Going viral: How Beatlemania became ‘a really big show’

Chances are that when you hear terms like “viral marketing” or “it went viral,” you’ll immediately think of email, social media and other Internet-based media. While the Internet has enabled things to go viral at exponentially faster speeds, the truth is that things have been “going viral” ever since humans learned to communicate with something other than a club.

In fact, an important milestone in the history of viral marketing occurs this month. Sunday, February 9, 2014, marked the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ legendary first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and their introduction to America. It was the most-watched telecast in television history up to that point, drawing some 73 million viewers. That was about 45% of the viewing households in the United States.

What makes those numbers so phenomenal is that three months before that telecast, virtually no one on this side of “the pond” had even heard of the Beatles. In those days, the flow of musical trends between the United States and Britain was a decidedly one-way affair: America was the exporter and Britain was the importer. In fact, if it weren’t for the American blues, country and soul records landing on British shores in the 1950s and ’60s, the Beatles wouldn’t have been, well, the Beatles.

So how did Beatlemania go from an epidemic to a pandemic? The answer is equal parts marketing savvy, incredible charisma and serendipity.

In early 1962, the Beatles had a big following in their hometown of Liverpool and their home away from home in Hamburg, Germany. But few people outside those cities had ever heard of them. Then in June of that year, Beatles manager Brian Epstein’s persistence paid off and the band finally landed a recording contract. By the fall of 1963, Beatlemania was not only rampant in Britain but was sweeping Europe as well.

In America, however, it was a different story. In 1963, the Atlantic Ocean was a much bigger pond than it is today, at least in terms of communications. Epstein and George Martin, the Beatles’ record producer at EMI’s Parlophone label, were eager to gain an audience in the United States. But their efforts to get U.S.-based Capitol Records, which was owned by EMI, to sign the Fab Four and get their records on American radio had so far fallen on deaf ears. Then fate intervened.

Preparing for takeoff
On October 31, 1963, American television host Ed Sullivan happened to be at Heathrow Airport in London when he saw thousands standing outside in the rain. When he found out that they had turned out for the return of a singing group named the Beatles from a triumphant tour of Sweden, he made a mental note to learn more about them from his talent coordinators in Britain and Europe. The hoopla was reminiscent of Elvis Presley’s heyday in the 1950s, and he didn’t want to miss out.

During a trip to New York in November 1963, Epstein arranged to meet with Sullivan two times and they agreed that the Beatles would make their first appearances in America on the Sullivan show on February 9 and 16, 1964. That gave Epstein three months to get Beatlemania to spread to America.

A Capitol infusion
One of the first things he did after returning to London was phone Capitol Records President Alan Livingston to ask why the record company had passed on “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which had just become the Beatles’ fourth-consecutive number-one hit record in Britain. Livingston listened to the single and decided to overrule the producer who rejected it and sign the Beatles. After Epstein informed Livingston that the Beatles would be appearing on Ed Sullivan, he persuaded Livingston to support a “Beatles Are Coming” promotional campaign with a budget of $40,000, an extraordinary sum in those days.

Capitol had planned to release “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on January 13, 1964, figuring that would allow ample time to generate some buzz prior to the Beatles’ February Sullivan debut. But fate once again intervened. On December 10, 1963, more than a month before the single’s scheduled release, a four-minute news story featuring Beatles concert footage and interviews with the lads aired on the “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.”

It’s charisma’s time
That night a smitten 15-year-old girl who had seen the newscast called in to radio station WWDC in Washington, D.C., to inquire why she couldn’t hear that music on the radio here. Disc jockey Carroll James, who had also seen the newscast, got a copy of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” sent to him by air from Britain. He invited the girl to come in and introduce the record a week later. Capitol demanded that the station not play the record again, but WWDA refused and subsequently put the record into its regular rotation.

James also shared a tape of the record with a colleague in Chicago, who in turn shared it with another colleague. And on and on it went. Before long, the switchboards at radio stations across the country were lighting up with requests to hear Beatles records. By the time the group landed in New York on February 7, 1964, Beatlemania was raging across the country. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what is the upshot for today’s marketers? Whether your interest is viral, direct, B2B or consumer marketing, the ultimate goal is response. If the Beatles could conquer America before setting foot on U.S. soil decades before the Internet took hold, think of the things marketers can achieve today—as long as our communications convey that what we are marketing has true value worth passing on.
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