03.07.07
ARG for NIN’s Next Album
Nine Inch Nails (NIN), the band fronted by Trent Reznor, have a new album coming out in April. The problem, however, is that the number of alternative radio stations to help spread the new stuff have been diminishing since the mid nineties. How do get the publicity in this age of dispersed media attention? For NIN, the answer is an Alternative Reality Game, or ARG.
An ARG was used to great effect with Halo 2’s ‘I Love Bees’ launch campaign. There, clues found on a website lead to mysterious pay phone calls, an intergalactic plot, and mounds of press. A recap of the NIN ARG for the album ‘Year Zero’ includes:
On the back of a new NIN tour shirt, some letters are highlighted. These highlighted letters all come together to form the clause “I AM TRYING TO BELIEVE.” This directly leads to other things, as iamtryingtobelieve.com is an actual site. This website and many others popping up with the same theme depict a very tortured, dystopic world.
Much more is on the recap site. After hearing the first single (Survivalism) I was pretty cool on the new album. However, given all this backstory, I’m now looking forward to hearing the entire thing.
Are there other examples where an ARG has been used to turn the mundane into the interesting?
Laura Moncur said,
March 7, 2007 at 8:54 am
Yeah, sadly…
The Steven Spielberg movie, A.I., had more interesting websites than the movie. I was so excited about the subplot on the websites that the movie totally disappointed me. I talked about it here:
http://laura.moncur.org/archives/2004/05/11/2004-05-11-05-00/
This isn’t the first time Trent Reznor has done this. His collaboration with David Bowie on 1. Outside. They had a whole backstory in a booklet on the album. No website or strange phone numbers to call, but way more thinking about the album than the music would have indicated.
Binky Bear said,
March 10, 2007 at 12:18 pm
here’s a clue…
i saw a link to a compilation of many many NiN videos around this rock opera here…
http://ReadMyloveStory.com just see the Plog and reAD the Blog on the amazon page for more details
mr_redbaron said,
March 28, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Sounds like the new NIN marketing/propaganda is taking a page from the old mutednoise. Combine music, story & art. The story sites remind of the ‘bit-rot’ that I heard of many years ago…
I have no idea how people would recognize that if they took a spectrum analyzer to a sound clip they’d get a contact phone number. Makes you wonder how many other hidden items are encoded in the media…
The story is pretty interesting, hope they develop it more.
I’ve been likin the “no, i’m not” track that was ‘leaked’.