?
âI donât know, I never asked. We did reward them - because they spent soo much time - Â so we made sure they could meet the band when they were in the country. Or they got merch firstâ
Interviewer: It does help if the band cooperates with this stuff. 1D didnât mind?
âYeah they didnât mind. I still love the example because you can put this idea on paper but ultimately you need to check with what the fans want. So it should be a collaboration. And we do this now with other artists too, from singer songwriters to boybands to older target groups, hiphopâŠâ
The Street Team is still active I think. No idea who they are, they may be annoying as hell. But this guy is not being cynical at all. Basically grass roots marketing more than anything.
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