It’s become an annual tradition: to try to bloody Simon Cowell’s nose and beat The X Factor to Christmas number one.

This year, the pretenders to the throne include Nirvana, The Wombles and the cast of The Only Way is Essex. Whether they will succeed remains to be seen.

But while hundreds – if not thousands – of people have failed to defeat the combined might of ITV, Syco and Sony Music, one man actually did it.  He wasn't a powerful media executive or a celebrity.  He was a married father of three who lived in Essex and worked for a chain of hi-fi stores. 

So, if you're thinking of launching your own social media campaign this Christmas, read Jon Morter's extraordinary story first.

Have a reason

“A follower of the Christmas chart for many years, I started to get a little bit tired and a little bit bored of this constant procession of nobodies hitting number one and disappearing forever," explains Jon Morter, the man who - along with his wife Tracy and 1.1 million Facebook friends - catapulted Rage against the Machine’s Killing in the Name Of to number one in 2009. “I saw Jedward on a TV screen and I thought: 'You know what? I’ve gotta do this.'

“I chose Rage against the Machine because I just thought it was the complete antithesis to anything The X Factor could put out. It’s got lots of swear words in it and I thought it would never normally make a Christmas number one. And it’s a great tune.”

Learn from your mistakes

In fact, the Rage campaign wasn’t Jon’s first attempt. “It all started way, way back in 2008,” he explains. “At the same time I was starting to play around with Twitter and Facebook and kind of working out that these things seemed to bring in lots of people for certain causes.

“The chart rules had, I think, just changed so that any paid download, in theory, can be a single. So I decided to twist the two together.” 

Jon’s social media campaign in 2008 to get Rick Astley to number one ended at number 73 in Christmas week. For many, this may have been considered a victory – they would have thanked the tens of thousands of Facebook fans for their help, had a chuckle, and moved on. Not Jon.

Use your tools wisely

In 2009, Jon was ready to take on The X Factor again. “I started a Facebook group. But this time round I had a lot of learning from where I’d gone wrong before. So it wasn’t just a lucky strike.

“I manipulated Facebook. There’s a lot of little tricks and things that they probably didn’t want me to do that I did.” These included finding loopholes in the way Facebook groups worked and using them to build the campaign’s momentum.

“I’d worked out a way of joining and becoming the new boss of that Facebook page. So if you can imagine, here’s a Facebook group about dog grooming or something with 5,000 members, all dog lovers. No admin. Suddenly I turn up and I take over. Now I’m in charge. I can message every member to say: ‘It’s nothing to do with dogs but, hey, Rage against the Machine are going for Christmas number one. Let’s have Cowell and his cronies.’ I did that for about 300 different Facebook groups.”

Manipulate the media

“I was creating stories that weren’t necessarily there. I blagged my way on a local radio station, Red Radio. But then, what I decided to do was invite all 100,000 of my Facebook group onto their chat server. And it broke. But that created a story. I hyped it and made out that those nasty, nasty Rage against the Machine people had broken their server.” 

But Jon wasn’t satisfied with stopping in the regions. He had the bit between his teeth – he wanted to go national.

“It grew and grew, and the stations and the media got bigger and bigger.”

Court controversy

By the time Jon made it on to BBC Radio 5 Live, he had a firm game plan to do “something vaguely controversial”, and at all costs be noticed.

“Radio 5 rang and said: ‘It’s going to be a very, very quick interview – 30 seconds to a minute, just to sort of let us know what’s going on.' So what I did is, I thought: ‘OK. Radio 5. Massive audience. How can I grab these people? So I made myself sound angry when I was on the phone. Nicky Campbell’s interviewing me and I sounded annoyed. And I mentioned about the campaign: ‘It’s on Facebook. Come and find us.’ 

"I ended the conversation abruptly. I actually finished the conversation early. I can’t remember exactly what I said now, but it was something like: ‘You know what, that Simon Cowell, he’s a –' and I cut myself off on purpose, to make it, hopefully, look like they’ve cut me off because I’ve been controversial and I’ve said naughty words.”

Keep up the pressure

“I blagged my way onto Sky News, I blagged my way onto CNN. I was just getting more and more people talking about it. And if they talk about it online, their friends see it and so on. Little things like that seemed to tie it all nicely together. And because the numbers were building and building – a quarter of a million, then to half a million, then three quarters of a million – the fact that there were big numbers was also creating its own news. I tried to create a snowball, which worked and then ran under its own steam.”

To Jon’s surprise, Rage against the Machine heard about the campaign and reformed.

“It was December 13th or 14th I think, so yeah, that was quite a key moment. We had nearly a million people by that time.”

Hope the enemy acknowledges you

Around the same time, a journalist asked Simon Cowell what he thought of the campaign at a press conference.

“Simon Cowell replied really negatively. He thought I was cynical and stupid for doing it. It was just the best possible piece of advertising and PR I’ve ever had in my life. It was just bonkers, absolutely crazy. And the group numbers just – I’ve never seen anything like it – it was going up by the hundred every second. And that was when I thought: this could work. I really think I could pull this off.”

Always have one last trick up your sleeve

“On the chart Saturday, Simon Cowell himself rang me at about six o’clock in the evening. I was a bit surprised. He said: ‘Look, I’ll be very honest with you. It’s absolutely neck and neck and could go either way. So I just wanted to say I’m really impressed with how you’ve done this and how you’ve managed to manage the media when you have no experience of doing it. I’ve been doing this for years and you guys have done amazingly well.’