Old Spice unveiled a highly interactive musical piece on Vimeo, featuring Terry Crews, one of the brand’s Guys. The former NFL player, who has been communicating the “power” message to public in a series of Old Spice commercials, now turns his own body into a machine, which produces music. In the new video piece, developed by the brand’s agency Wieden & Kennedy and director Tom Kuntz, Crews is sitting surrounded by musical instruments including drums, saxophones, a guitar and synthesizer to name but a few. But basically it’s not him who plays all of them—numerous electrodes are attached to his muscle groups (pecs, triceps and sartorius adductors among others), which activate the instruments with each muscle contraction.
Pic. Screen shot of the video
Wieden + Kennedy’s new Old Spice video ad
The impressive cacophony will definitely make your day. Inspired by this hilarious method, you may want to create a music piece of your own, using Crews body—and Old Spice provides you with such a great opportunity. “Watch me jam solo, then use the special interactive player to record your own remix. Go ahead, show me what you got!” urges Terry in the description to the interactive video. Users can record their own masterpiece by pressing keys on their keyboard—for instance, “A” makes sausages fall out, “T” makes Crews cry “Old Spice,” and when you press “[“, he asks to give him a hat in a very loud voice. When you don’t press keys for too long, with phrases like “Play the music or get out!” or “Boriiiiiiiiing” the Guy encourages you to be more creative and active when developing the piece.
Previously, YouTube was the major video platform for Old Spice interactive campaigns (for instance, the much-loved “Responses” activation starring Isaiah Mustafa was rolling out right there), but for this interactive promotion Old Spice turns to the competitor of Google’s video sharing service, Vimeo. According to Creativity-Online, which quoted Wieden & Kennedy spokesperson, it “was the only platform that could make this experience possible.”