To promote the new version of AMP Energy that blends the energy drink with electrolytes that launched March 23, BBDO New York created a long-form viral video in which a group of young people march down a narrow West Village street singing, “We will not be ashamed.”
“It’s like a morning-after drink, and after a long night of partying when you’re all dehydrated, it helps you out,” said Peter Kain, a creative director at BBDO New York.
“Walk of No Shame,” the one minute forty second viral that was produced by Biscuit Filmworks , features a cast of young people who sing about their confusion after waking up disheveled and declare their shamelessness after getting cans of AMP Energy from a street vendor.
The viral began playing online May 5, with a 60 second version playing on cable TV.
All the characters in the spot sing, but none will be getting recording contracts from their performances. “We weren’t looking for people who could sing well, but they had to have a presence to carry it off,” said Tim Godsall, the Biscuit Filmworks director.
Mary Wood, founder of Frisbie Music, which coordinated the recording, said, “The trick was to get the performance and arrangement right so the humor would come through. The agency made it clear they wanted the performance to be less than perfect, so they sound like real people, not professional singers.”
Godsall shot it on film with an Arri SR3 16mm camera “to make it a little more rich, instead of a homemade YouTubeness to it,” he said.
“We moved fast enough to wing it and do it on a fairly constrained budget with a lot of people in it,” he said. “It was shot on the streets of New York which made it a challenge, like a train running along at 100 mph with a few bolts falling off, but it worked in the end.”
Wood said they cast for “distinct voices” that didn’t sound professional and used a single piano player to accompany them, after trying guitar and full band versions. Godsall said he needed to have the song changed in at least one spot, “to add some breathing room, so we could get the actors from one place to another and they could sip the drink. They retooled it so we had a longer song and pulled some lines in the final edit.”
The video shows consumers holding cans of AMP Energy, but it’s hard to discern the brand and there’s no product tag at the end. But the website features branding images and YouTube posts the product name above the video screen, Kain said.
The shoot was fun for Wood because of the imperfection of the performers and for Godsall because of the fast pace of the New York shoot. The fun for BBDO is to create a successful ad that reintroduces a familiar product. Sixty and 30-second versions of “Walk of No Shame” are being used as TV spots on MTV, Spike and other cable networks, Kain said. The viral video runs at www.walkofshame.com, a site developed by Tribal DDB. It’s also on YouTube, where it’s been played over 149,000 times. It’s additionally playing on other video sharing sites. “They wanted a web component because their audience is on the web,” Kain said.
A Closer Look At Proposed Measures Designed To Curb Google’s Search Monopoly
U.S. regulators are proposing aggressive measures to restore competition to the online search market after a federal judge ruled Google maintained an illegal monopoly for the last decade.
The sweeping set of recommendations filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice could radically alter Google's business, including possibly spinning off the Chrome web browser and syndicating its search data to competitors. Even if the courts adopt the blueprint, Google isn't likely to make any significant changes until 2026 at the earliest, because of the legal system's slow-moving wheels.
Here's what it all means:
What is the Justice Department's goal?
Federal prosecutors are cracking down on Google in a case originally filed during near the end of then-President Donald Trump's first term. Officials say the main goal of these proposals is to get Google to stop leveraging its dominant search engine to illegally squelch competition and stifle innovation.
"The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired," the Justice Department asserted in its recommendations. "The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages."
Not surprisingly, Google sees things much differently. The Justice Department's "wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court's decision," Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, asserted in a blog post. "It would break a range of Google products — even beyond search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives."
It's still possible that the Justice Department could ease off on its attempts to break up Google, especially if President-elect Donald Trump... Read More