An amateur DJ has constructed a sophisticated PR campaign in which he implies that his House and Garage night ‘Diamonds, Silk and Pearls and Diamonds’ (“Yeah, that was a mix-up at the printers, too late now, got 10,000 flyers printed up”), is way more successful and well attended than it actually is.
Gary Mange, also known as DJ Nutbutt, is one-half of UK funky production duo Nutbutt and Retardo, who have yet to successfully produce any actual tangible thing. The Colchester-based pair – “The Colchester scene is sick though fam, you get me”, have been promoting their DSP&D club night with a cleverly orchestrated social media campaign. This has centred around posting ‘Big announcement coming – can’t say anything else yet!’ on Facebook several times a day and posting an E-flyer on Gary’s sister’s Twitter account. Nutbutt and Retardo have also engineered a cleverly coordinated viral campaign, by attempting to put a link to their online flyer in the comments section of every UK Garage video on YouTube, an on-going task that Gary now admits may take longer than his initial “45 minutes, hour tops” estimate.
Through careful media manipulation born of years of experience in the scene, the cunning pair have successfully presented an image of ‘Diamonds, Silk and Pearls and Diamonds’ as a cutting edge, well-attended club night, when in fact, it has continued to be virtually empty every week and consistently loses money. In a final Machiavellian twist, the night’s Facebook profile picture is a photo from a different, much better, club night. Gary, on his overall marketing strategy, told us: “Yeah I think that’s like Space, Ibiza or something. Looks mint yeah?”
