Crowd Sourced Gig Video – The National

31 08 2011

Last week I made the trip from my native Manchester all the way to Edinburgh for a gig. The National is Brooklyn based an indie rock band formed in Cincinnati, Ohio and despite a series of European festivals this was a short tour. I’ve seen them three times before and they never disappoint.

 

I had my iPhone 4 with me so took a few video clips and images as reminders of the experience but the highlight was the acoustic rendition of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks, with the audience singing along and singer Matt Berninger leaping into the crowd.  I was so captivated I didn’t video it, but at least five other people did.  With some cheap video  software I edited the clips together and produced a crowd sourced video.  With the increasing quality of videos on phone this will become ever more possible and bands without the cash to hire a crew will still be able to have multi camera live video footage.


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Categories : Media evolution, User Generated Content

Abercombie and their PR Situation

18 08 2011

A clothing brand pays a celebrity NOT to wear their clothes.  It made the New York Times.  Surely that’s PR genius.

Abercrombie & Fitch Chief Executive Mike Jeffries set the story ablaze during a conference call with financial analysts when he asked “is no one going to ask about The Situation?”.  Thus prompted to pose the question, the analysts were told “last Friday … someone came up and said, ‘Mike, I have terrible, terrible news.  Last night on ‘Jersey Shore’ The Situation had A&F product on.”

For the uninitiated ‘The Situation’ is a “star” (in a Warhol sense) of faux reality US TV ratings phenomenon ‘Jersey Shore’.

A&F decided to pay the cast not to wear their product, Jeffries said.  We can deduce that the cast are not A&F’s target demographic.  “We’re having a lot of fun with it” Jeffries added.  He may as well have just said “it’s a stunt”.  What on the face of it is generating a lot of media mileage maybe be bad for the brand.

In the first instance generally most customers don’t like having the wool pulled.  Secondly what A&F has actually done is created a powerful association between their brand and ‘Jersey Shore’.  The 9% drop in the company’s share price may be as much to do with the CEO saying in the same briefing “into 2012, it is clear that we are entering a period of greater uncertainty”.  It could equally that what seemed to be a clever PR ploy was actually his Ratner moment.

 

 


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Categories : Uncategorized


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