High Five: Memorable Moments in Music

I’m sorry, I’ve started with one of the most obvious advertising choices of 21st century advertising. I tried really hard not to include it, but alas, it was impossible. I just love it. The track couldn’t have been better chosen and the creative would never have been so compelling with a different track. The direction, the acting - Oscar worthy! I was working at EMI Records in 2007, and it became a weekly topic in the weekly all-label chart meeting. From the catalogue department first mentioning ‘In the Air Tonight’ had been synced by Cadbury’s for "some nonsense with a gorilla", to it quickly becoming the key talking point of the meetings, as the song sales were growing and eventually landed the song at number one in the charts (if memory serves me right). Utter genius.

When Volvo dropped the ad to launch their new XC60 with a Goldstein Music composed instrumental soundtrack, the audience really responded, demanding the ‘full song’. So, some clever people at agency Grey and Volvo’s audio partner Bowers & Wilkins decided to ask Swedish singer KLARA (who was also collaborating with Bowers & Wilkins on an album at the time) to turn elements of the instrumental into a fully formed track to soundtrack the commercial, with the song going on to top the iTunes UK Singer / Songwriter chart and the license extending to further projects in Asia and Australia. I love this project as Wiktor Skoog responded to the audience, acted upon it and delivered a really special soundtrack with an unknown artist who was given complete creative freedom to redesign the track using the basic elements of the original Goldstein composition. The sentiment in the lyrics, the swooping strings, the powerful piano and backing vocal hooks, it sits beautifully with the visual.

Whilst I’ve never been a smoker (and I was certainly too young at the time), I always loved the Hamlet cigar adverts on British TV in the '80s. One that has stuck with me is the ‘Baldy Man’ ad featuring Gregor Fisher in a photobooth. Many of them may not have aged so well, but they had this knack of grabbing the attention enough that you would actively look forward to seeing the ads. The use of music was impeccable, with a Jacques Loussier recording of ‘Air on the G String’ by Johan Sebastian Bach calmly ending the spots.

Harry’s does a brilliant job in differentiating from male grooming cliches, avoiding toxic masculinity and embracing modernity and the human touch. So, when Ben Dancer from the UK team (whom I had met while at Burberry where he was lead singer of a great band we collaborated with called Vinyl Jacket) got in touch wanting to explore their sonic brand, we explored a variety of genres and partner musicians. From some amazing submissions we agreed upon a very human soundtrack by Ilā (of London Contemporary Voices) that underpinned the visual from Brothers & Sisters and the voiceover by Adeel Akhtar. We then worked with Ilā to perfect the soundtrack which they then recorded with their choir Trans Voices to create a really powerful human soundtrack that really helped tell the story.

It was a toss-up here between the really obvious creative case study of Sony Bravia ‘Balls’ or the Google Play launch. Creatively speaking, it is Sony hands down, particularly for the brilliant use of Jose Gonzalez's ‘Heartbeats’ which fits my category of advertising launching artists. However, I have gone for the Google Play live music TV ad. This certainly isn’t the most compelling creative I have seen, but strategically, it is a brilliant use of media placement by a music service with a very recognisable name looking to quickly establish their credentials in the space by partnering with an artist who was the breakthrough act of the moment, Sam Smith, singing the track that established them. The ad saw Google Play take over the ad break with a live advert, in partnership with Universal Music, showcasing Sam performing ‘Stay With Me’ live in front of an audience at London’s Roundhouse. Simple and highly effective with even more people reading or hearing about it as actually saw it.