Facebook mum with more PR power than Simon Cowell

For those indie-minded old grumps hiding in the home office, like me while the X Factor saga rumbled to its depressing conclusion last night, a last minute hero has emerged.

A self-described stay-at-home mum from Essex, Tracy Morter set up a Facebook group in mid November, proposing ‘Rage against the machine for Christmas No1′

By the magic of Facebook and an alignment of media interest around X Factor, Tracy Morter’s idea may now determine the outcome of the Christmas singles chart.

There are 714K members of the Facebook group at the time of writing and between 250K and 500K purchases of “Killing in the name of” are estimated to be needed to secure the spot. The song is already number one on iTunes.

No wonder Simon Cowell is coming over as a bit cross in interviews about the campaign he describes as ‘silly’. With all his TV ratings power, it looks like he’s still no match for a mum with a social media platform.

The relatively unknown agency Anomaly, who last week Sony appointed to their £50 million global advertising account, has a quote on their website from the head of R&D at Proctor & Gamble which says “My biggest competitor today is a person with an idea” and so it is proving.