Street Teams & Fan Forum
When SPiT LiKE THiS began playing live gigs in 2003, a hardcore group of fans quickly formed and frequently travelled with the band to whatever gigs they could reach. These fans were quickly branded ‘SluTz’ (The Slut being the name of the band’s logo at the time), in this context though SluT was an acronym for ‘SPiT LiKE U TOO’, identifying the fans as clearly belonging to the band. As the band’s popularity increased, all the fans became SLuTz, and the hardcore became known as 'The SLuTz of Doom'.
From the first days of the band’s existence, word of mouth has always been a crucial tool for publicity and marketing. The band continues to encourage fans to form street teams to help publicise them, and they have provided a variety of free stickers and flyers over the years to help generate awareness, both of the band and of smellyourmum.com, and even dedicate a part of their website to fans’ exploits in this arena.
Fans who sign up to join street teams become a member of the 'Street SLuTz'. Originally established in support of smellyourmum.com, and replacing the ‘Guerilla Militia’ paid membership fan club which smellyourmum.com had previously operated, the Street SLuTz first appeared around February 2004. The name was changed briefly to Street Squadron in 2008, following concern that potential members were put off by the word ‘slut’, but an outcry from members saw it revert again shortly afterwards.
SPiT LiKE THiS have maintained a website since January 2002, to which a fan forum was added in October 2002. Prior to this, the forum was attached to the first incarnation of smellyourmum.com. Following the movement of the ever-expanding SPiT LiKE THiS website to a fully dedicated server in November 2006, the forum was named Obscene (But Not Heard) after the song of the same name from the ‘Dragged Kicking & Screaming’ EP. This forum has over 1,400 members, while the band’s email newsletter (the NOiZLETTER) has a circulation of over 17,000.
Read more about this topic: Spit Like This
Famous quotes containing the words street, teams, fan and/or forum:
“What are you now? If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving. . . . Take my hand. Speak to me.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Already nature is serving all those uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their lagging inventions supply.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)