Celebrity exclusives, streaming concert footage and full-length motion pictures in IRC-Galleria
The super-popular Finnish social networking service
IRC-Galleria – a part of Sulake’s product
portfolio – has done recently such cool new stuff, that it is almost compulsory to blog about it!
So here goes.
To begin with it is important to note that
IRC-Galleria reaches on a weekly
basis almost 50% of the Finnish population between 15-24 year olds - the reach is just astonishing.
Thus you can imagine how interesting the service is for e.g. bands, artists, movie promoters etc.
In November
the Finnish metal band
Mokoma and IRC-Galleria arranged
together probably the world’s first online community gig. The band had decided to release their new
album in a live concert (before it came to the stores) and this concert was also broadcasted live
to their
fan community in IRC-Galleria. Fans
got also live backstage footage as well a change to chat with the band during the event. The live
concert was attended by only 500 people, but close to 5,000 fans got to see the concert online in
IRC-Galleria! The response from the fans was super positive and boosted record sales as well ☺
As Finland’s definitive # 1 social networking
service, IRC-Galleria is filled with artist fan communities and Christmas presented a perfect time
for the artists to thank their fans with exclusive material. This was done through a very special
“hard-core Christmas calendar”
campaign, which offers the community members somewhat unusual surprises.
Here are just some of the extra-special treats: unplugged live performances by many known
Finnish artists e.g.
Hanoi Rocks and
The Rasmus, previews from the upcoming
Dudesons episodes and full-length motion
pictures – the Finnish/Chinese martial arts epic
Jade Warrior and
Finnish short film
Heavy Metal. The movies can
be viewed through the calendar until the end of the year.
The calendar page, named
HC Christmas, rose instantly to the
#1 position in popularity in IRC-Galleria, and 324 000 of the monthly overall 460 000 registered
members saw the Xmas campaign spreading across the community ☺ Absolutely a cool Christmas gift for
the users!
As mentioned previously in our
press release, the IRC-Galleria concept is soon going international, as it will
be re-branded and introduced in pilot countries during spring 2008. More news about that
soon!
Happy Holidays to everyone!
