One more thought, I sensed a reluctance on CherryMoons part to back Purple Rain (I'm thinking of the tweet you sent out about how Prince meant so much more than just PR etc). But if this campaign is about introducing younger people to Prince, then Purple Rain is your best shot. Most kids of today haven't even heard of Prince, let alone Purple Rain. It's his most commercial song, it's epic, it's well-loved by the 25-40yr old demographic. I really think that song would be your best shot. And then we all need to work together to try and think of ways we can get people beyond Prince's hardcore fanbase on board to make this work. And we need to focus on just ONE song this time.

[Edited 12/24/16 4:06am]

MattyJam said:

I think for something like this to really happen, Prince fans would need to unite (especially the UK ones). I don't know how many UK fans there are who check prince.org on a regular basis, but I bet it's upwards of 1,000. If every single one of them downloaded the same Prince track on the same date, he would be guarenteed a UK top 75 entry at the least on an average week. If those same 1,000 fans, all shared and retweeted on social media, it might even gain some attention from outside the Prince fan community, which is what you really need to make a chart campaign work.

This Christmas campaign started a little late in the day. I think if CherryMoon is serious about an April campaign, then he needs to start pimping it from January onwards.

The reason the Rage Against The Machine Christmas number 1 worked five or six years ago, was because of a social media campaign urging people to stop that years X Factor song from being the Christmas number 1. People were sick of X Factor ruining a UK chart tradition, and Rage Against The Machine stood for everything that was anti-Simon Cowell and anti-X Factor. You have to find a way to engage large numbers of people to make something like this feasable and worthwhile. You have to reach beyond the Prince fan community if there was ever going to be a successful chart campaign for a Prince song. How you do that is another matter altogether, I guess that's the million dollar question.

But Prince is a legend, and people have a lot of goodwill for the man, even outside of the hardcore fans. It is a crime when you think Prince has only had one UK number 1 single. If an April campaign goes ahead, I think CherryMoon should back the most popular Prince song (Purple Rain) and try and campaign outside the Prince fan community for it to be number one on the anniverary of his passing.

Try and think about different angles to promote it. There are a lot of real music lovers out there who aren't necessarily big Prince fans, but would certainly recognise and appreciate that he was a musical genius. Those are the people you need to try and get support from. You need to try and get the 25-40yr old demographic to come together to show the kids of today what real music sounds like.

[Edited 12/24/16 3:58am]

^Thank you for your feedback MattyJam, it really helps to know how other fans feel about this and constructive criticism is always useful.

When the idea of the campaign initially came to mind, the purpose for me was to give non-fans a glimpse of another aspect of Prince's music genre outside of Purple Rain and Kiss. And that simply because many of my non-fans friends had commented on the annoyingly excessive air-play Purple Rain had already had back in the Spring. I thought people were ready to hear something else from Prince, the Prince behind Purple Rain. Some didn't even know he had done other things at all (apart from The Most Beautiful Girl In The World).

In hindsight I now realise that you are totally right in terms of the strategy (i.e. purely aiming at the charts), and that no matter how 'boring' or 'overplayed' for some, Purple Rain still remains THE Prince anthem for life and I don't think anything or anyone will ever be able to change that (it is one of my favourite too). So yes, had the initial intent been been to simply hit those charts, I would have accepted that fact and used the song for our campaign. Except it wasn't. And despite that I was pleasantly surprised that 'The Cross' sort of became the Prince4Christmas anthem instead and it was nice to see so many go along (if not all) with the plan (THANK YOU!).

But since numbers are crucial in this kind of game, I agree with what you said and it is a fact that our main hurdle was the let down from those who refused to play the game and instead just sat back and criticised it. The most important thing when doing a campaign for an artist is for everyone to UNITE and work together on it. Without this important part played by the fans, nothing can happen and the fans must really understand this.

In terms of reaching out to other groups (including non-fans), there actually was a lot of background work going on at the same time, and we did reach out to many more groups and artists far beyond the Prince community. You can see some of this if you scroll down all the tweets we have sent out. There has also been dozens of emails and facebook pm's sent out to many different celebrities big and small and radiostations /presenters too, but - as already said - without a substantial number of supporters within our own community - we won't be able to convince them either. Sadly we have been turned down by many groups within the community itself, which was a great shame. Interestingly, some of them suddenly joined us at our most popular times.

BIG THANKS to Leslievette, Bankinherpocket, Guitarhero, Lovejunky, Dibblekins, Spayne, Barbara Annanburton,Prince~Eternity💜, NightChild Ethereal,Gb{+► (on Twitter), Casey Rain and Kim Camilia (The Violet Reality), Troy Gua (LLP), @ParrisHarris, Anna Fantastic, George Clinton and Bootsy Collins for their kind and willing support. I will never emphasise enough how grateful I was for their help. Sorry if I am not mentioning everyone, there were so many of you...

In summary, I will simply stress how crucial a role the fans involvement plays in all of this. It is in fact the starting point for any campaign Prince or otherwise.

PS. Additional info for those of you who don't know that yet :

- I am a (French) female
- Not a newbie at all (Prince fan since 1986 / first joined here in 2007)

- Met Prince personnally and still missing him more than one could ever imagine...

- The campaign was not focusing on Christmas, only aiming at the 'Christmas' charts because of their impact it has on the British nation (although not as much as it used to as some of you have already pointed out).
- As for the choice of 'The Cross' - which has also been harshly criticised in connection with him being a JW's - it was a song that was chosen for Judith Hill to sing (she did this beautifully) at the October celebrations. One of his most poignant songs that most participants voted for.

[Edited 12/25/16 5:19am]

^ beautiful Response Cherry Moon Pie..

You didnt get defensive and kept on pointe...

and............

you met Prince Personally....

Lucky Girl....

Lovejunky said:

^ beautiful Response Cherry Moon Pie..

You didnt get defensive and kept on pointe...

and............

you met Prince Personally....

Lucky Girl....

Thank you!

CherryMoon57 said:

MattyJam said:

I think for something like this to really happen, Prince fans would need to unite (especially the UK ones). I don't know how many UK fans there are who check prince.org on a regular basis, but I bet it's upwards of 1,000. If every single one of them downloaded the same Prince track on the same date, he would be guarenteed a UK top 75 entry at the least on an average week. If those same 1,000 fans, all shared and retweeted on social media, it might even gain some attention from outside the Prince fan community, which is what you really need to make a chart campaign work.

This Christmas campaign started a little late in the day. I think if CherryMoon is serious about an April campaign, then he needs to start pimping it from January onwards.

The reason the Rage Against The Machine Christmas number 1 worked five or six years ago, was because of a social media campaign urging people to stop that years X Factor song from being the Christmas number 1. People were sick of X Factor ruining a UK chart tradition, and Rage Against The Machine stood for everything that was anti-Simon Cowell and anti-X Factor. You have to find a way to engage large numbers of people to make something like this feasable and worthwhile. You have to reach beyond the Prince fan community if there was ever going to be a successful chart campaign for a Prince song. How you do that is another matter altogether, I guess that's the million dollar question.

But Prince is a legend, and people have a lot of goodwill for the man, even outside of the hardcore fans. It is a crime when you think Prince has only had one UK number 1 single. If an April campaign goes ahead, I think CherryMoon should back the most popular Prince song (Purple Rain) and try and campaign outside the Prince fan community for it to be number one on the anniverary of his passing.

Try and think about different angles to promote it. There are a lot of real music lovers out there who aren't necessarily big Prince fans, but would certainly recognise and appreciate that he was a musical genius. Those are the people you need to try and get support from. You need to try and get the 25-40yr old demographic to come together to show the kids of today what real music sounds like.

[Edited 12/24/16 3:58am]

^Thank you for your feedback MattyJam, it really helps to know how other fans feel about this and constructive criticism is always useful.

When the idea of the campaign initially came to mind, the purpose for me was to give non-fans a glimpse of another aspect of Prince's music genre outside of Purple Rain and Kiss. And that simply because many of my non-fans friends had commented on the annoyingly excessive air-play Purple Rain had already had back in the Spring. I thought people were ready to hear something else from Prince, the Prince behind Purple Rain. Some didn't even know he had done other things at all (apart from The Most Beautiful Girl In The World).

In hindsight I now realise that you are totally right in terms of the strategy (i.e. purely aiming at the charts), and that no matter how 'boring' or 'overplayed' for some, Purple Rain still remains THE Prince anthem for life and I don't think anything or anyone will ever be able to change that (it is one of my favourite too). So yes, should the initial intent have been been simply to hit those charts, I really should have accepted that fact and used the song for our campaign. Except it wasn't. And despite that I was pleasantly surprised that 'The Cross' sort of became the Prince4Christmas anthem instead and it was nice to see so many go along (if not all) with the plan (THANK YOU!).

But since numbers are crucial in this kind of game, I agree with what you said and it is a fact that our main hurdle was the let down from those who refused to play the game and instead just sat back and criticised it. The most important thing when doing a campaign for an artist is for everyone to UNITE and work together on it. Without this important part played by the fans, nothing can happen and the fans must really understand this.

In terms of reaching out to other groups (including non-fans), there actually was a lot of background work going on at the same time, and we did reach out to many more groups and artists far beyond the Prince community. You can see some of this if you scroll down all the tweets we have sent out. There has also been dozens of emails and facebook pm's sent out to many different celebrities big and small and radiostations /presenters too, but - as already said - without a convincing number of supporters within our own community - we won't be able to convince them either. Sadly we have been turned down by many groups within the community itself, which was a great shame. Interestingly, some of them suddenly joined us at our most popular times.

BIG THANKS to Lovejunky, Dibblekins, Spayne, Barbara Annanburton, NightChild Ethereal, GB (on Twitter), Casey Rain and Kim Camilia (The Violet Reality), Troy Gua (LLP), Anna Fantastic, George Clinton and Bootsy Collins for their kind and willing support. I will never emphasise enough how grateful I was for their help. Sorry if I am not mentioning everyone, there were so many of you...

In summary, I will simply stress how crucial a role the fans involvement plays in all of this. It is in fact the starting point for any campaign Prince or otherwise.

PS. Additional info for those of you who don't know that yet :

- I am a female
- Not a newbie at all (first joined here in 2007)

- Met Prince personnally

- The campaign was not focusing on Christmas, only aiming at the 'Christmas' charts because of their impact it has on the British nation (although not as much as it used to as some of you have already pointed out).
- As for the choice of 'The Cross' - which has also been harshly criticised in connection with him being a JW's - it was a song that was chosen for Judith Hill to sing (she did this beautifully) at the October celebrations. One of his most poignant songs that most participants voted for.

[Edited 12/24/16 5:15am]

Argh, sorry, didn't realise your were female. My apologies.

I applaud your efforts for this campaign, I really do. It's a shame the British Prince fan community didn't unite together to support this, but perhaps that's what you need to focus on building between now and April, getting as many British Prince fans as possible to follow on Twitter and FB, ready for the next campaign, so you have larger numbers for the next campaign.

I also felt it was a shame that prince.org didn't show more support. The campaigns prescence on this site was pretty much just limited to this thread, and not everyone will check one thread. If it were on the main page of prince.org it could've reached so many more people. Perhaps they didn't want to associate themselves with this campaign in case it was unsuccessful, which is a shame, because if prince.org had just taken a leap of faith, it really would have helped reach more UK Prince fans.

I think people have to believe that this kind of campaign could work. I bet tonnes of people would come out of the woodwork to support a Prince number 1 campaign if they believed it stood a chance of actually happening. Therein lies the problem, people don't believe in it.

And I can't over-emphasise the importance of it appealing to non-Prince fans as well. The reason why the RATM campaign worked was because of what it stood for. Not everybody who bought the song was necessarily a fan of RATM (I really don't believe RATM have even a fraction of the fans in the UK that Prince has). It worked because people connected en masse with something so anti-establishment.

Perhaps there could be a way of making the next Prince campaign appeal to people who don't necessarily care about Prince getting to number one, but do care about the legacy of timeless music and schooling future generations on real music by real musicians. That is something that I care about and I'm sure lots of serious music fans also care about this. Lets face facts, how many people really care about making Prince number one again? Not even half of his fanbase really care, as they have proven with their lack of support for this campaign. So how do you make people care? You have to tap into something that will make people want to support it. It could be less about making Prince number one and more about picking Purple Rain to represent a cause, to educate the youth of today about real music.

^

In terms of visibility and in their defense, Prince.org DID help us many times by spreading the word on other social media platforms as well as allowing me to evolve quite freely on here without any interference except when militant intervened for a minor issue with an 'irate' customer lol. I do think there is actually a lot more visibility in a regular thread than the stickies, as many of us don't even read them... I have also been able to post our updates on the very popular photo thread as well as 'What song do you have on your mind today' (another one of my babies ), which was quite helpful.

Having said that, I agree that a mention and link on the main 'NEWS' page would have helped in directing the uninformed fans towards the campaign, but it was still relatively easy for all to see. We also occasionally promoted (boosted) our facebook posts, targeting the exact audience that we were looking for and this proved extremely fruitful.

I briefly and temporarily changed the target criteria to exclude 'Prince' related items in the boosted search, in the hope to maximise our results on FB and ended up receiving a lot of abuse from non-fans or ill-informed people spreading erroneous info against the campaign or Prince. As soon as the filter included 'Prince' again, we grew very rapidly and received a lot more positive responses.

I agree on most of what you have said though and will keep all of these important points in mind - in particular on how to carefully market our campaign in terms of its goal(s) - for our next chapter (we're starting first week of January for those interested - watch this space!). This one was a rather interesting learning curve for us all and I am hoping that thanks to all these stepping stones we will be able to propel Prince even further next time.

[Edited 12/24/16 7:39am]

Beautiful & Professional. Great campaign that kept Prince in the s of folks. Amazing job, Miss Cherry!

Awesome stuff and I'm glad to have helped and contributed where I could and I think the chart positions of various songs speak for themselves and that's very cool.

I'm in agreement that if we want to unite behind ONE song in the future and gain some more momentum outside of the community then it's gonna have to be Purple Rain.

Well done, CherryMoon

purplepoppy said:

Beautiful & Professional. Great campaign that kept Prince in the s of folks. Amazing job, Miss Cherry!

Thank you!

Militant said:

Awesome stuff and I'm glad to have helped and contributed where I could and I think the chart positions of various songs speak for themselves and that's very cool.

I'm in agreement that if we want to unite behind ONE song in the future and gain some more momentum outside of the community then it's gonna have to be Purple Rain.

Well done, CherryMoon

Thanks Militant! I agree about Purple Rain too, it would be the perfect emblematic song for April. Another possibility would be to support a new track - released or not - from the PR Deluxe edition (do we know when this is due?), although that could still be a bit of a gamble re. the popularity with non-fans.

[Edited 12/24/16 17:36pm]