A while back I picked up Swindle Magazine as part of the Russell Davies "Make Me More Interesting in 10 Easy Steps" plan. I'm usually not much of a magazine reader, but Swindle had always caught my eye every time I passed by it in the bookstore magazine section and then I finally had an excuse to pick it up - a mandate to read 10 magazines in 12 weeks. If I was going to accomplish that task then they had better be very interesting magazines.
Swindle is a pop culture and underground arts magazine published by Shepard Fairey and friends. It used to be in a high quality magazine format and there was a slim chance that if you were cruising the magazine aisle looking for something other than Wired, or Dwell, or Blender that maybe, just maybe, you would stumble across it and the cover would catch your eye. Actually, the cover would grab your eyeballs and pull them towards it like a galaxy swallowing black hole. It was that compelling and it was usually just an example of their featured artist's work. Now they publish it as a hard bound book and only have it available underground art stores like Munky King.
I fell in love with one of the articles in the issue I picked up. It was a historical piece on the Chicago disaster that was "Disco Demolition Night." Well, disaster may not be right word depending on your perspective. I'm going to approach it from a brand perspective, and in that case, I can call it a Fabulous Disaster.
It was 1979, and if you want to talk about a brand that was always in beta, the Chicago White Socks were it. They didn't have a solid fan base to sell to because they sucked. Seriously, they were even worse than the historically disappointing Cubs across town. To overcome their lack of fan appeal they pulled every promotional trick in and outside of the book to raise attendance.
All they needed was a catalyst to do something really big and that catalyst came in the form of Steve Dahl. Dahl was a radio DJ at a Chicago area rock station who lost his last job to a format change from rock to disco. So he had an ax to grind against the disco genre, which he did daily by "blowing up" a disco record on his show every day. When his station manager and the White Socks marketing manager got together to discuss a joint promotion, an idea was born - Disco Demolition Night.
"The plan for Disco Demolition Night was thus: All fans bringing a disco record to the stadium would be charged 98 cents admission (as in 98.3 FM, The Loop’s radio frequency) for the doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers. The records would be collected in a large trash dumpster by the main gate, and the dumpster would be relocated to center field after the first game of the doubleheader, to be blown into smithereens by the commander himself, Steve Dahl. “Stayin’ Alive” and “I Will Survive” would do neither-this was to be the death of disco. On July 11th, Disco Demolition Eve, the White Sox drew just over 15,000 fans to Comiskey Park, filling less than a third of the roughly 52,000 seats in Comiskey Park. By all accounts, the hope was that the promotion the next day would draw an additional 5,000 to 10,000 fans."
What they got was a crowd of 40,000 rowdy anti-disco fans waiting outside the stadium gates, partaking in their share of illicit substances and getting rowdier by the minute.
By the end of the night a dumpster of records was blown to smithereens, inebriated teenagers had invaded the field, chaos ensued, the game was called off, the White Socks were overwhelmed by their own success, and the local community and Major League Baseball was in a rage. So overwhelmed in fact that the owner of the team had to fire the marketing manager, who happened to be his son, with the words, "You know, Miguel, sometimes they work too well."
I wonder about this sometimes. What if we manage to tap into the zeitgeist a little too well at some point? Can the right client forgive a massive over delivery? Will the public outside of the target be understanding of the circumstances? Can we manage success that blasts our expectations out of the water? And if you are a company built on constant experimentation, how do you capitalize on finding the one thing that really really works?
The White Socks could have handled their success a little better. They could have become the anti-establishment team. The team for the kids who just want to RAWK!
Read the whole story. It’s worth it.