Rage success explained

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Jon Morter, the man responsible for ending Simon Cowell’s long reign of Christmas number ones with a track from alternative rock band Rage Against the Machine, is heading to Cornwall later this month to explain how he achieved his success.

Heralded by the BBC as “one of the biggest shocks in chart history,” Jon’s campaign was one of the first examples of the social networking site Facebook being used to significantly influence consumer buying habits through viral participation.

The event entitled, ‘How I Got Rage Aainst the Machine to UK Christmas No. 1’ will be hosted by University College Falmouth in conjunction with The Hub and Cornwall Social Media Café and will take place on the evening of Wednesday April 28 between 6 and 8pm at the Tremough Campus, Penryn. Tickets to the event will be free of charge following sponsorship from local businesses UKNetWeb, Tonick Media, Niddocks Internet Marketing and Mail Away.

Rage Against the Machine’s Christmas number one was entirely down to the power of Facebook combined with the imagination and initiative of Jon Morter. Jon will explain how he came up with the idea, how he put the campaign together, how he promoted it on Facebook and how it built momentum until it crossed into the mainstream media and achieved its goal of getting the band to the Christmas no. 1, raising over £100k for Shelter in the process.

The event is already achieving strong interest across the south west with guests registering their interest in advance of the ticket release at 1pm on Monday (April 19). Many of the region’s businesses are keen to attend the event with the hope of learning how they may use similar campaigns to generate interest in their own businesses.

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Event organiser and managing director of local web development company, UKNetWeb, Toby Parkins said: “Over the past two years we have been working in partnership with companies of all sizes to help them realise the potential of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Jon’s success in getting Rage Against the Machine to number one forms a powerful case study of how just one man can launch a campaign that competes with the massive reach of a programme such as the X-Factor and TV personality, Simon Cowell.

“It is fantastic to have a speaker of such calibre speaking at an event here in Cornwall. We are proud to be supporting the event along with  the other sponsors who represent the cream of the digital marketing industry here in the south west.”

The event will begin at 6pm for 6.30pm and finish around 8pm. There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end. Guests are invited to pre-register their interest in the event or post questions via the event’s Facebook wall which can be found here.

Business Cornwall is supporting the event as a media sponsor. For those who are unable to attend on the 28th, our video partners Sideways Cornwall will be filming the event for later broadcast.