Odnarotoop: When Portland Got Weird With Japan
An earworm song with the world's weirdest tourism commercial reveals a lot about common content creation mistakes.
I don’t think there are many cities that are as proudly weird as Portland. I’ve never had the honor of visiting, but I want to simply because it seems so quirky-cool in that hipstery way that remains oddly surreal. People who lived there tell me I’d fit in.
Lately, I’ve been cleaning my apartment and humming a song that got me thinking about its origins. The song is “Odnarotoop” by the Portland-based band, Ages and Ages. Really, it’s an ear worm and probably one of the weirdest music videos I’ve ever seen.
What stood out to me about this particular song and music video is that it’s actually part of a marketing endeavor to help encourage Japanese tourists to visit Portland. Even though the campaign happened over 8 years ago, I still recall it today. That’s powerful.
Also, that’s really good work on both the video and the music.
To me, that’s successful marketing—at least partially. The problem is that Mr.Dude and “Odnarotoop” didn’t quite do what they set out to do. Otherwise, they probably would have stuck around for years and years. So, what happened?