How the right strategy could have turned Fancy Free into a hit

Hello everyone. In the ongoing saga of the CHC court case, it has now emerged that S$30,000 was spent on iTunes gift cards to boost the chart performance of Sun Ho's third US single Fancy Free. Now is this unorthodox? Or merely, as Kong Hee describes it, "It was a marketing strategy to create momentum for the launch of her single." Allow me once again, to put on my marketing/PR guru hat and talk about this strategy Kong Hee is trying to justify.

Now it was clear that in spite of all this money being spent, Fancy Free did not chart in the US - not in the dance charts, not in the Billboard Hot 100 charts, nada. Now at this point, I must make it clear that Kong Hee actually denies having spent S$30,000 on iTune gift cards specifically to download Fancy Free, but I am going to discuss in this article how one can get a song into the charts with a budget of S$30,000. I will discuss where Kong Hee/Sun Ho's PR team went wrong and what I would have done instead to guarantee at least some moderate success for Fancy Free.

Take a wrong turn and you will make a massive loss...

Can I begin by saying I actually think that Fancy Free is a pretty decent pop song - sure it isn't that original but then again, the pop music industry isn't about being the most original, it is about knowing your market and giving your consumers exactly what they want. That basic principle about economics is reflected in any hawker centre in Singapore - you will find all the usual Singaporean favourites there: laksa, chicken rice, char kway teow, wantan mee, popiah, prawn mee, fried hokkien mee, or luat, nasi lemak, mee siam, roti prata and there will of course be someone selling deserts like ice kachang, chengtng, cendol and probably someone offering chingchow and fresh sugarcane juice.

Why aren't there more stalls selling unusual kinds of food like Greek Souvlaki, Mongolian Khuushuur, Nigerian Kilishi or Polish Pierogi? Simple: because your average Singaporean does not go to the local hawker centre to be surprised by something exotic, they go there looking their favourite local dishes - hence the supply reflects that demand. Try to be too unusual or original and you are unlikely to be rewarded as you are unsure if there will be a demand for what you are offering: you are venturing into uncharted waters and taking a risk. Stick to a formula that is tried and tested and you can't go wrong. The same principle applies in the world of pop music - you must understand your market.

So by that token, Fancy Free does actually hit all the right notes when it comes to fitting into the music scene in 2009 when it was released. It was fairly catchy and she had an amazing music video was shot by Joseph Kahn (who had also directed music videos for Lady Gaga, Bryan Adams, Destiny's Child, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, Shakira, Rihanna, Kylie Minogue amongst others). Undoubtedly, this would have been Sun Ho's best shot at stardom after the horrendous, disastrous, godawful previous two singles of China Wine and Kill Bill. So really, she had a genuine shot at stardom: she had a pretty good song + she had money to spend on marketing. What could go wrong?

Sun Ho was looking for mainstream chart success in America and here's the major problem for her: in America, the ultimate chart position of a single is determined by both airplay and sales in the ratio of 80% airplay, 20% sales. This is to reflect the way people find out about new music in this day and age, gone are the days when people rushed out to the shops to buy CD singles on the day of release (gosh, I remember doing that back in the 1990s, I still have a big drawer full of CD singles). The Billboard charts even takes into account the activity on streaming sites from Spotify to Youtube in this digital age to determine a single's chart position. So with all this in mind, even if Kong Hee did spend S$30,000 purchasing the single Fancy Free, well that would only boost its chart position a little as there is still 80% of the equation to account for. You must evaluate the impact of your marketing strategy before spending any money! 

Is this how Sun Ho's team felt when her singles flopped in America?

In short, it was a strategy that was doomed to failure from the start as you would have had to spend a ridiculous amount of money on purchasing that single to even send it into the top 40, never mind a respectable top 10 position, if all you can influence is that 20% of the equation allocated to sales. Do the maths before you spend the money - it was a waste of money at the end of the day because it was a strategy that was never going to have any impact. What could Sun Ho's PR team have done to try to influence the other 80% of the equation then: airplay, streaming and music TV stations (such as MTV network, Zuus network, TheCoolTV and other pop music programmes on the more mainstream channels like NBC, ABC,CBS)? Let's look at some case studies.

Well, the first thing she could have done was draw attention to herself - she was (and is) still a nobody in America at that stage and with so many people releasing singles all at the same time, she had so much competition for the attention of the mainstream media. What she needed was a media story to capture the media's attention and I will give you one such example. Britney Spears famous 'mental breakdown' in 2007 was captured in lurid detail by the paparazzi, it was a carefully scripted, performed for the reporters and episodes like when she walked into a hair salon in LA and shaved her head - if she wanted to cut off all her hair, she could have done so in the privacy of her home, but no she had to do it in public with the photographers ready to shoot and record every moment. Instantly, that took the media by storm and she made headlines with her 'descent into madness'. I now refer you to the lyrics in Britney's hit I Wanna Go (which I totally love, it is so awesome) which clearly refers to her 'descent into madness' episode.

Lately, I've been stuck imagining what I wanna do and what I really think
Time to blow out
Be a little inappropriate, 'cause I know that everybody's thinkin' it when the light's out
Shame on me
To need release
Uncontrollably
I-I-I wanna go-oh-oh all the way-ay-ay
Taking out my freak tonight
I-I-I wanna show-oh-oh all the dirt-irt-irt I got runnin' through my mind, whoa oh
Lately, people got me all tied up
There's a countdown waitin' for me to errupt
Time to blow out
I've been told who I should do it with, to keep both my hands above the blank-blanket when the light's out

Some people are cynical - let's look at Britney's career prior to her 'descent into madness' period. Her last big hit was Toxic in 2004 (US #9) - then her career started to go downhill with her follow up singles Everytime (US #15), Outrageous (US #79), Having My Fun (failed to chart in the US), My Prerogative (failed to chart in the US). The following year 2005 was equally dismal : Do Somethin (US #100), Someday (failed to chart in the US) and And Then We Kiss (failed to chart in the US). Britney did not release any singles in 2006 and by then, the singer best known for her huge hits like Hit Me Baby One More Time and Oops I Did It Again was fast slipping into oblivion - the American public had lost interest in her and she needed something drastic to get back into the headlines. A further album without a single hit would certainly be the final nail in the coffin for her career. Cue her 'descent into madness' episode!

Britney had a great PR manager.

This 'descent into madness' stunt worked - her first single in 2007 Gimme More (released after this 'madness' episode) was a resounding commercial success (US #3, UK #3, Canada #1, Australia #3, Germany #7, France #5) - a pretty good comeback for a singer who had effectively slipped into oblivion for about 3.5 years (Toxic charted in January 2004, Gimme More charted in September 2007). She had managed to revive her career, achieving a further six top ten hits in the period following, including three US number ones - Womanizer, Hold It Against Me and 3.

What can we learn from Britney's comeback? Get the chronological order right damnit: you get the media interested and excited in you for all the right or wrong reasons, then you release your single. You need to work with the media, the paparazzi, the tabloids, you need them to write (good or bad) stories about you, you need people on social media to take an interest in you before you release your single otherwise your single is simply going to be ignored. There is so much happening out there - you need to find a way to capture the public's attention! Sun Ho's team got it all wrong - they were focusing so much on her music rather than courting attention and publicity for her. You have got to play the media game first if you want to court publicity for your music and no publicity is bad publicity, just look at Britney!

Sun Ho's career suffered from a lack of PR-savvy marketing.

Without something as attention grabbing as Britney's 'descent into madness' episode, Sun Ho had no chance in hell with the American media, even with a very decent song and an excellent music video with Fancy Free. What shocks me is how she (and her team) did not learn from her previous mistakes - given how China Wine and Kill Bill totally bombed in America, this was her third single in America. Like, surely you have learnt something from your two previous mistakes to try a slightly different approach to your PR and marketing campaign? And if your PR/marketing manager is not doing anything right, sack them all and get a better team of experts! You're willing to spend big money to hire famous people like Wyclef Jean and Joseph Kahn to work with, why not hire Britney Spears' PR team who will know exactly how to choreograph a PR stunt to get you into the headlines?

What kind of PR stunt? Well, Britney has already done the whole madness thing, let's try something different - how about picking a fight with someone famous? The media loves nothing more than a bitch fight between two celebrities - for example, Gwen Stefani and Courtney Love are constantly fighting in the media, saying horrible things about each other to the media and this keeps them in the headlines. The fact is, Courtney Love is best known for being the widow of Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana who killed himself in 1994. I remember how famous they were in the early 1990s with huge hits like Smells Like Teen Spirit and Come As You Are, but mention Kurt Cobain to anyone under the age of 30 today and they would probably have a blank look on their face. The highest position Courtney Love has achieved in the US billboard charts is #58 (Doll Parts, in 1994) - she is quite niche on the alternative rock scene and she needs such orchestrated, attention-grabbing PR stunts to get the mainstream press talking about her.

As for Gwen Stefani, well she may have had a huge success with the band No Doubt back in the 1990s but the last time she tasted mainstream chart success in the US was back in 2006 when she had two US top ten hits Wind It Up and The Sweet Escape. That's eight years ago - that's practically a century in the world of pop music where attention spans are very, very short. So certainly, this rivalry/bitch fight with Courtney Love is a win-win situation for both of them as it keeps them in the media headlines despite neither of them having tasted commercial success with their music in the last few years. Who knows, maybe in private, these two women are the best of friends but it serves their careers better to fight in public, all in the name of PR. Sun Ho could have easily "picked a fight" with another ageing pop star who has not had a hit in a few years, to create a similar kind of win-win situation where they would easily generate some much needed attention, simply by doing what Gwen Stefani and Courtney Love are currently doing. That's a lot of PR for very little money and you will have the press eating out of your hand, after all no publicity is bad publicity.

So what else would I have done differently if I were to turn Fancy Free into a hit? I would not start with the US market - now the US market is extremely difficult to break into because it is a huge country. You could spend months promoting your album in California and still no one in New York or Florida would have even heard of you. And even if you stage an event - like a huge flash mob involving 20,000 dancers (Psy actually achieved this in Paris when he showed up for a Gangnam Style flashmob) - in Los Angeles, okay, that will get into the local news, that may even get interest throughout California but would reporters in Chicago, Atlanta or Boston be interested in a flash mob in LA? So even if you can achieve some success in one city or one state, it is very hard to break through nationwide in a country as big and as diverse as America. This is why newcomers to the American music scene find it very hard to gain a foothold.

I would instead turn to the UK - it is a much smaller market both geographically (the size of the entire UK is comparable to a state like Minnesota or Michigan) and population: there are 63 million inhabitants in the UK, that's about Texas and California combined. However, the UK punches way above its weight despite its relatively small size in the music scene. A large number of British singers have achieved huge international success - the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Oasis, Take That, Elton John, Queen, Kate Bush, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Annie Lennox, Coldplay - I could keep going, you get the idea. People from around the world pay close attention to songs that become hits on the UK charts because they will often then go on to become popular in other countries where English-language pop music is popular. Furthermore, the way a single's position on the chart is determined in the UK is different from the US and a lot more easily manipulated be it through social media campaigns or quite simply with the right amount of money.

Let me tell you about an experiment in the UK where a radio DJ was able to send a song into the charts at no cost. In 2007, the rules regarding the official UK singles chart changed to take into account of digital downloads so DJ Chris Moyles wanted to find out if he could send a song into the charts even if the single itself was not currently available in the shops. He picked the 1998 song Honey To The Bee by Billie Piper who despite having three number one hits in the UK, is probably better known for her acting career (most notably as Rose Tyler in BBC's Dr Who). Now Honey To The Bee went to #3 originally in 1998 and DJ Chris Moyles managed to send it to #17 in the UK charts in 2007. What did he do? He merely used his influence as a DJ on a national radio station to start a social media campaign which gained enough momentum over the course of a week to send the song to a very respectable #17 in the UK charts.

Now because the UK is a much smaller country than the US, the number of downloads necessary to send a song into the charts is far, far smaller! This of course, varies from week to week but typically, back in the period of around 2008, 2009, just selling 2500 copies would be enough to send you into the top 40 and on average a number one would sell about 30,000 copies. Now 2500 copies in America would be just a drop in the ocean given how huge the country is and how sales account for only 20% of the chart position. Let's do some maths.

A mainstream single like Gangnam Style costs £0.99 on iTunes UK. Let's round that up to £1 to make my calculations a bit more straightforward. According to the exchange rate at the end of September 2009, S$30,000 would roughly be £13,274.33 - let's round that up to £13,300. That means that Kong Hee's S$30,000 would have easily bought around 13,300 copies of Fancy Free on iTunes UK, which would have been sufficient to send it to a top 15 position, quite probably even a top 10 position depending on what it was up against that week. Nonetheless, even if it was just a top 15 hit in the UK, that would still be a substantial result given that no Singaporean singer has ever achieved that before.

Sun Ho could have bought herself a UK top 10 chart position. 

Even if it achieved top 15 status in the UK, it would certainly be noticed by DJs in countries like Italy, Germany, France, Austria etc who use the UK and US charts as guides to new songs they should be aware of. Fancy Free could have easily charted in any of these European countries as well on the back of the success it achieves in the UK charts. It is a gamble that may pay off because it is a pretty decent single - it is certainly better than the awful crap Justin Bieber releases and he still enjoys chart success. Once you have propelled a song into the top 15 or top 10, people would start to take notice of the song and there would be people who may think, "hey actually this isn't a bad song at all, I will tell my friends about it on social media". This is a cycle that reinforces itself - DJs tend to play songs that are in the charts, this airplay sustains the song's position in the charts as it introduces the song to a new audience.

So if they had picked a period where the song wouldn't have that much competition with big names also releasing new singles, that S$30,000 or £13,300 could quite easily send Fancy Free into the UK top ten in the first week of release and it could potentially stay there for a week or two once it gains some momentum. What would ensure the song achieving a longer stint in the charts would be the opportunity to promote the song on radio stations, popular TV programmes and music websites - and here's the beauty about the UK: it's a small country compared to the USA. Potentially, you could speak to most of these important people in a week as they would mostly be in London. Logistically, it just makes it a lot easier to coordinate a PR campaign in a relatively smaller country like the UK.

The British market would have been a lot easier to break into for Sun Ho.

It would be a fairly big news story if a Singaporean newcomer scores a UK top ten hit on her first attempt at breaking into the UK market, so there would be plenty of people from the British media who would be keen to speak to Sun Ho after Kong Hee's S$30,000 propels her into the UK top ten. After that, who knows? She could keep on plugging the song through live performances at concert events, music festivals and clubs. The acid test would be if the song could maintain a decent chart ranking without Kong Hee pumping S$30,000 a week to buy iTunes downloads - it may fall into oblivion, but maybe, just maybe, it may stay in the top ten and even climb to very close to number one. It is, after all, not a bad song at the end of the day. Set it up right and you never know just how far you may go with a bit of luck.

All this would provide a great launch pad for Sun Ho to launch a second UK single once she has achieved a top ten chart position on her first foray into the British market - a feat that even Madonna didn't achieve. Her first two singles Everybody and Burning Up didn't chart in the UK at all, it was only her third single Holiday that gave Madonna her first taste of UK chart success. Would all this have made any money for Sun Ho? I would not be able to guarantee that - the worst case scenario would be for Fancy Free to spend one week in the charts in the top ten and then fall right out of the top 40 in the following week. In this case, Sun Ho wouldn't have made a penny from that - but at least she would have been remembered as the only Singaporean to ever score a top ten hit in the UK. That is still a pretty good outcome for a worst case scenario - all that the very fair price of just S$30,000, I say that is a pretty good bargain.

What is the best case scenario for Sun Ho now?

And hey, that's just what I can do for Sun Ho for just a modest sum of S$30,000. In another news report, I was astounded to learn that S$500,000 had been spent to buy Sun Ho's unsold albums - good grief. Half a million Singapore dollars, that would be £221,223 (according to September 2009 exchange rates)! Given that it takes just about 30,000 to 50,000 copies sold to reach #1 in the UK charts, that would be enough to sustain Fancy Free at number one on top of the UK charts for at least a few weeks (depending on what she is up against)! It would have easily been one of the biggest hits in the UK of 2009 and undoubtedly thrust her into the headlines as the Singaporean singer to take the UK by storm - that would so easily launch her onto the international stage as a very credible singer with significant British commercial success under her belt. It is unreal that CHC chose to spend that much money buying Sun Ho's unsold albums when that money could so easily have given her incredible success in the UK. Cue #facepalm.

So there you go - that's what I would have done: I would have made Sun Ho target the UK market instead before even trying the US market. The smaller British market is easier to tackle but it punches above its weight in terms of its international influence and success in Britain would have given her so much more credibility to tackle the US market at a later stage in her career. If you're willing to artificially create sales by funneling church funds into iTunes downloads, then I can so easily create some juicy scandals or bitch fights to feed the paparazzi. Nobody wants to read about a boring pastor's wife who is trying to spread Christianity through her music - people do want to read about stories like Britney's descent into madness or the latest episode in the Gwen Stefani vs Courney Love bitch fight/rivalry.

Sun Ho's PR team made so many bad choices which ruined any chances she had.

Here's the biggest irony. Given the amount of money that was at Sun Ho's disposal, she genuinely had the opportunity to become a huge star in the West if only her PR and marketing team knew what the hell they were doing. But no, they were hopeless, useless and clueless. So much money was squandered and they couldn't even have any commercial success to show for it. They had a chance and they screwed it up because they had no idea how PR in this industry works. So here's the moral of the story: if you are going to spend that much money on a project (any project, not just trying to create an international pop star), for crying out aloud, the first step is to hire best experts who know how to help you achieve your goals, rather than fumble around in the dark and squander S$50 million along the way before you realize, whoops, we screwed up and have nothing to show for it. Damn. #Ooops

As always, please do let me know what your thoughts are on this issue and leave a comment. Thank you for reading.