Why Saatchi New York Allowed a Rock Band to Destroy Its Office for This Music Video

Last month, the shop announced a change in both its leadership and its physical headquarters: It named former evp/global director Andrea Diquez as its new president and moved to reshape its offices by consolidating operations on a single floor and renting out the remaining space.

This left the agency with some renovations to do. So, it turned to the band Big Data and Good Company director Bill Kirstein to help facilitate some controlled destruction … along with a few strategically-placed body blows.

"When we got the go-ahead to remodel one of our floors, I thought, 'Most agencies would do a time lapse. Is that all we can do?' " executive creative director Chris Moreira tells AdFreak.

Saatchi did a good bit more than that, and managed to destroy a few walls and cubicles along the way.

Moreira says the Saatchi team decided on the music video format and "started talking to some up-and-coming directors and bands we thought might be into it." Kirstein, who has directed videos for stars like Beyoncé and served as a producer on her Life Is But a Dream documentary, was taken by the idea right away.

"We kept it simple: Imagine a music video documenting someone having a really bad day at work," Moreira says. "The guys at Warner [Music] had mentioned that Big Data was looking to make a video for one of its new tracks, and Bill connected to it." He adds, "You know how often you hear, 'Oh, it was collaborative,' but in this case it really was."

He says Big Data helped influence the idea by playing on its own signature brand of tech-driven paranoia and resulting chaos. "Imagine you come to work and it's Fight Club … dog-eat-dog corporate, if you will," Moreira says. He summarizes the video's theme as a reverse tech-versus-humanity narrative: "Maybe we shouldn't be afraid of Skynet. Maybe it's the other way around."

Kirstein didn't just direct the video, he also did a bit of casting—and several of the extras involved in the fight scene are Saatchi employees. (The stunts are all real, by the way.)

Moreira hesitates to classify the renovations as the end of an era, telling AdFreak that the Big Data project was "an interesting way for us to say goodbye to an old layout," and adding, "We're the same amazing agency we've always been … just bigger and better in a way."

He also assures us that Saatchi's offices do not host any all-out brawls resembling the one in the video. "This in no way reflects what goes on at Saatchi," he says. "We often get together, and we do a lot of karaoke as a group."

We'll have to take his word on that.

CREDITS

Production Co: Good Company

Director: Bill Kirstein

DP: Zach Sullivan

Executive Producer: Ryan Heiferman, Jonathan Lia, Alli Maxwell

Producer: Stephen Holtzhauser

Producer: Keenan Flynn

Line Producer: Matt Shields

1st AD: Siena Brown

2nd AD: Stacey Thiel

Production Designer: Bryan Norvelle

FX make up: Brandy McDonald

Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi NY

CEO: Brent Smart

CCO: Jay Benjamin

CMO: Christine Prins

Creatives: A. Chris Moreira, Mark Schöller

Head of Production: John Doris

Agency Producers: Tina Lam, Tegan Mahford, Frances Edwards,

Music Producer: Christine Bilich

Project Manager: John Rota

Print Producers: Alison Vicidomini, Joe Smookler, Jennifer Wysokowski, John Lew

BTS Crew / Editor: Andrew Slough, John Rota, Rohan Sen

Teaser / Mixer: Justin Kooy

Editor: Adam Zukerman

Post Production: Prodigious

VFX: Tasayu Tasnaphun

VFX: Jake Nelson

Animator: Mikki Mengyi Xu

Animator: Lhong Lhi

Assistant Editor: Craig Vitrone

Assistant Editor: Frank Barnes

Director, MultiMedia: Murilo Silva

EP, MultiMedia: Beth Fitzpatrick

MultiMedia Coordinator: Casey Brumbach

Color: Color Collective

Colorist: Mike Howell

Color EP: Claudia Guevara