Fan Base Currency

12 Sep 2009 by Paul Rutherford

Death can be a great career move – but it takes considerable skill to pull it off successfully.

Elvis is the role model for passed-on profits. The pelvic mumbler may have ingested his last burger in 1977, yet in 2008 (three decades after his ‘bathroom’ demise) he earned $52m. That was 25% more than Madonna.

Having said that,   he’s been seen working the fries at McDonalds in Memphis so, like-for-like, Madge way not be too far behind.

Of course, this is not generated by a flesh-and-blood person; this is a revenue stream for Elvis the Corporation. It’s a brand, a back-catalogue and a devoted fan base determined to keep the man and his music ‘alive’.

This is a global business, and you have to admire the endless creativity of rights owners in fully exploiting both their intellectual property and the gullibility of the public.

ELVIS! LIVE!!

Did you know that you can still go and see Elvis in Concert? He’s touring Europe in 2010. Thanks to a mix of projection technology and the reunion of his ‘former band members’, you can spend an electrically-charged evening (literally) watching the musicians who failed the Cocoon audition try to keep pace with a film of a man on steroids.

A case of sixty, drugs and rock’n'roll.

And while you’re booking your tickets, you can also buy – “for the first time ever” – a DVD of the his legendary performances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Or how about going to stay in one of the ‘Elvis-accented’ rooms at the Heartbreak Hotel? (Read the small print, and you’ll be disappointed to learn that ‘accented’ means there’s a picture of him in each room.) You might want to splash out and upgrade to one of the Elvis-themed suites. There’s a choice – the Graceland, the Hollywood, the Gold & Platinum and, of course, the honeymooners’ Burning Love suite.

Ahunk ahunk of Burning Love indeed.

And if you can’t move out of your house (a statistical probability for Elvis fans), then he’ll come to you – at least, you can sign up for Elvis updates. This is a new definition of the word which the student of career death needs to understand:

In my Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘update’ means ‘the act or instance of updating’; in Graceland it means letting you know that they’ve found another tape in a box in the loft, and that a 52-part series (with never-before seen photos) will be available soon.

All of which can be paid for with you Elvis-branded Visa card.

FAB FOUR AND MORE

You don’t have to be entirely dead to benefit from no longer being around. Half The Beatles are still with us, and yet we now have another re-issue of The Beatles back-catalogue: “re-mastered, re-packaged and re-discovered”. And to much acclaim. Read the customer reviews on Amazon, and it’s 5-stars all the way. Then again, if you’d just paid £170 for 12 albums that you already owned in two previous formats, you’re not likely to say ‘I wuz robbed.’

Also this week, the launch of ‘The Beatles – Rockband’ on Sony PS3, dutifully supported by wall-to-wall Beatles coverage on the BBC – an entire weekend on Radio 2, and a week of programs on BBC Four. Even my daughter had the good sense to ask why: “Did someone die, Daddy?”

No darling. But one of them is now a pension salesman and the other got divorced.

To be fair, those in the know say that Rockband is beautifully produced and very engaging – if playing plastic toy guitars and pretending to be a pop singer is your thing. It just isn’t mine.

But don’t think that making money from being dead is a foregone conclusion. The holders of the Presley and Beatle brands are (despite my cynical tone) very, very good at what they do. Wild horses couldn’t drag me to Heartbreak Hotel, but you have to admit – it’s an obvious ‘brand extension’, and probably serves its target audience very well. Stick of Jailhouse Rock anyone?

The Michael Jackson Estate could learn a lot from Graceland and Cavern Club.

TICKET TO (BE TAKEN FOR A) RIDE

How black must the mood have been in the AEG offices the day that CEO Randy Phillips heard that Jackson had shuffled (moonwalked) off?  Phillips’ company was promoting the 50-date concert series at London’s O2, and 750,000 people had paid up to £75 each. AEG would have to pay it all back.

Or not. In a stroke of genius – and commercially, I don’t think the word is too strong – Phillips re-invented the very nature of ‘ticket’.

Consider the usual purpose of a ticket: it is proof of purchase, a receipt for a transaction that is not yet complete. In effect, the purchaser is exchanging one promissory note for another: ‘I promise to pay the bearer…if you promise to provide a service that will entertain me’.

(As a Southampton fan, I’m not sure how that works…but that’s for another day.)

Not so, said Phillips. It’s not a ticket at all; it’s a souvenir – albeit of an non-event. In a stroke, Phillips created an entirely new market: the virtual memento. So what if something doesn’t happen? There’s still a merchandising market opportunity for it. To join in the fun, I am open to offers for my Led Zeppelin 2009 World Tour jacket.

Anyway, this wasn’t just a common-or-garden ticket. This was a MJ ticket. The man himself had hoped that people would ‘keep it as a reminder of the memorable evening that they would share together’. He had personally been involved with the design. And it had been produced using a Lenticular printing 3D process.

So fans had a choice: refund or non-ticket.

PRECIOUS MEMORIES

Websites and blogs were hot with indignation. Out of respect for Michael, and out of respect for Michael’s  fans (and their respect for his respect for them), how could AEG do this? It was immoral. And anyway, “I bought a £75 ticket and my friend only bought a £50 ticket, so I’m paying 50% more than her for a memory of an event that didn’t happen.”

Yes – but your non-existent memories would have a clearer view.

Despite the absence of respect, AEG later claimed that ’40%-50% of ticket purchasers had taken the option to receive their tickets’. Worst case, that’s 300,000 people who are now spending time thinking about the evening they didn’t spend together. With or without Michael.

(If that wasn’t enough, at the end of October Sony Pictures releases a film of the concert that never happened. Remember that 30-second rehearsal clip that Phillips showed as evidence of Jackson’s well-being? It’s now going to be a motion picture event, and ‘a gift to Michael’s fans’.)

It will give them something to cling to while they wait for the next non-performance.

Just yesterday, the much-heralded Vienna Tribute concert collapsed, with many of the promised stars failing to commit an appearance. It’s now being rescheduled, to London in June 2010.

Tickets start at £44 – although no-one seems to know what you’ll get for your money. Not that an absence of content seems to stop any of the riders on the Jackson bandwagon.

DEAD CERT?

This looks like a chronic case of ‘more haste, less speed’ in the Jackson camp, but with an army of would-be Colonel Tom Parkers out to make a buck or two, Jermaine and Co obviously think they need to strike while the body’s still warm. (Fancy buying the Jackson Opus, and 38-pound book with -never-seen-before-photos? Yours for just £109).

Whatever your opinion of the man (repugnant) his music (infectious) or his dancing (the best on film since Astaire and Kelly), watching this soap opera play out could some day become a business case worthy of Harvard or LBS. The Wacko side of Jackson won’t be a hurdle: as pop-commentator Paul Gambaccini pointed out shortly after Jackson’s death, Judy Garland was a washed up, alcoholic mess when she died. Today, she’s an icon.

The collective memory will paper over Jackson’s cracked behaviour, and remember only the performances. More difficult to call will be the management of the core material – the ownership of which will become a bloodbath. There’ll be some very rich lawyers at the end of all this, and probably a very bitter family.

Meanwhile, the man in the mirror will either become a billion dollar enterprise, shadowing all that has gone before, or a forgotten footnote.

It’ll take 30 years and a generation to decide.