- Product/Brand - Mercedes E63 AMG
- Spot - Sound With Power
- Song Title - Pass Out
- Composer - McKenzie, Okogwu, Roberts
- Publisher - Sony/ATV EMI Music
- Artist - Tinie Tempah
- Record Company - Warner Music-PLG
- Song Title - Tidal Wave
- Composer - Douwma, Matthews, Pockson, Ghost
- Publisher - Universal, Sony/ATV EMI Music
- Artist - Sub Focus
- Record Company - Universal
- Song Title - Theme from Stingray
- Composer - Gray
- Publisher - Sony/ATV EMI Music
- Artist - Barry Gray
- Record Company - Sanctuary Music Group BMG
- Song Title - Little By Little
- Composer - Verdi, Kaye
- Publisher - Sony/ATV EMI Music
- Artist - Dusty Springfield
- Record Company - Universal
- Music Supervisor - Ithaca Audio
- Ad Agency - AMV BBDO
- Creative - Paul Brazier, Steve Jones, Martin Loraine
- Film Company - Blink
- Film Director - Tom Tagholm
- Post Product - The Mill
- Air Date - October 5 2013
It’s one thing to have a client brand which prides itself on innovation and originality. However it’s quite another to fully reflect that brand’s innovative and groundbreaking spirit in a TV commercial. But that was the challenge facing the AMV BBDO creative team charged with introducing Mercedes Benz’ new E63 AMG high performance saloon car to the TV viewing public.
“Instead of another slick film of a car speeding down a road in some exotic location, we wanted to make something which had never really been done before,” says AMV BBDO Creative Director and writer Martin Loraine. “We also wanted to offer our audience the opportunity to engage with and really enjoy the Mercedes message.”
The result is the Sound With Power spot which broke on October 5 and will be seen on our screens in various edits over the next twelve months. With its awesome array of split images and an in-your-face mash-up of crunchy sound effects and samples from four very different music copyrights, this is an ad designed to grab your attention and never let it go.
And that’s just the off-line (TV and cinema) version! Sound With Power is also a fully interactive commercial with a story which grows in the telling once you enter the ‘second screen’ world – but we’ll come to that later.
“When we first sat down to discuss this project in January, we had a very clear brief,” says Loraine. “Mercedes dealers told us that once they got customers to sit in the car and turn on the ignition then the roar of the engine alone virtually guaranteed a sale. So our task was to convey an emotional response to that roar…but on film.”
To turn that idea into a reality Loraine and Art Director colleague Steve Jones called in film director Tom Tagholm (of Channel 4’s production arm 4Creative fame) and Chris Evans-Roberts from Brighton-based sound design company Ithaca Audio. All agreed from the start that Sound With Power would not only be a split-screen project but one where, unusually, “the final edit would depend entirely on the music choices and not the other way round as is normally the case.”
So began a long drawn out, intensely collaborative process that didn’t end until a matter of days before the ad was scheduled to go on air but should nonetheless be hailed as a triumph of teamwork.
The initial Sound With Power shoot involved three cameras over four days during which the driver hero was hooked up to a high tech suit developed by military software firm Equivocal to measure and display the stress levels of soldiers in combat situations. Man and suit were filmed reacting to dozens of different pieces of music, dialogue and found sound compiled by Ithaca from its extensive audio visual library.
While Tagholm subsequently reduced hours of footage into a basic linear narrative focusing on the man and his machine, those sequences where the marriage of sound and vision worked best were also identified and AMV BBDO’s business affairs department under Maxine Thompson set about clearing as many of the music and rights as possible within the available budget.
“On the publishing side we went to Sony/ATV because they already controlled many of the tracks on our shortlist and we knew they would consider negotiating a single deal applying to anything we might use,” says Thompson. “James Cooper there was also extremely good at suggesting viable alternatives to titles which we liked but they didn’t control.”
Then it was back to the editing suite where, with grime star Tinie Tempah cast as virtual MC and electronica artist Sub Focus providing a musical safety net, Ithaca Audio’s Evans-Roberts began to piece together a final audio visual jigsaw which changed shape many times over before the job was done.
“Although you can end up with really surprising results by juxtaposing wildly different bits of music in a mash-up you still have to keep beats per minute and keys in mind to get something which works effectively within the context of a film,” Evans-Roberts explains.
Among many great ideas which ended up on the cutting room floor was a possible pairing of AC/DC’s Back In Black and the lullaby from Mary Poppins! By comparison the final choice of Dusty Springfield’s Little By Little and the theme from Gerry Anderson’s kids TV staple Stingray was probably less hardcore.
But, says AMV BBDO’s Martin Loraine, the fact that both originated in the Swinging Sixties was purely coincidental. And, he insists, the Sound With Power spot should not be seen as an exercise in nostalgia.
“Over the last four or five years Mercedes has been purposely targeting a younger market which is in its mid-30s and regards itself as innovative and original as the car,” he continues.
“Music is still incredibly important to them but the way they access and consume it has changed. The line between what’s contemporary and what’s back catalogue has blurred significantly.”
Similarly the way viewers watch TV has shifted to the point where some analysts believe that as many as 60% of the population routinely do so on a second screen - be that a computer, a tablet or a mobile phone. The opportunities this offers brands and advertisers to think outside the old offline box are enormous.
It’s also an area where the Mercedes Benz / AMV BBDO partnership has form.
On October 6 last year, let us not forget, eyebrows were raised across the industry when they dropped the Escape The Map mini drama into three ad breaks within a single episode of ITV’s X Factor and invited the Twitter audience, in effect, to choose how the plot unfolded. At one point during that evening this initiative out-trended the TV talent show and ultimately chalked up some 3.8 million Google views.
Twelve months later and an on-screen message under 10 seconds into the Sounds With Power film urges viewers to visit the ad’s website, create their own Mercedes mash-up and tweet it in – with a promise that the best will be broadcast on terrestrial TV during the course of November.
Whether this new campaign outperforms its predecessor in terms of online audience numbers is not the issue, says Loraine.
“Our aim is to get people excited about the brand and the ad through an interactive campaign which talks to the market in a language they understand and enjoy…and enables them to share that excitement with others.”
