Flight of the Conchords

You know what time it is when I’m down to just my socks, it’s time for business, that’s why they’re called business socks. Jemaine Clement

Flight of the Conchords are a New Zealand-based comedy duo composed of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. The duo’s comedy and music became the basis of a BBC radio series and then an American television series, which premiered in 2007 on HBO, also called “Flight of the Conchords.”

The duo tapped The Mechanism to create a new website design and supporting open-source Content Management System integration to launch in time for the band’s 5th album on Sub Pop, “I Told You I Was Freaky,” which peaked at #10 on the U.S. charts. As part of the overall redesign effort, The Mechanism built a custom “Ultra-High Fidelity Music Box” that resembled an old-school cassette deck, allowing fans to not only sample tracks from the new album, but also listen to select tracks from the duos musical past. As an added enhancement, the audio player was designed to “dance” in a similar manner to objects in the opening credits of their popular HBO show.

The Mechanism consulted with the band and management throughout the project, integrating unique social media enhancements as a way to announce tour dates and ticket sales online (the tour sold out within hours of the online announcement), creating a “Fan Art” section of the website through Flickr (allowing fans to share artwork on the site inspired by the duo), and enabling the band to actually post musings live on the site via text message. Fans were also encouraged to use Twitter hashtags while at shows, which were pulled into the website’s tour page through an RSS feed. Years after their last tour, the Twitter feed still receives constant updates from fans on the site.

The band’s unique style and aesthetic was carefully incorporated into the site, so that the overall presentation and visual design would last beyond any particular record or promotional release. Since the launch of the site, The Mechanism produced promotional emails based on unique poster designs for the band’s tours.