Art + Internet = Commerce
When Walk Off The Earth posted a cover of Gotye’s “Somebody I Used To Know” to YouTube in early 2012 the band was $60,000 in debt. Today the Burlington, Ont.-based band has a record deal with Columbia Records and this year it inked a series of lucrative brand partnerships with the likes of Pringles, Volkswagen Canada and ING (now Tangerine) that propelled it well out of the red. Walk Off The Earth is managed like a company, says band member Ryan Marshall, noting it cuts brand deals to expose its music to new fans. And as a company, WOTE proved it was smartely attuned to building its brand in unconventional ways.
• As a YouTube cover sensation that also writes its own material and shares the love with brands, Walk Off The Earth sits at the happy intersection between art, the internet and commerce. Acting almost like a publisher, the band feeds its fans on social (100,000 on Twitter, 800,000 on Facebook) with a constant stream of fresh, funny musical content, most of which lives on YouTube. The band’s TV-style characters even earned it an open invite to YouTube’s Maker’s Studio. It hasn’t accepted (yet, anyway) but continued its love affair with YouTube by creating a “live music video” at the YouTube awards this year alongside Lady Gaga and Eminem.
• Leveraging its 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, Walk Off The Earth featured Pringles tubes as a converted drum set in the video for its original song, “REVO in Paris” this July. Though it has long way to go to match the 150+ million views for the Gotye cover it has already earned a very respectable half a million YouTube spins. This fall WOTE also made three interactive videos inspired by three Volkswagen Beetles in its biggest brand deal yet.
• In May the band shot a video cover of Madonna’s 1984 hit “Material Girl” as part of the Tangerine “Canadian Superstar Saver Search” campaign. Marshall says the multi-point partnership, which tasked the band with judging contest entries, is the type the Walk Off The Earth is after, noting it led to a gig playing Tangerine’s re-branding party alongside the rapper Macklemore.
You can find out who will be named our Marketer of the Year on Jan. 29 at our Best of 2013 cocktail party. Want to attend? Lots of important people will be there. Visit us online for more information.
