TouchIT

It’s a pretty exciting morning when the first e-mail in your inbox is from Grammy®award-winning musician John Mayer asking for your strategic, creative and technical savvy. On that note, John’s team contacted BLITZ to develop creative strategy to launch his new album, Battle Studies. He wanted something big, innovative and disruptive.

Knowing that John Mayer fans would undoubtedly grab his new album once it hit the shelves (and iTunes store), it was those who were on the fence that we geared our strategy toward. We needed to engage them on a level that went beyond music.

Drawing off John’s own passion for technology, we quickly came up with a concept that revolved around an Augmented Reality music video for the single, Heartbreak Warfare. This would allow the user to engage with the crooner within a 3D space on their computers. And because it was the first full-length music video developed using the emerging technology, we knew that this approach would also become a major PR play for his new album.

Working closely with our technology partner Adobe®, we worked against the clock to get the video shot, rendered and developed in time for the 2009 Adobe MAX conference. There, Adobe’s Chief Tecnología Officer, Kevin Lynch, showed off the video during the conference’s keynote, and invited John on stage to chat about producing the video with BLITZ.

In addition to conceptualizing and developing the video, we also needed an icon or “glyph” to act as the video’s play button. But we didn’t want to simply create an AR icon — we wanted our creative expression to become part of John’s own brand. Thus, the broken heart was born, and since has become the logo that’s emblazoned on nearly all his merchandise from apparel to iPod cases.

The video itself was a major success, and gained massive praise throughout the blogosphere and within social media. The logo, too, remains the core mark for the John Mayer brand.