Tight fit

Band in a banner

Here at BBF we sift through a flood of ‘overly complicated’ or downright ‘conceived while inebriated’ music/brand marketing campaigns on a daily basis. However, we also occasionally stumble on some quite brilliant activity in the music space on our trails. This campaign, used to promote upcoming Universal act VV Brown, is simple but strikingly effective and definitely falls into the later category. “As VV Brown is such a striking artist with a stunning vocal talent, we wanted to move away from the standard advertising formats and introduce her “in person” and singing live on your desktop” said Pru Harris, Island Records Marketing. Which is exactly what VV Brown does, she climbs right into her own web banner ad, crouches down – like Tori Amos on the cover of Little Earthquakes – and proceeds to sing acoustic versions of the songs ‘LEAVE!’ and ‘Crying Blood’ from within the banner alongside her band.

We’ve seen ‘bands in bubbles’ and ‘bands in giant snow globes’ but bizarrely we haven’t seen a band in a banner before. Which seems strangely obvious now we have, and we wonder why no one has tried this before.

This campaign has a nice circular feel to it. With single and album releases increasingly acting as ‘flyers’ for live activity it’s good to see it reversed with online ads acting as mini gigs to promote releases (this one comes with a free download). It also got us thinking about the possibility of ‘Banner Aid’, which could potentially take this concept to the next level. How about placing various bands across the web performing banner gigs on a particular day with a charitable tie in? A real ‘Ad-funded’ effort. Surely that’s not as daft as it sounds.

As for the VV Brown campaign itself its easily our favourite ‘banner ’since Bruce Banner.

Other music advertisers should be green with envy.

VV Brown’s single ‘LEAVE!’ is out on 2nd March, and the track ‘Crying Blood’ is to be featured in the opening credits of James Corden and Mathew Horne’s (of Gavin & Stacey and BRIT Awards fame) upcoming film debut ‘Lesbian Vampire Killers’.