If you’re any kind of geekster hipster, you would have visited http://thewildernessdowntown.com/. You know, that Arcade fire, HTML 5 thingy. It’s a brilliant experimental in interactive media. Built for the new web, using HTML 5. Definitely worth watching – if you haven’t already.
You enter the name of the street that you grew up on, and voila. You’re thrust into an immersive experience. With you the star of an Arcade Fire video clip. Here’s a still from my version – you can see birds flying over my house! Then, write a postcard to the person who lives there now. The best ones submitted then get read out at a concert (ok I may have made that last bit up). But brilliant concept all round. A great track too.
Of course, you’re gonna need to download Google Chrome, apparently. But no worry. You’ve been using Firefox, and only Firefox, for years. But there’s no harm in a little “download another browser” action.
And hey, other browsers, like Safari and Chrome are really good. They’re just battling at the shorter end of the market share tail. They need a little help – but they just need a little help getting the word out.
As a marketing ploy, this is a no-brainer for the Arcade fire. They don’t really need to spread the word about this album. But they may as well. Especially if it’s for free. And Google certainly knows how to get the word out, from an advertising perspective.
But the real brilliance here is that Google. They’ve completely pulled off a viral marketing campaign wizardry. That Arcade Fire eagerly awaited album was every hipster geekster’s top album for 2010, even before its release. And geekster hipsters love watching film clips in HTML5! And, the best bit – the hipster geeksters are exactly who they need to be marketing to. A large psychographic that are far more likely to use more than one browser.
Genius.
At long last, we have another classic case study on a successful viral marketing campaign. Which is great – that “Will it Blend” example was starting to get tired and lonely.
