Alizée ads 30 seconds long will air on Boston, U.S.A. radio station

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

I had noticed monday, that the audio for the ads seemed a little low compared to the songs that were being played. I especially noticed it when I merged the 3 commercials so I could post it. I had to amplify the volume quite a bit to get if up to normal levels. I didn't reall think to much of it, thinking maybe the commercials air at a lower volume than the songs do, though such isn't the case for tv where the commercials blow you out of the water.

Tuesday night was to be a big night... when Alizée's ad came on, I had to get up and go over to the speaker to really understand what she was saying.

...My immediate impression was that it was someone at the station who doesn't like this music,or these ads, cranking down the volume... Jessica... did say it was due to some type of programing error on those days. I don't know if I believe that...

There are enormous amounts of incompetence and negligence in the world. That could easily explain what you observed without attributing it to malevolence.

The bottom line is: what does it matter? You contracted for a service and it was screwed up. Who cares if it was a fool, a disgruntled employee or a sinister manager? That's why people audit things. People who advertise regularly in broadcast media even automate the auditing process, e.g. by putting inaudible markers in their ads (cf. http://www.audioauditing.com/ ) to reduce the cost of auditing.

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

they'll be rerunning those ads on monday and tuesday.

That is what they should do. Good job catching their failure! But whatever the cause of the failure, I cannot believe any personal preference of the owners is the explanation.

Generally speaking, radio stations HATE dead air time, because that encourages listeners to remember they should be doing their tax accounting or their homework instead of listening to the radio, and they click it off or switch to another station to help them keep forgetting.

I guess it is possible some listeners telephoned the radio station bitching about the "goddamn foreign music". But if the station had wanted to pull a fast one on you, they might have skipped playing the ads altogether, or even placed other ads in their slots, doubling their revenue. But maybe that would have been too obvious, and a tactic less subject to detection would be to turn down contracted ads too many regular listeners found disturbing.

I don't listen to broadcast radio or TV in real time anymore, but when I did, and heard the late Billy Mays come on the air, I'd change stations rather than endure even 30 seconds of his aesthetically displeasing narration. I guess he enjoyed great success, so that the cost/benefits trade-off was a good one for advertisers: they secured more advantage from increased sales to those who would listen than to those like me who would boycott the ad, and could compensate their broadcast hosts well enough to make up for the people driven away from the station and their other advertisers.

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

I had ordered an MCE album second day air then priority mailed it over to them, so they could hear the entire songs for some of these ads. I asked Jessica to mail it back because I think there's somebody there who doesn't enjoy Alizée's music.

The library at the French Cultural Center of Boston holds single copies of each of Gourmandises and Psychédélices. It would seem they have no problem sharing Alizée's music with metro Boston! Perhaps they'd welcome donation of a copy of Mes Courants Électriques as well. You can contact their librarian at: librarian@frenchculturalcenter.org (Source of e-mail address: http://www.frenchlib.org/index.cfm/library/

Don't be discouraged if you don't get an immediate reply from the library. Remember, the Center is the product of a merger which happened only last month, and mergers often happen when one, or even both partners are at the end of their rope. They might still be quite distracted. As I mentioned before, an inquiry about expanding their Alizée collection has been posted on their new Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?ui...7867&topic=122 (Notice how it tries to suggest her music might be a way to encourage more people to learn French, which happens to be a big line of business for them!)

Or maybe someone at WNRI 1380 in Woonsocket would like a copy of MCE. Too bad they are an AM-only station and their broadcast infrastructure would hardly do justice to CD-quality.

[User22]

Well done telling them who's the customer Scruff. They definitely should re-air them. Hopefully there isn't someone at the station that hates her music

[Fall]

Listened to it not too long ago. Good that you added the spelling.

[Scruffydog777]

Originally Posted by docdtv

The library at the French Cultural Center of Boston holds single copies of each of Gourmandises and Psychédélices. It would seem they have no problem sharing Alizée's music with metro Boston! Perhaps they'd welcome donation of a copy of Mes Courants Électriques as well. You can contact their librarian at: librarian@frenchculturalcenter.org (Source of e-mail address: http://www.frenchlib.org/index.cfm/library/

Don't be discouraged if you don't get an immediate reply from the library. Remember, the Center is the product of a merger which happened only last month, and mergers often happen when one, or even both partners are at the end of their rope. They might still be quite distracted. As I mentioned before, an inquiry about expanding their Alizée collection has been posted on their new Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?ui...7867&topic=122 (Notice how it tries to suggest her music might be a way to encourage more people to learn French, which happens to be a big line of business for them!)

Or maybe someone at WNRI 1380 in Woonsocket would like a copy of MCE. Too bad they are an AM-only station and their broadcast infrastructure would hardly do justice to CD-quality.

I've carefuly read Doc's suggestions. I tried to carry out the idea for promoting her at the open house at the French cultural center in Boston, but met with minimal success. I did learn something in the process that younger people are the ones more willing to listen to and accept something new.

As far as the radio station down in Rhode Island, I sent them an e mail, with a Youtube attachment to some of Alizee's songs, asking what it would take to get her music played there. I will post any response I get from them.

As far as donating a copy of MCE to the BFCC, I don't think I will do this. They have a copy of Gour and the 2 albums are somewhat similar. The donation of this album would only have a minimal result in our efforts to promote Alizee. I'd rather spend thousands on something I think would have a big affect than something that will have a little affect.

As far as promoting her on Bastille day here. I thought it would be good to promote her during the open house, because we could encourage fans at the same time to go to Magic and offer an opinion there, but on Bastille day, the ads will be well over and promoting her then, will not have that big an affect, so I may attend or I may not. I'm still playing catch up with everything else in my life, yard work, house work, automotive work, of which all I'm far behind.

Edit:

Ads for June 28th.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y5nioewvmot

[ALS]

Maybe we can find a way to promote Ajaccio and Corsica as a vacation spot for U.S. residents over the same old same old Paris and its tourist traps.

The quiet and quaint charm of a relaxed small town on the Mediterranean.

[Scruffydog777]

Well the commercials have run their course. What kind of results will there be if any? I called Magic today and talked to Jessica Oar and Mark Laurence for a while. Mark said they didn't recieve a bunch of inquiries about this music, but that's typical, because the ads were asking people to go to AlizeeAmerica.com and that's where they would typically go. But I would think if it a lot of people here did like the music they probably would've contacted the radio station. I guess we'll hopefully get some results from Ben. I'll e-mail him later to post the results if any.

I talked to Jessica about the different rates for advertising. The rates at night were about $165.00 a minute. But there prime time rates which runs roughly from 9am to 7 pm, jumps up to about $500.00 a minute. Most of these ads typicaly played after about 1 or 2 minutes of other commercials. I asked if it was possible to have a commercial play right after a song, before people had a chance to skip to another station. They said yes, but that would be another $50/min more. She also said a 30 second commercial runs at about 70% of what a 1 minute commercial runs.

I would have liked to have placed these ads with a top 40 station as opposed to a soft rock station. But as I mentioned before, of the several stations I contacted, this was the only one to offer any serious consideration to what I wanted to do. A soft rock station probably has a some what older listening audience than a top 40 station. I didn't really think this would be a factor, but last week, when I was trying to hand out 50 dvd's of Alizée's music at a time when these ads were running. I found teenagers were the ones who were most responsive and willing to take these discs and to listen to them and what I had to say and because of that, I wish I had searched for another top 40 station where I could've placed the same ads to target a younger audience.

Maybe I should have selected 1 minute commercials, to let people get more of a chance to get into the songs.

I talked to Mark Laurence about what a radio station would have to do in order to be able to play a song of Alizée's. He said there is nothing that could stop them from playing one of her songs if they wanted to. The only thing they have to worry about if the songs or albums are licensed under BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC, in which case just means they have to pay a very small fee each time they play the song.
He mentioned a song called 9 million bycicles,
<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xF_w7MMU0DU&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xF_w7MMU0DU&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
It was sung by Katie Malua, who was born in Russia, then moved to Ireland, then London
He said it was a song that everyone at the station loved and they played it many times, but it never really did catch on.

Just goes to show you, if they like a song, they can and will play it.

Bottom line is, where do we go from here?

I think it's important we keep our efforts to put up flyers, give away cds, tell people when ever we can about Alizée.

But is there something we can do on a large scale, such as what I attempted to get her noted in a significant way, that will hopefully lead to something more than just adding another fan here or there? I'm not sure, but I'll continue to work on it.

[MYGOGT]

Scruffy,
Here is what I have discovered over the past couple months of trying to promote via CD and DVD.
If I have set up a video/photo display I get about 1 in 75-100 people will actually take a CD/DVD even though I put up a sign reading Free, take one.
I literally have to place a disc in people's hands in order for them to take one.
Even at that it is met with apprehension.
Today I set up En Concert video on a 22" display only 1 CD was taken. These were all people I work with. I heard one comment "I know al-leezee, she's the French Brittany Spears wan-a-be". Another comment I got "So, you are advertising for her?" and no disc taken.
So, I had a disappointing day of trying to promote.
I have put Alizeeamerica.com in front of literally 10k + people and has there been any increase in activity here?
It looks to be an uphill struggle all the way.
I feel your pain Scruffy, but we will come up with new plans and keep swinging away at it.
You are a great ambassador Dave.

[lefty12357]

I've noticed people can be very resistant when they feel they are being "sold". The vast majority of us discovered Alizée on our own. There is magic in that kind of discovery. But when we try to introduce her to others, we are often met with resistance. I think people are more likely to accept something if they believe they discovered it for themselves.

Based on that premise, some of us tried "disc-dropping" back in the Psych era. We made up a bunch of Alizée sample discs and simply left them in public places where people could find them on their own, thus they could feel as if they made the discovery. I left mine in parks and shopping malls. Unfortunately, I have no idea if it worked all that well.

This guy really made the effort: http://disquedrop.blogspot.com/2008/...fty-sixty.html

Maybe to succeed at such an endeavor in this country requires a massive (and very expensive) effort.

[Junkmale]

I feel your pain too, Scruffy.
Your efforts (and everyone else's) are VERY appreciated here. Don't forget that.
Funnily enough i've just be having a rant about something unrelated (but perhaps similar) at my own website.
You can read the post here -

http://www.ewafarna.co.uk/blog/index.php

The general tone of it, i think, relects what you are saying?
I've come to the conclusion over the last year that any sort of promotion that you, i, or anyone attempts is a waste of time without some sort of Official support. Perhaps 'waste of time' is a tad harsh but you know what i mean?
Alizee's 'people' should have been in touch with the Radio Station to give their support for your efforts ( i assume that they haven't?). They could have capitalized on the publicity that the adds have generated. I would also have thought that some sort of financial support would have been welcomed by you (even as a token gesture). After all you are doing thier work for them.

I think that the important thing is not to give in and to stay positive. My situation is slightly different as it's mainly (but not totally) financial reasons for my annoyance at the 'failure' of my site.
Hang in there.

Oh and i remember seeing Katie live in Belfast many years ago. Me and about 6 other people. Lovely, talented girl!

[Topaz]

This is a bit off topic but C'est la vie. Scruffydog, I absolutely adore Katie Malua. She sings the title song in one of my movies. "Just Like Heaven".

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Anywho, keep up the good work Scruffydog!