Daft Punk officially split up in February 2021 but they had effectively been quiet following the incredibly limited promotional activity around their Random Access Memories album in 2013 and an appearance at the 2014 Grammys.

Even albums made by grown men pretending to be rave robots are not immune from the tractor beam of the anniversary reissue; so it is that Random Access Memories gets a 10th anniversary edition featuring unfinished tracks, demos, studio outtakes and more.

Given the two members were never exactly garrulous when they were together, it is left, fittingly, to technology to do the heavy lifting here. Snapchat’s, also fittingly, Paris-based AR Studio has created what it is claiming is “a series of never-before-seen augmented reality experiences” for the Daft Punk: Memories Unlocked initiative.

There was a triptych of AR experiences involved.

The first was to tease the 10th anniversary edition of the album, whereby the track ‘Horizon’ (originally released only on the Japanese edition of the original album in 2013) was made available 48 hours before the anniversary album came out. Snapchat users could scan the 2013 sleeve with their smartphone to hear it while flipping their camera allowed them to don the crystal robot helmet on the cover of the anniversary edition.

The second experience was a treasure hunt in 10 locations globally (Paris, London, New York, LA, Berlin, Mexico City, Tokyo, Sydney, São Paulo and Buenos Aires), with clues pushed out through the act’s official social channels.

The final experience was a “remix” of the first initiative, this time involving billboards in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Sydney, London, Liverpool and Berlin with a QR code that would unlock the augmented crystal helmet and the ‘Horizon’ track.

That is, from a marketing perspective, the curse and the beauty of working with an act that is largely defined by their anonymity. They are not going to be producing endless jovial content for social media and everything is circumscribed by their intentional absence of personality. But, even if they have split up, you can turn their absence, and their intentional absence of personality, into a trait.

It was probably a hard slog a decade ago when the two members heavily restricted what promotion they did; but now they do not have to be leaned on for any content, it’s probably a relative breeze.