idea blog

Marketing commentary for better. Or worse.

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We like what Pharrell’s done here.

In what he calls “the world’s first 24 hour music video,” various dancers – professionals and amateurs, celebrities and unknowns (mostly unknowns) – move along to the new single, one at a time, one after the other after the other (after the other). It’s all very happy.

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A few things we think are truly excellent, from a marketing standpoint:

1. Viral potential

The whole thing makes me want to go out with my friends, video ourselves dancing to the song, and upload it to Youtube. Immediately. Which people have been doing, here and here and here.

The song also appears on Despicable Me 2’s soundtrack, which I hadn’t initially realized, so you can look at this whole thing as a cross-promotional tool, too; the movie’s website calls for people to “show us your happy dance.”

 2. Interactivity

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Start watching at 1:28pm and you’ll automatically be taken to someone dancing in a sunny street at 1:28pm. But you can also mouse over the video and use the “clock” to navigate to other times of the day (and other dancers). Click between 10am and 11am and you’ll find someone dancing in a big train station earlier that morning. Fast forward to 11pm and you’ll see street dancers in the night. If you want to watch the credits, just hit “credits” and they’ll pop up over the scene. (You don’t have to wait until “the end” here — there is no ending. You decide when to jump out or jump in.)

3. Design

Simple and elegant. The site navigation is very intuitive. Circles abound, everywhere from the clock face you use to navigate to the site’s favicon (a smiley face, of course). Yellow is a great color for this.

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4. Bold concept; the right set of constraints; perfect execution.

One dancer, one personal travel object, one song. One (long) take. Repeat. For 24 hours.

It’s a simple formula, but the endless variations possible within that keep me interested as a viewer. This is what we love, as marketers: the endlessly generative properties that a simple, bold concept like this holds.

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http://24hoursofhappy.com/