There have been, especially since the early days of the pandemic, a lot of marketing plans using colouring books as part of what they are doing. Some were done for fun and others had a more serious mindfulness element woven in.
We do feel this area was starting to risk overkill, but the campaign for Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness’s new single, ‘Stars’, thankfully does something a bit different.
Put together by Nettwerk Music Group, the tie-in colouring book site is very involved. It’s based around a drawing of someone in bed with a very busy duvet cover and a set of curtains that have to be filled in. There is also a psychedelic drawing of space melting into the room and a poster above the bed saying, “A world without color is a world without you,” (a lyric from the single).
There are colour guides to follow or you can just, like a digital Picasso, break apart the conventions of the genre and fill in the picture with whatever colours you please (staying within the lines, of course).
There is also an embedded Spotify player below the artwork so you can play the song (well, a 30-second clip) as you digitally paint your masterpiece. You can, of course, click through to Spotify to hear the track in full.
Where it transcends the average colouring book mechanic is that sneakily hidden in the duvet cover is a QR code that is subtly revealed when the colouring in has been completed.
Activating that led to a signup page where users were emailed details for a Stars Metaverse Meet-Up with Andrew on 14th September, done in collaboration with NoWhere.
Arielle Rubin, senior marketing manager at Nettwerk, told us ahead of the activation, “Andrew will be there to do a virtual meet and greet, there will be a 360-degree room experience with spatial sound with the song as well as exclusive merch. At the end, we’ll debut a brand new song weeks before its release.”
It is a good example of taking something in digital marketing that is teetering on the brink of becoming a raggedy cliché and giving it a vivifying and iridescent twist.
