The relaunch of former social media front-runner Myspace LLC is backed by a $20 million advertising campaign created in-house by owner Specific Media LLC, an Irvine-based digital media company.
The campaign debuted this month with 30- and 90-second “This is Myspace” spots airing across network and cable television, radio and online.
The spots, each set to different music but all with the same content, were developed by Myspace art director Marshall Rake and the company’s chief creative officers, brothers Eric and Keith Tilford. Also pitching in were Christian Parkes, Specific Media’s vice president of global marketing, and April Thrun, vice president of brand development.
Rock Paper Scissors edited the ads, A52 studio completed visual effects, and Lime Studios performed audio post production. All three are based in Santa Monica.
The 90-second version is set to The Orwells’ “Mallrats (La La La),” while the shorter version features “5 to 9” by Fidlar.
The 30-second spot also has a quick, “almost subliminal” flash of ad production credits.
“We thought doing it this way was also part of the fun: getting people to lean in, engage with the spot, and try to decipher who they’re seeing on screen,” Parkes told the Business Journal by email.
The ads promote the idea that, unlike Myspace’s main competitor, Facebook, it is focused on “the creative community, helping both emerging and established artists connect to audiences,” Parkes said.
The longer version of the TV spot features more than 25 musicians and visual artists, such as Chance The Rapper, Pharrell, Erin Wasson, Ciara and several others hanging out in an empty, white space ready to be personalized.
“The diversity of talent is representative of the democracy of the platform, and the spirit invoked is inspired by the energy and vitality of youth,” he said.
A call to action in the spot—“Check us out on Myspace”—was developed by the Myspace community.
“As little as three years ago, the majority of touring bands on the planet ended their sets with those words,” Parkes said. “For the foreseeable future, our theme is simply ‘This is Myspace.’ We know we have a lot to prove, so the straightforward message tries to reflect that awareness. It’s sort of like, ‘Here we are. This is what we’ve got. Check it out.’ ”
Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson founded Myspace in 2003. They sold the then-rising social media site in 2005 to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $560 million. The site’s popularity peaked at 76 million U.S. visitors in October 2008, after which it started losing ad revenue footing to Facebook, which now has more than 1 billion users.
In 2011, Specific Media partnered with former ‘N Sync pop star Justin Timberlake to buy Myspace for $35 million as many observers doubted its former prominence could be revived. A similar sentiment followed the recent launch.
“Wait, a segment on SportsCenter was endorsed by MySpace? Is this 2006?” read a Twitter post.
Beverly Hills-based Myspace accounted for about $15 million of Specific Media’s $228 million in revenue in 2012, while the social network’s operating costs were estimated at $43 million, according to company documents.
Currently, Myspace has 27 million users in the United States and more than 50 million worldwide. It features a new, tiled layout that can be scrolled horizontally and accessed through a mobile application.
Specific Meda is owned by Interactive Media Holdings Inc., also of Irvine.
