First off, I should say that I loathe Chatroulette. It’s a service that lets you randomly video chat with people, and then shuffle to move on to another random person. I went on once for 20 minutes, and found mostly depressed looking guys and naked men (about 1 in 5 shuffles was a guy’s bits).
But the other day, Mashable posted a video that Ben Folds had done, where he would sing spontaneous songs to whatever he saw on the screen during Chatroulette. He calls these “ode to Merton,” and the backstory there is that this other person, Merton, would sing songs to people that connected with him on the service. Ben Folds, being something of a celebrity, has since overshadowed Merton in some senses, while still paying homage. But that’s not really the main point.
The following video is what Ben was doing. NOTE: Some NOT SAFE FOR WORK/KIDS language in the video.
The main point is this: after watching Ben Folds in this video a few times, I was reminded that I like his music. More so, I liked that he embraced a new technology like Chatroulette. More so, I appreciate that he could be extemporaneous. And that, friends, sold Ben one more album. Here’s an amazon affiliate link to the album I bought.
Marketing is sometimes about exposure, awareness, and getting us to connect with the product. By watching Ben interact with people on Chatroulette, I connected with the spirit of what he was doing, and he made another sale. That’s the takeaway.
What say you?
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