Some times your brand starts to feel stagnate, tired and predictable. While the standard of a good brand is consistency. Constancy of experience and presentation help your brand maintain its message with out confusing and diluting your brand image. But every now and than it can be good to shake your brand up a bit. Even the most conservative brands can benefit from a little brand shake up and in most parts they will probably benefit the most.

No ones personal brand is more consistent and organic than the mellow Hawaiian singer, song writer, and film maker Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson’s brand is so organic that it comes with a USDA stamp right on it. Johnson’s smooth, mellow, laid back style is as even keeled as the sound of his acoustic guitar.

Johnson’s brand is very strong and his consistency of presentation is very high. Concertgoers and album buyers know exactly what to expect from Johnson and he always delivers right on point. Because of this his brand has flourished despite the waning market for musicians. But with all of this mellow predictability Johnson has been criticized for being to dependable and not exciting enough.

The solution Johnson has always been great at using his temperate persona in juxtaposition to other more flamboyant characters or diverse images. Johnson is very savvy at utilizing unique video content that plays perfectly with his mellow style. He paints his basic character against a colorful wall of creativity to create dynamic experiences.

Some perfect examples are Johnson’s video for Taylor Featuring comedian Ben Stiller. Stiller’s neurotic and fast paced character was perfectly infused with Johnson’s to create a memorable and exciting moment that was refreshing for Johnson’s brand.

In Johnson’s Sitting, Waiting, Wishing video he pitted him self as a static character immersed in a chaotic setting where the world was going backwards as he went forwards steadily just strumming his guitar as things burst into flames, food fly’s at him and he is thrown around the room. This creative video was the perfect way to spice up a predictable brand with out deviating from the essence of the brands message. You have the character or brand behaving predictably in an unpredictable environment.

Jack Johnson latest juxtaposed interactive branding effort will be sure to draw some excitement. In Johnson new interactive marketing campaign he pits him self against the rebel-rousing comedian Andy Samberg in the Andy Samberg vs. Jack Johnson “At or With Me” Teaser. The campaign is complete with a landing page pitting the two characters against each other and the whole thing is integrated with a Facebook ”like” function allowing users to vote on who they think will be victorious in the brawl.

This campaign works because of how unexpected it is. No one would ever expect the mellow Johnson to engage in a brawl so by pairing him with a comedian know for stirring things up think Samberg and Justin Timberlakes SNL skit “dick in a box” and you get a brand experience that is sure to infuse some excitement into even the most predictable brand.

This technique works with out diluting or degrading the brand because the application of juxtaposition is so unexpected that it is immediately recognized as humor, but it is not so predictable that viewers will over look the message in the “snow blind” way that static brand messages often are.

So if your brand feels to static and tired now might be the right time to use a little brand juxtaposition to breath some fresh air into your brand.

Tags: Brand Juxtaposition, Jack Johnson.

Google partnered up with the music group Arcade Fire and Director Chris Milk to develop a fun new look at the music video and interactive web content. This video is a very creative concept and it makes novel use of HTML5 and Google maps street view application as you the viewer is transported into the music video as you interact and run through your home town.

At first when you load the site you might be confused by all of the windows that quickly queue in the lower right corner causing your initial reaction to think you are getting hit by spam pop ups. However the site utilizes HTML5 embedded video to guide the user through the interactive experience that also includes very user friendly drawing board and post card creation interface.

Check out the video it is very exciting and hopeful an indicator of fresh new creative interactive media sites to come. You will need a Google Chrome Browser to view the video given that the HTML5 video is only embedded properly on this browser type and it does not feature cross browser capabilities.

It will be interesting to see HTML5 as it pushes to replace flash and with Google jumping on the HTML5 wagon along with Apple whose ipad and ipod devices do not support flash we should see more development utilizing HTML5 over flash.

Tags: HTML5, Music Video.