Six60: Masters of cyber space

Six60's new album quickly reached gold status. The band will soon be touring New Zealand. Photo / Supplied

Six60 don't need to do publicity to promote their New Zealand tour. Tickets to five of the shows sold out in days, if not minutes. Yet Marlon Gerbes is up early and has trudged across Auckland for this interview.

Perhaps he's the band member who has drawn the short straw. You'd never know it, though. He's more than happy to chat and we squeeze a raft of topics into our 40-odd minutes - their delight at the success of their recently released second album, its new soul-tinged sound and working with Grammy Award-winning artist and producer Printz Board.

But it's social media and the Six60 approach to self-promotion that really gets us talking. It's a big part of the groundswell that has turned these old uni mates into one of the country's most successful acts. "Social media is so key in what we do at the moment. Like this album we just released. Our label said we spent zero money on marketing. It was all done through social media," says Gerbes, who co-produced the album with Matiu Walters and Board.

Gerbes runs the Facebook page, which has 230,000 likes, and Chris Mac does Twitter, where they have 18,800 followers. They all take responsibility for Instagram. Gerbes says they treat them as individual platforms, which fans appreciate, and all three are incredibly time-consuming.

"It's a conversation and it's a long, long one that you have to keep up. It's not like you can do a random post that has nothing to do with the last post. It's a continuation and people get it and they follow it."

And he says the band listen to what their fans have to say. "Nowadays it takes ages to go through 300 comments but you have to. You get a feel for how people are feeling and what they're saying and you reply, because you want people to know you're listening."

It worked like magic when teasing the new self-titled album, which reached gold status within seven days. And it was just as successful for announcing the tour, helped by the band promising more gigs if New Zealand made it through the Cricket World Cup semifinals.

"That was totally off the cuff. We were in the lounge watching and going, 'Let's just say if they win this game [semifinal], we'll announce more shows.' Halfway through ... we had to go and do an interview and by then the radio had already picked it up and were talking about it."

It also undoubtedly helped Six60 achieve the almost unthinkable for a Kiwi band - selling out Auckland's Vector Arena. That still blows their minds, Gerbes says.

But really, you'd expect nothing less from a bunch of hardworking, aspirational friends whose goal is total domination, not just in cyber space, but the real world, too.

The Six60 tour kicks off in Wellington on May 16 and 17 and finishes in Tauranga on June 7. They play Vector Arena in Auckland on May 23.