Pearl Jam Rocks 20th Birthday with Digital Hunt

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Taking a cue from hip hop mogul Jay-Z’s scavenger hunt to uncover pages from his memoir, Pearl Jam is the latest artist to leverage its cult-like community in combination with digital tactics. One of the largest bands to emerge during the Seattle grunge scene of the early 90ies, Pearl Jam is celebrating its 20th birthday, 20 years since the release of its debut album “Ten” on August 27, 1991. The band that was once known for refusing to make music videos and boycotting Ticketmaster due to its service charge to consumers on ticket sales is leveraging digital tactics for engagement and to generate interest and buzz leading up to Cameron Crowe’s “Pearl Jam Twenty” documentary.

Last week, Pearl Jam’s label Sony Music announced a scavenger hunt to reveal the tracklisting for the documentary soundtrack, as opposed to routinely posting it on their website and/or Facebook page, issuing a press release and publicists sharing it with select media. The latter sounds similar to when we undergo a traditional product launch – press release, pre-briefs and launch day coverage. Sure, this works in some instances and absolutely can generate strong stories (assuming your product is good!), but the 20-year old band wanted to up level its impact, as do our clients in many instances.

The scavenger hunt  was promoted via Pearl Jam’s Twitter account and Facebook page, and supplemented with traditional media coverage in two Billboard stories – a key outlet for any entertainment brand. Clues were released every 30 minutes on the Pearl Jam Twenty website, “Pearl Jam Twenty’s” website PJ20.com and amplified via @PearlJam and the hashtag #PJ20, leading contest participants to physical and virtual places ranging from the Jumbotron in New York’s Times Square to the LiveNation Facebook page to a Google ad appearing in search results for Pearl Jam 20 (sources: Billboard). The first person to find each track name and tweet it using #PJ20 won a numbered Pearl Jam Twenty poster with the track title and location written on it.

According to Billboard, twelve hours following the start of the contest, the number of Pearl Jam mentions on Twitter quadrupled, reaching 5.9 million tweets globally, and drew more than 65,000 views of PJ20.com, which according to Columbia Records was the record label’s most-viewed page of the day.

Will the scavenger hunt impact sales of the “Pearl Jam Twenty” book and soundtrack and viewership of the documentary? Time will tell as to if sales meet Pearl Jam’s success metrics and how the results compare to traditional promotion efforts. But as I write this post listening to one of my all time favorite songs of all time, Pearl Jam’s Yellow Ledbetter, what I can say is the scavenger hunt generated a significant amount of buzz, reaching people who previously weren’t aware of “Pearl Jam Twenty” (myself included), and shows a twenty year old grunge band can still innovate.