#GuDroChallenge Over, a Shocking Winner, and Lessons Learned

Time to come clean: I’d been waiting for a reason to have a group vs. group competitive poll situation for a week or so, and Guso Drop inadvertently presented a prime opportunity.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, a poll geared toward Westerners that included Babymetal in a race for Most Anything was won by Babymetal. By the time this summer is done, there’s a very good chance that they’ll have the most name recognition in the West of any Japanese artist, period, and they’re already in many ways the backbone of the international alt-idol fan scene. As such, they have a very well-built-out Internet fan presence (that’s full of people with a chip on their shoulder, but that’s not for today); as soon as the poll was shared to the Babymetal subreddit, this thing was over.


Oof

So, lesson #1: Find ways to minimize Babymetal’s influence on these things. 🙂 But there’s a tautological factor at play, too, which is that most people are going to come to this site via interest in Babymetal, at least through Phase 1 (Did I never mention that there are phases to this? There are phases to this. Why? Because I work in digital strategy and that’s a thing you can do.), so how to balance that out?

I’ll actually employ a very simple bit of statistical modeling, structured properly but with a lot of number-fudging because I don’t feel like combing the entire Internet to manually count a bunch of 1s and 2s: I’ll “adjust” the results to account for proportional exposure and size of fan base and incoming traffic sources; if you like sports, especially baseball, you’re probably familiar with the idea (ERA+, DVOA, etc.).

In the end, then, the winner is neither Babymetal (who got all the votes) nor Guso Drop (who went and started all of this), but Fruitpochette, who managed two votes despite having absolutely no real online presence. That’s cool!

Which, lesson #2: There’s more awareness and appreciation of these groups than I think we appreciate. Between me and some zealous fans, Guso Drop and Necronomidol and Babymetal supporters all got some encouragement to come and vote; other than initial tweets this morning, neither Fruitpochette nor Haloperi Doll nor Hanako-san nor BiSH (who, come on) nor Party Rockets got any promotion in this at all, but they all got a vote and ergo have at least one huge fan who’s connected with the site. Even Screaming Sixties got a write-in. Nobody took the bait on Kamen Joshi. Smart!

So, lesson #3: There’s potential to actually make this work.

If you’re reading this and made it this far, be forewarned: March Madness begins next week, and we’re going to have a little tournament of our own. I’m still working on the concept and design, so it might not launch at the same time as the NCAA tournament, but we’ll get it going. If we can get the groups to promote, it might actually be kind of fun!

8 thoughts on “#GuDroChallenge Over, a Shocking Winner, and Lessons Learned

  1. Fair play but one thing i think you are losing sight of here is the question you asked was ‘Who is the heaviest idol’ and whilst Babymetal were always going to win this because of their huge fanbase they are (by far) sonically the heaviest of all the bands listed.
    Whilst they are definitely not the most extreme in terms of themes or presentation they have the ‘metal chops’ that none of the others do.
    I’ll admit to being a huge Babymetal fan and they were my introduction to the world of ‘anti-idol’ (if you like) back in mid 2013, i have CD’s by nearly all the bands listed in your poll (where were Passcode tho’?) and i am a huge fan of Bish, BiS, Fruit Pochette, Passcode and even Screaming Sixties but i voted for Babymetal because of the question asked.
    If it had been ‘who is the most extreme idol’ for instance my answer would have been different (Probably Necronomidol i guess).
    This is not intended to be criticism but is merely a rambling thought from an old UK Metalhead converted to Homicidolism 🙂

    • Not at all, sir, I loved it. You have good taste! I actually left off PassCode because no matter how much I love their breakdowns and Yuna screams, I just couldn’t reckon it. (Why I then included Kamen Joshi remains to be seen …). Welcome – hope you like the site!

      • Thank you and yes your site is pretty cool, glad i stumbled across it
        Looking forward to see what you post next
        Kamen Joshi… hmm yes – pretty good songs but liking them on facebook causes lot’s of posts of girls cleavages to appear (which can be embarrassing if i’m at work LOL)
        Keep up the good work

          • Ha ha yes that’s exactly it, happily my wife hasn’t paid any attention to my facebook feed but if it carries on i might need to knock kamen Joshi on the head lol

  2. Technically Fruitpochette do kinda have an online presence, there is a Facebook fan club where I posted a link to the poll. On the other hand, I was the second person to vote for them so I don’t think it had much effect.

  3. Pingback: GuDro Proclaims Selves Most Heaviest, Will Now Fight It out in this Poll | Homicidols

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