- Product/Brand - New Lynx Peace
- Spot - Call To Arms
- Song Title - War and Peace
- Composer - Kay
- Publisher - Woodwork Music
- Artist - Philip Kay
- Master Rights - Woodwork Music
- Music Supervisor - Woodwork Music
- Ad Agency - BBH
- Creative - David Kolbusz, Daniel Schaeffer, Szymon Rose, Jack Smedley, George Hackforthjones
- Film Company - MJZ
- Film Director - Rupert Sanders
- Post Production - The Mill
- Air Date - January 24 2014
Helicopter gunships, burned out cities, state-sponsored terrorists and military-styled dictators? In a Lynx ad ?!? You cannot be serious.
There’s no denying that Unilever’s Lynx (or Axe if you live outside the UK) dominates the young adult male market for deodorants and shower gels thanks to a series of occasionally sexist, often titillating and invariably post-ironic screen campaigns which have made the rest of us either chuckle or groan ever since BBH took over the account in 1995.
But as they approach their 20th anniversary together, the brand and its agency have chosen to turn down the testosterone and put the bikini babes on the backburner in favour of a message which is more...well...grown up...than we have come to expect of them.
And by ‘grown up’ we don’t mean Adult (nudge wink). Rather this new Lynx Peace campaign invites its target audience to look above its waist and take a more mature view of a world where politically-motivated violence is rapidly becoming the norm.
According to Matthew McCarthy, senior director for Axe/Lynx at Unilever, it also actively promotes a time-honoured Make Love Not War message
"Young people care deeply about the future,” he says. “This generation is socially conscious and ... in a world filled with conflict, we know sometimes the most powerful weapon is love.
“And as the film dramatizes, for one sublime moment a kiss has the power to make the world a more united and peaceful place."
David Kolbusz, deputy creative director at BBH in London, heads up the agency team working on the Axe/Lynx account. He confesses that they were initially at a loss over how to top last year’s popular Apollo Astronaut campaign. But, he says, the realization that they had been able to activate it successfully across 50 markets “gave us the confidence…that we could do something good and use our influence over those markets positively.”
By partnering with international not-for-profit pressure group Peace One Day, Unilever and BBH were also able to wrestle with the campaign’s unusually serious themes without being accused of trivializing them.
The result is a work of some magnificence by MJZ’s top drawer director Rupert Sanders. His showreel stretches from breath-taking computer game and trainer ads to award-winning shorts via the magical Twilight spin off fairytale movie Snow White and the Huntsman starring Kirsten Stewart and super model Charlize Theron. But in the full 90 second version of Call To Arms screened during this year’s Super Bowl ad fest, British-born Sanders surpassed himself with a lavish geo-political thriller which not only pays homage to some great Hollywood moments but also alludes directly to the tensions arising from contemporary hot spots like Iran and North Korea.
According to Kolbusz, the music for the Axe/Lynx Peace film had to strike a very particular tone too.
“There's a pivotal point in the middle of the on-screen action where we realise that all is not lost and that these are actually stories of love, not war,“ he tells adbreakanthems. “As such, the music needed to change from a maudlin yet dramatic "world is going to war" kind of thing to a heart-wrenching "everything's going to be okay" vibe.
“The challenge was that both bits needed to relate to each other and really be one piece of music. It wasn't enough to simply score the film. It needed to be an organic piece - something that made you feel.”
In face of what was by all accounts stiff competition, Woodwork Music’s Phil Kay was commissioned to produce the soundtrack. Originally a member of indie rock band Working for a Nuclear Free City, Kay’s portfolio of award-winning ads includes spots for Hovis, Coca Cola and Puma as well as The Guardian’s acclaimed Three Little Pigs film. He has also written for US TV series such as Breaking Bad and CSi NY.
Not surprisingly Rachel Wood MD of Manchester-based Woodwork Music has nothing but praise for her protégé, who, under the nom de plume King Of The Mountains, also has a new album Zoetrope scheduled for release in April on Melodic Records.
"Phil has such an endless supply of ideas and really enjoys the process of collaboration with agency creatives, producers and directors which is crucial as the process can often be difficult and frustrating. I love working with him,” she says.
BBH’s Kolbusz clearly enjoyed the project which sounds like it could, in other circumstances and with another composer, have ended up feeling like a trip to the dentist.
“Phil Kay and Woodwork did a stunning job striking the perfect balance,” he says. “And they worked HARD. We put them through the ringer but they handled it all with grace and aplomb and Phil never cow-towed to my idiotic demands without retaining his artistic integrity."
Artistic integrity isn’t a phrase you expect to hear too often in advertising circles. But in this instance it must surely be justified.
