DASI

There’s no denying that Spotify has been a bit of a revelation of late. We love it here, and so do most people we speak to. If nothing else, it allows for some classic musical battles across the office, and occasional bouts of what only can be described as ‘80s fever’ which is similar to swine flu, but a little less tasteful.

Obviously, where there’s a lot of traffic, there will be commercial enterprises that want to be able to tap into it; look at Twitter. For Spotify’s sake let’s hope this is the case, as the jury still seems to be out on how they’re really going to make their money, and you feel that the much coveted iPhone app they’ve developed and the rumoured 3 mobile deals might be fairly pivotal in their long term future. Whilst these commercial deals will undoubtedly appear, at the moment the guys www.invisiblefestival.org seem to have stolen the show, and what’s more, it’s for charity.

From what we’ve read, three guys decided it would be a cool idea to promote the world’s only “100% mud free, crowd-free, rain-free, tout-free, queue-free, free-free virtual festival.” It utilises the potential in Spotify’s playlist functionality to allow people to listen to the same music in their own garden, front room or anywhere else they have a computer and internet connection. Various artists have developed special one-off playlists of their music and their tastes for the event that will be live just for day and it’s nicely packaged in a playful identify. The whole event is aimed at encouraging people to give money to Cancer Research, although it’s not been directly organised by their marketing team; one of the guys happens to work for them in a different role.

Frankly, it’s great. What’s perhaps the most important thing to consider here is that the budget for the whole thing must have been close to nothing. The site is built on Wordpress (as this blog is) and promotion on the whole has been through WOM, although a few banners are now live on Spotify itself.
It’s a classic example of how if you understand the technology, digital can be a fantastically cost effective medium for some clients. To me, it also makes you think, what is real creativity? Is it taking a multi-million pound budget and making something that looks, well, a million dollars? Or is it being able to make the most of whatever the circumstances maybe, being the Ray Mears of the advertising world, if you will? There’s great skill in both, but as everyone is feeling the pinch in the current advertising climate, the ability to produce great, engaging work to restrictive budgets has perhaps never been so valuable.

A genuinely nice piece of work, with a nice story behind it and what’s more, a million miles better than a ‘chugger.’

This has been all over Twitter the last couple of days, and I’m not suprised. Augmented Reality (AG) has been around for a while now, and has been the darling of a few agencies on the R&D front of late, we recently ran a pitch that 2 of the 4 agencies presented an AG concept; they were lovely in their own right, but there wasn’t really a practical edge, just a cool one. This is often the case with new bits of technology, as agencies always want to be doing the coolest and and most interesting work- that’s what makes them creative beasts, but that can sometimes mean that the true business needs of the client aren’t top of tree (where they should always be).

Step forward AKQA in the states who’ve produced the above. It’s amazingly simple as an idea; but then the best ideas are often are and there’s a real end user value, something that will make an impact past the couple of mins initial dwell time.  It might not be the sexiest of products or uses but who cares, no doubt you’ll see this come awards time, and we’ll not be arguing. Smashing.

A nice idea this- scrap the big site build and over the top production, and  instead, build everything in You Tube. There’s so much ‘noise’ created by agencies that it’s always difficult for smaller companies to make themselves heard, so it’s great when something like this happens. It’s true Practice What You Preach work too, having a great idea and creating stand out from a crowded market for minimum cost. It’s had great coverage in the industry press, but perhaps more importantly is the fantastic general feedback from Joe Public- it’s these guys that will send it round the world,  and gain it one of the holy grails: ‘earned media’- it’s literally the kind of coverage that money can’t buy.   When was the last time you saw an agency site do that? Spot On.