We have been talking about the Japanese “super creative” firm Party a lot recently and the team seem to be a non-stop creative machine. One of their newest projects takes on the world of music videos and spins it off into a commercial venture. Party created the promotional video for the latest song from Japanese band Androp titled“World. Words. Lights.” involving flying mirror balls, dancing rocking robot cubes, light video towers and a host of other toys.
Product placement in videos is pretty rife in pop music nowadays however Androp and Party have put a new twist on the concept. The box like dancing musical toys used in the video were put up for auction on eBay as soon as the video was released, meaning fans of the band or those who want the designer toys can get their hands on one…. that is if you happen to have a spare $5,000 knocking around. Ten limited edition versions of the toy will be handmade per order by Party and artists Yuri Suzuki, Tomoaki Yanagisawa and Kimura.
The concept for the video came from the lyrics which touch upon words and their meanings around the world, as the band commented “when we listened to the track, keywords such as “lights” and ” dance music” stood out. In order to visualize the mechanical beats, and these 2 themes, we came up with an idea to create a group of “toys” which dances to the music”. You can also check out the making of the video and all the toys for it here.
Depending on how demand goes for the first of the toys “Rocker” (a cool name in itself) which changes its facial expression to the music, the band will then release all the other toys designed and made specifically for the video on eBay as Party’s Masashi Kawamura commented, “the Flying mirrorball, we plan to produce it as a fun toy anyway.” Creating spin off bespoke pieces that can be purchased is an interesting revenue creating idea from Party and Androp, especially in the days of music piracy where bands lose sales, and enabled Party to keep production costs low as they will keep the money generated as part of their creative fee.
This isn’t the first video that Party have produced for the band either, having also come up with the amazing video for “Bright Siren” last July which featured 250 Canon cameras and their flashes, controlling the strobe through a computer program. Again the video doesn’t stop at simply being just a promotional movie but the dedicated site allows fans to create their own version and send as a message via social networks. You can also pause the video at any given moment to see photos taken with the cameras that made the video.
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Darrell is a native of the U.K. and has been in Japan since 2002. He consults on innovation and strategy at the 
Those are cool toys, but I’m not sure I’d be willing to spend $5,000 on a smiling box.