Anti Marketing: Kid A
Radiohead’s decision to opt for minimal marketing for Kid A left EMI (record label) executives jaw dropped. The band quashed any bells-and-whistles promotion plans for the highly-anticipated record by deciding to release not one single from it. If that wasn’t enough, there would be no videos either.
The decision was referred to by some industry insiders as ‘commercial suicide’. However, the band felt it was the only way to avoid the life-draining press and concert tours of OK Computer unfolding again. The band’s front man Thom Yorke told the New York Times: “Those last months on the ‘OK Computer’ tour, it was just totally wrong.”
This sentiment led to them playing just two US dates to promote Kid A — one of which was on Saturday Night Live in October 2000 where the band performed two new songs Idioteque and The National Anthem. The performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, but instead Jonny Greenwood played electronic instruments and the house brass band improvised over jazzy The National Anthem, while Thom Yorke danced erratically to the electronic-experimental piece Idioteque. The band did tour the UK and Europe. However, this was in an intimate capacity tent in which corporate logos and commercial sponsors were banned.
Despite garnering many column inches from the revolutionary methodology, journalists too were hit by Kid A’s unorthodox…
