- Post a comment
- Skip to the latest comment
- Back to the blog
Nick Haley is an unlikely music mogul. Although he's a big music fan, that's not really his business. In fact, he's only 18 years old -- and a political science student at a university in England -- so he doesn't really have much of a business career going just yet. And yet, he's already done more for one band than any record label or music industry executive has in years: according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, he has made them a star, and boosted their music sales by an order of magnitude.
The band is a Brazilian outfit called CSS, which is short for Cansei de Ser Sexy -- a Portugese phrase meaning "tired of being sexy" (which in turn comes from a comment made by Beyoncé Knowles of Destiny's Child). Haley heard their song, "Music is My Hot, Hot Sex," and thought that it would make a perfect background track for an Apple iPod ad, since the iPod Touch has a touch-interface screen, and the song has a line that says "my music is where I'd like you to touch."
So in his spare time, the young British poli-sci student put together some clips from Apple ads and made his own advertisement using the CSS song, and then uploaded it to YouTube, where it was eventually seen by some employees of Apple's advertising agency. They liked it so much that they flew Haley to Los Angeles and created a new version of his ad, with better production values.
In the weeks leading up to the launch of the Apple ad, the CSS album with the song on it had sold about 340 copies a week. After the ad was broadcast on MTV, the record sold more than 2,000 copies in two weeks.
Feist may not have had Nick Haley's help, but sales of the Canadian singer's latest album The Reminder also rocketed after the song 1,2,3,4 was used in an Apple iPod Nano ad. Before the ad aired, the album was selling about 6,000 copies a week; after the commercial was broadcast, it sold anywhere from three to four times as many per week. In just a month, according to a spokesman, the album sold about 60,000 more copies than it likely would have without that exposure.
-
Albin Forone from Toronto, Canada writes: Be careful about conflating cause and effect - I looked up Feist after seeing the ad, not because it was Apple that played the song, but because it's the first I had heard of a catchy number. Nobody buys every tune that backs a major product - credit to Apple for picking one people would actually want to hear in full. Apple is nothing if not tasteful.
- Posted 26/11/07 at 1:19 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
-
David Wood from Guelph, Canada writes: I don't think Leslie Feist is a band.
- Posted 26/11/07 at 1:36 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
-
Mathew Ingram from Canada writes: Good point, David. My mistake.
- Posted 26/11/07 at 3:42 PM EST | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment
Join the Conversation, Leave a Comment
This conversation is semi-moderated What is moderation? | How do I report a comment?
You must be logged-in to submit a comment — login now!
Not registered with globeandmail.com? Register now. It is quick and free.
Alert us about this comment
Please let us know if this reader’s comment breaks the editor's rules and is obscene, abusive, threatening, unlawful, harassing, defamatory, profane or racially offensive by selecting the appropriate option to describe the problem.
Do not use this to complain about comments that don’t break the rules, for example those comments that you disagree with or contain spelling errors or multiple postings.
