Verizon Goes All Out For Fergie Tour

Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas is doing a solo tour with Verizon, which has the most mobile related stuff I’ve seen of any tour team-up, indicating that the carriers are beginning to get the hang of this. First, as far as I can tell, fans won’t buy tickets to the concert — rather, they’ll get free tickets if they buy any Fergie content (from the new Fergie channel on V Cast TV, V Cast Music), go to certain Verizon store events or buy a Motorola handset, or attend select Candie’s “Try 2 Win” fit events at Kohl’s department stores.

At the actual concerts fans will be able to dance in front of a green screen and create personal video messages of them dancing with Fergie that can be sent directly to their mobile phones. The concerts will finish with a thank you SMS from Fergie. Before the show fans can visit select Verizon stores and have their pictures taken with cameraphones and submitted to the Fergie Mobile Fashion Meter, and possibly get the chance to model their fashion onstage.

There’s 20 shows on the tour, and since tickets will be the price of a song download for Verizon customers it’s about the cheapest tickets around — the cost of the tour is not going to be recouped at the door. Verizon is banking not only on getting people to download a few songs, but on its customers finding out how to get the content, deciding they like it and continuing to buy it in the future. There should also be a viral aspect — fans of Fergie will tell their friends to buy something to come to the concert (because it’s so cheap they may as well) and they’ll probably forward the video messages of themselves to a lot of people… and spend the time to tell them how to view the message, which could create interest in video messaging.

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