dtuur Posted December 8, 2014 Posted December 8, 2014 Hi guys, I'm excited to share the results of an experiment to promote self knowledge in Belgium: a 10 page report published on scribd & facebook, about a Flemish artist who died at age 52 last week, likely due to the consequences of heavy drinking, on the 14th birthday of his son. In interviews he had admitted he was "fundamentally unhappy", despite having achieved his childhood dream Description: In the report I tell the story the Luc De Vos' childhood, followed by some of the life choices he made as an adult. The second part of the report gives 7 reasons why I think he was unhappy and died young: not giving his mother responsibility, fatalism, living in a dream world, not pursuing therapy, having a child, expecting to die young, and betrayal by the outside world. On the last page, I recommend various sources for doing therapy and self work, including Stef's bomb in the brain & peaceful parenting series, Alice Miller, Gabor Maté, and IFS sources. Marketing: Published the report on scribd 5 days after his death, 2 days before the official funeral. Promoted with a facebook page, tweets, press release to 2 newspapers, and emails to 200 therapists. Results, 4 days after publication: - 7,500 people downloaded / read the report - facebook page reached 6,600 people - facebook page got 104 likes (very low!) - 5 positive emails back from psychologists - not picked up by mainstream media Luc De Vos sang in Dutch and was only popular in Flanders, with a population of 6 million. To put the outreach of the report in context, the US equivalent of 7,500 downloads in Flanders would be 375,000 downloads. Evaluation: I'm satisfied with the amount of people that have read the report. I expect the number to climb to 10,000 over the next days & weeks, which would be the US equivalent of 500k downloads. The backlash has been significant. A lot of people said calling the report "truth about" and publishing it just days after his death was sensationalistic and arrogant. After the "Truth About" facebook page was inundated with angry reactions and several people said they were reporting the page to Facebook, I decided to unpublish it for now. On the plus side, I've received several positive emails of people that said it really helped them think about the man's music and the meaning of his life. Lessons learned: - there definitely seems to be an audience for written 'truth about' reports - preparing for anger is definitely advisable - I think the emotional backlash of publishing right after the death of the person does not weigh against the benefit of more exposure to the message - promotion via social media is easy and requires only limited time - contacting press is futile For those interested to have a look, here is the report: https://www.scribd.com/doc/249165758/De-Waarheid-Over-Luc-De-Vos 5
ParaSait Posted December 8, 2014 Posted December 8, 2014 Wow, congratulations on the success Tuur! You've certainly spent some effort into this. You've sifted through so much information about Luc's life, and ended up with no less than 10 pages of relevant material. That is remarkable and I'm glad the effort paid off. Popular musicians are a special kind of person, in a social sense. They're persons that a huge amount of people have a strong, very real emotional connection to. We look up to, take an example from and identify with them. If you want to effectively reach a large audience, this is pretty much the way to go. Your essay may change a lot of people's lives for the better. That's such a wonderful way to do justice to Luc's death. Cheers!
dtuur Posted December 8, 2014 Author Posted December 8, 2014 Wow, congratulations on the success Tuur! You've certainly spent some effort into this. You've sifted through so much information about Luc's life, and ended up with no less than 10 pages of relevant material. That is remarkable and I'm glad the effort paid off. Popular musicians are a special kind of person, in a social sense. They're persons that a huge amount of people have a strong, very real emotional connection to. We look up to, take an example from and identify with them. If you want to effectively reach a large audience, this is pretty much the way to go. Your essay may change a lot of people's lives for the better. That's such a wonderful way to do justice to Luc's death. Cheers! Thanks Niels, your support means a lot to me! I agree that the emotional connection people have with musicians is unique — which explains how strong the backlash is.
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