The Wilderness Downtown – The Arcade Fire

Flash vs. HTML5 – who will win? If the Arcade Fire promotional website (The Wilderness Downtown) is any indication, HTML5 all the way. Ad Age recently included the Creativity’s best ad “Arcade Fire: The Wilderness Downtown Trailer” in their morning newsletter, and the ad is amazing. It’s essentially a trailer for the music video. The whole concept was designed by Chris Milk from @radical.media and Google’s Aaron Koblin from the Google Creative Lab.

Basically, it’s an interactive music video for the song “We Used to Wait” that utilizes Google’s Chrome Browser and HTML5. You type in the address that you grew up in, and it takes you on a journey incorporating Google Maps. It is way cool and the functionality is amazing. You even get to type a letter to yourself that might be included in the Arcade Fire’s promo stuff.

I really hope we see more interactive music videos like this. It gives fans one more way to connect with the music beyond “I like it” to “I’m in it!” And who doesn’t want to feel like a rockstar – or at least to be part of the entourage?

Filed under: brand, HTML5, social media, technology