Mistakes in digital marketing

When digital marketing goes bad...

Chris Cunningham, Jonathan Glazer, Spike Jonze, stop it right now. Stop making those weird and wonderful music videos that give your own special interpretation of a new tune and listen up. From now on, music videos will be three-minute information broadcasts that tell the viewer everything they want to know about the band.

The first minute should contain selected images of the band and also carry information on their likes and dislikes, favourite colour and so on. The second minute should show people a discography of every record the band has made, together with pictures of the album and single sleeves. The final minute must feature comments from random idiots proclaiming that "THIS BAND SUX ASS”.

Imagine how dull that would be, though. It might be a laugh as a one-off, but if every video followed that kind of dumbed-down, info-tainment format then people would soon switch off, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t even bother watching music on TV at all. But luckily, record companies realise that music videos are about promotion rather than customer support. On that basis, they commission video producers to make exciting shorts that capture the emotion, intensity or even the idiocy of the music and help people to get a better understanding of what the band are all about, or at least of how their management want them to be seen. So why are Web sites any different?

I know I am treading on dangerous ground here, because when I’ve spoken to record company execs about my philosophy on band sites in the past, they have nodded politely and quietly asked reception if they wouldn’t mind asking the nice man from security to stick his head round the door. Even worse than that, when we recently took a democratic vote at Kerb about a Web site concept based around my heretical opinion, I was in a minority at one..

My earth-shattering statement is simply this. How can you take something as emotive and primal as music and simply showcase it by the sum of its parts? It seems to me that approximately nine out of ten Web sites for bands are split up into the following sections: news, images, discography, downloads, listen to singles, watch video and, of course, the obligatory message board.

I suppose that is fine for bands whose fan base is about 12 years old, because at that age you absolutely need to know everything about your favourite band. But this format is extended for use with bands trying to target much older audiences and that is dull. The Internet is a perfect medium for extending the creative journey that begins with the music and the video and can then be compounded to make something very special. Something very special is a reason for someone to actually visit a site and become immersed in the band’s music and image.

I did a focus group the other day asking 17 to 18 year olds what they liked and disliked about their favourite band’s sites and their answers surprised me. When I asked them to define what they liked, their answer was: "We don’t look at band Web sites”. When I asked them what it was they disliked so much, they didn’t know because: "We don’t look at band Web sites”.

And the reason they don’t look at those sites is because they are not interested in seeing the same old information-based format being trotted out again and again. The only person who admitted to have spent time on a band site, named the Radiohead site. This doesn’t surprise me at all. The Radiohead site is an extension of their creativity and provides something missing on most band Web pages - entertainment.

Radiohead knows that anyone wanting to find out Thom York’s shoe size will be able to get that information from a fan site. The band has instead chosen to use the Web to strengthen its brand by concentrating on its core strength - entertaining the fans.

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