The Q magazine published today has a full-page advert for the DVD of Pulse – the 1994 Pink Floyd concert: the one which was supposed to be out last October, which slipped to december, then January, then November 2006. I just checked on Amazon and they have a revised release date of July 10th 2006.
I will believe it when I see it.
Seeing the advert did make me think a bit about the whole point of advertising. There is a famous quote from a businessman who said "I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don't know which half."
I'm no expert, although I do have a CSE grade 1 in Mass Media Studies, but I can think of three main ways in which advertising can work.
- It can persuade you to want something you had never heard of with a hard sell on features or image of a product or service.
- It can promote 'brand awareness' to make consumers recognise your brand and be more inclined to include it in their mental list of possibilities
- It can tell you of the availability of something you already want, where the only thing preventing you buying it is not knowing its there to be bought.
New albums by established artists, a new Harry Potter book, or a new version of software are examples which spring to mind.
Pink Floyd is already a well-know brand so the nebulous concept of brand awareness was obviously not a consideration. Surely everyone who might like them already does and those who don't are unlikely to be persuaded. That just leaves the third option as the point of this advert in Q… but it did not have a release date on it!
Thats wasted advertising money as far as I can see. My first reaction when I saw it was to damn EMI for teasing us again, like they did when they first ran the ads last year. With no release date given I just assumed they were building up to the previously quoted November release date.
This DVD is going to sell itself when it hits the shops anyway, a rare example of 'build it and they will come'. Why spend a fortune on advertising it?
The word was that the original delays (on releasing what is, after all, a 12-year old concert) were that David Gilmour did not want its release to distract from the release of his solo album and the supporting tour. So now the timing now is interesting – Gilmour's tour, or the UK bit anyway, has just finished, and Roger Water's is just hitting the road.
Doesn't bode well for a reunion does it?
Pink Floyd is made up of a load of bloated Tory voting friends of Jeremy Clarkson.
They once sang about being anti establishment now they raise money for the countryside alliance.
I would keep your money for better things!
Given Waters and Gilmour’s comments over the past year I think a reunion is unlikely. For a long, long while at least
I thought it was just Roger Waters who was the countryside alliance nutter, although I can see Nick Mason rubbing along with Clarkson what with all his motor racing and everything.