What Radiohead Can Teach Us About Disruption

James Procter

With everyone having access online to essentially the world of information, discovering something new is big.

Discovery is a massive part of any brand success.

With everyone having access online to essentially the world of information, discovering something new is big. More and more people want to feel like they are the first or are in the leading pack of people that know something before the masses – early adopters if you will. It’s a powerful sentiment that great brands use well through things like sneak peeks, limited releases, and closed betas etc. Essentially something that gets the influencers talking that in turn stimulates the next wave of ‘fast followers’.

With everyone having access online to essentially the world of information, discovering something new is big. More and more people want to feel like they are the first or are in the leading pack of people that know something before the masses – early adopters if you will. It’s a powerful sentiment that great brands use well through things like sneak peeks, limited releases, and closed betas etc. Essentially something that gets the influencers talking that in turn stimulates the next wave of ‘fast followers’.

Radiohead as a band are always doing interesting things both musically and with their music distribution model – a few years ago they tried the ‘honesty box’ approach with fans being able to download the whole album then paying what they wanted to the band. It wasn’t a crazy success but I loved the fact they gave it a crack. Remember, failure is almost always one of the fathers of true innovation.

So around the 1st of May this year, we start to see headlines like “Radiohead removes themselves from the internet” and the music world goes into a bit of a frenzy with people unable to listen to Radiohead on their favourite platforms. Was this the end for Radiohead? Had they had enough and just bought a small island somewhere Skandi to make music just for themselves?

We dipped into our social insights platform, Crimson Hexagon and as the chart below shows, the internet was intrigued with the volume of people talking about Radiohead surging.

Radiohead 1

Crimson Hexagon shows the volume of the Radiohead conversation.

A couple of days later we got the answer – with the world’s attention placed firmly on them, the band released its new album. The perfect closing of the loop.

Radiohead 2

The conversation moves from the disappearance to the new album.

Now before we all rush out and pull our own Radiohead style campaign, this kind of thing is not for every brand. It can go horribly wrong with a backlash of sentiment as people react to being ‘tricked’. It takes confidence and timing and it certainly doesn’t hurt if the album you are releasing is a belter.

Well played Radiohead!