A Comprehensive Promotion Guide for AFI
 

A Comprehensive Promotion Guide for AFI

Created/compiled by ixnay and Alli

An archived copy of this guide with possible updates can be found at www.liberty-lyrics.8k.com – The Complete AFI Series by ixnay and Alli.

As most of you may have noticed, Fanscape's 'The Fifth Column' is currently very inactive, if still existing as a promotional means for the band. So we have decided to create and compile a large list of 'missions' for everyone to use as a reference/checklist. You do not have to do these, these are not official. But feel free to add to these and to tweak them in this forum (do not steal the guide for your personal or commercial websites), and provide feedback on your success or lack of it in doing these missions. The missions are in a grading order from easiest to most difficult. Of course some of you may find some easy. Also, the difficulty is called on the level of creativeness needed and cost. Cost? Don't freak. Most are free. Any that require a cost means they are EXTREMELY effective forms of promotion.

DISCLAIMER: We are not representatives of AFI. We do NOT know the laws of your land. Please use this as reading material only. If you choose to follow these missions, please find out if they are legal to your area first. We claim no responsibility for your ignorance.




Firstly, what is The Fifth Column?

• The Fifth Column (5C) is a community of sorts that help promote the band on various levels to different areas. There are two main sections - online and offline. The 'official' offline team is US only. The online team is worldwide, but specialises in US activities. Every two to 4 weeks (give or take a month) an email was dispatched to the online team to do a certain mission. You then logged your activity on the site. The people who did the most work were rewarded with posters and stickers and stuff. Those who went out of their way to promote the band in a unique fashion were given a highlight spot in the mission emails. The Fifth Column is currently not active. So it's up to us to promote the band ourselves. That's why this has been created.

(requires little to no creativity, skill, cost or work)

• #D1 – Let your friends know who AFI are, and why you like them. Let them listen to AFI if they are interested, but don't force it down their throat. Generally, just letting them know the band name is good enough as when they see the band on TV or hear the band on the radio, they'll recall you talking about them and will possibly enjoy the song.

• #D2 – Give your friends a few songs, or lend them a CD for a while. Let them listen to it in their own time. If they spark up the curiosity to actually go play it, chances are they'll be more into the music when it is played.

• #D3 – This is a rather grey area of promotion. Wear your AFI merchandise when you go out. The problem here is, a lot of people will have no idea what AFI is. So a search of AFI on Google will return a high ratio of American Film Institution. A country specific search outside of America will prove to provide even worse results as AFI is not as popular outside the states. The best place to actually wear your AFI merchandise is within an area where the normal person can come to the conclusion that AFI is a band. An example would be a show or a trip to your record store.

• #D4 – If you drive or live in a dorm, play some AFI when people are around. I know that going out and being the designated driver can often land you dropping some friend's friend home. So what better time to infiltrate another possible fan. Living in a dorm is another good area. You will most likely have to make friends with current strangers. Music can break the ice, and allows you to mould a new fan.

• #D5 – When over at a friend's house and using their internet connection to browse, add www.afireinside.net to their bookmarks. You can add a custom title to the bookmark such as "A good band" or something more creative hopefully.

• #D6 – As above, only this time download a simple mp3 and place it in their play list or on their desktop. Who isn't going to give a listen to a random mp3 you don't recall downloading?

• #D7 – As you have probably read before, 'The AFI Dollar' is a popular and fun form of promotion. This involved writing AFI on your dollar bills. However, as stated in #D3, AFI means nothing to anyone not a fan. A much more effective form of 'The AFI Dollar' is to write the official AFI website on it. Now, I have seen plenty of examples of how people have taken on this mission. Let me say I am not impressed. It is NOT an offence to mark money. However, it IS an offensive to deface it. For example, writing AFI in big letters across the whole face of the note is defacing and down right stupid. Where American bills say "In God we trust", crossing out God and writing AFI so as to say "In AFI we trust", is very disrespectful and also stupid. It is another form of defacing. In order to do and maintain this mission, I suggest you use common sense. This can be a rather fun mission, and it is an ongoing one. Just remember, keep it neat. Website over band name. DO NOT POST ABOUT YOUR AFI MONEY ON THE BOARD. IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE AND MAKES PEOPLE GO WEIRD.

• #D8 – This is a highly controversial 'official' mission with a more sensical twist. The Fanscape mission involved going to message boards and posting about AFI's new single and new album. This was rather disastrous in some aspects as most of the posting was complete spam and most popular boards received multiple people spamming them. When undertaking a mission like this, please by mindful of the rules and guidelines of the other board. Don't sign up just to Spam AFI. This is 100% wrong in my eyes, and if it brings the AFI board into disrepute, you will be banned from the AFI board. My suggestion is not to sign up to random boards at all! Instead, change you avatar/signature/caption/screen name to an AFI related theme. If a topic calls for input on bands, you know what to do. Do not create threads saying "Check out this band". No one likes them, and you generally whine when other bands do it to your board. Empathise.

• #D9 – This coincides with the above mission. Most of you have and use MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger, ICQ etc. A good way to promote AFI here is to just change your screen name to some AFI lyrics or the AFI website. Make sure you note the band's name in your screen name though. Alternatively, AOL and Microsoft Messengers allow for display pictures/avatar. Use them to promote AFI as well. In your profile, you can add the AFI website.

• #D10 – Myspace, LiveJournal, Blogger users – this one is for you. Simply create a section or post about AFI as a band and what they mean to you. Be sure to include their website link. I have seen a few allow for a "Currently Listening To:" section. Simple… AFI.

This concludes the Dork Missions. See below for the next level of missions.

(requires some creativity, skill, cost or work)

• #R1 – This is a simple one to start off with. It is also an ongoing mission, and we need more people doing this one. Go to all your local and major record stores. Check their stock of AFI CDs. Missing a few? None at all? Don't walk away! Request the store personnel to order in some of the AFI catalogue. If they give you a blank stare, give them a helping hand. The easiest way to tell them to check the Nitro Records catalogue and the Universal Catalogue (for Sing the Sorrow). If the store claims to "specialise" in records (vinyl), then get them to stock up some Nitro Catalogue coloured 12" releases. Another good one is the Sessions Records Catalogue for the Bombing the Bay 7" split with Swingin' Utters. This will definitely save some fans spending 20 dollars too much for it on eBay as it is only worth 4 dollars.

• #R2 – This also coincides with the previous mission. This is for the record stores that 'specialise' or hold a merchandise section. Do they same as above. This time, tell them to check the Cinderblock Catalogue. Plenty of AFI gear there. If they decline to, ask them once more. If not, leave them alone. Most stores won't get in merchandise if they are unsure of its selling power/turnover.

• #R3 – We are once again going to be doing some record store work. This time it's the online department. Find some top independent or major online record stores. Do the same as above, but this time through email or phone! Couldn't be simpler really. Only do these after you check their stock. Missions are not a race.

• #R4 – This mission branches into the media and will focus on DJs and VJs (radio and television). Find your local radio stations that play mainstream, indie, punk, rock, alternative etc. and get their request line information. If you want to go one step better, post this contact information on The Official AFI Message Board in the 5C forum. Give them a call and get your friends to do it to. Request lots of AFI. If you prefer to see videos of your favourite band, then get your main video segment's details and post them in the 5C forum and get requesting! This may cost money due to phone calls, but lots of request lines are toll free.

• #R5 – A mission that requires some writing creativity. If you lack this, you can attempt #R6. Have a local zine? School magazine? Newspaper, handout? Great. An excellent chance for you to spread the word of AFI. If you have a local zine, write up a review of AFI's career, album, or show. If you have a school magazine, write an article on music in general and place some reference to AFI, or do an album review. If you have a newspaper, try a local show review or album review. A handout is good for album previews. Remember; always include the official AFI website link. Bring the information to them!

• #R6 – If you have sub-good writing skills, write a letter to the editor about AFI. Most printed papers and magazine have a section for letters to the editor. I know that I enjoy reading that section! Give them an overview of the band and what they have done/mean to you. A website link in this will often be deleted from the printed copy by the editor, but you can try.

• #R7 – Are you in a band? Have you ever had the school ask you to play for them? Ever considered asking if you can arrange a lunchtime 'battle of the bands' for a week? Not only will this look good on your school participation and involvement record, it allows you to express your creativity in an area you know and promote AFI at the same time. A perfect package! Hell, if all goes well, it could become a permanent fixture encompassing various style of music each week. The school will love you. Anyway, onto how this works. The main focus for AFI promotion here is for newsletters about the event and the songs you choose to play. The newsletters can have band names and websites for the genre of that week. When you are up to play, why not throw in an AFI cover and a quick shout out to the band? Sounds nice to me.

• #R8 – This is the first broad mission in the guide. This allows for extreme flexibility. School related once again to follow the pattern. I know in English we have had to use poetry, song lyrics, books etc. as related texts or even core material. AFI is there. What about speeches on stuff? AFI can be there for album review. What about art? I am sure a lot of AFI fans love art. How about some AFI-style artwork which can be used to promote the band? Essays on forms of art? AFI is there as well. You can cover a lot of your bases with school and AFI. I'll let you decide how to best promote the band in this area. Your creativity better suits you than my instructions.

• #R9 – Create an AFI Website. This is also a previous 5C mission. It's a good hobby and you can learn some skills for the business world too. There isn't much that needs to be said on this as it is pretty straight forward. Try to do something different on your site. Something every other site doesn't do. That will determine the success of your site. Don't post personal information, and do not steal information. Always ask to uses parts of someone else's work and then give credit when they say it is ok. Stealing material from a site is a breach of intellectual copyright and you can potentially land in some trouble. Best thing to do is be original and creative.

• #R10 – Have a website that isn't AFI related? Place an AFI banner/news box on your unrelated site. You may get some unusual traffic to the site, but you may create a new fan. It's all worth it. The 5C has some interesting sponsor branded news boxes. But some unsponsored/clean banners too. Make sure the banner is hyper linked to the AFI website.

Congratulations on finishing the Rizzo Missions. Continue below to move to the next level of missions.

(requires a level of creativity, skill, cost and work)

• #P1 - This is the first mission that will require some money in terms of ink. With this mission, we are going to create and print a series of fliers. A flier is simply a piece of paper advertising/promoting something, distributed in large quantities. For this mission, we will require 100 fliers to start out with assuming there are 5 independent and major record stores in your area. Work on a ratio of 20:1. 20 fliers per store, per week. If you find these fliers going early in the week, try 50:1. I think a good size is to evenly place 6 fliers per sheet of paper. For this mission, we will use black and white print. Make a design of your choice, but make it promoting an album in specific. Not just the band! To reach 100 fliers, we will need 17 sheets of paper and have 2 fliers left over. These can be your master copies to keep. Go to your local stores, and place a pile of 20 fliers at their usual front of store flier location (where the free street mags are).

• #P2 - This mission is similar to the previous. However, this time we will do some sneaky work to increase the amount of people who see the flier! You can do this on the same ration as above, although I think that's a rather inadequate amount for this mission. I am moving towards 70:1 to 100:1. Print off all these fliers. Go to your local record stores and find the most popular free street magazine that relates to AFI's music. Now simply add a flier into each copy of the mag. This is almost guaranteed to get the person who picks a copy up to look at what the flier is about! This saves you hundreds of dollars of printing an ad in the paper. The only downfall is it is limited to your local area, and requires a lot of printing. But this is highly effective, and I recommend this as one of the best forms of promotion.

• #P3 – Let's up it once more. If you are comfortable with 70:1 printing, then we can stick to this. If you want to print more, do so. This time, we are doing a 1:1 method. Remember when cars would get swamped with fliers on their windshield under the wipers? Slowly that has died down and I haven't seen it for ages. Well, let's use this to our advantage. If you have yellowish orange paper, use that – Will explain soon. In order for someone to not be annoyed driving home, they have to remove the flier. They will almost certainly take a look at the flier. Now, some people won't look at the flier though. This is where some sneaky tactics come into play. Find out what colour your parking tickets are in your area. See if you can find that colour paper to buy. Now print off your fliers on this paper and go around public car parks or down some streets spreading the word under wipers. They are guaranteed to look at it thinking they have a parking ticket! You can play with their sense of humour (hopefully they have it) by writing a message on the coloured flier relating to them thinking it was a ticket. Example: "Surprise!" or "Not what you thought? Nor is this band!."

• #P4 - With the fliers once more, let's go back to plain white paper. If you don't like people, you probably won't like this one. This is your simple hand out fliers on the street promotion. It is sometimes effective as people can actually ask you questions straight away which may keep their interest long enough to check them out! Doing this after gigs is also good.

• #P5 – This mission involves A4 (210 x 297mm) size fliers for promotion. Find a local billboard wall, and place the A4 (210 x 297mm) fliers/posters on this wall. You can also post them on light posts if not illegal in your area. In my area, this is common practice. This is probably best to do at night time so people don't heckle you. This is a common form of professional advertising.

• #P6 – Letterboxes may be fun to blow up, but did you know you can use them to let people know about AFI? Left over fliers or A4 (210 x 297mm) posters can be used in a letterbox drop run. For real estate agents, this is a huge practice. So why not make the most of different methods of advertising?

• #P7 – How many of you own a mobile phone? I thought so. How about an AFI ring-tone? AFI operator logo? AFI picture messages? We can use these as a form of promotion. These may cost a few dollars, but most are good quality. A well made AFI ring tone may sound amazing. You may even get friends or strangers asking what ring tone you have. If you get that question, you've basically made a fan. Send AFI picture messages to friends and maybe they'll send to their friends. Almost like chain mail, but a more pleasant variety. These methods may not work at all, but if they make one new fan in the world, they are successful.

• #P8 – Going back to the fliers and posters once again. If you are currently at school or university/college, you can infiltrate these places with AFI promotion. Most of these educational facilities have a public notice board. Free space to place your promotion. My university has a high traffic area around the lifts. There is a desk in this area which contains sheets informing people where their classes are. 50 fliers going in one day easily.

• #P9 – If any of you know how to make stickers, then you are at an advantage here. Stickers are an excellent form of promotion. Who doesn't like stickers? I love them. Now, the first method of sticker promotion involves getting some. You'll have to decide how to do this. You can get them made for cheap if you get lots. Now we will head back to the record stores. Place these stickers where you placed your fliers. These will be snapped up quicker than the fliers, so time your use of them. Weekends are more effective as the younger fans seem to be the new generation. Remember to put the AFI website link on the stickers!!!

• #P10 – With these stickers, you can also place one on your car… or your neighbour's car… ok, just yours. I love reading bumper stickers. This is a rather simple mission, but requires dedication if you have a nice car.

Here's a bonus Phoenix Mission

• #P11 – If you are a skateboarder, surfboarder, snowboarder, skier, etc. then stick the sticker on your craft. Small mission, but you can lead it into other areas. Maybe stick the stickers at the lip of your local ramps?

Congratulations on finishing the Phoenix Missions. Continue to the final level of Missions below.

(has a considerable level of risk or cost)

• #C1 – This method of promotion may not be acceptable by AFI or their label. So this can be here for reading material, idea provoking, or for you to find an answer to. This involves the record store again. If you haven't made friends with them by now, something is wrong. This time take along a CD-R of maybe 2 or 3 AFI songs. Once again, this may not be legal. If you do it, add a Read Me.txt file on the CD so they can find details about the band. Include the AFI Website. I'd say about 20 CDs per week. CD-Rs cost around 20 cents these days. So this isn't very expensive.

• #C2 – This uses the idea of the first Celluloid Mission, but makes it more legal. Instead of burning songs/mp3s onto CD-Rs, we will add freely available music things. For example, the Valentines Day flash video created to promote AFI. Or the Russian executable program promoting Sing the Sorrow. All these forms of material are available through www.liberty-lyrics.8k.com (see the Video Channel section). 20 CDs per week with a Read Me.txt with details on the band ad their website link.

• #C3 – Going back to skateboarding, you may have a local skate park. Lots of local skate parks allow for graffiti to keep it off the streets. If this is the case in your area, create an AFI stencil and get painting. Make sure this is legal in your area! Some other places also allow for graffiti to keep it off buildings. An example is Bondi Beach in Sydney. This is good because it is in an area where people can make an educated guess towards AFI being a band. So a website link is not necessary. You should probably do this when the skate park is not in use so as not to aggravate the skaters who have right of way.

• #C4 – Ever seen buttons on eBay reaching around 30 dollars for 3 pins? Well the reality is they only cost around 10 – 20 cents to make maximum with a child's button maker. Humans love freebies. Go to your record store with a dozen home made pins and place them where the free street mags are. Maybe three a day because placing 12 will probably encourage the store to pick them up and sell them, or a greedy person to take them all. Go around to stores and find out which stores embrace this idea the best and stick with it. Where's the satisfaction selling them on eBay?

• #C5 – Some of you may disagree with this method of "promotion". Well, it's not promotion. But it does support the band and help the fans. It involves preventing the sale of bootleg videos on eBay. Most turn over around 50-100 US dollars for low quality videos which can be found on IRC anyway in better quality. I know a few fans have been helping to stop this for a while, and I have been doing it for a few months now. Here is how you can help. If you find a bootleg item, look for the Item Number. The go here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/bootlegs.html and click "Report" near the bottom. This will open up a reporting form where you can enter up to 10 item numbers at a time. If you find 11, report 10 in one form, and the final one in another form. The more reports per bootleg, the more chance of them closing it and warning the bootlegger. I have been able to get a few pure money hungry bootleggers suspended, so it is possible to get a handle on this problem. If anyone can contact AFI or speaks to them, ask them about the VeRO Program on eBay.

• #C6 – This is my absolute favourite form of promotion. I have seen this one in action and it is amazingly effective. Once again, this may be illegal in your area (although it causes no damage whatsoever). This involves heading to your town centre and writing "AFI – www.afireinside.net" across the pavement a few times per main street. They will last a few days before council, rain, shoes get rid of it. Now, this may not be effective just yet. But do this once per weekend for a month, and I guarantee you that a HUGE amount of people will have checked the site out. It's a great form of promotion! Don't do this on walls because people look down when they walk. And don't do it only once in one place. That defeats the interesting method of promotion, and will ultimately fail as a form of promotion.

You have finally reached the end of the Missions. If you have done all the listed Missions, then you are an awesome promoter. If you actually followed the missions in order from Dork to Celluloid, then you were probably surprised by how fun it actually was. As a bonus however, I will add some suggestions that have been brought up on the board by various people. Credit will be given where needed.

(AFI fan suggestions)

• #B1: usedpunx
  If you have a school/college/university radio station, simply play some AFI tracks on the air. This may be illegal in your area, so always check before you do it. If you work in a store, play some AFI as well. Also illegal in areas.

• #B2: N/A
  Vote for AFI on voting sites whenever they are in a competition online. If they beat the bands/people that other people prefer, they will wonder why they were beaten and check out who AFI are.

• #B3: PUnkYBewster13
  This is a rather 'sit-at-home-bored' method of promotion, but you could have some fun with it. Sick of telemarketing companies calling you up to promote their product? Tell them that you already own their product, then tell ask them if they have heard of AFI. Try promoting the band this way. It would be interesting just to see how they handle it. This does NOT involve prank calls!

• #B4: GracieK
  A very unique way of promoting AFI. You know how stationery stores sell pens? Hehe. Well, they usually have pads to test the flow/thickness of the ink and ball point in that section. Draw a picture and write "AFI – www.afireinside.net". Free promotion while shopping.

They were the only 4 acceptable forms of promotion we found in the 5C forum.