Hey Jude, It’s All About Joy

People who join and sing in choirs get it. People who perform in musicals get it. Bands get it. Record labels (used to) get it. David Armano gets it, as does almost the entire Chinese nation. And perhaps, more importantly, WE get it.

Music, and singing in particular, taps something primal in us. It allows us to transcend the barriers of language and culture. It allows us to see beyond our own prejudices and to become emotionally involved with others. And when we do this en masse, when we sing with a group of others it can be transformative. As Richard Huntington says, “life’s for sharing”.

This is why brands have had a long association with music. It is why finding the “right” song for your campaign is essential – it is a fast-track to engaging with an audience emotionally. Not only that, you draw upon the collective good will (or social capital) of the artists who created the work.

So what happens when you combine all this in a single, large scale public spectacle? What happens when you put the microphone (literally) in the hands of everyday people? And what happens when all of those people start to tell the story of your branded event?

8 thoughts on “Hey Jude, It’s All About Joy

  1. three reasons why i hate this.
    1 – Don’t mess with my Beatles.
    2 – It’s got Pink in it.
    3 – None of those people give a shit about T-mobile

  2. Brand association eh.. hmmm
    I had to think about what brand it was again that had done this, but fair dos it’s sequential thing isn’t it? Following the Liverpool street doings, I spose that is historically typical in ad land, rolling out a theme.
    Regardless if the people like t-mobile or even give a crap about them is irrelevant isn’t it? If t-mobile are appearing funky, pink, beatley, and harmonious then a slice will rub off on the masses… the brain will be permeated, and the ad will appear in the naughties top 50 ads on ITV in a decade from now.
    Crowd sourcing is fashionable is all.. reminds me of the way those fake home video ads are used for comparative websites, geeks know it is bollocks, but many of the masses do not, or more to the point don’t give a shit if they are or not, they are just entertained.
    Integrity doesn’t cut the mustard too much I feel.
    Anyone?
    P.S. How can i be notified of follow ups here?

  3. I can talk to anyone like me who grew up in the US in the 60s and 70s and we can literally sing every commercial we saw when we were kids. We don’t always think much of the products, but those jingles are so embedded in our brains they’re part of our shared culture.
    Coke, Oscar Meyer, Old Spice, BandAid, it’s like an iPod list in our brains. Did that music disappear or is it that we don’t see/hear them in the volume we did back then? While the latter is true, I think that music disappeared as well.

  4. Personally, I find that the inclusion of good music in ads is a great vehicle for driving music purchases. I have bought at least 5 songs in recent months purely because I heard the song in an ad. The pictures add to the music and I like the song more.
    Then it’s so easy. For example, I love the song from the Adidas House Party ads. Just googled that term to figure out the name of the song and then copied into the iTunes store and boom … I’ve got a new favourite song for a week or two.
    There is no way in hell I would have ever heard or bought that song without the vehicle of the ad.
    I wonder if there is a great opportunity for labels to pitch ad ideas to brands based on songs e.g. they have a great song and they think it fits with a brand so they pitch the use of it in a tv ad for that brand.

  5. I love it – but I still think it feels more Vodafone than T-Mobile … and that to me is the problem with marketing these days, it’s becoming the tool for the lazy marketer – focused on saying something rather than doing something. But that’s just me obviously.

  6. I love this piece. Just like I loved the train station dance movement. I agree that the brand recognition isn’t great but it’s what they do from here. It gives T-Mobile the backbone to branch on and explore this ‘together’ theme. When Cadbury launched Gorilla there were the same conversations happening about no one registering it was a Cadbury ad. Years later, the content has continued living (with most people seeing it – voluntarily – multiple times) and has been expanded so that the moments of joy proposition lives on in other executions. Will be interesting to see how far T-Mobile can take it.

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