I’m not sure if you felt it, but you might have detected a shockwave in the air as heads exploded at the thought of a reverse-procedure, modern-day telethon, held on the internet, using actual phones, conveying sensitive information the opposite direction while, of all people, Weird Al Yankovic pulled a list of musician’s names out of the butt of a paper mâché donkey. Okay, maybe that was all a lot to take in at once. But trust me, there was some method, some madness and actually some brilliance in the breaking down of true public relations and actual social media at work within an incredibly traditionally structured live event. But let me explain…

Bonnaroo Lineup Announcement Megathon (B.L.A.M.)

For a few weeks prior Bonnaroo had teased that they would announce this year’s lineup to their 12th annual four-day music and arts festival (held in June on farmland in central Tennessee, we’re fans) and telegraphed that comedian and song parody king Weird Al Yankovic would be a part of the big reveal.  Bonnaroo was no stranger to unusual or gimmicky lineup announcements. In 2010 Bonnaroo unraveled the lineup slowly throughout a whole day via a cartoonish clock hosted on MySpace (of all places). But this year’s plan began to coalesce with the announcement of an hour-long internet TV-special on YouTube called B.L.A.M., hosted by Yankovic.

Nevermind whatever you think of Weird Al, who, with the help of other comedians like Chris Gethard and a vaudevillian lineup of stunts, live music (Portugal The Man), jokes, tubs of meat and more managed to at least captivate if not actually entertain during the special event. Some found Weird Al’s humor painfully annoying while others were at least charmed in the same way they were when Al used to do a takeover of MTV for a Saturday (or indeed his whole movie on a TV takeover, the classic UHF).

No, the real magic was in the clever and casual use of social and traditional – and not in the same staid “one promotes the other”  cheap imitation of integration. In fact some of the ideas were so forehead-slappingly easy to pull off the real feat was that it all didn’t fall apart under the weight of what is a big news day for one of the bigger U.S. festivals.

Video Phones

After a montage of videos depicting what bands some people were hoping Bonnaroo to announce (which confused a few online who joined late into thinking these were the actual updates), B.L.A.M. hosted a mother-son duo who were chatted up and then given, presumably in the chat window below their private VOIP call, the names of the bands they could be the first to announce. This happened a few times during the event, putting a human face on the fans and allowing real surprise to show on the faces of fans also communicating a lineup to viewers.

The Reverse-Telethon

But by far the most unique, and frankly brilliant in my opinion, move by Bonnaroo was this unusual reverse-telethon they hosted. After a number had flashed on the screen several times early on, viewers were encouraged to call in and talk (presumably) to one of eight phone operators, which included comedians such as Eugene Mirman). When calls did manage to get through the caller was given a name of a Bonnaroo artist in the lineup that had yet to be announced. That’s it. And yet, it’s brilliant. No embargo, no requirements to share. You could do whatever you wanted with that information – you could just be privately excited. You could just tell your friends by phone, email, Facebook, whatever.  Or you could be the first person to tell the whole world an unrevealed nugget of news. If you wanted to reach the most people you’d use the #BLAM hashtag on Twitter – where you would no doubt be met with gaggles of new followers, hundreds of ReTweets. It was up to the caller. The truth would be revealed eventually whether you told anyone or not and so the onus was truly on the caller to make the most of the information. And the gem of news you were given was yours to do with as you please. It was a fantastic blend of the private hand-to-hand gossip world of social media and the opposite public desire to be a source to be recognized.

Love (and Information) Will Find a Way

Sure the whole, “let our audience announce it” bit has been done before, from white board photoshopped photos to even video clips – but Bonnaroo’s B.L.A.M. took it one crucial step further: they not only gave bits of info to fans directly but they gave them the freedom to use it too.

Timing was also on their side, theirs to mangle and play with like play-doh for the hour. No matter what happened, the Bonnaroo lineup would be revealed by 2pm. Countless media were no doubt ready to publish the list or at the very least would be sent it instantly. For an entire hour Bonnaroo (and Weird Al) could just screw with us. From a PR perspective the greatest weight was lifted with the concept that at 1:01pm EST if the whole thing unraveled it just didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if Paul McCartney was unveiled first in some ways (he wasn’t). It was a communications stress that lifted the moment the show started. It was play, it was fun, it was freeing. Yes, they wanted B.L.A.M. to be a success and be an entertaining hour but if the whole thing felt like a giant experimental theatre project that was perfectly okay. They had let the lunatics run the asylum and handle all the good china. In fact it was the best china Bonnaroo had: their precious and manically protected lineup before tickets would go on sale.

(At one point they had the internet live-vote through hashtag use to determine which envelope hidden in a poster would be open for the next reveal – one was Mumford and Sons, the other that Weird Al himself would be at Bonnaroo.)

The lineup content, or basic information in this case, was incredibly easy to separate and compartmentalize. Certainly some announcements were bigger than others, but not knowing how big a name was about to be revealed was part of the excitement (especially since, by many standards, Bonnaroo had managed to compile a relatively top-heavy lineup comprised of many other summer festival’s headliners and several unique ones all their own). There was more to B.L.A.M. than just reverse-telethons and you can watch the whole thing for yourself below.

Perhaps most refreshingly the B.L.A.M. stunt broke down the silos of not just “traditional” versus “new media” – but also the silos between channels. They had official channels that were all humming, but they didn’t try and make anyone use any channel they didn’t want to. With the exception of the live stream hosting exclusively on YouTube, fans of Bonnaroo could find out about the lineup a myriad of ways. The almost lackadaisical variety was nice to see – they weren’t getting worked up over how you revealed what whenever you wanted to. All control would still be theirs by the end. (Meanwhile I’m sure the entire endeavor would make many classically trained public relations professionals clutch their pearls.)

In the end, the important thing to take away from this isn’t how they utilized both channels and behavior to their advantage. No, it’s how they didn’t let a need for control get in the way of a number of smart ideas. Did everyone love every part? No. But as a series of tricks they managed to do more interesting things in 45 minutes than I’ve seen some brands do with an “integrated” strategy in an entire year.

- Dean

Groupon has been on the tip of everyone’s tongues lately, but this week, deal rival LivingSocial made the news. LivingSocial’s deal on Wednesday was 50% off an Amazon gift card – allowing people to get a $20 gift card for only $10. Over one million vouchers were sold.  As Mashable pointed out,

“Amazon, clearly interested in helping the startup it just invested $175 million in, will likely take a big hit as a result of the deal’s popularity. The online marketplace will lose millions of dollars — at least $10 per voucher — when LivingSocial members make good on the offer. The company, however, probably sees the loss as a net gain and a worthwhile marketing cost.”

Google Offers:

More daily coupon news: Google will be launching their own deal service, Google Offers. The deal service will work much like Groupon and LivingSocial. Users will receive a deal of the day email and have an allotted time to purchase the deal. Google Offers appears to still be in the testing phases – but look out Groupon – there’s about to be a new coupon deal in town. As many are saying about Google’s failed attempt at buying Groupon (for $6 billion) and their subsequent plan to launch Google Offers, “If you can’t buy ‘em, beat ‘em”.

Social Network Takes Gold:

I love that a movie about social media won a traditional media award. Actually, it won several of them. The Social Network took home four Golden Globes this week for “Best Motion Picture, Drama”, “Best Director, Motion Picture”, “Best Screen Play, Motion Picture”, and “Best Score.”

Google’s CEO Switch:

Google has made some changes to their upper management this week, replacing CEO Eric Schmidt with co-founder Larry Page. Schmidt will still be working at Google as executive chairman. The change came as a surprise to many, and left people wondering, “Why Is Eric Schmidt Stepping Down at Google?” As Mashable reported, Schmidt’s current ownership stake at Google is worth $5.77 billion and he intends to sell half a million shares, the dollar equivalent of $335 million dollars.

Facebook & Feature Phones:

On Wednesday, Facebook launched a mobile app for non smart phone users. The app is compatible with over 2,500 mobile phones, and can be accessed via a data usage plan. For some global users, the first 90 days of accessing the data plan for Facebook will be free. The facts, from All Things Digital:

“Facebook today released a feature-phone app that is designed to be kind of a gateway drug for both Facebook participation and mobile data usage. The company has arranged deals with 13 carriers to give users of the app free Facebook-related data access for 90 days. If you look at the countries where the launch partner carriers are from, you can see where Facebook thinks it can grow: Romania, India, Mexico and elsewhere.”

-Anna (@alucas9)

Rendering is not representative of actual lab, which will clearly utilize hyper digital beaker technology

Our Target: The Bonnaroo Music & Art Festival in Manchester, TN – Bonnaroo was named one of the 50 Moments That Changed The History of Rock & Roll by Rolling Stone, while The New York Times said, “Bonnaroo has revolutionized the modern rock festival.”

Our Mission: Gauge the usefulness (and usage) of social media tools, explore and experiment with new ideas and trends of destination marketing, consider the effect of communication concepts from within and outside of the participants, and find out what innovations are coming from the crowds.

Featuring: Onsite, @dbrowell, @ideaman, @alucas9, @ScottTKE517

Homebase: @thomasmcdonald, @hmillar13, @bcarr & Brittney!

Details: The people, not institutions, drive social media trends. So when more than 80,000 online denizens converge for a vacation, we’ll see tens of thousands choosing how they communicate to those inside and out. What that communication does to help them prepare for, travel to, live within and reminisce after their chosen destination will say a lot about the current state of tourism online and where its going. Plus, what best practices can we observe from festival-goers, event organizers, bands, vendors and more?

Feedback will use four distinct personal accounts and personalities to cover one of the largest music and art festivals in the US, testing trends, performing live tests of multiple apps, taking a look at the communities and cultures that are reflected online, studying communications and, of course, having a blast watching how radically diverse acts and fans share experiences in person and online. The “best of” our live work will be featured on our Feedback channels and studied for post-event analysis. (Also be on the lookout for performances via Radio Free Feedback; if you’re going to Bonnaroo and from an ad agency or PR firm, or are a Friend of Feedback, let us know and we can organize a jam session!)

One of Feedback’s founders, Dean Browell, was one of the first people to broadcast social media content from the farm at Bonnaroo, covering the entire weekend via blog, Twitter, Brightkite, and more for the last five years. Now he returns with a company and team to continue that tradition as well as take it the next step: treat it like the incredible laboratory it is for the benefit of all of our clients, from travel and tourism to healthcare.

In Preparation: Ahead of our trip, we will be canvassing our clients and our partners to find out what they would like to know about how certain trends perform, apps, critical mass of usage, technology needs and what events they have that we should keep in mind for new ideas. If you have an idea or a question you’d like to see us pursue, just let us know! Just email Contact@feedbackagency.com or through our individual contact info, below or on Twitter.

Radio Free Feedback is our musical experiment, featuring musician friends, up-and-comers we can help highlight, observed acts of musical lunacy and more. We will occasionally feature musicians in our offices as well as out on the road, sometimes themed and sometimes just jamming. If you’re interested in being featured or hanging out, contact us through the info at the bottom of the page or click here.

Radio Free Feedback 1: Featuring Dave Tinney!

Thanks to everyone who tuned in live and in-person! The recorded show is in full below, check out and fan our Facebook Page for video clips, photos and more:

-Dean (@dbrowell) on behalf of the Feedback crew, old and new