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COVER STORY

The Right Direction

One Direction used social to conquer radio and fire up its fan base, resulting in two No. 1 albums in one year, and leading the charge in a 2012 packed with chart-topping new artists

By Andrew Hampp

As 2012 dawned, few American adults outside the most dedicated of Anglophiles knew much, if anything, about One Direction. In part, that’s because the kind of boy-band pop One Direction had already turned into 2011’s fastest-selling debut album in the United Kingdom (aided by the most preordered single in Sony Music history) doesn’t target adults. And in part it’s a matter of history: In the decade that passed since the peak of the boy-band craze led by Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync, the U.K. groups that kept the sound at the top of charts overseas were barely able to translate their success beyond a single on American shores.

Of course, One Direction would change all that, and write a little bit of history in the process. By Nov. 30, as the sun began to set on 2012, the group had invaded the New York area for a week that included three sold-out arena shows (two in Connecticut and its first headlining gig at Madison Square Garden), a private fan convention in New Jersey to meet and greet with die-hards who’d been flown in from more than 35 countries, visits to “Letterman” and SiriusXM—and to cap it all off, the opening slot at New York’s biggest pop concert of the year, WHTZ’s Jingle Ball.

“This week’s been crazy, crazy busy but so much fun,” says Louis Tomlinson, the group’s oldest member at just a few weeks shy of 21, toward the end of the band’s whirlwind takeover of Manhattan. “To have this opportunity to come here and perform is amazing . . . It’s almost a cliché but it’s so true—if anyone hadn’t bought a record, we wouldn’t be here.”

So how did Louis, Harry, Zayn, Liam and Niall accomplish what no British group had done before, let alone a boy band, by topping the Billboard 200 with its first two albums (March’s Up All Night and November’s Take Me Home) and going from virtual unknowns to mega-stars in less than a year’s time? Social media played a crucial part, as it did in so many of the breakout stories of 2012: Gotye, Carly Rae Jespen, PSY. But One Direction was bigger than an Internet meme, and that’s thanks to an aggressive touring plan and the combined efforts of a team led by industry veterans Richard Griffiths, Harry Magee, Steve Barnett and Simon Cowell, who signed the group to his Syco imprint shortly after the act finished third on the U.K. “X Factor” in 2010.

A healthy dose of intuition helped, too. The first inkling that something might click stateside came Feb. 26 at Chicago’s 4,400-capacity Rosemont Theater. The gig was an 11thhour opener for the Nickelodeon-created boy band Big Time Rush on the latter’s sold-out Better With U tour. One Direction had just released “What Makes You Beautiful” as its first official single in the United States less than two weeks prior, and Up All Night was still weeks away from domestic release. But minutes before the band members took the stage, nervous that no one would know their names let alone care, manager Griffiths and former Columbia Records chairman Barnett heard 4,400 girls chanting “One Direction!”

“We hadn’t gone to radio—we’d just put a track out—and yet everyone knew all the words to every song,” says Griffiths, a longtime record label executive who co-founded Modest! Management with Magee in 2003. “This was all fans communicating amongst themselves about this band.”

Griffiths is referring to the “Bring1DtoUS” campaign, designed to boost the group’s social media profile stateside. It grew the act’s core fan base from 40,000 to 250,000 online from late November 2011 to the end of January 2012, and garnered more than 220,000 followers to a dedicated Twitter handle. Different cities competed to win a special concert, with Dallas winning a show for 10,000 fans at the Dr Pepper Ballpark in March and Los Angeles winning an event on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

Soon, that rabid following began to translate to radio, which began to take notice of “What Makes You Beautiful” and the group as the conversation began to swell leading up to the album release. “Usually traditional sales lead the way for us, but we also had fans request them through our social media sites,” says John Ivey, senior VP of contemporary hit radio programming and talent development at Clear Channel. “And the song was good, too, which always helps.”

The Bring1DtoUS campaign spread the word on preorders of Up All Night and generated contest winners in each city where One Direction played with Big Time Rush. The initiative was so successful Columbia bumped up the album’s release date a week ahead of schedule. Crowds of 4,000-5,000 swarmed in-store signings during release week, with a mob of 10,000 to see the group play “Today�� on March 12, the day before Up All Night’ U.S. release. By the end of the tour, One Direction had become the first British group in Billboard chart history to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with its first album.

“The campaign has always been fan-first and about One Direction as a band. It’s never been about a traditional push around just one single,” Columbia senior VP of marketing Doneen Lombardi says. Nevertheless, “Beautiful” quickly became a top five hit on the Billboard Hot 100, with follow-up “One Thing” later cracking the top 40.

As One Direction’s album sales made headlines, tickets to a handful of spring U.S. tour dates were scooped up in minutes, prompting Modest! to make the bold decision to start selling tickets to a summer 2013 tour in April— more than a full year in advance. Those were quickly sold out, too.

“I actually rang Irving Azoff [Live Nation Entertainment executive chairman/Frontline Management Group chairman/CEO] to ask him if it was crazy even thinking of doing it, because not many people were agreeing with us about that. And he just said, ‘Go for it,’” Griffiths says. “We knew that it was exploding everywhere, and we knew that we really needed to have a plan that took us all the way through to next year. We didn’t feel we needed to wait and see—the evidence was there to make the most of it.”

That still left a short-term problem for 2012, with One Direction already committed to a month-and-a-half ’s worth of dates playing U.S. amphitheaters before taking time off from touring to work on Take Me Home. Creative Artists Agency’s Mitch Rose, who books One Direction in the States, was able to get a December date at Madison Square Garden that would save the band months of time in tour routing by doubling as a global fan event. Columbia quickly spearheaded a “Go1Den Ticket” contest that gave fans in dozens of countries the chance to win a travel package with a trio of tickets to see the band’s show and accompanying fan convention.

“There’s a certain excitement that is generated when you have nearly 40 countries flying in to see a show,” Rose says. “If you just think of how social is driving everything with acts like One Direction, the good will, the word-of-mouth, the excitement, the passion of all those countries is exponential for what can happen.”

“THE CAMPAIGN HAS ALWAYS BEEN FAN-FIRST AND ABOUT ONE DIRECTION AS A BAND. IT’S NEVER BEEN ABOUT A TRADITIONAL PUSH AROUND JUST ONE SINGLE.” — DONEEN LOMBARDI COLUMBIA RECORDS

And while 2013 already looks to be an even bigger year for One Direction touring-wise, it’s easy to see why industry eyebrows raised when Sony U.K. chairman Nick Gatfield spoke candidly of the band’s fortunes at a creative industries reception in June. “What you might not know about One Direction is that they already represent a $50 million business—and that’s a figure we expect to double next year,” Gatfield said, indicating that Sony has more participation in the band’s career than just recorded music. A Sony U.K. spokesman declined to expand upon or clarify Gatfield’s comments, which Columbia U.S. chairman Rob Stringer echoed when asked to do the same. “You’d have to ask Nick,” he said.

Still, Stringer had strong indications that the time was right to break One Direction in America, having previously worked with both Cowell (on acts like Westlife, Susan Boyle and Jackie Evancho) and Griffiths when the latter was running Epic U.S. during the ’90s. “It does work well to have people who understand each other,” says Stringer, another Brit expat on Team 1D.

But although another British boy band (and “X Factor” alum) was worked to U.S. audiences at the same time as One Direction, Stringer hesitates to declare a resurgent boy-band movement. “The Wanted record is a very good record. It’s just not the same, and it’s not on the same scale,” he says. “Can you do what One Direction has achieved again and again? Probably not. But then again, 10 years ago ’N Sync and Backstreet Boys were in the same world and even on the same label. So, there’s room, but we’re happy to have One Direction have the lead that they do.”

What Stringer and Modest! are bullish on is the new wave of British pop stars that has been imported following One Direction’s success, including Epic’s Cher Lloyd and fellow Columbia act (and Modest! client) Olly Murs, whose U.S. debut arrives in April and was preceded by “Heart Skips a Beat,” which has sold more than 300,000 downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Another Modest! act, girl group Little Mix, will also get a U.S. push from Columbia closer to late spring. And then there’s the lucky, as-yet-unconfirmed benefactor who gets to open for One Direction on its sold-out U.S. tour.

“There is one act that we’re going to be working with very closely that will be opening for us pretty much everywhere, but it’s something we’re still keeping under wraps,” Griffiths says.

If the new British, post-“X Factor” wave of teen pop brings to mind the late-’90s boom of albums from “Mickey Mouse Club” alums Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, so does the music itself, written and produced by the Swedish protégés of hit machine Max Martin, who wrote many of the signature early hits for Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync and Spears. In the case of One Direction, “What Makes You Beautiful,” “One Thing” and “Live While We’re Young”—its three biggest hits to date—are all the products of Carl Falk, Rami Yacoub and Savan Kotecha, two Swedes and an American who first cut their teeth writing for Irish boy band Westlife. Like its predecessors, One Direction’s music has a uniformly pop sound designed to showcase voices over beats, with little regard for EDM trends or borrowed cred from guest rappers.

“It felt like everyone tried to do boy bands by going to the cool, hip producers who were coming up,” says Kotecha, the American third of the songwriting trio. “We wanted to make it very vanilla. You’re aiming for teens and tweens with boy-band guilty pleasure music. We weren’t trying to be urban or rhythmic, and they happened to share the same vision.”

Falk also wanted to create songs that were built around guitars, as both he and the band’s Niall Horan are guitarists. “Each of the songs have signature riffs—something so people can play YouTube versions of our songs,” Falk says. “We wanted to do something where we didn’t copy anything right off. We’re trying to do our own thing a little bit, even if it’s just guitar parts.”

The songwriting and recording process for Take Me Home in August also empowered the boys, with cowrites from all five members on three of the standard edition’s tracks, guitar work from Horan on six songs and Harry Styles now building a recording studio at his home in England.

The band members took turns working with each other during their songwriting sessions to best focus their ideas. “Somebody could have the first initial idea after we heard a melody or a track, and someone would chip in a few words and then Liam or someone else could come in and by end of the day we’d have a song,” Zayn Malik says. “We wanted to feel like we were giving a little more back in our personal lives, so what better way than to get involved in the writing process?”

The sessions, which were largely split between Stockholm and London, were accompanied by an extra, surreal layer of pressure— mobs of fans waiting outside the studio every day, singing the lyrics to hits like “Beautiful” and “One Thing” while the group was inside struggling to create follow-ups. “It was crazy—we only had a month or so to record the whole album, but we always felt like we had the fans on our side,” Liam Payne says during One Direction’s visit to New York, where fans have been greeting the members during their stay at the Trump Hotel. “They’re always anxious to know where we are—even before I do. It’s good to see that level of dedication.”

BOY BAND BRANDS

One can also add some of the top brands to the list of One Direction’s biggest fans. Pepsi is featuring the band and “Live While We’re Young” in a highly visible NFL commercial costarring Drew Brees (and an issue of Billboard with One Direction on the cover). Hasbro has licensed the band’s name and the boys’ likenesses for a series of board games and Kenlike dolls. Nokia has a line of One Direction phones in the United Kingdom. Colgate recently debuted One Direction toothpaste and singing toothbrushes in the States. Griffiths confirms that Kraft-Nabisco’s new global brand portfolio, Mondelez, has come onboard as the sponsor for the group’s 2013’s world tour. And Target aired a custom commercial to promote the release of an exclusive deluxe edition of Take Me Home and its heavy in-store push, walking away with 55% market share of first-week sales of 95,000 copies sold of the deluxe version, according to SoundScan.

“THERE HAVE BEEN DOZENS OF BRITISH BOY BANDS WHO’VE BEEN TOLD THEY WILL BE THE NEXT BIG THING, BUT TO HAVE THE ENDORSEMENT OF THE AMERICAN MARKET REALLY IS WHAT SENT THAT RIPPLE OUT AROUND THE WORLD.” — RICHARD GRIFFITHS MODEST! MANAGEMENT

“It is proof positive that fans crave extra content, and we’re proud that Target is the exclusive home to the deluxe version,” Target VP of entertainment John Butcher says. “One Direction is a dynamic band and their new album is really spectacular.”

Sharpie also sponsored the band’s three one-off U.S. shows in Connecticut and New York, with a paid promotion on Twitter and digital billboards in Times Square to help fans say “#Hello” to the band. Sharpie global director of marketing Ryan Rouse was eager to support One Direction after noticing an unsolicited frenzy of activity from social-media followers using their Sharpies to create fan art devoted to their favorite band.

“We don’t ever want to ride the backs of our dollars and slap our logos on something,” Rouse says. “If Sharpie can play an authentic role, we’re interested, and for us the real hero is the fans’ passion for the band. That’s what this entire initiative is about.”

Team 1D also seems keenly aware that warp-speed teen-pop hysteria can be created just as quickly as it can disappear, and that long-term relevance is difficult to achieve. (Though trading on nostalgia through touring can be quite profitable, as Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block proved in 2011.) That’s why most of 2013 will be spent almost entirely on the road, with a brief interlude to release and promote 3-D concert film directed by Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”) also in the works for the summer.

“You have to make sure they have enough time off to keep things fresh,” Griffiths says. “Next year is essentially touring, then we’ll make another record for 2014. We’ve got some pretty big ideas for what we’re going to do in ’14. We’re just working on that now.”

Having a feverishly active following on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and other platforms could also help One Direction sustain fame in ways its pre-iPhone peers never experienced. “Twitter allows them to be the five individuals that are [in the group], and that’s what the fans love about these boys,” says Will Bloomfield, the band’s day-to-day manager at Modest! To wit: The @OneDirection account has more than 8.3 million followers to pump out centralized messages to, but is eclipsed by the personal account of Styles, who has 8.8 million followers (likely aided in part by his recently much-tweeted romance with Taylor Swift).

And as fans rally around their favorite One Direction members as they explore their musical identities, speculation of which one will become the next Justin Timberlake is only natural. In a taping for SiriusXM’s “Artist Confidential” just hours before taking the stage at Jingle Ball, all five members are asked about the solo question, which Payne answers in a half-serious, half-cheeky tone befitting a 20-year-old pop star.

“We’re so used to being around each other, one of us would be like, ‘Cheeseburger!’ And no one would be around to answer.” (For the uninitiated, “Cheeseburger!” is the band’s preferred catchphrase, and tour snack.)

But as crazed and unlikely as One Direction’s success in America has been, it’s only become a calling card for other territories like South America and Japan, which the band hopes to visit more in 2013. “There have been dozens of British boy bands or pop bands who’ve been told they will be the next big thing, but to have the endorsement of the American market really is what sent that ripple out around the world,” Griffiths says.

Being embraced by the Yanks rang particularly true for Styles, who singled out the MTV Video Music Awards as a personal highlight from 2012—a year in which the members also performed at the Olympics near their homes in London, mind you—and the first tangible sign that One Direction was actually being embraced beyond its tween core.

“There was something about being in the room and the whole kind of atmosphere that really surprised me,” Styles says. The group won three VMAs that night and played “One Thing” to 6.1 million viewers on a bill shared with Swift, P!nk and Frank Ocean. “To be on that stage and perform was unbelievable,” Styles adds. “It kind of felt like people learned a bit more about the One Direction thing. It was like we were making music where people of all kinds could appreciate.” ■

#Billboard #December #2012 #Harry Styles #Shaggy Hair #Take Me Home Era #Magazine Scans #USA Magazines #one direction

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