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Posts Tagged ‘music’

Red Square performs at the Hangout.

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

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The inaugural Hangout Beach, Music & Arts Festival was this past weekend, and what a success. Crowds from all over gathered on the very beautiful, very oil-free beaches of Alabama to experience an amazing event that was the culmination of the hard work of scores of people. Grace Potter said it best: “my God—it’s Coachella on the beach!”

Our creative/design and PR crews, led by Sarah Jones and Niki Lim, executed flawlessly. The designs, from the stages to the signage to the tickets, were killer.

As for the PR side of things, the Red Square kids worked like maniacs alongside our pals Music Allies setting up press conferences (note Alabama Governor Bob Riley giving the international sign of the fest), managing internal communications, coordinating live news shows, and dealing with the good people at Associated Press, CNN and other major media.

Congrats to all involved. We are thankful to have been a part of the festival’s success.

Tags: awesomeness, design, music, PR
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Em Tee Vee.

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

MTV_blog

MTV changed their logo. So what? Fine. I admit I haven’t cared much about MTV in a long, long time, but I still feel a little funny. MTV was my Sesame Street. I was raised by Martha Quinn, Alan Hunter, Headbangers Ball, Kurt Loder, Pauly Shore—all of them.

I loved MTV.

So the logo feels like my cooler older sister just got a facelift. It’s still her, but she kind of looks off. Very simply, it’s a refreshing of the mark rather than a redesign. And a facelift is just a nip here and tuck there, right? They’ve dropped the “music television” descriptor, which is appropriate. The “M” has been cropped and widened, and the stroke on “TV” has been cleaned up, which is nice. Creative Review notes the updated logo allows MTV to house imagery within the widened “M” letterform:

The space in the new logo will be used more to push its programming and its endless procession of reality TV micro-celebrities than as a canvas for artists, and animators as it once was.

Sweetness! I was hoping they’d figure out how to incorporate Snookie in their logo.

Bobby over at Kitsune Noir has some good observations regarding the evolution of a 30-year-old brand:

MTV has become a household name, those three letters alone. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone call it Music Television before and I grew up in the 80’s. It’s the same as other major networks. You don’t get your news from the Cable News Network, you don’t tune into the Home Box Office to see True Blood and you don’t hate the National Broadcast Company for screwing over Conan. These three letter acronyms are culturally built-in at this point and after almost 30 years MTV deserves the same treatment.

Fair enough. I do think that many people will feel like this is absolute admission of a betrayal of the channel’s initial and core philosophy—playing music videos. Not that anyone has the patience to watch an entire music video these days.

Tina Exarhos, executive vice president of marketing and mulitplatform creative projects at the network, sums it up best:

I’ve been at MTV a long time, and as it was reinvented over the years and maintained sort of a fluid nature, we never touched our logo, which is sort of ironic. It’s a fantastic, iconic logo, but it wasn’t working for us in a way that we needed it to anymore. It needed to express more about what MTV is today, not what it was in 1981.

In other news, I am officially old.

Tags: design, music, TV
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Throw us in the briar patch.

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

HANG_BlogScreen

One of our newest clients is the Hangout Music Festival. There’s not a whole lot we can say about this yet except: 1) it’s on the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama; 2) it’s May 14-16; 3) the acts are going to be killer; 4) we’re handling the design, advertising and PR.

According to stories that have run in the press, the festival will be the surfside equivalent to the Rothbury Festival and Coachella.

Acts will be announced soon. You can read more here, and be sure to sign up for email updates.

Tags: latest work, music
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The sound of advertising.

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

music

There are lots of things that can make or break a television spot, and music is one of those things. It can set tone, create emotion, take the audience to exactly where you want to take them. And that’s what brands should do too: make people feel something.

So it’s poll-taking time: What are the current best ad/song combos? What are the worst?

The Ask.com jingle is immediately disqualified for being so bad that I kind of like it. I keep that bottled in a very secret place, where I keep things like my admiration for Justin Timberlake.

Tags: music, poll
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Digital in a mixtape’s clothing.

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

Okay. As a follow up to the last blog post lamenting the lost art of the mixtape, here’s something that was passed around the agency yesterday: the Mixtape USB stick.

Street cred for your digital music, I guess.

Tags: music, technology
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MJ’s Death: A New Collective Experience

Friday, June 26th, 2009

When news of Michael Jackson’s death broke yesterday, the Internet nearly broke with it. People flocked to their computers, if they weren’t already in front of them, to share their thoughts and feelings on the passing of a true music icon. Everyone had something to say, at the same time, giving the Internet’s infrastructure a thorough testing. All of this illustrates a fundamental change in how we experience events collectively.

According to The New York Times, “Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, tweeted that Mr. Jackson was a more popular topic on Twitter than the Iranian election or the recent flu outbreak ever were.”

Mr. Zucker’s quick research shows that approximately 15% of all posts on Twitter last evening mentioned Michael Jackson. The percentage may seem small but considering the sheer volume of tweets per day, which some estimate to be close to 20 million, the statistic is amazing.

What does this say about how we communicate as a society now? Major pop cultural moments in our country, and around the world, used to be passive events. The Kennedy Assassination. The Lunar Landing. The Challenger Explosion. The Fall of the Berlin Wall. Even 9/11. We watched as history was broadcast into our homes, and we discussed the significance with our friends, family and co-workers in our communities. Now, with pop culture episodes like Jackson’s death, we actively share the experience and participate in a larger collective conversation via the web.

Here’s an interesting and very debatable question: is the new shared cultural moment more meaningful than the old?

What’s not debatable is the breadth of Jackson’s career. At Red Square Agency, we are paying tribute to the “King of Pop” with an all-day MJ Marathon on our Internet radio station, WRED–visit our web site and click the link in the upper right.

Tags: music, technology, twitter
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A Non-celebrity Playlist.

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

I’ve been listening to a weird mix of stuff lately. Some new music, some old-school classics that deserve rediscovering. Anyway, I figured I’d share a playlist with all you fine people.

Satellite Skin by Modest Mouse. I’ve loved these guys since 1997’s Lonesome Crowded West, which I still consider their raw best. On this particular track, Isaac and the boys seem to have recovered some of the fire from their early albums. My favorite line: “Hard enough just to say you believe them/ Well how the heck did you think you could beat them/ At the same time that you’re trying to be them.”

Belated Promise Ring by Iron & Wine. This song is just pretty.

Starman by David Bowie. I have to admit I didn’t listen to much Bowie until Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Call me a convert. The guy is amazing, and everyone under 30 years old needs to check into Mr. Bowie.

Nikorette by Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. Prolific is the only way to describe Conor. I interviewed him back in 2005 just before the release of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, and since then he’s lived in three or four different states and put out as many albums. He makes Ryan Adams look lazy. This track is my favorite from his new disc–I immediately liked it from the opening bar.

Dream City by Free Energy. This is glistening pop. It’s a guilty pleasure. So what?

Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear. I’m trying to figure these guys out. Here goes: their stuff is ethereal. And awesome.

Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon. How can you deny any song that begins with the line “I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking through the streets of Soho in the rain?” My friends, you simply cannot.

Speedoo by The Cadillacs. I told you this mix was odd. I first heard this song in the 1990 Scorsese classic Goodfellas. It popped back into my head a few weeks ago and has been there since.

Best Supporting Actress by One for the Team. Another kind of new age pop song. A great guitar sound.

Paperback Writer by The Beatles. I’ve always leaned toward the Lennon songs, but this McCartney track has been in my rotation recently. Don’t ask why. There’s no explanation. Maybe I want to be a paperback writer, okay?

There you go. Maybe @ninatot will teach me how to link the songs to iTunes. Next time?

Happy listening.

Tags: music
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