Community Announcement

Yes, 2010 has been Bruno Mars’ greatest year in his 25 years in the planet. Grenade is Bruno’s third number one after Nothin’ On You with B.o.B. and Just the Way You Are. Grenade sold over 500,000 singles in one week alone! His songs have scored nominations at the Teen Choice, BET Hip Hop and MTV awards.

Moreover, just before the year ended, Bruno Mars learned that he has been nominated for 7 Grammys for the upcoming February award show for his work as a recording artist, songwriter and record producer.

Indeed, Bruno is one of the hottest stars in pop music today. He is the first male act in over 13 years to take his first two charting radio singles as a lead artist to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In fact, Mars is the biggest act to come out of Hawaii in almost 40 years, according to the Honolulu Star Advertiser, which featured him in its cover recently. “No artist from Hawaii has hit the national charts harder straight out of the box since Bette Midler went platinum with her debut album, The Divine Miss M, and won the Grammy Award for best new artist in 1973,” said the Star-Advertiser of Bruno Mars.

The New York Times called him “one of the most versatile and accessible singers in pop, with a light, soul-influenced voice that’s an easy fit in a range of styles, a universal donor.”

Born Peter Gene Hernandez in Honolulu, Hawaii, on October 8, 1985, Bruno comes from a musical family. His Filipina mother, Bernadette “Bernie” Hernandez, is a very good vocalist while his Puerto Rican father Pete is “an incredible percussionist” who has a band. Bernie immigrated to Hawaii from the Philippines as a child while Pete moved to the island from Brooklyn, New York. The two met while performing in a show where his mother was a hula dancer and his father played percussion.

At the age of two, Mars was nicknamed ‘Bruno’ by his father, because he was a chubby baby and because there was a famous chubby wrestler at the time called Bruno Sammartino. He adopted his stage name from the nickname his father gave him, adding “Mars” at the end because “I felt like I didn’t have no pizzazz, and a lot of girls say I’m out of this world, so I was like I guess I’m from Mars.”

In an earlier interview, Bruno said, “Growing up in Hawaii made me the man I am. I used to do a lot of shows in Hawaii with my father’s band. Everybody in my family sings, everyone plays instruments.”

Mars started singing at the age of four by fronting his uncle’s band, becoming Oahu’s youngest Elvis impersonator in the process. In 1990, at the age of 5, Mars was featured in MidWeek as “Little Elvis”, going on to have a cameo in the film Honeymoon in Vegas in 1992. Later, he was impersonating Michael Jackson.

In 2003, after graduating from President Theodore Roosevelt High School at the age of seventeen, Mars moved to Los Angeles, California to pursue a musical career. His sister, Jamie, who’d moved to California years earlier, helped him make initial contacts. A “very, very crappy demo” got Mars a deal with Motown.

Bruno said in an article, “Through Motown I just started building different relationships, and while I was signed with them I met Philip Lawrence.” Philip convinced him to try his hand at writing songs for other artists. The two dubbed themselves the Smeezingtons and co-wrote Long Distance, which was recorded in 2008 by R&B singer Brandy. More offers arrived after that, but it wasn’t until 2009 did Bruno Mars put his name on top of the charts in 2009 by co-writing Flo Rida’s hit song Right Round.

By 2010, Mars seemed to be everywhere: singing alongside B.o.B on the chart-topping Nothin’ on You, and co-writing Travie McCoy’s Billionaire, both of which became Top Ten hits. Mars used that momentum to launch a solo career, quickly becoming the first male vocalist in two decades to crack the Top Ten with his first four singles.

Following this success, Mars released his debut extended play (EP), titled It’s Better If You Don’t Understand, on May 11, 2010. The EP peaked at the ninety-ninth position on the Billboard 200 and produced one single: The Other Side, featuring rappers Cee Lo Green and B.o.B.

Mars collaborated with Cee Lo Green once more in August 2010 by co-writing his single F*ck You! He performed a medley of Nothin’ on You and Airplanes with B.o.B and Hayley Williams at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010.

Mars’ debut album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans, was released on October 5, 2010. The lead single, Just the Way You Are, was released on July 19, 2010, and quickly reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

While Bruno is incredibly proud of the recordings, he said the best way to experience the sound is to see him perform live with his band. “That is what I’m most excited for—taking these songs and traveling them around the world,” he said. And one of his destinations is the homeland of his mom, the Philippines. According to a Twitter announcement made by the producers at N91LIVE, Bruno will be performing two shows on April in Cebu and Manila: April 7, 2011—Waterfront Hotel, Cebu, Philippines and on April 8, 2011 at the Mall Of Asia Concert Grounds, Manila.

At the top of the world at such a young age, Bruno says, “This is just the beginning for me, and I know that. But I have so much more to go and so much more to show.”

(www.asianjournal.com)

(LA Midweek Jan 5-7, 2010 MDWK pg.2)

Taken by Cars

Formation (1998–2008)

Zialcita, Chua, Yap, and Kong, who have been friends since elementary school, formed a rock band in 1998 when they were high school sophomores. In an interview with Philippine Daily Inquirer, Zialcita said that their only goal was to play gigs in saGuijo, a café in Makati City, Philippines, which caters to indie rock enthusiasts. They performed during their high school and college days under different names like “Kung Fu Benny,” “Mexican Rice Bowl,” and “Morning Wood” until finally deciding on the name “Taken by Cars” because of its association with the concept of movement and that they “listened to a bulk of their music in their cars.” They also tried out several music genres before settling into its “classic rock-modern indie vibe” when Marco joined the group in 2006. However, after just one month of gigging in small audiences using original materials, the band took a hiatus due to what they described as “personal reasons.” They made most out of this idle time writing and recording new songs in preparation for their return. Without a major record label to promote them, the band uploaded their music on MySpace, where they garnered fans from different parts of the world.

Taken by Cars returned to scene in early 2007 and have become notable in Manila’s indie rock scene that fans began to compel local radio stations for them to play the band’s first single, “A Weeknight Memoir (In High Definition).” On February 2007, the band submitted a demo copy of the single to NU 107, a rock music station in Pasig City, Metro Manila, for its segment “In the Raw.” Despite its less-than-perfect audio quality, “A Weeknight Memoir (In High Definition)” received heavy radio airplay and has even reached the top spot of NU 107’s daily countdown. Their next single, “Uh Oh,” also reached number one in the station’s charts.

Endings of a New Kind (2008–present)

The band’s appeal has gotten noticed by Warner Music Philippines, which signed the group to a distribution deal. Their debut album, Endings of a New Kind, was released in early 2008 under the production of Mong Alcaraz, who is also behind the music of Sandwich and Chicosci. Endings of a New Kind was received warmly by critics and fans. Entertainment writer Diego Rosano P. Mapa reviewed that he “can hear Bloc Party, CSS and New Young Pony Club in their music, but they are doing something that sounds different and refreshing. The drums party like a drum machine, the riffsare shimmering, the basses distorted like an analog keyboard, and Sarah Marco’s vocals are gonna rip all the men’s boxer shorts to shreds.” The album also includes a download card that provides access to remixed versions of its tracks. They also released a mashup version of “Uh Oh” entitled “Uh Oh It’s Electro,” which was collaborated with house DJ Funk Avy. They are working on their second album, which will be released in late 2009.

A few weeks ago I met up with one of the members of the band Up Dharma Down to just exchange ideas about social media marketing. I was completely blown away with what they’ve accomplished so far on Facebook and I think it would be a crime for me not to recognize them here at New Media Philippines. They’ve done an excellent job on building a strong community online and I think they just have to leverage it some more and they’ll definitely book more corporate gigs without any effort. As of this writing, the Up Dharma Down Facebook Page has 73,600+ “likes”.

Appropriate Landing Page
Up Dharma Down’s landing page is a Facebook app called Band Page which is just perfect for musicians. It allows them to stream selected songs that they want their fans to listen to. There’s also a tab at the bottom which allows the visitor to check out the Facebook Wall, Twitter Stream, or Tumblr posts of the band. This is a pretty awesome app! Here’s a screenshot:

I wasn’t really a fan of Up Dharma Down when I first met with one of their band mates. However when I checked out their Facebook page when I got home that day and listened to some of their songs on this page I was hooked. I asked my assistant to buy a copy of their album immediately.

It’s also very easy to spot the schedule of their gigs. You can find it just under the profile picture. This is always updated so kudos to whoever is handling this.

Vibrant and Active Community
Another amazing thing you’ll notice is that they have a pretty solid and active community on Facebook. They get a lot of reactions each time they post updates and photos. This is a good indication that they’ve built social capital over the months that they’ve maintained and updated the page.

To connect further with Up Dharma Down, there’s a box on the left side with links to other channels you can find the band on like Vimeo, Twitter, MySpace, and Youtube.

How to Leverage
In this day where social marketing is such a huge thing, the band can easily get more corporate gigs by packaging online PR through their Facebook and Twitter profiles. They can link to the pages of the companies or brands that they’re playing for to drive their community to like their pages as well. Same goes for Twitter. The company gets more bang for their buck because other than getting a band to perform, they also get to advertise their products to the band’s online fan base (which is huge right now at 70,000+).

I have several suggestions to make the page better and to make it more interactive but I’ll just e-mail that to my contact on Up Dharma Down. I’m happy to see that local bands are seeing the potential of building their tribes on social media. I’m pretty confident that they’ll continue to be successful as long as they continue to take care of their community and constantly interact with them to raise social capital.

To Up Dharma Down — You guys rock! ^_^

When Cebu Pacific executives made the decision to have their flight attendants dance during the security briefing they probably didn’t think that several top global websites would pick up the story and give them unprecedented media mileage. As of this writing, Yahoo, Telegraph, Huffington Post, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, and TV Gawker (Gizmodo Network) have featured the video giving it a monumental view count of 9.1M to date! The guy who proposed this to management will probably get a promotion or a bonus.

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