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Thanks to @ncbeets, @hackernewsbot @brazenlab for the heads-up about this hilarious 404 page from Blippy. Go ahead. Click on the unicorn.
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Have you seen the new Steam Whistle Brewing television commercial? It premiered last night on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos.
If you aren't familiar with Steam Whistle Brewing, it's a Toronto-based pilsner brewery that
uses traditional brewing techniques and only four natural ingredients
including spring water, malted barley, hops and yeast - all GMO-free.
The beer is brewed in an old warehouse that used to make steam locomotives. Their logo, distinctive green bottles, delivery vehicles and advertising all play off that retro feel. The television commercial is a lovely example of how using sound can underline brand identity and create a memorable 30-second spot. It also ties-in nicely to the Steam Whistle website, which has the same iconic whistle sound.
The ad was created by Toronto agency SharpeBlackmore Euro RSCG.
After an all-too-brief stint in Toronto where I attended Mesh and met up with colleagues and friends, my head is swimming with some of outstanding moments and great lines, some of which I’ve jotted down here...
"Companies go to great lengths to protect their existing business models, even if it goes against their best interests. And, in a lot of cases, I believe it does. A lot of these innovations will increase the size of a market, not decrease it. But innovation also creates fear." Mike Masnick discussing how litigious copyright laws inhibit new sustainable business models."I think that I could retire on happiness." Jessica Jackley discussing how she feels about her work at Kiva.org
"Digital has to be at the strategy table from conceptualism. If digital only exists to support traditional, it’s a fail." Pepsico’s Bonin Bough on the integration of digital media.
"Search is huge. It’s the new digital newsstand. It's a whole new space to evolve into, and create relevant content.... You have to start thinking like a newsroom. Think about going from sound bite to sound blast." Bonin Bough on message distribution.
"Today it’s all about filtering – how do you find what’s important?" Andrew Cherwenka on finding the signal through the noise."Blogging is dinner. Twitter is dessert." Mark Evans on the difference between substance and yummy tidbits.
1. This week you couldn’t swing a cat – if you are inclined to do so – without hearing the word “Skittles.” When the candy company killed its website and instead overlaid their site on top of Twitter, Wikipedia and other social media sites, a full-scale Skittlegate rolled into the InterWebz. David Armano had some thoughts that he shared with Jackie Huba of Church of the Customer. Jim Sterne sees it as a Kool-Aid overdose and wins the prize this week for the most amazing sound-bite: "...don't bogart that social-media bong. Small hits are delicious..."
2. Hey, guess what? At long last Twitter might actually get a built-in search box.
3. Are you a newcomer to the world of SEO? SEOmoz is always an incredible resource and this week offered 12 Easy Mistakes that Plague Newcomers to the SEO Field.
4. Ann Smarty reminds us not to ignore breadcrumb navigation – it can feed search engines and help users.
5. Brand stories often can be told in a few highly compelling words. Advergirl’s Leigh House has an insightful look at 10 compelling, authentic brands.
6. Online influence. What is it and how do you measure it? Micah Baldwin delivers the goods at Mashable.
7. When Matt Cutts makes recommendations, you should listen. Google has a firm stand on paid posts and transparency. Word.
8. I found Suzemuse’s piece, The Story of Information, to be fascinating and a profound piece of advice: Figure out the story you want your online data to tell.
9. Design and content work hand-in-hand, to provide a user experience. Smashing Magazine has a fantastic article on how icons can support content in web design. I promise you’ll never look at the icon the same way again.
10. In a world of No’s it’s time to think of creative ways we can say Yes! to our customers.
This Week’s Fun
Was it Mrs. Peacock in the library with the lead pipe? Nope, it’s Aflac.
Social media has changed the music industry. Bands now actively promote themselves on MySpace, interact with fans through dynamic websites and blogs, and use the power of the collective to sell out gigs.
Sweet Billy Pilgrim is a three-piece band from the UK that is one of those bands that is plugged into new media. Tim Elsenburg, the band’s frontman, very kindly took some time to speak with me via email to answer some questions about how Sweet Billy Pilgrim is navigating the waters. We discuss the mythology of the MySpace page, finding your audience and the business model of the new music economy.
You’ve got a new album, Twice Born Men, coming out on March 16th. First of all, tell me a little bit about this project.
We recently signed to David Sylvian's Samadhisound label, and we tend to find ourselves hunching under the umbrella of 'folktronica' alongside UK artists like Adem, Tunng and Psapp. I think we'd need a slightly bigger umbrella (one of those golfing ones?) to account for the influence of atmospheric, progressive pop bands like The Blue Nile and Elbow, but essentially we take acoustic noises and atmospheric electronic ones, and try to mix them all up in as emotive and honest a way as we can.
Twice Born Men is our second record, and it's a sort of concept album, in the loosest sense. It starts at the end of the heart's little journey and then works its way back to the beginning, which is actually the end anyway, so it's kind of like that Elton John song in the Lion King... only longer, and with less lions. There are some tigers though, oddly enough.
Sweet Billy Pilgrim as well as the individual members have MySpace pages. Tell me about the strengths of MySpace from a music marketing perspective.
I'm in two minds about MySpace these days. It seems to me that many of the musicians there have swallowed those (possibly) mythical stories of record companies signing bands on the strength of them having hundreds of thousands of friends, and so they just spend an hour every evening adding people in an effort to look popular. That has the knock-on effect of rendering everyone's Friend Request pages completely ungovernable, so that no one actually has the time or inclination to listen to any of the music anymore.
Without the music element, there is no advantage to MySpace; there are other networking sites with infinitely more elegant interfaces, so basically it's just there as a quick, crude, easily reached reference for people like me who read a review and want to navigate quickly to somewhere they can hear what they've been reading about before they buy it. You can hear a song or two, a quick scan of the biog, and then you're gone.
It surprises me, with the current state of things in the music 'industry', that the musicians are still often the conservative ones when it comes to their aspirations. So many young bands still gaze down in awe at the imagined dotted line that'll lead to the O2 Arena and loads of girls / boys with alcopop-breath. It's not really going to happen anymore, with a few exceptions here and there, and it won't matter how many MySpace chums you have. What we have instead is the chance to put music out there, not as a means to an end, but actually as the end.
How's anyone going to make money out of that? We haven't quite got to that question yet, because first we have to find and connect to our audience. I still think it's a very exciting time to be making music, because for the first time we can make that connection. We can provide real context from which people can listen to what we do; background, influences, even personality perhaps, and all via SN.
In addition to MySpace, Sweet Billy Pilgrim is very connected; you’re on Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. How did you decide which social networks you would use to connect to fans?
Just wandered about like lost children until we saw people congregating, and then - like the sheep we are - joined in ! There was no plan. We looked at what other people use, and really the only thing we had to bear vaguely in mind was that we're over 30, and therefore a 'heritage' act in the eyes of the industry (that's a real term, apparently). No point in us hanging around on Bebo or CafeMom, because it'd be inappropriate and a waste of time.
How have social networks changed the relationship between a band and its fans?
Well, there is a relationship now, apart from the one a band and an audience establish at a show, which obviously differs in being a more shared experience. When I discover new music, I'm very keen to absorb as much information as possible about an artist. I like finding out about the records they like, and what guitars they use (I don't get out much). Following a band via social networks is a chance to learn all that, and have the chance to interact with the artist too. I can never understand it when an artist opens a Twitter or MySpace profile and then leaves it to a PR person or manager to update when there's new product or a show to hawk.
I understand that some artists like to be a bit mysterious and intriguing, but we're kind of the opposite of that. We've done some fairly serious electronica festivals, all involving bearded men staring intensely at laptops, and when we amble on and chat to the audience inbetween songs there's almost a collective sigh of relief: We've invited them in.
I think that the social networking side of things should really just be an extension of that. They've invited us into their lives by coming to a show, or buying our record, so it would be a shame not to return the compliment. I get lots of good records recommended to me too, so I'd miss out on all that.
Has the online interaction with fans helped to shape any musical direction/the creative process?
No. Not really. I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to the songs. On one occasion though, it has directly influenced my choice of shirt onstage. Apparently someone has also created a dance especially for one of our songs, which makes me a bit nervous.
NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker recently lamented that the entertainment industry has exchanged “analog dollars for digital dimes”. The traditional concept of the album-as-artifact is quickly changing in today’s market of (often) free digital media downloads. Can you talk to me a bit about Sweet Billy Pilgrim’s business model in the new music economy?
I guess we're kind of lucky, in that our appeal - demographically speaking - would probably be to the last group of people perhaps interested in buying physical CD product. Samadhisound pride themselves on beautiful artwork, which certainly helps us to be noticed by the collectors. We do give away quite a bit of music though. I'm not precious about it. The last album went into stores with little or no PR, except for the support of the mp3 blogging community.
I'm not under any illusions that there's a living to be made from my songs, which - in a way - is quite freeing. If people don't want to pay for music, then they won't. All you can hope - naively perhaps - is that they might come to a show or buy a T-shirt, or even buy the next record if they love what they hear.
The important thing becomes getting the songs out there. Onto people's iPods... their Last.fm profiles... their phones... Then there's hope at least! The democratizing effect of the internet and affordable recording equipment means that there's load of great music out there - probably more than ever - but also that there's even more rubbish, so it becomes a matter of trying to stand out a bit.
Word of mouth seems to be the key there, so answering messages, passing on information, sharing free music with the bloggers; just joining in as creative and non-cynical a way as possible does seem to inspire a bit of brand loyalty, to use a horrible phrase. People might talk about us because they like the music, but it's never just been about music, so the details start to matter a whole lot more. Plus, almost everyone I've encountered is really lovely.
What will 2009 hold for Sweet Billy Pilgrim?
I'm going to restart my mp3 blog. I've discovered so many great new bands in the last few years, and I need somewhere to yarn about them. I've just finished a collaboration with Adem for a BBC Radio 3 commission, so that'll be aired in March or April. Then there are a couple of remixes to do and various shows and festivals coming up in the UK.
Related Resources
Official Sweet Billy Pilgrim Website
Sweet Billy Pilgrim on MySpace
Tim Elsenburg on MySpace
Twitter - Sweet Billy Pilgrim
Flickr - Sweet Billy Pilgrim
Facebook - Sweet Billy Pilgrim
Last.fm - Sweet Billy Pilgrim
What if those ubiquitous, generic male and female icons that appear on signs everywhere had a life of their own? In the Pedestrian Project, they do. The familiar icons in real-life settings are strangely mesmerizing.
Thanks to Armin at Speak Up for the heads-up!
I was as pleased as Punch to find one of my Flickr photos – the one above – used on Spacing Montreal, an online magazine that explores neighbourhoods, architecture, urban planning, transit, cycling and just about anything that involves the public realm of the city.
Even cooler, I learned a new word: psychogeography.
According to Wikipedia, psychogeography is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."
Sounds like a little dose of the unexpected in a walk-about format.
If you’ve ever let yourself be thoroughly, completely captivated by a foreign city or new area of town, drifting and wandering happily from street to street, drinking in the personality of the place – the architectural shapes, smells, feel and colour – and letting yourself be delighted by something new, then, you’ve done a bit of unbeknownst psychogeography.
The creative process is similar. A bit of happenstance. A serendipitous drift. Suddenly, two unconnected bits/thoughts come together and form that “Oh, now that’s interesting” moment.
It’s Saturday. Try something new. Maybe a psychogeographical mosey? Or rearrange your bookshelf by colour.
From the very odd season's greeting from U.S. President Bush’s dog Barney to poor sad Billy Idol hamming it up to Jingle Bell Rock a few years back (My eyes! My eyes! Aiieeee!), it seems like everywhere you turn there is something new and mostly wonderful to watch. ( I suppose I should be grateful that at least the former Gen-X front man isn’t doing adverts for butter, unlike others.)
Of course, companies like to spread the holiday cheer as well. Every year Twist Image does something fun and witty. And, yesterday, I stumbled across this highly elaborate, wildly imaginative seasonal greeting from the London-based office of AKQA, a digital marketing company.
But the one that touched me the most was from Brainstorm, a brand development and communications company. Friend Ed Illig sent over the link and I was instantly captivated. On the BCause08.com site, the folks at Brainstorm share their favourite holiday memories, and as a reminder of what this season is really all about, they donate 25 cents to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, up to $5000, for every viewing. (So, go, check it out!!)
As colleague @zoonini pointed out, the site doesn’t only look nice –it’s a great use of Flash- but in a salute to usability, they've included a notification to users that there is audio. Combine a lovingly designed website and good copy that has a distinct voice (“Peek at our past and we’ll give to the future.”) with a cause and a way to make a difference and it elevates a fun seasonal video into a feel-good moment. Nice work, Brainstorm.
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