CheekyChicago

Call them poster children of the movement or marketing pioneers – whatever the label you assign to describe just what it is that OK Go is doing – very simply, it works.

The paradox in today’s world is that having every piece of media at your fingertips makes it all the more important to find a way to bring yours to the forefront.  And even that isn’t enough when you’re speaking in terms of Pop music – you’ll never succeed unless you can gain repetition.  That used to come, very simply, in the form of radio airplay, but we live in an age where radio has become extremely safe and therefore, very stagnant.  Bands are being forced to find other ways and mediums to gain exposure and attention, and this band is a prime example.

The name OK Go may not be readily familiar to you; but if I said, “the treadmill video band,” you’d definitely recognize them for their 2006 pop culture triumph / music video for “Here We Go Again,” which took a seemingly unknown band from Chicago (yes, they’re really from here) and put them on a global stage overnight, with a live performance of the video at the MTV VMA’s and opening for national-level bands on major tours.

But that was 4 years ago… Today, they’re back with a new album – and so they’ve stepped up their game once again.

In promotion of their new album, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, the band has created another viral sensation for the video of their single “This Too Shall Pass.”  This time, they constructed a Rube Goldberg Machine (remember the board game you had as a kid called Mouse Trap?) that is shot in one take and is quite simply amazing.  You completely forget that you are watching a music video – and there’s the whole magic trick!  While you are enthralled in the mechanics of the video, you’re not even conscious of the fact that you’re listening to their single and absorbing it into that part of your brain which traps the subtlest of hooks, for what seems like hours. The scope of this project was so magnificent that – in order to execute the concept – they recruited an engineering team–and to fund the six-figure budget, the band partnered with State Farm Insurance.  Ten years ago, any band that made their music video into a corporate commercial would have been sentenced to death by a verbal firing squad of “purists.” However today, it hardly gets mentioned.

Their music may not be the greatest or catchiest – in fact it’s hardly average (and the album itself is a total disaster), but they’ve found a way for you to give it enough chances.  When the country is as ADD as we are today, that is no small feat.  This all makes for a great story – and an even cooler music video.  It’s just too bad that the band couldn’t invest the same creativity and effort into the music rather than the gimmick.

(Checkout their video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w)