The data center has made an appearance at Paris Fashion Week! To my surprise, high fashion figurehead Karl Lagerfeld used data centers as the inspiration for his Spring/Summer 2017 collection for Chanel at the recent show. While data centers have occasionally appeared in pop culture over the years, the merging of one of fashion’s biggest houses with one of the tech industry’s nerdiest institutions brings data centers in front an entirely new audience.
Combining the arts with the data center brings technology and the humanities together when the two worlds typically operate in completely separate spheres. While each manifestation is unique, the irresistibility of the data center as a source of inspiration can cross artistic mediums. Especially when popular culture or the more mainstream arts get involved, I can’t help but think about the PR opportunities that arise when data centers inspire art.
DATA CENTERS + FASHION
Karl Lagerfeld established the arts partnership between fashion and data centers with the backdrop of this week’s Chanel show in Paris. Data centers served as the primary inspiration for both his collection and the show itself. While the fashion world has flirted with technology for years (such as the Met Costume Institute’s Manus X Machina exhibition), this was the first time the data center specifically stood in the spotlight.
- PR opportunity: It’s all about exposure. No, the audience at the Chanel show probably isn’t the most obvious sales lead for your DCIM tool or new PDU. However, widening the availability of data centers and exposing the basic concept to a broad audience naturally raises the profile of the industry as a whole, which can include your particular company.
Read more about the Chanel Data Center inspiration at The Telegraph.
DATA CENTERS + COMEDY
HBO’s Silicon Valley explores the IT world beyond data centers, but these facilities have made several memorable appearances, to date. Perhaps most entertaining was the data center that one of the main characters, Gilfoyle, built in his own garage to host data from the app developed by the show’s hero.
- PR opportunity: The data center comic illustrator, Diane Alber, created the Kip and Gary series, which combines data centers and comedy to produce a humorous visual that can be used to support marketing efforts. Even PR, with its press releases, articles, and other pieces of content that educate your audience through earned media, are open to a little humor. A well placed line or amusing phrase can go a long way towards gaining attention (we’re still waiting for data center memes to really take off!).
See some clips from the show and learn more at Data Center Knowledge.
DATA CENTERS + ART
This example puts art into (or, more accurately, onto) the data center. Announced just this year, Google’s The Data Center Mural Project was launched to create data center murals, which will beautify the exterior of these mammoth structures. Joe Kava, VP of Google Data Centers, describes the project as “a partnership with artists to bring a bit of the magic from the inside of our data centers to the outside.”
- PR opportunity: Projects like this one can bring the purpose of the data center closer to the public while simultaneously extending that very purpose from purely technical to also artistic. If it serves as public art while powering the data and Internet everyone needs, the data center can show the world its importance to the development of culture both digitally from its interior and physically from an artistic exterior.
See some examples of the art at the Data Center Murals website.
DATA CENTERS + FILM
Several films in the recent past include data centers as part of a set or scene, depending on the topic at hand. While they don’t always form a pivotal point in each movie (though some certainly do!), it’s nevertheless interesting to see how each portrayal is handled. As the world of data centers and Cloud move closer to user experience, we’re interested to see how much more they might be featured in upcoming movies.
- PR opportunity: The basic combination of data center and film essentially plays right into current marketing trends of using video for promotion. Data centers, perhaps because of their scale, uniformity, or pretty lights, are especially well suited to the medium of film.
Learn more about each movie they considered from Data Center Knowledge.
DATA CENTERS + MUSIC
British composer and audiovisual artist Matt Parker has used the noises emitted within data centers to produce unique compositions. The result is an otherworldly, certainly technically based compilation of sound. Fun fact: Mr. Parker is also the director of the documentary film “The People’s Cloud,” a piece that explores how the rise of the digital Cloud impacts all kinds of people, from engineers and technicians to economists and family members.
- PR opportunity: Of all the arts, music and the data center don’t seem to be the first interdisciplinary practice we can think of. However, using the sounds of the data center as a way to educate the industry about your solutions may work for some campaigns. If anything, it’s an interesting and novel approach to understanding data centers with a new sense.
Get more details about the musical project at Cities and Memory.
No matter your muse, data centers can inject artistic aspirations with new ideas, images, sounds or concepts. It’s clear from the examples above that while data centers remain firmly based in the technology and engineering fields, there’s much to learn from the artistic elements of these impressive facilities as well. Any good PR campaign will harness this kind of creativity to educate a broader audience about the impact of a news story.
Caroline Haley authors the column “Caroline’s Cloud” and is Vice President, Outreach & Operations for Milldam Public Relations.
