Maker of 1980s chart tapes holds 500 house parties to launch service allowing fans to make and download own compilations
Back in the dry-ice-swept and pre-digital days of the 1980s, their endless series of twin-packed cassettes supplied the latest in cheesy chart fodder. Now That's What I Call Music! was the compilation that everyone had but no one would admit owning.
Three decades on, Now has finally taken a leap into the digital age, with its website allowing fans to create and download their own compilations.
To spread the word, the company helped organise 500 house parties across the UK, where teenyboppers, pop fanatics and pressured parents from Cornwall to the Highlands danced around their living rooms to party tunes such as Jessie J's Do it Like a Dude and Britney Spears' comeback single Hold it Against Me, made their own playlists on the Now website, and took photos which they were then encouraged to share on Facebook.
The new marketing campaign is a recognition that while advertising billboards and a glossy picture of New Kids on the Block may have sold music in the 90s, they have little impact in 2011, said James Foley, music editor of industry newsletter Record of the Day.
"It's a brilliant mix between a Tupperware party and an online social network," he said. "In the past, kids made mix tapes and took them into school on Monday morning, but now they are going to spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. That's how the noise is made."
Giles Harris, managing director of party organisers Come Round, which has organised similar bashes to promote Usher, JLS and The Wanted, explained how from the seed of a 10-person party a nationwide campaign is spawned.
"In the real world, everyone who comes to a party tells at least 10 others, and through Facebook and Twitter they reach about 50 more – so for those 500 parties, you are actually going to touch around 375,000 people," he said.
But it isn't just a sneaky sales technique dressed up as good fun, he insisted. "No one at these parties has anything forced on them, it is not like receiving junk mail. Organisers apply to hold a party – they get the album before its release as well as other goodies. If we are being sneaky at all, it is just by making it lots of fun."
As one party organiser, Andrew Crotty, croakily put it the morning after his bash: "Everyone loves a freebie." After holding several Come Round parties for his 10-year-old daughter and her friends, they had become so popular that he held his Now festivities in a nightclub, where events took a rather more debauched turn.
"We had a lot of fun, put it that way. We had a couple of streakers – you'll be amazed at what some people will do to get their hands on a free CD."
The new marketing technique reflects record labels' obsession with marketing directly to customers, said Harris. "In the past, EMI or Universal's customer was HMV or Woolworths, but now they want to go straight to the fan. Through the parties they get to be in the lounges of their consumers for more than four hours." Labels and artists also benefit from the most powerful form of marketing – word-of-mouth.
According to research from Nielsen, 90% of consumers rate friends as their most trusted way of discovering products, and 60% tell 10 or more friends if they like something new.
PR agent Mark Borkowski said the move reflected a shift from selling a product to getting consumers to buy into it. "Music fans know how to get music for free, so record labels need to find ways, like Radiohead, of giving them more value."
In an industry that is strapped for cash – album sales declined by a further 8% last year – harnessing that power makes economic sense, said Pete Duckworth, joint managing director of Now.
"Social networks are hugely powerful means of marketing music. You have a readymade community to market to. The fan gets something they want, the record company doesn't waste money advertising to people who aren't interested, and the artist gets to speak directly to their fans."
Now and then
Since its launch in 1983 Now That's What I Call Music! has been as much an integral part of the pop psyche as prefab girl groups and perfectly coiffed teen heartthrobs. Despite the demise of other pop institutions such as Top of the Pops, Smash Hits and Hit Man and Her, the series has remained in robust health, its 2010 Christmas album one of its best sellers to date.
Through the years Now! has ridden the waves of potentially tempestuous format changes. Starting out on vinyl and cassette, early compilations had accompanying VHS (and earlier Betamax) tapes with music videos of classic 80s artists such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the immortal Kajagoogoo. The first double CD came in 1987, vinyl lasted until 1996, and cassettes to 2006 before finally giving up the ghost. There was a brief fling with MiniDisc from 1999 to 2001, and in 2005 Now 62 became the first Now album to be released as a digital download.
Robbie Williams is the most featured artist in Now!'s 28-year history with 30 different songs with, without and with again Take That while with the nation's sweetheart, Cheryl Cole has featured 25 times. The honour of being the longest-standing star, getting songs on to both Now 1 and Now 68 belongs, quite rightfully, to Phil Collins.