Jonno Seidler: Turn it up
By Jonno Seidler, social copywriter, M&C Saatchi
CB Exclusive – While McDonalds’ deal with Omnicom may be making waves across the ad world today, among the younger set, all eyes are on Kenzo and its sparkling new longform perfume ad, directed by the legendary Spike Jonze. The spot is exhilarating for a number of reasons – including the way in which it gloriously takes the piss out of the category – but a lot of it arguably comes down to the soundtrack.
Jonze’s brother, Sam Spiegel, created the dancehall-inspired ‘Mutant Brain’ especially for the campaign. It follows on from ‘Da Da Ding’, another custom job for Nike, composed by EDM upstarts Gener8ion and Gizzle. You can find each of these songs on streaming services. Even stripped of their visual context, they’re also good enough that you’d want to add them to your party playlist.
Advertising has a history of bankrolling stars into turning jingles into jams. From Justin Timberlake’s ‘I’m Lovin’ It’, which doubled as a spot for McDonalds, through to the famous Pepsi run of collaborations in the ’90s (and let us not forget the Mad Men revival of ‘I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke’), it’s somewhat in our DNA – even if that typically relates to broadcast.
Australia’s most famous foray into composition in recent years is still ‘Dumb Ways To Die’, a jingle cleverly wrapped in song, but nonetheless not something you’re going to drop at a 21st birthday.
For the most part, our industry’s approach to music, particularly in the age of Facebook, in which we are repeatedly told that millennials scroll past content without sound, is one of gentle ambivalence. We oscillate between licensing big name tracks for large TV campaigns and using skilled production houses to create moods that sound like contemporary music, but deliberately retain none of the actual stickiness.
These recent moves by brands firmly plugged into the pulse of ‘kids these days’ should not go unnoticed. Both the Kenzo and Nike ads are longform, were released first online and rely on having the sound turned up. By our benchmarks, they should not work. But the marketability of their tunes gives them a residual effect that extends far beyond the spot, and a clear association between the brand and cool.
This year, an automated stock music composer called Juke Deck won an innovation lion at Cannes. It uses artificial intelligence to create sounds to spec for any type of creative, musical genre or audience. It seems that as we plunge more and more dollars into video, it’s coming at the expense of music, which we consistently attempt to make cheaper. Kenzo will not be the last brand to prove that our rules around content are there to be broken.
If there’s something worth listening to, the earbuds will go in and brand salience will go up. So who will be writing the beats for your next big campaign?
28 Comments
Obviously I’m missing something because the Kenzo spot bored me senseless.
Thanks for the namecheck brah. Now write some ads.
Says it all really!!!
love
It’s certainly a beautiful film but isn’t it simply a combination of Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice and Fatboy Slim’s Ya Mumma but shot more modern and luxurious.
I love watching it but it’s hardly original and there’s no huge idea here. If taking the piss out of luxurious communication is it’s goal, we’ve all seen it before.
Craft award, certainly. Not sure about all the others it will undoubtedly get.
Surely there’s also something to say for the Dance phenom sweeping pop culcha. If say this is closer to Sia’s Chandelier than Fat Boy Slim’s Weapon of Choice.
. . . is in the altogether.
This is not advertising.
The brief: Give us something like that Walken thing you did for Fatboy Slim.
It’s Elaine Benes at the staff Christmas party. And Fatboy Slim. Only way shitter.
Jonno with 2 ‘n’…come on bud.
A message to the king.
It is advertising but just to as you know it.
Keep up.
Um, if anything this is a throwback to the way advertising used to work in the past rather than some new thing for the kids.
In the nineties and before interesting film driven spots with big budgets were what won award shows. (I’m not saying this is a bad thing by the way. It’s just ironic. The social media guys have discovered film!)
I didn’t choose the title, the title chose me.
Reads like someone has just discovered the power of music in communications. Your examples are current but your thinking is outdated. It’s been happening well for years.
I do love the work though.
This blatant self-promotion made me want to Google what work he’s done in the past. Not the best time to be Google searched m8.
This will move more product then all you hack advertising naysayers have ever, and will ever move.
The older you get the more you become a grumpy cunt. At least we now know who comments on this blog. When I was a boy…
I feel blessed that somehow this piece was shared by a dozen or so of my Facebook friends, passed around the agency the other morning (by a man in his late forties), and on the Adweek site that a young person once told me about. Otherwise I would have no idea what ‘the younger set’ would be up to. Thanks Jonnno. Can you please post again tomorrow so I can find else what’s going on.
Turn it up “Jonno”
At least it’s honest.
“… as we plunge more and more dollars into video …”
Really? Where are YOU working? For the rest of us, we create more and more video, but with less and less dollars.
https://khuthalaworx.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/in-other-news/
We received your postcard all the way from Australia telling us that music works in advertising. OMG! WTF! Tie me Kangaroo down sport! Thanks so much for the revelation Australia.
To the young set,
Age has nothing to do with creativity. You are in awe of a film made by a person much older than you. He’s just smart enough not to work in an advertising agency.
Advertising exploits the young, makes them work hard and pays them nothing. Jonno, you sound like you are one of the exploited and don’t even realise it.
Regards,
The old set
Great point.
The music in this spot is just exquisite, I went searching for the track immediately after seeing the spot. I’ve watched the spot several times in the last few days, and can’t get enough of it.
The Kenzo piece is so good as a wonderful piece of entertainment and advertising.
Delighting the audience and selling the product.
I wish I made it.
Yes its derivative but it’s a wonderful piece. And good on you for having a crack at writing some commentary. However in a few years time I think you’ll be cringing at your use of the term ‘the younger set’. To suggest that only 20 somethings enjoy and share stuff like this is astonishingly short-sighted. I saw it first on my mum’s Facebook. She is 64.
I loved this ad, I might be looking way too much into it but I hope not. Finally an ad showing a girls emotional, quirky, fun crazy, imaginative side. The frustration of seeing the perfect boring girls all the time in ads bores me senseless and I’ve never related. I’ve seen older women sharing this with comments like ‘this is how I feel coming out of the courtroom’, or ‘this is me when I listen to fat boy slim’. When I see my nieces growing up they used to post fun videos of themselves doing fun crazy dances like this, as they get a bit older it’s sad to see them posting more boring, perfect, what I call ‘Botox face’ images. Finally a perfume I total
“Advertising has a history of bankrolling stars into turning jingles into jams. From Justin Timberlake’s ‘I’m Lovin’ It’…”
Yup, that’s where it started, all the way back with Justin Timberlake.
Like a good ad, a good article needs insight. If the point was something about music in ads, do serious research, draw wise conclusions. This kind of writing is fine for Vice readers, but if your goal is to help others that do this for a living, and not just self-aggrandise, you must do better than – ‘Put a good track on your ad because young people’.
Oh god, I just soiled another Depend.