Ruh roh.

Are we to be blamed for making Dubstep mainstream to the masses? According to an article in AdWeek, we’re a contributor.

What exactly is dubstep even, anyway? And did we actually ruin it? Upon a deep discussion within GeniusRocket HQ, we realized that as cool as each employee is, none of us had a solid answer. In terms of a definition, these memes below best describe the intellectual caliber of answers we came up with.

We decided to research, and found some fun dubstep facts to share:

• Dubstep was somehow spawned off of reggae (dub music is a genre of reggae)
• It originated in London and became mainstream in the late 2000′s to early 2010s
• Dubstep has been endorsed by Britney Spears, Rihanna, and Xzibit
• Skrillex, dubstep legend in the US, has a pretty undubsteppy real name: Sonny John Moore
• Skrillex is BFF with Jared Leto from My So Called Life (an epic MTV drama. Yes, remember when MTV played dramas before reality TV took over?)
• You can make your own dubstep mix for your next office party!
• Grandparents, as expected, don’t know what to make of it

Our academic research revealed the following: we have no idea how much of a qualitative or quantitative impact our video we had on ruining dubstep for original lovers. BUT, we do know that the video helped Audio-Technica get some serious lift in brand awareness and evangelists, and SALES (you can read more about the video’s impact here). We helped exceed all of Audio-Technica’s business objectives for the campaign. How? Target segmentation. We didn’t make Audio-Technica’s Solid Bass headphone users dubstep fans. We turned dubstep fanatics (or more arguably, Marquese Scott fans) into fans of Solid Bass headphones. We produced branded entertainment that brands running video marketing campaigns strive for.

So in conclusion: we do kinda feel sorry for feeding into the diffusion of dubstep to the masses. When you love something underground, you feel cheated when your secret is spread to the public (like how a GeniusRocket employee felt when he had a passion for the relatively unknown Bon Iver. But then they won a Grammy).

But when we consider what we (and our Creative Community member: Production Company The DVI Group) were able to accomplish for Audio-Technica with this one video: we’re sorry for not being sorry.

To our dubstep loving marketers and creatives, we ask you to share your opinion. Did GeniusRocket make a bub wub and kill dubstep?

Special thanks to David Griner who chose our video to appear in his AdWeek article. Because let’s face it. It’s awesome to be featured in AdWeek (unless you’re being completely torn apart obviously).

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Other related links:

Interview with Audio-Technica’s Marketing Manager on Creating Audio 911: The Transcript

Audio-Technica Audio-911: the Case Study

Behind the scenes pics: On-set for Audio 911

Another video we did for Audio-Technica: Get Your Own Mic

How to effectively crowdsource a video marketing campaign like Audio-Technica did: the Guide