CASE STUDY KIDS ON IPHONES SONY MUSIC CREATIVE

Client: Creatives: Phil Clandillon & Steve Milbourne

URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjx5_-SPhk0

ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN

Kids on iPhones was an online campaign designed to take MGMT’s critically acclaimed “” to a wider audience in the UK and internationally.

THE BRIEF

Buzz around MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular built up throughout the summer of 2008 as the did the rounds on the UK festival circuit. By the end of the year the album was in all the major tastemakers’ top fives and the band‘s credibility had been firmly established. Our challenge was to introduce the music to a wider audience online. This task was made particularly difficult by the fact that the band rarely approve any marketing or advertising ideas and are very protective of their image.

THE INSIGHT

We decided to target our “White Collar Radicals” segment of 25-34 year old men. Our consumer insight told us that these guys were interested in girls, gadgets, cars and sport, and that they spent a significant amount of their leisure time browsing YouTube and sharing video content with their mates. THE BIG IDEA

We decided to combine the hottest gadget of 2008, the iPhone, with another of our target audience’s passions -girls, and create the first live musical performance using only iPhones and iPod Touches.

THE EXECUTION

We recruited unsigned all-girl synth pop band The Mentalists and furnished them with iPhones and iPod Touches equipped with a range of music apps including DigiDrummer, MiniSynth and Ocarina. The girls went away and practiced the song and we recorded a live performance, playing MGMT’s hit “Kids” using only the iPhones / iPod Touches. The Mentalists uploaded the performance to their YouTube channel and we carried out a carefully planned seeding strategy to build buzz around the video.

THE RESULTS

The video was initially picked up by the online tech press, with Gizmodo, TechCrunch and Wired all running the story concurrently. Buzz spread from there with coverage on Boing Boing Gadgets, MacWorld, T3 and iJustine following shortly after, and thousands of smaller tech blogs picking up the story. The story also spread to hundreds of music blogs with Pitchfork and NME leading the way. We also saw an incredible amount of activity on with thousands of people tweeting the link to the YouTube and links to stories about the performance.

STATS AND MEDIA COVERAGE YOUTUBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjx5_-SPhk0 885,000 views and counting

MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS

Online coverage YouTube UK homepage #3 on YouTube Global Featured list Viral Video Chart #2 in world (at peak) - http://www.viralvideochart.com/ Wired.com Gizmodo TechCrunch T3 MacWorld iJustine NME Pitchfork MusicAlly Thousands of other blogs from large to small Offline coverage The Telegraph Evening Standard The Metro The London Paper

Industry press Creative Review

CONTACT

Phil Clandillon or Steve Milbourne, Sony Music Creative [email protected], [email protected]