
Emailing 25k Marilyn Manson fans a video of their house - leemartin
https://medium.com/@leemartin/wkwyfl-43879e3348ac
======
ThinkingGuy
In June 2004 Reason magazine did something similar: Every subscriber to the
magazine received an individualized copy with an aerial photo of the
subscriber's house on the cover, and the title "[Subscriber name], they know
where you are!"

[http://reason.com/archives/2004/06/01/database-
nation](http://reason.com/archives/2004/06/01/database-nation)

~~~
leemartin
YES. Wow. This is what I referenced when pitching the project.

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sandworm101
People are very sensitive about other people seeing images of thier homes. I'm
in the military and once had to deal with a complaint about our aircraft
"buzzing" a house. As the address was in nearby farmland I called the person
to confirm the exact location. Maybe the house was on an approach to our
airport or maybe our pilots were using it as a landmark for an exercise.

"I'm with one of our pilots now. We're looking at what we think is your house
based on the address you gave us. Is it the one with the gravel driveway and
L-shaped pool?"

"What? Are you taking pictures of my house?"

"No ma'am. I've got a satellite view of your address on my screen."

"You have spy satellites over my house!!@!$#!#"

"Google maps!, just google maps!"

#Click#

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paulgb
This reminds me of the interactive video to Arcade Fire's The Wilderness
Downtown:
[http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/](http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/)

~~~
leemartin
You nailed it Paul. That campaign really inspired me early on as a developer
(and I think a lot of devs in music would say the same) and I've used similar
tricks of geo-nostalgia in other projects.

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kowdermeister
Really clever campaign.

Architecture wise I would have rendered the video server side and just send a
link to the MP4 to the user skipping the 6MB attachment.

~~~
leemartin
Cheers man. I would usually do something like this server side but didn't have
much time to test the pros and cons of rendering via something like FFMPEG vs.
After Effects. I was pretty excited to try out the DataClay plugin as well.

We really wanted to mail the attachment because most folks would receive this
via mobile and you can't download a link (easily, to my knowledge) to your
mobile file system or photo library. By putting the attachment in their inbox,
it's a one-click process which gets them one step closer to sharing.

------
justsaynope
you leaked the videos url in your medium post :( Now everyone can check the
location of MM fans.
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/wkwyfl/WYWYFL_1.mp4](https://s3.amazonaws.com/wkwyfl/WYWYFL_1.mp4)
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/wkwyfl/WYWYFL_22357.mp4](https://s3.amazonaws.com/wkwyfl/WYWYFL_22357.mp4)

~~~
leemartin
Haha. That's like saying Google Maps can leak the locations of people. There's
nothing to tie the users to the videos but I've gone ahead and turned off that
S3 because you gave me a small heart attack.

~~~
justsaynope
better safe then sorry! ;)

~~~
leemartin
Agreed. Thanks for the nudge

------
climber_mac
This is awesome. How did you end up working on projects like this one? This
kind of interactive one-off experiences are something I've been interested in
for a long time.

~~~
leemartin
1) Got lucky: [http://leemart.in/origin](http://leemart.in/origin) 2) Worked
really hard and stayed as curious as possible 3) Add 15 years

------
Quanttek
Sounds like an wesome campaign. Congrats! Are there any sample videos
available?

~~~
leemartin
Cheers man, check this out:

[https://twitter.com/leemartin/status/907308086184087552](https://twitter.com/leemartin/status/907308086184087552)

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faitswulff
This is pretty awesome. Updates on the AC bill would be appreciated ;)

~~~
leemartin
Well it's probably not going to be as bad as my S3 bill but I'm not looking
forward to it.

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5_minutes
Smart idea, and you got lucky there with the addresses :)

~~~
leemartin
If we're counting luck, this campaign was a god damn fluke.

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DanBC
I assume the competition had finished. Why hadn't this personal data been
deleted?

Did competition entrants have to opt in to allow you to use their personal
data for marketing? Or was that opt in assumed?

~~~
leemartin
Competition is still ongoing. It's tied into a larger campaign.

The videos were sent directly to users as part of an email confirmation of
their contest entry. We did not use the videos for marketing. It was up to the
user to actually share the video.

~~~
beberlei
I think parents question is about if you have consent from your competition
users to use their location data as part of marketing campaings as part of the
ToS. While from a technical PoV this campaign is awesome, in Europe you might
easily get sued for this kind of use of the data, especially since you make it
quite obvious how you used the data (v.s. "hidden" data mining, which most
companies can get away with).

~~~
leemartin
Yeh, I hear you. Users consented to sharing their location as one of the
variables required to enter the contest. It was a ticket giveaway so knowing
their location allowed us to figure out which show they might go to. Again,
the videos themselves were emailed directly to users and while sharing them
publicly was encouraged, it was not something we did ourselves.

It's like... you gave me an email address so naturally I'm going to email you.
You gave me a location so (unnaturally) I'm going to make a video for you.

~~~
leemartin
I should also note that the location consent was (in most cases) initiated by
the HTML5 Geolocation prompt. Now a lot of companies use this technology to
reposition something like a Google Map on their website. We did the same thing
but positioned a static map and made it part of a video composition.

------
carlob
> Contestants were required to give their email address and share their
> location in order to earn a chance to win tickets to see Manson live at a
> show near them.

ah ok

~~~
leemartin
In addition, we contacted a few online store customers since we knew their
mailing address. I believe the Manson camp also mailed some of those folks
post cards with a similar theme.

------
anotheryou
no video example?

~~~
justsaynope
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/wkwyfl/WYWYFL_X.mp4](https://s3.amazonaws.com/wkwyfl/WYWYFL_X.mp4)

where X is 1-22357

~~~
leehung92

      #!/bin/bash  
      for ((i=1; i<=22357; i++)); do  
         ffmpeg -ss 00:00 -t 00:01 -i  

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/wkwyfl/WYWYFL_$i.mp4](https://s3.amazonaws.com/wkwyfl/WYWYFL_$i.mp4)
-vframes 1 -f image2 mmfanloc-%05d.jpg done

whoops..

~~~
leemartin
Out of curiosity (since we are on Hacker News) - what would have been your
next logical step on trying to connect those videos to their actual fans?

