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Gibran Burchett
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Gibran Burchett (born August 23, 1975) is an American celebrity's writer, memeticist. Gibran was born in St.Louis, Missouri and now resides in New York, New York. He is founder of the Aether Lumin Research Firm which helps brands identify and analyze memetic themes and other cultural imprinting on global consumer markets that influence brand loyalty and product purchases. Currently he is studying the use of social networking applications previously coined as "online communities" as a means of communicating with consumers. He believes social networks along with mechanism design theory can unlock our understanding of culture which is a manifestation of emotions and learned behavior. This information could prove to be beneficial to the advancement of social science. Unlike the Myspace and Facebook models which are derivitives of earlier online community models used in the music industry to promote artist, his research uses online communities to analyze cultural experiences and examine the effects of technological paradigm shifts. Biography Prior to establishing Aether Lumin Research, Gibran spent 10 years as marketing director for DDI Studios a multimedia design and marketing firm he co-founded with a high school and college friend Mike Bell in St. Louis. In 1998 DDI Studios was hired by Rza of infamous platinum selling Rap Group Wu Tang Clan to start Wu Creative and help relaunch the group online. There was also the goal of figuring out how to separate Wu Tang from the negative publicity associated with some of the group member’s behavior. Wu Creative developed a new strategy for launching the group which was to look at the group as a brand. The new strategy and new launch proved to be successful. Despite all of the legal strife and negative publicity the group’s new album Wu-Tang Forever reached #1 pop, #1 R&B, in 2000. The idea of looking at artist as brands began to spread as Sony Music, Universal Music Group and other major labels began to borrow from this strategy and promote artists as global brands. In 1999 Gibran helped to relaunch the Wu-Tang Clan’s lucrative Wu Wear clothing line with Power also known as Oliver Grant and a gentleman by the name of Oodie. It is during this time that the C&J Clark Styled boot shoe reclaimed fashion fame as WU Wear launched the new Wu Wallaby. Under Rza's guidance Wu Tang branched out into various merchandising and three years later negotiated with Activision and launched Wu Tang: Shaolin Style which was the first video game to feature artist as characters. DDI Studioa also consulted and developed an online strategy for selling the Bob Marley shoes online and the label Tuff Gong of artist Bob Marley through president of the Label Maxine Stowe, shortly after being introduced by artist Jimmy Cozier. Influences on the Development of Viral Marketing Viral marketing began as a study of promoting an artist online globally. The term viral in viral marketing was originally used to describe the spread of artist's memes and music. It is another byproduct of the street teams model, more so online street teams. The same as those that were instrumental in helping to make Wu Tang a successful global brand. The term virus or viral was used in correlation to the term meme. A meme being a unit of cultural information transferred from one mind to the next. In order to get an artist's meme out quickly, Burchett believed you had to get other people to propagate that message, in various places, in large numbers. This idea came from discussions between Rolando Bell, Lottman and Sokol. They discovered the best way to do this was to offer products to people. They realized that people will work for product if it's a good product, something they desire. He eventually tried to test this same theory online and offer product in exchange for promotions while still maintaining a strong profit margin. The test proved to be successful after the first 6 weeks of promotions they had accumulates over 5,000 people for their online street marketing team. Each of those 5,000 loyal customers then kept a certain amount of product and sold the rest. This allowed the building of loyal marketing teams in a rapid fashion. The total number of online street members reached a total of 100,000 people worldwide. Creating A Paradigm Shift from Traditional Marketing Between March 1998-September 2001 there was an explosion in the youth market. Offline marketing Street Teams and online marketing began to grow rapidly out of the music industry's previous traditional techniques. The online street team model was born during this time from work done at Wu Tang Creative, Loud, Def Jam, Jive Records, and AKA.com which was an affiliate of Loud Records. This blueprint would evolve into the now common multi-tier affiliate programs not to be confused with the click through model. In 1999-2000 Wu Tang began offering Wu Wear clothing online in exchange for promotional work in various countries. The idea of a global street team concept was born out of discussions between Loud Records and the Wu Tang Creative department Wu Creative. After a conversation with Rza from Hip Hop Group, Wu Tang Clan which was signed to Loud Records. Gibran suggested building an online community to create stickiness. During this time Loud's began to see the advantages in the online street team model and invested in internet startup AKA.COM. AKA.COM borrowed from the online street team model and the techniques being used at Wu Tang Creative department. With financing behind them AKA.COM began to grow rapidly there were no significant other companies operating as an affiliate for corporations. Wu Creative only focused on affiliate programs with their own traffic. AKA.COM was the first major attempt of of branching out to the Corporations like Sprite, etc... The idea was to direct users from high traffic sites to their site which would run ads and collect revenues from companies looking to promote their products. Over the next year Loud, AKA and Wu Tang Creative often shared ideas on how to market online since there were no current online models. The three companies at the time each shared traffic between sites by creating cross promotional programs. The three companies would discuss concurrent campaigns strategies to redirect traffic to Loud Records and AKA.COM site from Wu Tang. In early 2001 AKA.COM began to experience financial problems and closed. Steve Rifkin now seeing the benefit in online marketing and branding left Loud to start SRC Records, Street Record Corporation, a Record Label, street and online marketing company. Wu Creative would go on to develop two other websites for Rza. WuTangfilmz.COM and Bobby-Digital.COM. After meeting Power also known as Oliver Grant, WuWearOnline.COM was added to the project list, head of Wu-Wear. Loud Record's traffic began to decrease after AKA.COM's demise. This may have been the first incident where the artist was charging the Label for advertising. Wu Creative's efforts increased although and the Wu Tang's website traffic shot through the roof. Wu Tang site was averaging 9,000 -10,000 hits per month, during album sales it peaked at 500,000 hits for a two months following a releases. Without other efforts. For the launch Wu Creative designed a series of three sites for Rza which are currently defunct these were the official Wu Tang.com, WuTangfilmz.com, Bobby-digital.com. After just 6 months the site traffic increased dramatically to 1.8 million unique hits per month. This growth can be contributed to the efforts of Wu Tang Creative's creation of an online community, with 50+ hours of Wu Tang footage, in combination of other content and marketing techniques added and the teamwork of Loud and AKA.COM. The global street team would offer merchandise to online street team supporters on multiple levels. The site would later feature a cartoon titled "Fare Game" for the release of the Bobby Digital album release. Rza as Bobby Digital drove a high tech cab around the city and used a robot he built in the lab to help fight crime and corrupt corporations carried out the missions. In addition Footage of Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog with Academy Award Winner Forest Whitaker in which Rza created the score. (as noted in [The_Source_(magazine)] '2000) Wu Tang began it's major online voice as Wu Creative began to take root. Immediately there was a revamp of the websites to create a more cohesive look. This helped online users to be able to distinguish the official sites from the fan or mock sites which numbered in the tens of thousands. The thought of Wu Tang being promoted as a brand began at 99 University Place between Wu Creative Directors, Mike and Gibran and Rza on a Thursday evening. In order to collect the traffic a campaign was started in which all sites claiming to be official must be This was also major problem because the number one site on Google ranking and which was also receiving more traffic was a fan site. A complete rebranding and new site design was the only direction. On Jan 1, 2001 after 4 months of intensive marketing, Wu Creative launched the official Wu Tang website which featured an online community and animated bees flying on the site. The site was considered new and innovative and was a feature of numerous magazine articles. There was even a site for Rza's alter Ego Bobby Digital www.bobby-digital.com (now defunct). Creating Email Spamming Spam was the easiest way to get people your advertising message online without use of banner advertising. In 1999 people were using email much more than previous years and having become more comfortable emailing were more trusting. Banner ads weren't generating the kind of sales record companies had hoped. Many thought running ads on their site would clutter the site. So began a pattern of sending emails with advertising links and ads inside of them. It began generating sales because it was based on the click through model. If a user clicked the link or ad the company advertising would have to pay the company which sent the email. Tracking was essential at this point because it was a way to see how much traffic was being sent and from what previous site the user came from. This is one of the earlier ways companies could track along with cookies although cookies weren't as prevalent as they are now. At this time the labels needed a solution to increase their marketing efforts record sales were beginning to drop for Loud Records. Email spamming began from the workings of Loud, AKA.COM and Wu Creative. The three also had influence as to how fast it spread. Spamming on a large scale began as the labels began selling emailing lists between each other. Wu Tang internet traffic began to increase so dramatically as a way to continue promoting new music, is was and still is a custom to collect email and information from users. As a result of the enormous flooding of traffic to Wu Tang the Wu Creative staff collected over 1.2 million email addresses from around the world. At the time there was no law against spamming so the Directors of Wu Creative were told by Rza to began selling that mailing list to the other labels to do marketing. The list was sold, and as more names were collected these names were then added to the list and then resold again and again in the music industry. This continued and the lists began selling outside the music industry to other companies by individuals wanting to make a nice quick buck. By the time this happened the list in total contained tens of millions of email addresses. Influences on Technological Pop Culture In 1999 DDI Studios (defunct) began working in New York with Pseudo.com as a content provider. After being introduced to Founders, Jacques N. Tege and Josh Harris. Gibran worked several deals between PSEUDO and Wu Tang ranging from performances on the popular network, a Rza as Bobby Digital, Calvin Klein commercial run on the network to several online affiliate deals between Wu Creative and PSEUDO. In March of 2000 Gibran met singer Jimmy Cozier and at that time J Record Label mate Alicia Keys, Cozier, Burchett along with partner Mike Bell would try to recreate and build on the ideas from Pseudo.COM and UBO.NET which had given notice of closing up shop earlier in the year. Gibran worked with both companies developing content. MGC Networks had a modest launch however due to lack of financing. The concept included online channels and a 24/7 radio station complete with urban news. The goal was to sell network channels to celebrities allowing them to produce their own content. Wyclef Jean and Alicia Keys were rumored to be the first lineups with Method Man and Redman to launch channels next. In September 2000 the network would run for the next 6 months and then close. Plans had even been to give performances from the Hit Factory studios. In January of 2001 Wu Creative received a web casting server from Leveious Rolando, Larry Lottman and John Sokol pioneer of video streaming technology at the time working for Pervasys a video streaming media company. X-Ray Technology was also being used to stream media in the porn industry. It's advantages at the time is that it didn't require a plugin and live streaming was possible. Live meaning from stored video source or video camera. This led to the early experimentations of web casting back and forth between California and New York with Sokol, Lottman and Rolando. The web casting server was the only video streaming unit used in the industry at that time and was based on X-Ray technology. It allowed live streaming of media without the use of plugins, which was instrumental in helping maintain traffic on the Wu Tang sites. Users tuned in on a regular basis to see Wu Tang members recording live in the studio or just fooling around. This was an early example of reality television on the internet. Before the beginnings of Wu Creative the Wutang office had no email at the Wu Tang office and none of the computers were networked. The office would even in the late nineties send courier back and forth for reviewing and signing of documents. This new way of looking at Wu Tang Clan as a brand was echoed with Loud Records and both Wu-Tang Creative this helped to push the group over the million album sales mark. The increased traffic to the site was contributed to the non-traditional marketing efforts of Wu Tang and the increased development of contact like live web cast being run from the studios. This extra content served as a means of keeping users online for extended periods online. Gibran believed that this would increase advertising dollars on the Wu Tang sites if users stayed longer periods. Method Man Inspectah Deck and Masta Killa would wind up giving most of the performances. Wu Tang Law Suit On September 6th, 2001 Rza is alleged to have attacked Gibran and his partner Mike Bell and stealing $250 thousand dollars worth of media equipment, files other properties and client's files from the two. The case was filed in NY State and reportedly was started over a $17,500 debt Rza owed to two department heads of Wu Tang's Creative and Marketing division, Wu Creative. Thinking the two had deliberately taken his site down, he and 5 other men accosted Gibran and Mike resulting in bodily injuries. According to internet hosting company Verio. Rza had not paid the hosting bills for his three websites in 2 years and the bill totaled excess of $30,000. According to Verio, (verifiable via emails and evidence presented in the case). The credit card Rza had been using for paying his services was declined causing his websites to be shut down. DDI Studios filed suit against Rza and Wu Tang Corp. Bell and Jones were alleged to have doctored the photos in order to reclaim equipment. The case was settled out of court three years following the event for an undisclosed amount. Other Notable Works * July/August 2005 pg. 56 YRB Magazine article on Filmmaker Tracey Edmonds, engaged to Eddie Murphy, former wife of Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds. * YRB Magazine Issue 55 p. 74 Cover Story on Kimora Lee Simmons * Trained with 34th Generation Shaolin Monk Sifu Shi Yan Ming also Sifu of Rza * In 1996 finalist for Disney Imagineering Design Competition See Also
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