ABSOLUT DJ (1998)

interactive music mixer - Internet's first premeditated viral marketing campaign

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It was an honor to win Absolut Vodka as a client. The company's "Absolut <concept>" format is so firmly established, it's arguably graduated beyond an advertising campaign- to an institution. So many great artists have contributed to Absolut's branding, that approaching a new iteration is both intimidating and totally cool.

Absolut.com was also an opportunity for the client who, due to legalities surrounding spirits advertising, had been largely restricted to utilizing static imagery in their campaigns. But the web site offered Absolut the opportunity to utilize a time-based medium for the first time.

When we pitched the Absolut business, we did so with an idea that was a little bit ahead of it's time. Our world was interactive, and by 1998 we had just begun to see the first "interactive artists" emerging on the scene. We had some strong connections to many of them, and had considered hiring these largely unknown artists to follow suit with the campaign's heritage, and develop a series of Absolut <interactive artist> pieces.

As it turned out the idea and the creative we produced won the business - but in 1998 it was still too early for most people to wrap their heads around the idea that "interactivity" was literally a new language, and thus, a valid art form. So we were asked to conceive a slightly more conventional idea.

The result of this effort was "Absolut DJ". And in the end, it became another historic piece for Red Sky.

This piece was conceived by Kirk Gibbons, and considering his love of the DJ movement, it's maybe not surprising that he had a blast interacting with such well-known DJs at the time.

The 3 DJs we chose, all of whom accepted the invitation to participate, were: DJ Spooky in NY, Coldcut in London, and UFO- United Future Organization in Japan.

(I've provided only our Coldcut version here.)

The whole premise of the DJ movement was based on incorporating audio from other artists work, then modifying, adding to, and remixing it, to create something completely new. And in a lovely full-circle gesture, Absolut DJ literally gave users the ability to do the very same thing with the music of these successful DJs.

We'd learned the important lessons of HP Pong the year prior and saw Absolut DJ as an opportunity to try something new.

So we decided to add a feature to the piece that allowed the user to save his unique composition, and send it to a friend. At this time there were no "Send to a Friend" buttons, the term "viral marketing" had never been uttered, nor had "word of mouth" in this context. Around this time, we'd begun calling the effect "friend to friend marketing". I rather still feel that this term is closer to the truth than "viral". "Viral" is something most advertisers probably wish it were, but it's never-the-less a fundamentally incorrect interpretation of the effect's function, and I think, the result of many failed campaigns.

Anyway - Absolut DJ was later identified as the Internet's first premeditated viral marketing campaign.