Alex’s YouTube channel of popular song covers had been enjoying some success, with videos often exceeding 150k views. Recognizing that the market had become saturated with cover artists, he wanted to set himself apart from the crowd. Together, we decided there was only one logical strategy: invent an aeronautical technology company, and have its human research division kidnap Alex during a recording.

We created an elaborate, consistent fiction around Aeolas International that included a website, company logo, employee bios, and a promotional video. We imagined Aeolas as a multinational organization that had started to venture into the lucrative scientific field of “human-based research.”

We kept the language that Aeolas used in its public-facing material as vague and generic as possible. The voiceover copy for the marketing video avoids any specifics, and includes only high-level strategy and broad initiatives delivered over stock footage.

For a brand slogan, I wanted something that felt bold and ambitious, that stayed nebulous, but also felt slightly authoritarian and menacing:

In addition to being a talented musician, Alex is also a top tier interface designer and filmmaker. He designed the company logo, which ties spaceship imagery into the “A” of Aeolas.

After Aeolas had abducted its subject, our story continued with Alex being held captive in a surveillance facility. The YouTube channel was now covered in Aeolas branding, and his music videos included CCTV footage of his cell, as well as brief (and sometimes heated) interactions with his captors.

Aeolas International’s Twitter feed updated the public on the activity and morale of the company’s latest test subject. A number of Alex’s followers were clearly confused, and there was a lot of theorizing and head-scratching in the YouTube comments sections:

While engagement on his channel did increase, we decided to terminate the experiment before Alex’s inevitable launch to YouTube stardom was complete.

The design and production team consisted of Alex Cornell, Phil Mills, Michael Chang, and myself. The videos were shot with a Panasonic PV-GS250, edited in Final Cut, and color corrected in Color.