Selling One Direction in America

One direction seem to be on the verge of making it big in America.  They've been there on tour and making personal appearances for about a month now, and the album Up All Night is released there tomorrow.

To promote it they've done a series of media partnerships - see pic - with mainstream and niche companies including AOL, Vevo, RollingStone (!) and Cambio.  There are also a series of competitions, including one where you can win a personalised MP3 message and postcard from the band.

It seems amazing that in 2012 you can launch a mainstream album on one market months after it's been on sale in another.  Surely any rabid Directioner worth their salt would have bought one from the UK, listened to all the tracks on YouTube or found another way to download them?  The point is that music is only one part of the 1D experience, and fans want a physical artefact of the group in addition to the music.  So they want a physical copy, and if they can get a signed one then all the better.  (Recent signings across the states have limited the number of fans to 1,000 per event.  Imagine that - 1,000 fans queueing up to buy physical CDs in a record shop...)

One Direction Paper Dolls - I've been getting a lot of traffic for this search term since I wrote about it last year.  To download the templates, go to the 1DCP site, and then go to task 4 to see the dolls link (see pic above).  Use the arrows on the bottom.  Good luck, Tinkers!