- Product/Brand - IKEA
- Spot - Make Small Spaces Big
- Song Title - One Room Paradise
- Composer - McFarland
- Publisher - Carlin Music Corporation
- Artist - Elayna Boynton
- Record Company - The Shipping Forecast
- Music Supervisor - Platinum Rye
- Ad Agency - Mother
- Creative - Freddy Mandy
- Producer - Ellie Gibb
- Film Company - Riff Raff
- Film Director - Megaforce
- Post Product - Finish
- Air Date - July 6 2013
Most home furnishing campaigns look like they came in a flat pack.
But simply slapping a seasonal sale sticker on a sofa and licensing in a Seventies smash for the soundtrack has never been what sector leader IKEA calls a TV commercial.
And since Mother took over its account in 2010, the Swedish giant has chalked up a series of extremely memorable spots which prove that price isn’t always the issue in this particularly cost-conscious corner of the market.
Instead it’s innovation and imagination which are the watchwords in IKEA’s latest film Make Small Spaces Big. Set inside a dolls’ house, this clip is designed to deliver a core message that not all customers are two parent families living in semi-detached houses – and that IKEA can provide solutions to make even the smallest space into a beautiful home.
It was directed by the Paris-based collective Megaforce, who took Mother’s initial concept and then brought the toys to life with all the quirky characteristics developed via off-the-wall pop videos for such as Madonna, Dizzee Rascal and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs.
“On IKEA we look for directors who are visual innovators,” says Mother Creative Director Freddy Mandy. “We only want to collaborate with people who are doing the most interesting and exciting work because we want the film we make to be able to hold its own in the world of promos and not be regarded as just another ad.”
Conceived as the last spot in a campaign of four – which started with the surreal cuddly toy extravaganza Playing With My Friends (Adbreakanthems Sync Of The Month December 2012) and more recently included a spoof zombie/alien invasion movie starring a gang of angry garden gnomes – it took Make Small Spaces Big nearly 12 months to get from script to screen.
A key part of that lengthy process was sorting out the music track, One Room Paradise, which is a re-recording of an obscure Aretha Franklin track from Runnin’ Out Of Fools – one of eight unsuccessful albums she recorded for CBS (now Sony) in the early Sixties before finding ultimate fame and fortune as Atlantic’s Queen Of Soul.
“The music actually predated the film on this spot, “ Mandy continues. “The way we work on IKEA is to start with insights about how people live in their homes and then find a music track that expresses this insight. We then come up with concepts that bring the music track to life.”
Mandy admits that the choice of One Room Paradise was more the result of some good googling rather than a staffer at Mother having an encyclopedic knowledge of Aretha's back catalogue.
“As soon as someone played this tune, we knew it was the one. And we also knew that we shouldn't take too many liberties with the re-record. It is such an awesome track as it stands.
“We always do re-records for a couple of reasons. One is the cost of licensing the original, but the main reason is one of principle: we feel that IKEA is an innovative brand and as such it should always surprise people. A re-record of an old tune can be a nice way to do that.”
Platinum Rye is Mother’s long term music partner on high profile campaigns like IKEA and Creative director Arnold Hattingh led the team from the music supervisor tasked with identifying the different ways a re-recording could go and suggesting artists who might be interested in demoing the track.
“Ikea jobs are never straightforward,” says Hattingh. “ We do not have a musical template that corresponds with each project or the brand as a whole. They are not really covers but more re-workings.”
He cites Time For Change, a track by 1980s Heavy Metal bad boys Motley Crue which ended up with a 42 piece orchestra along with 30 piece choir by the time it was heard in the recent Ikea garden gnomes spot.
For One Room Paradise Hattingh commissioned the production team at Northampton indie label The Shipping Forecast to create a backing track which would update the uptown R’n’B of Franklin’s original without sacrificing its air of authenticity. But finding a singer who could stamp her personality on it began to look like an impossible task.
“We heard some amazing women singers but none of them were quite right,” says Mandy.
Then members of the Mother team took time out to go and see Quentin Tarrentino’s latest movie Django Unchained – and heard the otherwise unknown Elayna Boynton perform a song Freedom as part of flashback sequence. .
“They all fell in love with Elayna's laconic style and unique voice,” says Mandy. “We thought Arnold was going to laugh us out of court when we suggested her but he just smiled and left the room. Next thing we knew, he was sending us her demo. And it rocked.”
Who you gonna call in Hollywood to make those connections? Hattingh isn’t saying. Instead he’s more concerned with making Boynton’s recording more widely available.
Following in the footsteps of the previous IKEA TV spots – Living Together (which featured UK folk rock band An Escape Plan’s interpretation of a 1979 Bee Gees song), Time For Change (which was arranged by Tom Player and performed by The Palace Of Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra) and Playing With My Friends (a Robert Cray and BB King blues completely recast by Welsh band Masters In France) – One Room Paradise has been released through iTunes by online indie label The Shipping Forecast.
“At Platinum Rye we always try to help new artists and that has always been the mandate with Ikea,” says Hattingh
Sadly there are no immediate plans to issue One Room Paradise on CD until Boynton, who moved back to California after a stint in Nashville, has completed work on a debut album due later in the year.
But given that the song has had to wait nearly 50 years to get a good cover, what difference will a few more months make?
