There are plenty of ways bands and musicians can commemorate their landmark albums’ anniversaries. A lot seem to include some form of creative packaging. They might release a new vinyl box set, complete with various folds and perforated edges to add to the whole experience. Maybe they print out sets of fliers or old posters to go along with the music. Perhaps they create a real knit sweater to cover the whole thing.
Or, in the case of Green Day celebrating the 30th anniversary of their seminal pop-punk classic Dookie, they take all sorts of objects technically able to play music and put a different track from the album – along with a special label – on each.
The Dookie: Demastered release is a fun, new take on releasing music, relying on antiquated and unorthodox music players. If you thought print was on its way out, wait until you realize that there’s about to be demand for 8-tracks and Game Boy cartridges.
Each track’s vessel is a one-of-one release and can only be won through an auction. The full list of 15 items for the album’s 15 tracks is as follows:
- “Burnout”: Player piano roll
- “Having a Blast”: Floppy disk
- “Chump”: Teddy Ruxpin doll
- “Longview”: Doorbell
- “Welcome to Paradise”: Game Boy cartridge
- “Pulling Teeth”: Toothbrush
- “Basket Case”: Big Mouth Billie Bass
- “She”: HitClip
- “Sassafras Roots”: 8-track
- “When I Come Around”: Wax cylinder
- “Coming Clean”: X-ray record
- “Emenius Sleepus:” Answering machine
- “In the End”: MiniDisc
- “F.O.D.”: Fisher Price record
- “All By Myself”: Music box
The project’s web page has a teaser image for each one. It’s a little creepy watching the Teddy Ruxpin say, “Well, would you look at that? It’s time to sing ‘Chump,’ my favorite song from ‘Dookie.’” And a toothbrush is certainly not the most high-fidelity way to listen to “Pulling Teeth,” although it is a terrific pun. Those Green Day boys always had a good sense of humor.
So, how does this all root itself into the print and promotional products industries? For one, it’s taking a promotional opportunity – the anniversary of the album – and finding ways beyond just re-releasing the music in the normal formats, instead transforming each piece of the album into tongue-in-cheek references for fans. Did you notice they wrote “Billie Bass” instead of “Billy Bass” for Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong? Did you think about the pun of a wax cylinder literally coming around for “When I Come Around” or “Coming Clean” using an X-ray to see inside a person? Pretty solid stuff.
But there’s also the print aspect of it. Each of these products includes a specially made tag or label. Just as you’d see a label on a Game Boy cartridge, the label is now using the Dookie: Demastered logo, turning each item into branded promo that incorporates both print and promo.
The exclusivity factor of each item being one of a kind also creates a call to action and inspires the recipient to hold onto it even longer. “Is that the Green Day answering machine?” they’ll ask. “You know it,” they’ll reply, before playing the machine’s sole message: the isolated vocal track of “Emenius Sleepus.”
So, the next time someone says print has no business in a promotional campaign, you can tell them it does, and it’s right alongside 8-tracks as being a crucial part of a campaign designed by one of the biggest bands in the world.
The real moral of the story here is creativity: A distributor can find the literal and figurative blank space in a campaign that might be well-suited for a print product like a label, tag or sticker. And they can take the heart of the promotion or the brand they’re working with and think about products that capture their essence, rather than just find a cheap solution everyone has seen (or heard) before.
