Content Is Advertising: Making Music Videos More Appealing And Interactive

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

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.

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