Courtesy: Think Tank Marketing
Janet Jackson‘s Discipline is set for release on February 26, but her hard core fans are questioning why Island Records isn’t promoting their icon enough. “2 weeks to go before Discipline is released. Where are the promotions?” wrote one poster on a Janet Jackson forum.
It is hard to tell when you’re a consumer on the outside looking in and you are not privy to the inner workings of record labels. But the good folks over at Think Tank Marketing are working overtime to promote Janet’s CD – and I hear the marketing machine at Island is running on fumes.
For instance, if not for Think Tank Marketing, I wouldn’t know that on Feb. 26:
JANET JACKSON will take over TIMES SQUARE with GOOD MORNING AMERICA at 7AM with a LIVE PERFORMANCE at NOKIA THEATRE!Then she will take over TRL with a SPECIAL PERFORMANCE AT 3PM
And she will be at BEST BUY (between 43 and 44th streets in NY) for an IN-STORE SIGNING AT 6PM!
The problem is not a lack of promotion on the label’s part. The problem is the lack of interest on the part of the target audience of the promotional material – radio stations, media outlets, etc. Entertainment editors are writing scathing reviews of the album, and 8 tracks have already leaked onto the Internets with very little mention in the mainstream press.
So don’t blame the record label which is doing the best it can. Blame an industry that has been lulled into apathy due to the unspoken blacklisting of Janet for that unfortunate Super Bowl halftime incident that she says wasn’t planned. Much will be made of Janet’s failures if Discipline doesn’t make cash registers sing on Feb. 26. But as far as Janet’s hard core fans are concerned, Miss Janet cannot lose.
