The United State Of Social Media
Posted: Thursday 06 August, 2009
Alex Smith
Members of their message boards, official website and social media contacts were notified of a treasure hunt via email and directed to their micro website, ununitedeurasia.muse.mu, and once signed up they became part of a "resistance" aiming to reunite Eurasia once again.
The band posted 6 different riddles to the website in the form of instructions to members, which then had to be deciphered to work out the location of a memory stick containing a key code. When inputted into the micro site this would then unlock a section of one of the bands new songs, "The United States of Eurasia". Once the first 5 riddles were completed and their sections unlocked, the samples were pasted together, forming the almost complete song.
The final section was then directed at the US version of the website, with the band asking for recognition from the US in order to complete the song.
The campaign involved tasks such as achieving trending topics on twitter, as well as a worldwide geographical orientation on which the whole project was based. The memory sticks were placed in 5 destinations across Europe, with the final one in the USA, and those clever individuals who solved the riddle and raced to find the sticks won tickets to see Muse at a gig of their choice. Not a bad prize...
This is a great example of how niche and mass social networks can be laced into each other to create a huge buzz, and the success of the campaign was measurable by the number of people who joined the network and downloaded the song that was unlocked at the end.
Let's just hope that their show is as good in November!
