Rock gets dirty

Music fans hit the road

This summer, getting your hands on gig tickets will mean getting your hands dirty.

Up until September, some 5,000 young people aged 16-to-25 are being asked to give just four hours of their time to one of 50 local community projects. In exchange for volunteering, they will receive a ticket to a one-off concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 29th September.

Orange RockCorps is sponsored by the mobile network and spearheaded by RockCorps, an organisation which has run similar events across the US over the last four years. Over 35,000 young people have taken part in the US programme – Boost Mobile RockCorps – netting access to see acts such as Kanye West, Panic At The Disco, Kelis, Nas, Korn, and Nelly. The first confirmed guest to attend the exclusive concert line-up in the UK is rapper Busta Rhymes.

Orange RockCorps is about you giving back to the community. It’s about urban transformation; rebuilding and regenerating the parts of your communities which need it most. “You can’t buy a ticket. You can’t win a ticket. You have to earn this ticket,” states the key campaign message.“Orange RockCorps hopes to inspire thousands of young people to help their community, get involved, and make a real difference through a love of music,” said Stephen Greene, RockCorps Co-Founder and CEO.

Orange RockCorps is powered by Sony Ericsson and will be televised on Channel 4.

So what?: The rise of Generation Free has somewhat disturbed the balance of ‘give and take’ in the music industry, and this campaign goes some way to addressing that. The media often blames music, like videogames and other perceived leisure pursuits of the young, for many of society’s problems. So it’s good to see music taking a stand to rectify that slightly misconceived argument. Orange could have offered free tickets via a competition or some other fairly innocuous platform attempting to capture consumer interest, but instead opted to exercise its corporate social responsibility instead.

Fans are prepared to get their hands dirty for the music they love, as the numerous festival volunteers seen each year testify to. The only slight drawback to the proposal is not having more big names lined up earlier on to draw interest; as a result, the event becomes something of a working mystery tour. Arguably, you could suggest that this makes it even more appealing, and that (based on its previous rooster of artists in the US) it will draw in those people prepared to purchase festival tickets well in advance of any line-up announcements. Over 35% of US participants have volunteered again within 12 months – which shows that it is generating contented users as opposed to just user-generated content.

“This is a really nice CSR-meets-music idea and a clever way to stand out in the often crowded live event space. The challenge will be persuading kids to get their hands dirty; but if the calibre of artists matches the US shows, that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Dom Hodge, Associate Director, FRUKT

http://orangerockcorps.co.uk