Zayn Has No Promo - Tumblr Posts

Thanks for your insightful response on playlists.

You also brought up an expense that so many miss when discussing promo - the cost of flying the artist and their band/team around for appearances and associated expenses.

The story many Louies tell is that Louis had 'no promo' for Walls and its singles because he didn't do SNL or have an Eroda/Niall Storm type campaign, but he spent Oct-mid December on a promo tour of US radio shows, playing small sets at pre Jingle Balls etc. I know he had barely anything post Walls but this kind of mini tour is surely useful in building links, is expensive to fund and yet is usually dismissed as meaningless or not even mentioned in fandom talks about his promo.

I agree that fans have a very narrow definition of what ‘promo’ is (the short version is a lot of people only count content they personally enjoy and things they see as prestigious).  

And I think your point suggests a much more useful and interesting way of looking atm promo.  Rather than asking whether there was enough - as if promo can be measured by weight - I think it’s far more interesting to ask how well spent the money was.  That accepts that labels are not going to invest unlimited resources and that a good promo campaign is one that uses money well.

So while it’s important to acknowledge that that was promo - I think it’s also worth asking whether it was a particularly good use of time and money. I’m not at all convinced that US radio play was a good use of resources for Louis’ album campaign.  Radio is costly and only delivers if you hit big, and I think the chances of that were very low. 

In general, my thoughts about Louis album campaign was that it was super disjointed.  There were good bits, mostly those directed towards the fandom (the stuff that involved collecting location data was probably particularly useful in tour planning, and the mural was great).  But there was incoherence between UK and US, and resources weren’t allocated particualrly strategically.  I think there were external factors that made things so incoherent.  Syco’s capacity was obviously very limited and any money that was spent on early singles would be counted as part of the marketing budget, even though if you were making a plan for the album as a whole you’d do it very differently.

Anyway, this is why I hope that Louis develops his plans for a second album thoroughly before looking for a label.  I think it gives him the right chance of a promo campaign that is coherent and fits his music.