Loyalty

One of my favorite bands is the Christian rock band Thousand Foot Krutch.  Musicians are especially good at creating brand loyalty, and I think this is an excellent example of that.  TFK announced the other day that they would be going their separate ways from their record label, and releasing their next album independently.  However, although they have had a lot of musical success, most of the money goes to the record company so they did not have the necessary funds to produce the entire album.  TFK wanted to make sure their fans were behind them with this new move, and so they asked their fans to pledge $40,000 to go towards album production costs.  The fans are not out the money they give, they get the album early, get band merchandise, and get tickets, etc. depending on the amount they pledged.  They put this on their Facebook page, and although they only have about 500,000 Facebook fans (popular mainstream rap artist Eminem has nearly 50,000,000 fans), TFK raised the $40,000 in 22 hours after announcing their new plans.  This is a great example of the power of brand loyalty, and how much people's consumption decisions are influenced by their emotions and the connection with the brand.  You can read the whole story here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tfk/tfkthe-end-is-where-we-begin