Marvin Gaye's Facebook Campaign

If you ever had any doubts about the wisdom of promoting on Facebook, look no further than r&b singer Marvin Gaye. Even though he's been dead for almost 30 years, MG’s become a viral sensation right now. The reason?  Universal Motown, Marvin Gaye’s record label (which was pretty much gutted by parent UMG recently - but that's another story), recently launched a successful Facebook campaign to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his What’s Going On album where the campaign asks fans to post photos of “What’s going on” all over the world.

Fans have responded by loading photos, videos and even editorials, but more important, the campaign drew more fans that I think even Motown thought could happen. Gaye began with fewer than 300,000 fans at the beginning of the week but had increased to more than 940,000 by today. Gaye’s name even became a trending topic on Twitter.

Granted, MG has a legion of built-in fans, but the fact was that they were mobilized and made aware of the new release thanks to the social media campaign. The lesson? Don't take social media promotion lightly. It's been shown to work and work well time and time again.

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