Let’s Get Real

records

I thought I was a dinosaur. But it seems buying a USB-enabled turntable – or in old money, a record player – a couple of years ago made me an ahead-of-the-curve hipster.

There’s an Oxfam charity shop around the corner from Dialogue that sells second-hand vinyl albums. Since their stock comes from the collections of the recently-departed, it’s a glimpse of the real ’60s and ’70s. The decades when Mantovani and James Last, not Jimi Hendrix or the Sex Pistols, shifted units by the billion.

Occasionally I’ll strike gold lurking behind some Andy Stewart atrocity. After handing over €2, I’ll race home to hear the warm ‘thunk’ of the needle connecting with the opening groove of classic vinyl.

But why bother? Can’t the same song be downloaded in milliseconds?

The thing is, it’s not the same. When you interact with music, you listen more. You hear more. You enjoy more.

I’m not the only one that thinks this. It seems that vinyl is selling more and more – and not just to the nostalgia brigade.

So what’s all this got to do with marketing?

It says that pixels aren’t everything. There’s still an appetite for real stuff. Things you can hold, open and interact with.

Don’t get me wrong. Digital has given us an incredible new toybox to play with. But when the world is overwhelmed by the ‘deluge of data’ (to use the phrase we coined for Amdocs) tangible, objects become exceptional. A physical communication – whether it’s delivered via mail, dragged across the sky behind a plane or stenciled onto a mucky wall using bleach – now stands out.

All this was sparked by a recent observation: when we passed a tangible object around the table at a pitch last week, the audience lit up. Their body language said ‘finally, something that’s not a powerpoint visual’.

Engaging the senses makes sense and it’s something that a lot of major brands have latched onto as this presentation shows.

So if your view of marketing possibilities has narrowed to what’s possible on a screen, maybe it’s time to also look up and get real.

Des Columb, Creative Director

PS: If you know your music, you might spot a couple of genuine classic covers lurking amongst the specimens above. Can you identify them?

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