Wayne Coyne http://www.adweek.com/taxonomy/term/9228/all en Ad of the Day: Virgin Mobile http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-virgin-mobile-147902 Sam Thielman <img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/colonel_meow_virgin_mobile.jpg"> <p> I usually have at least one question for our intrepid Ad of the Day candidates. But I have several for Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne. First, why did you make me play that one album on four different boom boxes sitting in the corners of my living room? Also, what in the world is going on in your new Virgin Mobile commercial?</p> <p> Coyne is in this ad (following his and the band&#39;s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAe-06mUHkI" target="_blank">recent turn for Hyundai),</a> telling us to retrain our brains, and it feels a lot like watching one of the weirder Flaming Lips songs (like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtwWwVYwA7Q" target="_blank">this cover</a> of &quot;If I Only Had a Brain,&quot; for example). My favorite moment here is the &quot;cat video&quot; of a person playing with a ball of yarn, apparently filmed by <a href="http://colonelmeow.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Colonel Meow,</a> not to be confused with Chairman Meow. The brain leaping off the reverse-exploding couch is also quite effective, as are the red-suited interpretive dancers who swirl the giant Kleenex through the air.</p> <p> One of the most solid axioms of copywriting is that if you don&#39;t have anything to say, say something funny, and that is exactly what this spot does. Honestly, pay-as-you-go cellphones don&#39;t really seem like that great of an idea anymore, but Virgin is sticking to its guns and Coyne is convincing enough to make you go, &quot;Wait, why was my cellphone bill $95 last month, again?&quot; It might not make you switch, but it makes you laugh, and that keeps the ad&#39;s subject on your mind.</p> <p> I&#39;m also not convinced it&#39;s not forcibly inserting itself into your brain in some weird way. This is the kind of thing I watch and then expect to start clucking like a chicken an hour later solely to amuse people like Coyne and agency Mother.</p> <p> The New York agency has done a great job on this one, too. The casting is great, and it&#39;s got a solid Adult Swim vibe. To be honest, it feels most like something from the late, lamented Tim &amp; Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, which is a little weird, since Tim Heidecker usually <a href="/node/137492">works for Weiden + Kennedy.</a> Maybe it&#39;s just the Flaming Lips effect.</p> <p> Also, Wayne, is this part of a new direction for the band? Why did you put out your last record exclusively on vinyl for two months? Does not having a turntable make me a loser? Cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck &hellip; !</p> <p> <object height="367" width="652"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xjZ0rXSXeBA?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="367" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xjZ0rXSXeBA?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="652"></embed></object></p> <p> <strong>CREDITS</strong><br /> Client: Virgin Mobile<br /> Agency: Mother, New York</p> Advertising & Branding Ad of The Day Celebrity Endorsements Colonel Meow Mother Telecom Sam Thielman Wayne Coyne Creative Agency Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:24:09 +0000 147902 at http://www.adweek.com Flaming Lips Tries to Top Jay-Z's 8 Shows in 24 Hours http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/flaming-lips-tries-top-jay-zs-8-shows-24-hours-140718 Charlie Warzel <img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/flaming-lips-hed-2012.jpg"> <p> Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne has been performing with the same group for over 30 years, but he has absolutely no problem innovating. On Wednesday, Coyne announced via Twitter that the group is gunning for Jay-Z&#39;s Guinness World Record for the most shows played over 24 hours. The performances will be livestreamed as part of a promotional stunt for MTV&#39;s fledgling O Music Awards.</p> <p> Starting on June 27, the Lips will try to perform eight shows over 24 hours in eight cities, starting in Memphis and concluding in New Orleans. Fans will be able to view all eight shows at omusicawards.com, on iPads and other mobile devices.</p> <p> The trip, which Coyne lovingly described<em> </em>as &quot;ridiculous,&quot; will feature a myriad of acts playing alongside Coyne and the Lips as they attempt to make history. Coyne sat down with <em>Adweek</em> to talk about the record and how he&#39;s consistently pushing the envelope with new technology.</p> <p> <strong>On trying to break Jay-Z&#39;s record</strong><br /> &quot;The fact that it&#39;s going to happen over 24 hours sort of goes with the mentality of what our group is about. It&#39;s the idea of the Magical Mystery Merry Pranksters bus starting in Memphis and going to New Orleans. You know, if I was 18 years old, I&#39;d get a bunch of my friends and get some drugs and make the journey. It&#39;d be awesome. We&#39;re not going to Afghanistan to dig bombs out of the sand; we&#39;re going to play some music. What&#39;s the worst that could happen?&quot;</p> <p> <strong>On pushing boundaries with technology</strong><br /> &quot;I&#39;m not really an early adopter. I&#39;m around a lot of people who are into all this stuff. We were all talking the other day about Jack White and this idea of what punk rock is in this digital age, and sometimes I talk to groups and they relate to Jack White or the Black Keys and how they record on these old analog machines. They say it&#39;s very &#39;punk rock.&#39; And I&#39;m like, &#39;Wait a minute. That is not punk rock.&#39;</p> <p> &quot;Punk rock is&mdash;I hate to say it, but it is true&mdash;the way Kesha and Chris Martin did it when they recorded their track on the record <em>The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends</em> with me. They grabbed their computer, used the microphones that are in their laptop, sang into it and sent it to me. That to me&mdash;what kids do now&mdash;they don&#39;t go buy some 40-year-old machine that costs thousands of dollars. That to me is the opposite of punk rock. It&#39;s grab this thing, scream into it.&quot;</p> <p> <strong>On staying ahead of the curve</strong></p> <p> &quot;With new technology, I&#39;m just abusing anything I can for my own entertainment,&quot; Coyne laughed. Yet he seemed worried about being deemed a digital innovator.</p> <p> &quot;I&#39;m not really at the forefront. I think if that&#39;s really what you were trying to do then it would be very boring. We&#39;re just trying to entertain ourselves. If we&#39;re at the forefront, then that is great too, but I think if you were trying all the time to do it, you wouldn&#39;t end up doing much. There&#39;s always going to be somebody beating you to the punch. I meet bands that worry that something has already been done. Who cares? I don&#39;t think about it being innovative or anything. I&#39;m just doing what I like and hoping to get away with it.&quot;</p> <p> <strong>How technology facilitates collaboration</strong></p> <p> For <em>Heady Fwends</em>, Coyne and the Lips collaborated with 13 other groups, a process he believes couldn&#39;t have happened without the seamless communication of the Web.</p> <p> &quot;I&#39;ve still not met Justin Vernon [Bon Iver] or Jim James [My Morning Jacket]. With some collaborations, it all happened from sending emails to each other. I&#39;d seen My Morning Jacket, texted their drummer and he gave me Jim&#39;s number and within 45 minutes&mdash;right before he left to go to the Grammy&#39;s&mdash;in his personal recording studio he gets the file, messes with it and gets it back. It&#39;s insane. I don&#39;t buy that it isn&#39;t authentic. What&#39;s authenticity? We made music.&quot;</p> <p> &nbsp;</p> Technology Digital Recording Flaming Lips Jay-Z MTV O Music Awards Charlie Warzel VH1 Wayne Coyne Wed, 23 May 2012 15:40:31 +0000 140718 at http://www.adweek.com