OK Go walks the fine line between musicianship and avant-garde spectacle with a couple dashes of brand promotion thrown over their shoulder for good measure. And I feel confident in saying that OK Go would recommend using Morton Salt for all your throwing-salt-over-your-shoulder good luck needs.
There is a common dominator for all the revolutionary video content this band produces: it is captivating as all get out. And, beyond the excitement and 400 million video views, there are lessons to be learned that go beyond the typical music success story. Understanding OK Go as a phenomenon is a key to understanding the digital era that privileges creativity and the don’t-follow-the-leader mentality.
Damian Kulash, lead singer of OK Go, recently led my social media course and talked with 50 of my Communication & Media students at Clarkson University about digital success. Some of his statements were geared toward future facing digital strategies and reminiscent of the rules of Fight Club. “The places in which there is still room to grow is exactly not where you think they are,” says Kulash. Clearly Kulash knows his stuff because his digital sophistication and viral sense is a prized commodity and one that many brands and campaigns would like to have on their side.
Regardless of Kulash’s prior digital accolades, he knows there are new hurdles towards notoriety in the digital ecosystem. “We are no longer in the early years of the internet gold rush. It is not wild west out there. Google owns a lot, Facebook owns a lot and Apple owns a lot. The playing field has been tilted again,” says Kulash.
It was that industry tilt and trying to appease so many different critics that was exactly what he didn’t like about the early record industry. “Good songs didn’t just float to the top,” says Kulash.
“You had to write something that appealed to the record label in a certain way so they would then make it appeal to a set of radio promoters in a certain way so that they would then try to make it appeal to radio stations in a certain way. If it were successful it would then appeal to MTV in a certain way. The one song you were making had to check all those boxes because they were the gate keepers.”
Kulash says that OK Go thrived in operating within the early digital era where it was possible to make something that excited people which in turn grew their fan base holistically. People saw their work and were attracted to the message.
“The internet allowed for that, and still does allow for that, but there are gatekeepers now. You can put anything you want up on Youtube but no one is going to see it. You can put anything you want up on Facebook but no one is going to see it. The industry exists again,” says Kulash.
It’s Only Rock And Roll
The internet’s move from the wild west to a more controlled corporate interest isn’t a new phenomenon. Kulash details that rock music itself charted that very path.
“Rock and roll in the 1950s was for a bunch of outcasts trying to dance nasty to each other. Rock and roll by the time I was a kid was a big business. Rock and roll now is more or less what jazz was when I was a kid. It’s for old dudes. These things are only new once and the zone of opportunities only happens once before a lot of things glom onto it and make an industry out of it.”
But like the evolution of art in a modern world, the rules of the game are never set in stone for the long haul. Denise Lauer, director of communications & corporate brand strategy at Morton Salt, Inc., talks about her organizations recent partnership with OK Go for the One Moment video and Morton Salt’s recent Walk Her Walk campaign, which is a promise from the brand to make and promote a positive impact in the world.
“We wanted to shake up the way people thought about the Morton brand. Basically, everyone knows that Morton equals salt. We don’t really have to drive awareness of what we do. But what we did need to do is reframe the way people think about Morton and create a more emotional connection with our brand and not just what we sell,” says Lauer.
Clearly, the Morton Salt/OK Go campaign with nearly 30 million views, has done just this. It allowed a band to make great art and find compensation for the act of creating while also allowing the Morton Salt brand a chance to target and highlight its product and stance to a new generation of millennials, which, Lauer says, was important in their brand strategy sessions. “OK Go’s videos have a very optimistic, positive, uplifting feel and that is the basis for the Walk Her Walk campaign, so we felt like there was a match from a tonality perspective,” says Lauer.
Although it appears that OK Go has figured out a formula for success, Kulash tells my students, “The people who are making real money on Youtube are usually doing it by putting out something every day or three times a week with very low production values. So follow us in terms of the way you keep your mind open about what ideas you are having, but do not try to make very expensive things once a year—it is a terrible business model.”
Although the revenue from OK Go downloads may not be an extremely profitable factor for financial success it is that notoriety and track record which make them an A list artist for social impact. And that is a difficult accolade to put a price tag on.