Sharp Dressed Brand

If you’re like me, you’re probably totally satisfied with your browsing experience through FireFox and Safari, as they are both fast and functional browsers that pretty much do it all, and thus you have yet to download and use Google Chrome.  Well, Arcade Fire just gave you a reason.  I’ll go ahead and say that it is a necessity that you go watch their interactive, HTML5 web experience just launched at Chrome Experiments (Note that you will need to download and install Google Chrome for the video to work).

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If you’re one of the 500 million current subscribers to Facebook, then you probably noticed a new feature called “Places” added to the social network.  Places is a geo-social tool that allows people to “check-in” at specific locations, alerting their friends to where they are at that moment. If this sounds like a passing novelty or just another news feed distraction, then perk up your ears, because the industry is looking at location-based marketing as a future behemoth and a major game changer. (more…)

I first want to quickly note how, in terms of practicality, the music industry’s fight to sustain a relevance for the physical product for recorded music in the eyes of the consumer has been a tough sell. People have voted with their dollars (or lack thereof) that, for the average music listener (which is by far the majority of the country), the album art, the liner notes, and the nostalgic feeling of visiting your local record store (or these days, your local Wal-Mart or Best Buy) and buying and unwrapping a new CD or vinyl LP is not where they derive the value from their musical inclinations. Even the “album” as a concept, let alone a “product,” is going by the wayside, amplified by the culture of one-off 99 cent downloads and mix-and-match playlists.

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Arcade Fire might just be the best band on the planet. Since forming in 2003, they have released two critically-acclaimed albums, Funeral and Neon Bible, that are so refreshingly creative that, if the albums could, would stand up to recent chart-topping imitators like ColdPlay’s “Viva La Vida” and smack it straight in the mouth. (Sharp Dressed Brand loves ColdPlay and Viva La Vida, but let’s be honest. There would be no VLV without the Fire.)

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(Let me preface this article by saying Sharp Dressed Brand LOVES Kanye’s music. I own every album he’s released on a major label, and other than 808′s and Heartbreak, I celebrate his entire collection.)

Kanye West, rapper, mogul, and all-around gentleman (just ask Taylor Swift), finally joined Twitter two weeks ago, and the tech and music communities were buzzing. Sure, the fact that a major celebrity, musician, politician, athlete, or other famous person has decided to micro-tweet their world is nothing really newsworthy, well, unless your Kanye West and have publicly blasted the platform for months. Whether it was dissing Twitter in an improv freestyle at the Facebook headquarters, a verbal lambasting he gave the company after they refused to shut down some Kanye parody accounts, or just another one of his Kanye-branded”egotistical diatribes” that swarmed the webosphere, Kanye had all but made up his mind on the value of having a Twitter account.  But, unlike most of his musical and artistic decisions, he was obviously mistaken. (more…)

With the current Web 2.0 trend that is pushing design and functionality toward ease-of-use, standardization, and simple integration into social communities, the stand-alone website, especially for musicians, might ever-so-slowly becoming obsolete, or at least somewhat unnecessary. The impact that Facebook Pages, Twitter feeds, ReverbNation, and MySpace Music have had on the music industry is revolutionary, as the industry seems to finally be discovering what active participants in social media have known for some time, that the ROI of community dwarfs that of mere presentation. But with that said, Sharp Dressed Brand still appreciates the stand-alone website in many ways, as a marketing tool, revenue generator, brand builder, and creative outlet for artists, even if they might ultimately be unnecessary in the world of Facebook (which just crossed 50 million users). (more…)

Usually when you hear social media and the New England Patriots in the same sentence, you would be referring to the latest trending Twitter topic about Tom Brady’s newest actress or supermodel conquest, but the marketing department for the storied Patriots franchise has developed a cleverly engaging campaign to energize the Foxboro fanbase for the upcoming 2010 season. Using the location-based social media technology SCVNGR, which at its essence is “a game about doing challenges at places,” as noted on its websites, fans are tasked with hitting the streets, businesses, and boroughs around Boston to help find Patriot defensive tackle Vince Wilfork’s stolen Superbowl ring. (more…)

Gilt Groupe, the discount luxury e-retailer, is trying to capitalize on the current Groupon-inspired “collective buying craze coming to a city near you” with a brand extension called Gilt City, currently in Beta.  Similar to their other branded channels (Gilt, Gilt Man, Jetstter), Gilt City caters to the fashion-conscious socialite on a budget, but this time focuses on a wide variety of high-end products, from discounts on four-star restaurants to exclusive Broadway tickets. (Gilt City is currently only available in New York City, I know, bummer…) (more…)

Back in 2001, before Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, or any of the other players now considered prerequisites for fostering a truly “viral” marketing campaign, Burger King launched one of their most successful, intriguing, and borderline disturbing online promotional campaigns in the web’s short history.  Taking their “Have It Your Way” campaign to its logical ends, BK created “The Subservient Chicken,” a microsite incorporating a seemingly-live web cam feed of a chicken-suited figure who, upon entering a command via the website, would follow your instructions to the best of its ability, all in the name of promoting their new menu item, the Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich.   (more…)

If you’re a Twitter enthusiast or follower of industry news in the tech sector, you’ve probably heard of fake twitter accounts that parody a person, brand, event, or other entity. As of this morning, @BPGlobalPR, a fake “BP Global Public Relations” account created after the company’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, now has 184,497 followers and growing. The parody account created to poke fun at Apple’s head honcho Steve Jobs (@ceoSteveJobs) has over 116,000 followers.  The popularity of such accounts are as impressive as they are intriguing, and without question, these twitter caricatures are redefining how brands are defined in the age of social media. (more…)