Ad of the Day: Pandora Gives Real People the Brutal Task of Describing the Power of Music

Advertisers have been trying forever in commercials to communicate the power of music, and it's almost an impossible task. Yes, ads can use particular songs as examples of music's transcendence (the iPod silhouettes series is probably the most notable example). But that hardly gets at the universality of music's power. Beyond that, commercials have just words and pictures, but visual and textual metaphors often fail at describing something that is neither. Enter Pandora's new 60-second spot from twofifteenmccann. For its latest stab at capturing people's deep, meaningful and personal connection to music, the streaming service gave up on licensed music entirely—the spot has none—and instead recruited "real people" to simply describe in their own words what particular songs mean to them. It's Pandora's first campaign without using music or musicians. Check out the spot here: The characters are charming and quirky and nicely diverse. And their emotion is evident and seems genuine—particularly the crying guy, whom we meet, somewhat jarringly, after he's already weeping. And if their words are a poor approximation of the feeling they're trying to describe, that's just par for the course in this category. In fact, the spot (inadvertently?) admits as much in its final scene, when an off-camera interviewer asks one of the music fans, as she's taking out her headphones, "Tell me how this song makes you feel." When it comes right down to it, she can't. And when she doesn't even try—the honesty of that—is when the spot finally hits its stride. The tagline remains, "The next song matters." The campaign includes a :30 and upcoming :15s and spans national broadcast, online, DR, music festival activations, email marketing and custom digital/social across media partnerships including Thought Catalog, Cracked, Cluep, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Periscope, Twitter and Whisper. CREDITS Client: Pandora Agency: twofifteenmccann Chief Creative Officer: Scott Duchon Executive Creative Director: Adam Reeves Creative Director: Ezra Paulekas Art Director: Sean Flores, Nicole Birch Copywriter: Ben Wolan, Matt Bunnell, Bri Hand Director of Integrated Production: Alex Spahr Sr Producer: Kacey Hart Sr Digital Producer: Eryn Lovich Digital Producer: Amanda Punzalan Digital Video Assistant Producer: Brandon Chen Interactive Art Director: Ken Macy Digital Video Editor: Carson Bell, Ivan Shumaker Account: Charlie Byron, Anne Cathcart Strategy: Gabrielle Tenaglia, Janene Lin, Paige Robertson Production Company: Smuggler Director: Henry-Alex Rubin Director of Photography: Ken Seng Line Producer: Leah Fleischmann-Allina Executive Producer: Drew Santarsiero Editorial: Stitch Editor: Dan Swietlik Assistant Editor: Weston Cadwell Producer: Ben Bragg Executive Producer: Mila Davis Colorist: Tim Stipan Company: Efilm Mixing: Lime Studios Original Music: Cliff Martinez

Brand Marketing

Ad of the Day: Pandora Gives Real People the Brutal Task of Describing the Power of Music

Twofifteenmccann tackles an impossible mission

Tim Nudd

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Tim Nudd