Content Is Advertising: Making Music Videos More Appealing And Interactive

from the choose-your-own-music-video dept

Tue, Oct 26th 2010 3:45pm — Mike Masnick

We often talk about the importance of recognizing that good content acts as advertising and that good advertising is no different than good content (such that people want to seek it out). And that's definitely true of the concept of music videos. They've always basically been "advertising" for the musician. These days, with YouTube, the music video has a new platform rather than MTV where music videos used to live. Lately, we've pointed out that some musicians are trying to get beyond the somewhat static limits of what a plain old "video in a box" can give you. For example, we discussed how the band Arcade Fire did an interactive video using HTML 5, that mashed up the actual video with the Google Street View of your childhood home.

The latest example we've seen is from singer Andy Grammer, who has just put out this "interactive" music video, which is basically a "choose your own adventure" version of a music video. As the music plays, you're given various choices as to what happens next, and the whole thing is incredibly seamless (though, warning: it takes freaking forever to load before you can start):

Now there's nothing completely earth-shattering about this. The video is still a music video, but it does make the whole experience a bit cooler and it certainly gives people a reason to watch the video a few more times to see other variations (and there are a lot of variations), which might also help getting the song stuck in people's heads (in a good way, it's catchy). But it does show that it's good for artists (and their labels -- in this case, indie S-Curve Records) to think beyond the traditional box (quite literally) in ways that they interact with fans.

One of the complaints that some people make when we talk about the importance of connecting and interacting with fans is they think that all we're talking about is that musicians should hang out on Twitter all day. But nothing is further from the truth. For some musicians Twitter might be the best way to connect. For other musicians, putting together cool videos like this can help them connect. The point is to experiment and to figure out what works, rather than just doing the same old thing and expecting everyone to rush to you.

Separately, it's worth noting that the video itself was sponsored by Old Navy. We've seen brands doing this a lot more lately, such as State Farm's sponsorship of Ok Go's Rube Goldberg video. Once again, this works on the multiple levels of advertising and content meshing in a way that isn't intrusive or annoying, but which makes everyone better off. And, of course, that's not all either. To make this video work, S-Curve is using technology from a start-up called Interlude... which it has invested in as well. Without a doubt, this video is also advertising Interlude and its technology.

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Filed Under: advertising, andy grammer, content, interactive videos
Companies: interlude, old navy, s-curve

10 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 3:52pm

Where is the copyright license for that piece?

If it is not CC SA, Free Artistic or GPL, I'm sorry but no interest.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 4:07pm

Google does a pretty decent job with their videos too.
I still think that the best advertisement is this one for Google. And like the Kelsey Grammer video, it has Easter eggs in it and remains one of the most clever videos on the internet today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n4-oVOKoLY
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 4:27pm

here is my take on it all
if they had of done this ten years back it might have al worked and the massive millions of sheep would have bought into it.

Instead they sued and tried to control that which they could not.

The quote below was seen on my seocnd private torrent board of a user i became friends with....
"p2p is about marketing, if you can't give somehting away how are you going to sell it stupid"
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Mike Masnick (profile), 26 Oct 2010 @ 4:40pm

Re: here is my take on it all
if they had of done this ten years back it might have al worked and the massive millions of sheep would have bought into it.

Um. Who's "they"?
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2010 @ 4:45pm

One of the many benefits of being a moron
When you think about it, these people are probably all Techdirt insiders. In fact, they also probably aspire to fix things by voting for the angriest candidate this fall. Grrr!

Look at Old Navy. They definitely has a better setup than The Gap. The GAP logo problem wasn't crowd-sourcing. It was just a shitty logo. Then they exasperated the problem by asking for free help. That's it.

Lather, rinse, repeat.
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TN, 26 Oct 2010 @ 5:09pm

In Oz, that link to Andy Grammer's stuff is 'not available in your country' so right now, it's a broken idea.
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 26 Oct 2010 @ 5:26pm

Not exactly interactive in the "choose your own adventure" sense, more like a "paint your own video and share it" sense, but I love this interactive animated music video:

http://soytuaire.labuat.com/
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jupiterkansas (profile), 26 Oct 2010 @ 5:37pm

So the secret is to do something interesting that people will actually seek out? You mean people have to do more than just write yet another pop song?

We're in a world that's flooded with media. Only the innovative will prosper.
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Chargone (profile), 26 Oct 2010 @ 5:48pm

hurray for things not available outside of the US and Canada...

woo.
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Phatnobody (profile), 27 Oct 2010 @ 1:48am

Connecting with Fans? I think not
Bad example of connecting with fans Mike. If he truly wanted to connect, he's make it available world-wide.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.
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