For 10 weeks between July and September 2015, South African musician Karen Zoid, collaborating with several well-known local artists, dominated the iTunes South Africa charts with a record-breaking 10 hit singles in a row. This was no accident, but part of a brilliant, strategic campaign that capitalised on a variety of transmedia platforms including her television show Republiek Van Zoid Afrika, social media and iTunes. iTunes is so intrigued by Zoid’s transmedia domination that it will be researching it as “a case study”.
The CD and DVD for the first season of Republiek van Zoid Afrika, which first aired on Kyknet in July 2014, was only packaged and released in November, several months later. What they determined to accomplish with the second season this year was an immediate digital release of each collaboration on iTunes on the night the show aired. Around 500,000 people were watching that show nightly and what Zoid wanted was for them to have songs immediately available as a download after they heard them.
You can’t beat free, but you can sure as hell make it easy…..
Full, fascinating article on the power of transmedia by Marianne Thamm at Daily Maverick.