What with the involvement of Dow Chemicals, I suppose no one’s excited about the London 2012 Olympics in the summer ‒ fair enough. (Although Vir Sanghvi has an excellent solution…) But you gotta check out Coca-Cola, one of the event’s main sponsors’ ad campaign ‒ super cool it is! Currently being aired in Europe, it’ll be rolled out to all other countries where Coca-Cola operates (including India) between now and July, 27, so catch it before others do 😉
Called Move to the Beat™, it attempts to “inspire teen involvement in sports” by blending together the sounds of sports and music. Right, how do you do that fusion? Trust über producer Mark Ronson to have an answer. He travelled to “five corners of the earth” and carried out field recordings of five Olympian hopefuls: American hurdler David Oliver, British table tennis player Daruis Knight, Russian middle-distance runner Kseniya Vdovina, Mexican taekwondo practitioner Maria Espinoza, and Singaporean archer Dayyan Jaffar. He then merged those sounds into a synth-pop song called Anywhere in the World, the vocals of which were provided by Katy B. With the input of long-time Olympics sound designer Dennis Baxter he managed to capture the entire gamut of noises, from grunting to the table tennis volleys. For instance, a microphone and stethoscope was fastened to Vdovina as she ran on a treadmill to record her heartbeat, which, at 120 bpm, provides the literal pulse of the song. Bril stuff, right?
The spot, created by Mother London, has Rono, behind his keyboards, enacting the role of a choreographer to whose instructions four of the five athletes perform, while Katy B croons away the track. Filmed in the shadows of the Olympics stadium in Stratford, London, it has come out spectacularly ‒ and incredibly brought various elements of the track to life. It comes in 30 sec, 60 sec and 2-minute formats for now, and in May a 4-minute version will accompany the release of the anthem as a single. So looking forward to it!
Coca-Cola unveiled a visual dramatisation of the campaign too, a giant urban artwork called the Beat Wall. The 25 metre wide and 10 metre tall wall situated in Hackney Wick, London was created by photo-realists Neil Edwards, Hadley Ever and Smug. Quite cool, no?
P.S. How lush is Mark Ronson? His drone-like voice, transatlantic accent, mod style, eclectic music sense… You name it, I love it all, to bits.