It’s hard on some mothers to watch their sons go from boys to men as we see in a gloriously twisted Old Spice commercial titled “Momsong” that was created by Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, and directed by Steve Ayson of MJZ.
In the spot, young men—irresistible to women thanks to Old Spice Re-Fresh Body Spray—enjoy time with the opposite sex, unaware they are being stalked by devoted moms who just can’t bear the thought of losing them.
Explaining the thinking behind the hilariously creepy musical, W+K creative director Jason Bagley said, “Watching their little boys turn into men can be deeply sad for moms. It’s a very relatable universal experience for moms and sons everywhere, so we wanted to find a funny, exaggerated way of portraying that. And just about everything is funnier when you sing it. Based on this science, we thought having moms sing about this universal heartache would be pretty entertaining.”
Ayson thought the idea was original and brilliant. When the director accepted the assignment, there was a script and lyrics to “Momsong,” but nothing was set in stone. “Once I came onboard, we [he and the W+K team] worked the script back and forth, mainly to debate new scenarios for how the moms stalked,” Ayson said, noting it was important to give the spot build, starting small with a mother hiding behind a door and stepping out from behind a bush, and then having the moms show up in weirder and more intense ways as “Momsong” progressed.
The director also worked with the creative team to find a proper conclusion for the freaky spot. “The end of the script, in the early stages, was very big and busy, and we all decided that it might be better to find a more odd quiet moment. From this debate, we discovered the lead mom sliding out of the couch and along the floor,” Ayson said.
It was crucial that all of the action was intricately choreographed and storyboarded prior to the shoot given that “Momsong” is a musical with sequential lyrics, W+K creative director Craig Allen pointed out.
Ayson and DP Ryley Brown shot “Momsong” in the director’s native New Zealand, in and around Auckland. Of all the women cast as moms, only one had major acting experience. Neither the agency nor Ayson wanted to hire anyone who was too polished. “We just wanted moms who felt real but also had some comedic character to their look and performance,” Bagley explained.
“I wanted it to be like we went into a small town and stole real moms from craft club meetings and made them sing,” Ayson said.
“Madness with gusto”
Ayson loved his cast, noting the women “took on the madness we put them through with gusto.”
It wasn’t an easy shoot for the ladies. Case in point: The mom who slides out of the couch and across the floor up into a seated position on another couch had to put up with being rigged with wires and dragged around by a stunt crew that manipulated her as if she was a puppet.
“We definitely went into this to shoot everything in-camera,” Ayson said. “The Mill guided us in making sure we could keep it in-camera. Then they helped a lot with wire removal and in particular with the sand mom as she moves through the sand, putting the real singing face of the mom onto a prosthetic cast head and shoulders that we towed through the sand.”
“As usual, The Mill worked themselves to death to make us all look great. They did an amazing job,” Bagley said. “We always try to shoot practical stunts as much as possible, which still involves an enormous amount of clean-up and effects. They worked a large amount of miracles for us to say the least.”
Editor Jim Hutchins of Los Angeles-based HutchCo cut “Momsong” into :60 and :30 versions. Ayson shot some random action, including the falling violin mom, the mom in the curtains and the mom punching a cake, so that Hutchins would have some material that could be used to ramp up the tempo of the cut.
“To a certain extent, the edit was dictated by the song, but there was still a lot of small tweaking to get the pacing just right,” Allen said. “At every stage of the process we learned how hard it was to make a singing musical spot.”
The lyrics to “Momsong” were written by W+K art director Ruth Bellotti and copywriters David Povill and Justine Armour as well as composer/arranger Brad Neely of Walker, Portland. “The creative team wrote some very funny lyrics, and then Brad made them even funnier when he recorded the demo track,” Allen said.
Looking back on the project, one of Ayson’s favorite setups involved the mom who pretended to be a janitor. The scene evolved from an idea Ayson’s wife pitched about a waiter that turned out to be a mom. “In pre-production none of us really knew how weird and creepy this setup would be,” Ayson reflected.
