BUZZ NEWS

State Farm Takes OK Go Where Record Label Won’t

Posted on March 5, 2010
Angela Natividad

We love a good domino effect, and this one for OK Go’s "This Too Shall Pass" is deeply satisfying. (Our favourite part is when the old TV, featuring the video that first made OK Go a YouTube sensation, swings through the air and is smashed by a hammer.)

But we’re not just sharing this because we dig the music and the mayhem. There’s a pretty excellent, possibly revolutionary ad story behind it.

In January, OK Go — whose explosive success on YouTube in ’06 brought it mainstream — wrote a candid explanation about why its music videos are no longer embeddable to others’ websites. (Mostly it has to do with a profit-sharing deal between its record label, EMI, and Google.) It cited this as part of the reason why the band will probably never see viral success again. But if you have to choose between those who love you and those who pay you, well, it’s neither easy nor nice but it’s the menu du jour for bands today.

Then the unexpected happened: a month after that sad "we’ll never be viral stars again" letter, the band creates this spiffy new video for "This Too Shall Pass," directed by James Frost of Zoo Films in conjunction with Syyn Labs — and it’s embeddable!

How?

Because of a sponsorship from State Farm, whose logo appears briefly at the beginning and end of the video.

Don’t know all the details of how State Farm managed to wiggle the band out of any EMI obligations, but it smells like a good deal. And if sponsorship can bring bands where the labels don’t, or won’t, what’s the harm? (Asked with a grain of salt, of course.)