Late last night I received a text from my older brother to check out this band called Atomic Tom. He also let me know he posted their recent video on his facebook profile. The video consists of the band sitting on a NYC subway and playing their entire song on iPhone apps. You can watch it here:
I like the video. I like the sound of the band.
At the same time, I really do agree with many of the blogs I read last night about this being more of a stunt than anything real. I don’t believe the bands instruments were stolen. I don’t think that part was necessary to put in the video.
But it’s undeniable Atomic Tom created something pretty cool. Last night, I checked out the video and it had about 300,000 hits on YouTube. Now, about 14 hours later, it has almost a million more hits. It’s now a viral video and this band is getting a lot of recognition.
This March, I wrote about OK Go‘s great video for “This Too Shall Pass” and how OK Go adapted to the changing music video scene in the wake of MTV becoming just a reality show network. I think Atomic Tom is doing the same thing. They’ve successfully promoted themselves in a very inexpensive way (well besides the initial sticker shock of an iPhone).
Can we do this? Can we work to create viral campaigns for our own events?
It’s time for us to get creative and reTHINK the way we present.