Brand positioning

[Cache #260]

The essence of branding is being different. Clichés, therefore, are the antithesis of branding.

• Is “making a difference”
• Is doing something “by design”
• Has “revolutionized” or “reinvented” its product, service or industry

It is this last one that is most depressing to see, because it is almost always a sizeable exaggeration. It is also a bummer for the reason that it is lazy, which is the polar opposite of revolutionizing or reinventing.

Angine de Poitrine does not have this problem. They are the band and viral sensation you have already heard about, or are hearing about now for the first of many times.

Earlier this month, they performed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. It is not normal for a studio audience to break into cheers at multiple points midway through a band’s performance, but that is exactly what happened. Three times in one song.

Let alone for a band that plays 100% instrumentals and has only two players in it – who do not even speak, except for a few mumbles in a supposedly alien language. They wear absurdist costumes – polka-dot-saturated and reminiscent all at once of papier-maché, busking, and Monty Python. Their oversized outfits raising legitimate questions about how they can even see the instruments they play with extreme technicality in a weird jazz, electronic and progressive chaos that relies on microtones, i.e. the notes *between* the standard notes, thereby sounding somewhat off-pitch.

It results in a “math rock” style and a level of innovation celebrated by admiring and astonished legends including Shania Twain, Dave Grohl, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson (who called the band “exotic and mesmerizing”) and many others – not to mention all corners of the music press.

For its part, Rolling Stone describes Angine de Poitrine (translation: “angina of the chest”) as Spotify’s most viral band, and as having “one of the most fascinating and cataclysmic breakout years in recent Canadian music history.”

You may know that they exploded onto the scene this year after posting, as far as I can tell, a mere three YouTube videos of their playing, which earned them a spot opening for Jack White in Toronto, and now the Tonight Show appearance.

You may know in addition that they are 333-year-old alien time travellers, named Khn and Klek.

Apparently they are also from the Saguenay.

Easy listening this is not. Listening to Angine de Poitrine takes focus, dedication and quite possibly some mid-song breathers.

“This is what I imagined the future of music would be. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

So says Rick Beato, an incredibly insightful music industry insider and master multi-instrumentalist. He has six million followers on YouTube and has interviewed many music icons including Sting, Billy Joel and Robert Plant.

His POV on the costumes: “Unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

I confess that I really don’t get the music. But here is what I can say with confidence: Angine de Poitrine, starting with their weird name, are an example of the power of truly being different. They can actually say, with a straight face beneath those masks, that they are on the reinvention-revolution axis.

Even their detractors cannot help but be somewhat charmed. By the audacity of this band’s inventiveness and humour. By the virtuosity of their playing in an era of fake (AI-generated) music and even fake artists.

By their transfixing of our attention on something other than the millisecond-by-millisecond news and social cycle that is our prison.

—

I, not AI, wrote this.

Andris Pone, BA, MBA
President
Coin Branding Inc.
andris@coinbranding.com
1 416 560 0928
www.coinbranding.com