Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific
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February 22, 2008
Tracking the Flight of the Conchords
I was browsing through our Fast Moving Search Terms report for the News & Media industry to get a sense of what was topical in New Zealand at the moment, and found searches for 'flight of the conchords' and 'grammys' prominent. The Flight of the Conchords, if you haven't heard of them yet, are "New Zealand's fourth most popular digi-folk paradists".
The duo apparently have a strong following in the US off the back of their TV show on the HBO network, and last week won a Grammy award for best comedy album of 2007. This article makes an interesting point that "New Zealanders are ignored in their native land till someone overseas recognises their genius, at which point we rapturously acclaim them as ours".
The below chart goes some way to validating this 'cultural phenomenon': search variations on 'flight of the conchords' certainly peaked in the US during August 2007, but reached their highest point in New Zealand in February this year. Important to note that NZ search variations for 'flight of the conchords' have always outstripped US searches (by a factor of 4.6x at week ending 18/8/07, and 39.3x at week ending 16/2/08), but it took the Grammy Award to really spark mainstream interest in NZ.
It would be interesting to find other examples of where artists have peaked in consumer interest in overseas markets, before gaining local mainstream appeal. For now, here's a further glimpse of where searches for 'flight of the conchords' deliver New Zealand Internet users:
A couple of interesting points to note from this table - YouTube ranks at third position accounting for 11.87% of searches on 'flight of the conchords'. With Google.co.nz powering 77% of searches on the term, it's evident that the universal search results are influencing visits to YouTube; highlighted by the fact that YouTube ranked ahead of visits to HBO Online, the homepage of the Flight of Conchords TV show.
Second point is that MySpace accounted for 2.88% of searches, more than double than Bebo with 1.13%. This is significant because Bebo is the market leader in Social Networking and Forums in New Zealand, accounting for 17.63% share compared to MySpace with 3.67% for the week ending 16 February 2008. While Bebo attracts more visits overall, MySpace in this instance is the preferred channel for finding content related to Flight of the Conchords. Robin makes a similar observation in the UK of the strength of MySpace for promoting bands and artists.
Whatever your preferred channel, I would highly recommend checking out Flight of the Conchords for some quirky kiwi humour.
Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 10:47 AM
Posted to Music
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