Ministry of Sound relies on VIP backing ahead of crucial showdown

Ministry of Sound (MoS) is relying on social media support from DJs such as Judge Jules and Fatboy Slim to back its ‘Save our Club’ campaign as the super-club faces potential closure.

MinistryofSound-club-2013
Musicians and broadcasters whose careers have been closely linked with the club will encourage sign-ups to a petition backing the campaign.

The campaign comes ahead of February 26 when London Mayor Boris Johnson is due to decide whether or not to approve plans to build a multi-storey residential block, just yards from its nightclub venue.  

Staff at MoS fear a residential block so close to its commercial headquarters will place massive restrictions on licensing permits held by the club, which attracts 300,000 clubbers each year, and ultimately its closure.

This could also have a potentially detrimental effect on its record label business, which has sold over 50 million records since MoS was founded 22 years ago.

As part of the campaign, DJs whose careers have been linked with the club and record label are backing the campaign.

The likes of Judge Jules and Fatboy Slim will encourage their social media following to sign up to an online petition backing the campaign. There will also be an effort to get the #savemosclub hashtag trending. 

Lohan Presencer, MoS’ CEO, hopes the backing of such high profile artists will significantly boost awareness of the petition, which currently has 40,000 signatories.

“We’re relying on a huge social media push and confident that it can reach millions of people [with support from the artists],” he says. 

Presencer also adds a key message of the campaign will be to remind Mayor Johnson and the public of MoS’ cultural and economic contribution to the UK since its beginnings in the early 1990s. He also says regeneration of the area surrounding the club, London’s Elephant & Castle district, should not come at the cost of an existing successful business.

Presencer told Marketing Week other super-club brands that emerged during the same era as MoS, such as Cream and Gatecrasher, “don’t exist in the same way as us” since they no longer have a club venue.   

“The club is our beating heart and people buy our records because of an authority that stems from the fact that we have a club that has been here for 22 years,” he adds.

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