The billboard as stage. | Jerritt Clark/WireImage via Getty Images
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A global marketer's ad space might not seem like the most likely venue for a beloved indie rock band to play a concert—except maybe in an act of protest.
Nonetheless, TV on the Radio popped up on the corporate circuit Wednesday night, taking the stage in front a Heineken Light billboard in downtown Manhattan for a short show that received minimal advance publicity.
The concert, organized by Heineken creative shop Wieden + Kennedy, New York, with assists from production house Relevant and public relations firm MSL, continues the brand's new "Occasionally Perfect" campaign, a series of efforts to cast the beer as the appropriately quirky drink for alternative fashionistas and their alternative gatherings. Previously that meant fantastical TV spots about handlebar mustaches at bare-knuckle boxing matches and snakeskin blazers at off-shore snake fighting events.
What does the event hope to convey? The billboard, under normal circumstances a totally banal piece of media, actually becomes compelling once you put a popular musical act in front of it.
Of course, the promotional video cut from the performance perhaps shows best how quickly the billboard returns to being boring.
