Ahead of the release of their second album, Palo Santo, last week (6th July), British synthpop band Years & Years pulled together an augmented reality preview that worked through the Facebook camera on mobile.
Using 15-second clips from each of the album’s 11 tracks, users could pick from a song menu and there were 11 different effects that could be layered on top of video selfies, with each effect serving to recreate elements of the album cover and came with a different hieroglyphic symbol from the alphabet used in Palo Santo, the fictional location that is the conceptual centrepiece of the album campaign. (In short, it’s a city where humans and androids live side by side.)
Polydor Records in the UK claims this is the first time multi-effects have been used by a music company or artist in this context, with the only other company to have deployed this tech so far being Marvel.
Users take a selfie and, when it recognises a human face, it comes with the name of the selected song title and weaves in some lens effects, such as layering hieroglyphs on your face like on the album cover. You can also add your own stickers and effects as you would with a normal selfie. Then there is a shortcut to automatically add it to your Facebook Story.
Polydor supported the launch with media spend and are also asking key online influencers to use the camera effects and publish reaction videos. Meanwhile, fans using the #PaloSanto hashtag when sharing their clips could win the chance to end up in a live broadcast with frontman Olly Alexander.
The Years & Years campaign is already shaping up to be one of the most ambitious of the year. Back in March, the arrival of a messenger bot (Palo Santo Entertainment Network Server) served as the starting pistol for the campaign; and this was followed up in May with YearCoin, the band’s twist on cryptocurrency that worked as a points-based reward scheme for fans who could “mine” them by carrying out actions like sharing encrypted messages, watching and sharing official videos and saving tracks on Spotify.
