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:
“If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don’t care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“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)
“Hard times accounted in large part for the fact that the exposition was a financial disappointment in its first year, but Sally Rand and her fan dancers accomplished what applied science had failed to do, and the exposition closed in 1934 with a net profit, which was donated to participating cultural institutions, excluding Sally Rand.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“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)