How digital changes the way that marketing is made
In its recent very aptly titled article "Mayhem On Madison Avenue," Fast Company outlines how digital media has turned the agency business and marketing in general upside down. Unless you've been living in a cave, it's pretty obvious how companies use digital to market their products and services to customers. But less obvious, but equally important, are the ways that digital is changing the way that successful marketing is created in the first place.
If you watched TV over the Thanksgiving weekend, you probably witnessed an outstanding example of the digital media creative process in action: The prime time premiere of Pomplamoose, who may be one of the very best bands you never heard of.
Pomplamoose is Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, two Bay area musicians who have never made a CD, have no record deal and no publicists, no conventional retail distribution, and almost never perform in public. Most of their music is covers of other musicians' songs. And while they're excellent, appealing performers, there's nothing bizarre or Lady Gaga-like about them.
Sound like a recipe for artistic obscurity? Just the opposite. Starting around Black Friday, Pomplamoose starred in the first of their three holiday season commercials for Hyundai - "Up On The Housetop" - followed a few days later by "Jingle Bells" and "Deck The Halls." (Earlier in the year Pomplamoose created the "Mr. Sandman" music for a Toyota Avalon TV spot. IMHO: Great music, dopey ad campaign.)
They were one of the first bands invited into YouTube's Musicians Wanted, the program that places ads next to or on a video, and then share the revenue 50-50 with the artist.
• One Pomplamoose video has been viewed almost 4 million times on YouTube.
• They sold about 100,000 songs online during 2009, and have 180,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel as of September 2010.
• They market their music unconventionally, offering handmade soaps with free albums added in and free albums to anyone who buys their hand-screened t-shirts.
• Now Pomplamoose has released its latest song video, "Jungle Animal," as a browser-based game that lets fans lay down their own choice of tracks.
• And for this holiday season, Pomplamoose ties in with Hyundai and with Amazon.com, for a promotion that donates free books for kids in Richmond, California. Donate a book - download free Pomplamoose music.
Pomplamoose's experience is a perfect example of the kind of rapid evolution Fast Company reports in the advertising/marketing community right now. A new wave of DIY digital small businesses become the creative resources for conventional old wave TV advertising campaigns. Both benefit. In an interview, Conte and Dawn talked about how Hyundai parked cars in Pomplamoose's garage studio, then just invited them to create. "That's the thing," Nataly Dawn says. "People think that all of these things have to be done by geniuses behind huge desks or at the top of skyscrapers, but you can just go online and do it yourself.