Arcade Fire and Google Chrome - impressive viral marketing

Arcade Fire have just upped the bar for music videos and online band promotion with a new viral experience, partnering with Google Chrome.

The Wilderness Down Town is an interactive video accompaniment to Arcade Fire's single 'We Used to Wait', directed by Chris Milk.



The web page asks you to enter the name of where you grew up, and then as the song begins lots of separate browser windows start to automatically pop up along with Google street view images of your hometown.

Created in HTML5, the video cleverly shows off what Google Chrome can do. It's intended to persuade you to download the browser - the video is a LOT less effective with Firefox/Internet Explorer/Safari.

The effect is quite compelling - watching your browser take over your computer screen with lots of different sized, artistically placed windows is abnormal enough, and then your attention is grabbed further by the personal subject matter of familiar places flashing on screen.

Let's just hope you don't mind being reminded of your hometown!