Customer Experience: Music Video

These days, if you are a popular band or up and coming musical act, the music video is as powerful a marketing tool as any. A good music video can mean accessibility to many more fans who may not know about the music yet or who haven’t heard of the particular artist. Music videos in popular music today are most definitely consumer experiences, as artists use these 3 or so minutes to connect with their audience on a visual and hopefully a personal level that cannot be achieved by just listening to the album. However, rarely does a music video make as big an impact as the actual song it displays or the source album.

One of my favorite bands, The Arcade Fire, released a new album this year called The Suburbs. I first heard about this new album online, but not before being first introduced to the video for the first single, called “We Used to Wait”. When I searched for the band I was directed to the website for the video (http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com). The link also informed me that I would need a computer with high processing capability (Windows 7 works best) and the new web browser, Google Chrome, to properly view this video. The website displays the words “The Wilderness Downtown” in a creepy looking font and there is a graphic of an even creepier flock of birds that flies across the screen. At the bottom, a dialog box told me to enter the address of the home where I grew up. After a loading screen, the video plays.

The fact that I had to enter the address where I grew up told me that this video was going to be personalized for me in some way. When the video started, the song started to play and a new window opened up on my computer showing a video of a boy running down a neighborhood street. More windows opened up on the same screen (sometimes overlapping) showing various aerial images of the street. The windows were constantly shifting, resizing, dropping out, and coming back into view. As more and more images flashed across the screen, I realized these weren’t just generic pictures of the suburbs. This was my street, with the house where I grew up and my neighborhood, all in clear focus. The video had used my address and images from Google Maps and Google Streetview to incorporate my actual childhood home into this song/video about growing up in the suburbs. An immediate wave of nostalgia swept over me and I was an instant fan of the song and the video. As the song continues to play, more images appear and there is even an interactive portion where you can type or write a message while the song is playing. The video goes even further mixing the graphics with the thematic elements to completely unify the song up to its dramatic conclusion, but the final result is pretty exciting. Needless to say, I was sold on the new music and bought the album right away.

With this new project, The Arcade Fire has elevated the music video from just a simple promotion tool to an actual customer experience that reaches and drives at the inner desires of the consumer. The feeling of nostalgia created by the images I recognized made me feel good and want to listen to the whole album. The video could be described as a type of sense marketing, because it appeals using images and graphics in a creative way. However, by combining this technology with the personal aspect, the video also impacted the way I felt about the music. It was completely unexpected and deeply effective.

Impact of Design on Marketing

I was very intrigued to learn how design became such an integral part of the marketing landscape. In the 1900s it seemed as if the market exploded overnight. With the flood of products, marketing for a new product needed something extra to distinguish one product from any other product. Using a design philosophy in marketing has proven to be very successful because the design of the product determines how it looks and functions. The design of the system that delivers the product or service is important as well, as it will influence the overall experience of the customer. This whole concept illustrated to me how the entire experience of a product can be personally designed to fit the needs of the consumer, down to the last detail. The pioneers of design outlined a fantastic set of guidelines to the design philosophy, all of which hold true for successful products. I especially liked the quote from Eero Saarinen about designing a thing by considering its next larger context.

The incorporation of a design philosophy can be very healthy for a marketing practice, but I wonder if it is always healthy for the market. Does it truly consider the consumer and fill a needed void in marketing? Design can give way to tons of new products and can create a sense of usefulness in these products, but I question how useful some of them actually are. Tons of products are released that claim to make things easier, to make difficult tasks simple, to make your life better. One example that comes to mind is the Roomba, a small circular vacuum that literally vacuums your house for you using computer sensors that detect walls and spaces. Roomba made consumers think its product was essential, boasting so many cool features that everyone just had to run out and buy one. Now it is a huge seller. I’ve seen one in action, and it does its job. Actually, it is a pretty amazing technological design. I suppose it even saves the consumer a little time vacuuming and managing a vacuum cleaner, but is this product a true technological breakthrough? Was this a real problem in America, finding time to vacuum our houses? To me it seems like it is a cool new toy, but its design and the design systems used by its parent company iRobot have made it seem like an essential to life. There are tons of products like these, and design philosophy could allow for even more. The diverge/converge method struck me as a brilliant way of thinking up new ideas and getting creative by stretching your mind. This can and has led to many great products that do serve a purpose. It has also led to the creation of useless things you will probably throw away in a few years, but you take the good with the bad.

My favorite designer that Jeff mentioned was Dieter Rams. His quote, “Good design is as little design as possible” should be a mantra for all designers. Also, his list of 10 principles of good design reads like the 10 commandments of design. It perfectly combines the functional responsibility with the ethical responsibility. Jeff showed how you can tread this fine line by thinking of two problems, creating a product to keep up with competition and creating a product to improve people’s lives. If you consider everyone in the equation, you can’t go wrong.