The faithful love feeling that they've played a part in pop stars' success.
Say what you will about tongue-wagging, twerking queen Miley Cyrus, but she sure knows how to keep her fans salivating — and smash Vevo records in the process.
The social-media-savvy pop star set her 13.7 million Twitter followers abuzz this past weekend, promising that if her racy new Wrecking Ball video broke the record for most views in 24 hours, she'd unveil the track list for forthcoming album Bangerz (out Oct. 8). Lo and behold, the video premiered to deafening fanfare Monday, garnering more than 19.3 million views and easily besting the previous Vevo record-holder, One Direction's Best Song Ever (which hit 12.3 million views in July).
By giving fans incentives to help them achieve small milestones, pop stars such as Miley Cyrus not only drum up awareness of new music and videos, but also help fans feel that they've contributed to their favorite artists' success.
"They're able to use these very simple moments and build anticipation for a lot of different aspects of any project they're working on," says Mark Pasetsky, CEO of Mark Allen & Company, a public relations and content marketing agency that specializes in image branding. "It really connects them to their fans in a new and unique way."
MILEY CYRUS
The rundown: It wasn't the first time Miley has asked for fans' assistance. Throughout the summer, she frequently encouraged them to help increase her Twitter followers and We Can't Stop video views. After breaking the Vevo record Tuesday morning, she also asked fans to push Wrecking Ball to No. 1 on the iTunes song charts — and got there.
