Aerosmith Takes Live Video Streaming Mainstream, and to Main Street

Rethink traditional ads and start embracing live video streaming as a means to build your brand and promote new products. That’s the message Boston rock band Aerosmith projected Monday with a free concert on a city street for those who tuned into ustream.com or a HD TV channel, the day before the launch of its new album.

Just a few weeks ago, Red Bull won props for sponsoring a skydiver looking to break a world record, another one-time event streamed live to a large audience.

When something happens once, it’s an eye opener. When it happens again it’s an emerging trend, or at least worth watching more closely.


Image via Shutterstock

Mainstreaming Video Streaming

The bigger picture development here is the mainstreaming of live video streaming. It’s just as powerful for one- time, quick-hitter events and product pre-launches as it is for the Olympics, March Madness, mega-concerts and the World Cup.

Aerosmith and Red Bull proved that you don’t have to be one of the world’s largest technology, media or entertainment companies to put live streaming to work in order to expand your brand and build demand for new products.

Ustream (News - Alert), I Stream, We All Stream..

On Monday November 5, ustream.com streamed the Aerosmith event, which featured an appearance by the mayor’s wife and an intro by Jonathan Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, who attended with QB Tom Brady. The band played a mix of new and old songs from the back of a long truck parked in front of the building where they created their first albums in the 1970s.

The album, Music from Another Dimension, came out the following day.

What was far more important than the band’s new music was the use of live video streaming to get the event to the masses. Even though the coverage began at noon, those that couldn’t take a 90 minute lunch to attend in person, weren’t left out of the event thanks to ustream.

Light Lifting, Heavy Hitting

Perhaps lost in the (traditional) media coverage of the event was the effective use of live streaming that was cheap and didn’t require months of advance planning.

To be clear, this wasn’t a spontaneous event, it required more planning than a flash mob. At the same time, however, it was not a logistics Rubiks Cube nor did it require weeks of all nighters.

CMOs Take Notice

That’s why this type of event is a perfect match for live video streaming, which has seen throngs swarm to ustream, livestream, et al. to market their skills and opinions. The barrier to entry is low. Advance product marketing and select brand building events like the Red Bull skydiver represent a huge potential market of live video streamers. CMOs take notice or be on notice.

Well Beyond the Biggest and Richest

Live video streaming has been established as a means to deliver large audiences sporting events (The London Summer Olympics, World Cup), long-duration events (March Madness) and milestone events such as political conventions, debates, elections and concerts.

But when you make a product launch into an event, you are using live video streaming to build demand and whet the appetite of the consumer, in a unique online marketing approach. What Aerosmith did was bring streaming to Main Street in a way that makes the technology more mainstream than ever before.