The ‘JK Wedding Dance’ bounced around the internet a few weeks ago… When I clicked on it, I didn’t recognize the people or the song, nor did I catch the interest in it. But I started snooping around about it when thinking about the Media, Technology and Society class. It turns out that a few people have thought about it. If I told you that it was a brilliant money generating video, you might think that it was viral marketing a la these Levi’s commercials. But it’s not. The song is Chris Brown’s ‘Forever,’ and it’s popularity has skyrocketed one year after the release, the iTunes downloads hit #4, and #3 on Amazon’s MP3 list (Amazon sells MP3s?).
YouTube’s business blog notes:
This traffic is also very engaged — the click-through rate (CTR) on the “JK Wedding Entrance” video is 2x the average of other Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this newfound interest in downloading “Forever” goes beyond the viral video itself: “JK Wedding Entrance” also appears to have influenced the official “Forever” music video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last week.
Part two of this story is that Chris Brown has been in the press more for his domestic abuse. (Click here for a sobering statistic that over half of Boston teenagers think that Rhianna was to blame for the incident). When I found the JK Wedding website, this issue was not lost on them. They write:
We hope to direct this positivity to a good cause. Due to the circumstances surrounding the song in our wedding video, we have chosen the Sheila Wellstone Institute. Sheila Wellstone was an advocate, organizer, and national champion in the effort to end domestic violence in our communities.
Even if the bride didn’t get into the dance too much, I do give them both credit for this. The Sheila Wellstone Institute is here.