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I've never really thought that you could properly be a fan of a band that had only released one album. The more you like the first one, the greater the potential let-down if everything goes down hill from there. I think it's technically know as Stone Roses syndrome. So I've always reserved judgement, and most of the bands I have loved are ones who have really delivered second time round - stuff like Massive Attack, Goldfrapp, Arcade Fire (NB. I'm not linking to anything here. The point isn't really about my personal music taste).
So for all the well deserved praise for Fallon's Gorilla work for Cadburys, the Glass & a Half Productions idea has seemed a little tarnished for me by the pointless truckracing follow-up (an ad that would have made more sense had it been audio only, as Don't Stop Me Now is the only joyful thing in it).
But there has also been a part of me that will reserve judgment on a band that suffers from difficult second album syndrome. You can always turn it round with the third, as The Killers have recently proved and hopefully Kasabian and Franz Ferdinand will soon. So it made me very happy to see the new Eyebrows work that breaks tonight. Just as warm, arresting and generally daft as the Gorilla, and with much better music (Don't Stop the Rock by Freestyle, since we're talking about tunes).
And apart from being witty and likeable, there's a couple of other things that stand out in this spot. First one is pretty obvious - Gorilla was copied, mimicked, mashed up and responded to, and that took a bit of work - hiring Gorilla suits and drumkits were pretty much a prerequisite for any sort of YouTube homage. This one is clearly designed to be mimicked in offices and playgrounds across the land with a minimum of effort. A sort of visual 'Wassup!'. Second thing is that this is a 60" ad that will get funnier the faster you view it - ie it is virtually DVR-proof. Having only seen the clip posted here I am guessing, but I'm setting the Sky+ for it this evening to see whether it is best at 1x, 6x or 30x normal speed. And as anyone who follows my TV writing will know, that makes me think it is very special indeed.
Right this is inspired by Scott Brown's post on Wired, about the death of the linear story in movies. Ok there's a lot of backstory as well: I'm not going to do Faris Yakob the disservice of trying to condense Transmedia Planning into a few sentences, so if you haven't read about it, go there now. 
Anyway, the ideas that Brown talks about are based around the movie as a combination of multiple experiences and points of view, which deliver a far more deep and engaging experience than traditional storylines and special FX. So this is how a classic action movie linear narrative such as Die Hard might look in a post-convergence era:
John McClane, NYC cop, arrives in LA to reconcile with his estranged wife—but we already know all about their failing marriage from the ARG we've been obsessed with for the six months leading up to the movie's release. (McClane's potemkin Tumblr blog was especially illuminating.) With exposition rendered obsolete, we open instead on a Sprite commercial, which transitions seamlessly into furious gunplay. We don't even see McClane in the flesh, but our handsets are buzzing with his real-time thumb-tweets: "in the air duct. smelz like dead trrist in here lol." The film then rewinds to McClane Googling "terrorists" to read up on his adversaries. We then flash-cut to the baddies' POV, which we're familiar with (and sympathetic to) thanks to the addictive Xbox hit Die Hard: Hard Out There for a Terrorist.
and so on.....
The idea of an ARG offering a rich backstory to bring fans of a genre into the world of a new movie isn't a new one - Cloverfield is my favourite case study (which I think I annoyed everyone else in the cinema by explaining during the movie. But then the marketing IS much better than the movie). Neither is an Xbox spin-off (although a $0.99 phone app might be quicker to build and reach more people). What caught my attention was the idea of live updates from other characters points of view - not neccessarily tweets, but something that engages all handsets in the cinema (RFID?) to deliver a richer experience.
And that got me thinking about how this then might translate into smaller screens, of the kind in our living rooms. Broadcasters love stuff that has to be viewed live, like football and evictions. If some of the TV experience relied on live multimedia action then they might be able to hang on a bit longer to those linear schedules that they love so much. If you know you'll enjoy something more live, you are more likely to watch it live. Doesn't matter if the enjoyment comes from not knowing the result or from a richer experience. And then they can sell more ads around it.
Personally I think that that is all a case of decline management in the long term, but it did make me think some more about the CNN/Facebook Connect linkup. If you could friend characters from a TV show and get live updates on your phone's Facebook app, giving you more insight into what a character is thinking..... we could do that now, and it doesn't need an internet enabled TV (although of course if we had one of those then the internet is our oyster....).
Of course, for those programme marketers who actually want to increase engagement with their shows rather than simply sell more advertising (reputation vs ratings anyone?) there is also the prospect of doing this more openly on other platforms. I'm trying not to use the 'Tw' word, but this deck from Aki Spicer from Fallon is worth a look
