Volkswagen is, as usual, doing things differently and getting some some positive attention for it.
This morning a composer friend of mine posted a video on Facebook of "piano key" stairs. His post had nothing to do with VW advertising and less to do with marketing in general. He just found the video interesting because of his relationship with music (I'm sure of this because he posted the Swedish version of the video and he definitely doens't speak their language). After finishing watching the video, I clicked on the link, expecting to be directed to some sort of music school related experiment site, and was (momentarily) suprised to be directed to a lightly branded VW website proclaiming (once I ticked the UK flag for English):
"This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun
is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it
for yourself, for the environment, or something entirely different, the
only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better."
This mini guerrilla campaign/behavioral experiment is doing exactly that:
The piano installation was created to encourage people to make the healthier choice to take the stairs instead of using an escalator. The before and after shots of the staircase vs. the escalator prove the trick works.
The next video depicting "The World's Deepest [Trash] Bin," an outdoor public garbage can that makes a cartoonish sound of something falling very very far, had the effect of getting park-goers to not only throw away their own trash, but also to clean up the rest of the park just to hear the falling sound again.
Next, they promise to come up with a fun way to recycle.
I say, GO TEAM VOLKSWAGEN (BDB Stockholm)! This bare bones project of theirs sure is a great example of a lot of good things advertising: marketing as service, combining online and offline, and making a good idea viral by keeping it open-ended and by not shoving a ton of branding down the throats of those who couldn't care less about cars (i.e. my buddy the composer).
Two nights ago I attended SonarSound NY, a presentation given by Barcelona’s Festival of
Advanced Music in cooperation with the Institut Ramon Llull, a Catalan
cultural organization. If you follow me on Twitter, chances are you read my verging-on-hysterical tweets about seeing (and playing!) a ReacTable for the first time.
Though seeing the ReacTable was the sole purpose of my
voyage into the Barishnikov Arts Center, it wasn't the only thrill of
the evening.
Next door to the ReacTable demo, a wild interactive art piece was presented by Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca. Roca's Metamembrana is composed of four multi-layered projections and a few interactive elements: four patterned rugs intended to be trodded upon, and a bird house set on a low podium, into which the viewer is asked to scream. By stepping on the rugs and screaming into the birdhouse, the viewers trigger a video collage of flamenco-inspired performances depicting stories of love, war and death.
The goal of Metamembrana (I'm paraphrasing a google translation of the artist's own words here) is to engage the viewer in its own production by using their faces (captured from inside the birdhouse), by adding entities and elements gathered from each place it visits, and by creating a unique experience at each show, based on the participation of the viewers.
The other notable performances were from Prefuse 73, a three-person DJ set of densely layered sound, distortion and hip-hop beats, DJ/Rupture, whose music mashup magic inspired a surge of dancing, and a live minimal soundtrack to "Goodbye Dragon Inn" by Fibla and Arbol.
This event was complete success: positive, energizing, and mind-exploding. It had to go on this blog.
