Queen was a pretty good band and this is an EOD Friday post.
Heineken sponsors a lot of musical events around the world, in case you didn’t know. It’s kind of like Camel cigarettes in targeting the young folks that way, except it’s less cancerous and ethically questionable.
#LiveYourMusic is a new global campaign that involves some challenges for the beer because–as its global brand communication director Anuraag Trikha told Marketing Week–“people come to see the artist and not the brand.”
The first ad in that effort comes to us from Publicis Italy on the 40th(!) anniversary of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the 24th anniversary of the movie that made it big again. The point of this spot is that everyone loves a good jam and some people get a little too into it.
Yeah, it was a bit long, but you kind of just have to go with it. Here’s an interesting quote from Trikha:
“Music is a very difficult beast for brands and it’s challenging for brands to create salience. … If you don’t put a brand lens on it at all, it becomes just another promotion.
We’ll be doing more experiential activity inside festivals. We are also looking at partnering with festival owners to produce musical experiences that touch all your senses and then use technology to enable that.”
Heineken and Publicis picked this particular song because it’s 40 years old and because “for all these years it’s been the song everyone wished they could sing.” And we like how nobody in the ad even bothered to try singing in key.
The campaign also includes new packaging, bottle designs and the requisite social media push, but the most interesting fact we learned about it is that the neighbors of Publicis’ team in Italy got a little tired of hearing them sing Queen in the shower every day for three months.
It’s still a little more inspired than the one where Doogie Howser tried to sound…Scottish??
Company Name: Publicis Italy
Client: Heineken
Title: The Chorus
Production Company: Partizan Midi Minuit
Media Agency: Starcom
Pr Agency: Edelman
Creative Directors: Bruno Bertelli, Cristiana Boccassini, Marco Venturelli, Luca Cinquepalmi
Associate Creative Directors: Polina Zabrodskaya, Michele Picci
Art Director: Simone Di Laus
Strategic Planners: James Moore, Moritz Goede
International Group Account Director: Lorenza Montorfano
International Account Supervisor: Jana Uhlarikova
International Account Executive: Dalila Salhi
Agency Executive Producer: Silvia Cattaneo
Senior Director Global Heineken Brand: Gianluca di Tondo
Global Heineken Brand Director Communication & Digital: Anuraag Trikha
Heineken Brand Communication Manager Global Marketing: Agnieszka Gorecki
Director: Antoine Bardout-Jaquet
Executive Producer: Robin Accard
Line Producer: Khalid Tahhar
Editor: Bill Smedley
DOP Glynn Speeckaert
MUSIC Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
Sound Designer: Raja Sehgal, GCRS