Street teams

Street teams act as a form of below the line marketing. Street teams are groups of people who go out to promote their favourite band or artist. Street teams are seen to provide a bridge between the record companies and the fans, through the use of word-of-mouth advertising. Street teaming is especially popular for genres with a teenage/younger audience.

For teenage street teamers, promotion is often done in school. There is normally a ‘school chairman’, who is responsible for promoting their favourite band or artist in their school. They do this through the use of flyers, posters and generally talking to people about the band/artist. The school chairman would then send evidential photographs to the band’s record company. If the record company is impressed with the school chairman’s work, they may be sent free merchandise, concert tickets or they may even be given the opportunity to meet the band.

Boy bands Busted, McFly and V all had/have street teams. On their street team websites, there would be leaders who inform other street teamers of different missions. For example, Busted's street team once had the mission of trying to get Busted to the top of the public polls. Obviously, this particular mission was done quite some time ago. But even now, bands like McFly, The Kooks, Razorlight and Dirty Pretty Things have street teams. Street teaming is a good way of building up a fan base and it's also really cheap to do. Lisa Paulon (head of 'Traffic', a company who recruits and co-ordinates street teams) explained how an audience can be built up in the 2nd Guardian article below: "If those four or five people have the best time of their lives and have photos taken with the band, they go and say to their mates, 'This is the best thing that ever happened. Those mates tell more mates, who tell more mates - it's a word-of-mouth pyramid scheme. A month after the Kooks began playing smallish venues, their audience had quadrupled - and they went on to sell 1.1m copies of their debut album in the UK alone."

There has been some controversy about the so called exploitation of street teamers, but most of them claim that it's not really exploitive since they join street teams out of choice and wanting to help out their favourite band.

Resources:
Wikipedia
Guardian Article
Another Guardian article