Music marketing walks the line between mysterious and obnoxious, and that’s a form of cool?
I am not someone who follows the news regularly. But I enjoy reading my town newspaper a lot. I always find the little stories- about migratory birds coming to the nearby park or the nabbing of a bike thieving gang by the police r interesting.
One big reason is that these stories are about places I often visit and one is naturally curious about places one is familiar with. Another- equally significant- reason for my liking for such stories is that these stories suggest a certain domain that’s more in your individual realm- a locality, a neighbourhood, a town rather than the world, or the continent or global events- places and events about which you could exert very little personal control.
Reading the town paper, I get the feeling we could actually do some thing about what’s ailing us. Reading national and international newspapers, I get petrified by thoughts about global warming melting ice caps in Antarctica- a white clad landscape I have glimpsed only in photographs and American apocalyptic movies.
That’s certainly not the right attitude to approach news consumption. But that’s how it works with me.
All this is a long-winded way to say that I tremendously enjoyed reading in my town paper the news about a mystery person adorning an entire colony- or rather the trees in the residential colony- with placards bearing a seemingly indecipherable message.
The colony in question was an upmarket locality. Folks apparently don’t get out much in such localities, for no one had seen who hung the mystery messages from the trees. When they went to sleep in the night, the trees were not vandalised, but when they woke up the next morning, things were different.
The news report speculated that the hanging of the placards was done by someone to impress his lover who lived in that colony. I thought that was sweet. The reporter mentioned that no one in the colony had any clear idea what it was all about though.
But I found an interesting parallel between this act by the mysterious lover(I like to think it was a lover’s act) and how albums and songs are sometimes promoted by certain artists- by dropping cryptic, often mysterious messages offline or in online spaces.
Such guerrilla marketing tactics were developed by cash-strapped brands to promote their products. But it is part of the marketing mix for many a modern brand regardless of their size, an act that music bands and artists also adopt.
Sometimes, these artists drop seemingly unconnected images on social media after abstaining from the platform for a long time. And sometimes, it could be snippets of lyrics that they share. Or a performative piece of art may randomly pop up without giving you any context.
Whatever be the method, the idea seems to be not to tell you directly that a new work of music is coming your way, teasing your mind instead. Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Aphex Twins and Frank Ocean are only some of the artists who have used such allusive marketing techniques to good effect.
Meanwhile, the glaciers are still melting and we are all drowning in our own apathy.
