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The future of experiential marketing – could it be Satanic Polish heavy metal?

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Satanic Polish heavy metal.

Not something our clients immediately think of when they say ‘innovation’, to be honest. 

Anyway. Behemoth, a rather blasphemous band from a country with rather strict blasphemy laws, held a ticketed livestream event earlier this year: In Absentia Dei. Documented in and around a consecrated church, it was less a gig, more an unholy sermon of cinematic proportions.

Drones captured footage outside the church. The band rode horses all slow-motion, Wild West-style in prerecorded shorts. There was fire… everywhere. A performance artist, suspended by hooks in a Jesus Christ pose, hung over Behemoth as they rattled through an evil ditty your mum definitely wouldn’t call music. Oh, you could flit between cameras throughout the show, too. 

It was proper immersion – you were dragged into their world of jaw-dropping, hair-raising, Satan-hailing art. And it just would not have happened without coronavirus. Behemoth would have been on tour otherwise.

When the world opens up again, the arts and events will be gasping for air, peddling various wares across the world in an effort to claw back however much time, money and momentum the pandemic ends up costing them. 

But is that the end of livestreaming? Hopefully not. 

Of course, when you buy a ticket to a Marketing Week event in the flesh, you’re not going to get the post-pandemic Mark Ritson hook suspension virtual extravaganza. You’re going to get a Marketing Week event, and it’ll be brilliant. 

And that’s the thing: the interactive, customisable element of livestreaming is a special sauce that just can’t be replicated in a physical space. So don’t try. Live events be live events, but streaming – that still deserves a seat at the table. A means for people to engage, the way they want to. 

It doesn’t all have to be Luciferian litanies and drumsticks made of human bones – pop star Dua Lipa spent $1.5 million on her all-singing, all-dancing experience, which broke global livestream records with five million viewers (but to be honest, not many musicians have a million quid to spare). On the other end of the scale, UK theatres have admirably hauled their catalogues online, with the National Theatre, the Globe and Soho Theatre now offering affordable subscription services.

The entertainment industry has been completely reimagined by coronavirus, and of all its various facets, it seems to be music – the sector that’s got pretty much no money left, especially when held against the early 2000s CD boom – that’s taken the torch and turned it into a bonfire. 

When you think about experiential marketing, trade fairs, keynote speeches – there’s so much scope for exploration. The answer probably won’t be found in a song called O Father O Satan O Sun!, though. 

But it might be.

Shazam’s Alzheimer’s Blunder

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As a society, we’re obsessed with illness. It’s weird. It seems like we have to know what’s wrong with everyone, why it went wrong, and if it’ll happen to us. David Bowie’s cancer wasn’t private – it was ‘secret’, apparently. Brands take note of this, rallying around specific illnesses and diseases seen as ‘popular’ within the public discourse at that time.

Like the Ice Bucket Challenge, for example. That was the ‘in’ thing circa Summer 2014; you dumped ice-cold water on your head, nominated a mate and donated money towards motor neurone disease. Obviously it’s great that an illness was being highlighted, but more often than not it was about getting likes on Facebook and feeling really good about yourself.

And now Alzheimer’s has its turn on the merry-go-round. Again, it’s amazing that brands address illness; not only does it raise awareness, but corporate social responsibility is more important than ever in 2017. The thing is, though, that brands have to ensure they’re using their voice in the right way.

Shazam hasn’t done this. Recently, the music-recognition service started ‘forgetting’ song titles. Turns out it was a campaign, executed to highlight the fact that over 40,000 people under 65 are living with dementia in the UK. It resulted in over 5,000 users following Shazam’s link to Alzheimer’s Research UK’s donation page. Great stuff, right?

Well… not completely. There’s a major flaw: music is one thing Alzheimer’s sufferers seem to clutch onto. Crank up some AC/DC and dementia patients will hum along. Music is a tried and tested method of therapy to soothe patients and, in one case, even prompted a woman with little recognition or awareness to perform a pitch-perfect piano accompaniment. The brain’s motor centre responds directly to auditory rhythmic cues, meaning a familiar track can indeed prompt certain memories to jump out.

So Shazam’s campaign is a bit of a false advertisement – having Alzheimer’s doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll forget song titles. How many of us do that on a daily basis anyway? People forget song titles and lyrics all the time, because your brain can only cram so much stuff in.

If anything, this campaign unintentionally trivialises the illness and casts doubt on what it is. Just like pop culture has romanticised depression and framed people suffering from bi-polar as flipping between moods like the Hulk, Alzheimer’s is being misrepresented and, with something as popular as Shazam, this campaign could lead to people thinking they have symptoms. The NHS is spread thin as it is; it doesn’t need a line of worried musos fretting because they can’t remember the lyrics to a Nine Inch Nails b-side.

Brands: don’t stop trying. Don’t stop fighting the good fight. But please, please think a bit more about what you’re putting out there.