This week, music and science collide for a breakthrough around brain activity and music. Tinder paints the full picture for dating bios with the help of some familiar faces and one brand’s marketing ploy has the neighbours shook to the core with a brazen email.
Lego is also back in our feeds this week, this time creating ASMR playlists to de-stress. Check it all out below!
SCIENTISTS ROCK LATEST BRAIN WAVE
Music and weird science collided this week. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley reconstructed Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall, Part 1’, using the brain waves of epilepsy patients, recorded as they underwent surgery while listening to the 1979 hit.
This is the first time that scientists have reconstructed a song from the recordings of brain activity, and it confirms that musical elements of speech including rhythm, stress, accent and intonation can be translated from brain signals.
All in all, it’s a breakthrough that could pave the way in developing speech support technology, improving the perception of rhythm and melody.
Read more here.
THE FULL PICTURE
A picture may paint a thousand words, but Tinder wants daters to also remember the value of a well thought-through bio when creating their dating profiles.
To incentivise users to invest time in building these profiles, Tinder drew inspiration from the great masters to create profiles of some of the worlds most renowned portrait subjects, including Mona Lisa and The Girl with the Pearl Earring’.
Giving the full picture of the person behind the painting, the dating app takes some playful liberties with defining these iconic characters.
The campaign follows research that suggests first impressions mean everything. According to research by Tinder, 30% of Gen Z users get the ‘ick’ if a profile has poor grammar and spelling, whilst 35% back away from bios that tediously list out ‘their type’ on paper.
On a positive note, individuality means a lot with 51% of young singles lean more towards profiles that provide an authentic peek into a person’s personality.
So, love birds, keep it short, sweet, and unique!
Friendly Neighbourhood WTF?
You know you’re about to encounter a masterpiece of mad, bad marketing when you read that the follow-up email from contained the phrase “While a majority of our customers responded positively to this email, there was a small subset for whom the email triggered fear, anxiety and discomfort.” This story is so damn dumb we had to double-check that it wasn’t published on April 1st.
How bad could one email be? It began with the dishonest subject line “a message from your neighbour”, and went rapidly downhill from there:
“Hi Sophie,
it’s your neighbour right across the street with the silver car and little dog. Anyway, just wanted to let you know everyone in the neighbourhood can see when you walk around your house in your underwear all day.”
At this point, you’ve probably shut down your email and called the cops, but the email did eventually get to the point.
“If you want some comfy shorts to walk around in, Feat is doing a limited time promo where you can get free shorts with any purchase. Click here to redeem.”
Yup. This was an offer for a pair of comfy shorts. Redemption seems unlikely, frankly.
There is nothing to learn here. But the next time you’re having a bad day, remember that some genius thought that the best possible influencer to sell their shorts was the friendly neighbourhood peeping tom.
File this one under ‘what were the **** were they thinking?’ Read the full story here.
ASMR Block Party
So bricks aren’t the only things Lego’s been building.
Following the success of their first ASMR adventure, ‘White Noise’ (hailed by The Guardian as “the experimental album of 2021”) Lego is back for that ‘difficult second playlist’ by cranking up the chill factor to compliment the launch of their new Insect Collection.
The nature-inspired ASMR tracks were composed with the help of award-winning Foley artist Sanaa Kelley, who took the clicks and rattles of Lego bricks, and reimagined them as the unique sounds of the insects featured in the collection – the Blue Morpho Butterfly, the Hercules Beetle, and the Chinese Mantis.
The result is “Green Noise” a playlist of ultra-chill soundscapes up to 45 minutes long. It’s a great fit with Lego’s ongoing push to create products that promote wellness and mindfulness in people of all ages, not least the 93% of adults who regularly feel stressed, and the 86% of us that say play helps us unwind (according to Lego’s Play Well Report 2022).
As slightly stressed grown-ups, we appreciate it.
Listen to the brain-scratching audio here.