I met the Art & Media Director involved in a Steampunk recreation and performance group, The League of Steam. The League of Steam generates what I call D.I.Y.I.P. or Do-It-Yourself Intellectual Property. D.I.Y.I.P is a way content creators with a common interest can home-grow their own IP with the potential to coagulate a niche group of fans or micro audience (to be explicated in a later post). That micro audience has tremendous value for D.I.Y.I.P. because what starts as a dedicated network of fans who promote, evangelize and sustain your work can grow in popularity to something monetizable and mainstream.

Navigating to their YouTube site, I found this Panic! At The Disco music video, The Ballad of Mona Lisa, a song which I quite like. It features the Steampunk aesthetic and a few of the characters from The League and their Steampunk tools and props that actually work.

The video is a bit goth, but it’s fresh, and the song has two rockin’ choruses back-to-back. The video’s aesthetic is also evocative of Hell on Wheels, the new post-civil war Western era set series from AMC, which David Von Ancken, a Content Engine Content Creator, executive produced and directed. It premieres on AMC on November 6th.

See what you think of the video and song.