Nothing but the beat, the movie featuring David Guetta

BACKGROUND

burn, the Coca-Cola owned energy drink sold in more than 80 countries, is a challenger brand in the global energy drink explosion. With a mission and vision to fuel the passion to be bold, ambitious and fearless, the brand entered into a global alliance partnership with the world’s most famous spin doctor, double Grammy Award-winning artist, producer, and DJ, David Guetta, to enhance their brand awareness and engagement with their core target group. Saying that, most music and brand partnerships have already been done. It’s tough to break the mold while delivering results and keeping it appealing for the masses. This is where we come in.

OUR ROLE

burn invited Deviant Ventures to bring this global partnership in to life. The aim was to maximize the impact of this alliance in a very unique way. As Deviant Ventures, we believe in creatively and artistically telling a compelling story that will attract people to the brand. burn represents a movement of progressive energy, fearless creativity and serves as a catalyst for ambitious action. Seeing that David’s personal journey and burn’s brand DNA mirrored one another’s, we saw the opportunity to bring burn’s brand vision to life by telling David’s personal story through a full-length documentary-style film. We curated the full creative concept behind the movie – “Nothing but the beat’ we partnered with Partizan an award-winning production company and Huse Monfaradi an award wining director to bring our vision to life.

We worked with David, his management and wife Cathy to capture best moments of David’s life, career and meteoric rise from underground house DJ to global superstar and house music impact on today’s top charts presented in a style that will combine the classic elements of the best observational documentary storytelling, with stylistic elements of “music video” aesthetic and flair.

 The movie is featuring in-depth interviews with today’s most acclaimed artists including will.i.am, Kelly Rowland, Snoop Dogg, Ludacris, Taio Cruz and Usher, plus insights from dance music legends Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim, Lauren Garnier, David Morales, Pete Tong and some of the hottest new talents Guetta has worked with on his forthcoming album, Afrojack, Avicci and Nervo, the movie tracks the role Guetta played in birthing the cross-over genre of house blended with pop, hip-hop and R&B. A peek into the journey, Guetta shares the ups, downs, struggles and victories as he introduces ground-breaking beats and sounds to new audiences and generations.

The authentic and culturally relevant content that we are creating through this intimate and behind-the-scenes movie will not only reveal the private moments that fuel Guetta’s drive, ambition and success, but will also help launch the fifth studio album of David while delivering on burn’s brand vision and objectives.

RESULTS

Nothing But the Beat” was be premiered along with Guetta’s highly anticipated album of the same name at multiple launch events worldwide and a global premiere at Paris Le Grand Rex, Europe’s biggest movie theater. We are targeting getting screened in 200 movie theaters and Burn already secured TV deals in 15 markets across the globe in the coming months.  We are also organizing a global Facebook premiere later in the year, which will give fans the chance to view this compelling movie wherever they are in the world. We will post some hard results soon so keep tuned.

Press Releases

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2011/09/burn-and-david-guetta-movie-premiere.html

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/dynamic/press_center/2011/03/burn-partnership-with-dj-david-guetta.html

http://markets.on.nytimes.com/research/stocks/news/press_release.asp?docTag=201103311000BIZWIRE_USPRX____BW5968&feedID=600&press_symbol=178782

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/31/us-davidguetta-idUSTRE72U33620110331

Click here to watch the trailer

http://bit.ly/nLbqCK

Coca-Cola’s Official Anthem for 2010 FIFA World Cup  

Background 

The 2010 FIFA World Cup Campaign was a very special marketing effort by The Coca-Cola Company. It marked their biggest marketing effort in their 125 years of history with 300 million USD behind the campaign covering over 150 countries around the globe. Their initial inspiration was the legendary football player from Cameroon, Roger Milla, who celebrated his goal by dancing 20 years ago. They wanted to organize the biggest celebration ever and invited the football fans from around the world to show their celebration.

Our Role 

Deviant Ventures was retained to curate and lead music-marketing efforts for this giant campaign. We worked with one of our key strategic partners, Brand Asset Group from NYC to service The Coca-Cola Company’s global needs. Our solution was to create an iconic football anthem manifesting the meaning of the campaign with a bit of African flavor for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Our ambition was to release a single as the official anthem of the Coca-Cola Campaign and become the biggest hit of the summer. We wanted to get people to chant this anthem in the stadiums during the World Cup. To be very honest, even some of our comrades thought we were high on some kind of special ‘Kool-Aid’ as there is no proven formula for creating a hit single.

We organized a big talent search and invited labels, publishers and management companies to identify the best match for the campaign. We identified an extraordinary musician, poet and very articulate person K’NAAN from Somalia. Once again, some thought recommending an unknown artist for arguably the world’s biggest campaign was not a good idea either but we felt very strong about the proposition, K’naan’s talent and value of deviating from the norm by doing the unexpected.

We formed a global alliance with Universal Music Group, organized a global tour for K’naan as part of the global FIFA Trophy Tour presented by Coca-Cola, executed 15+ localizations of the song in different languages, handled all day-to-day interactions with all key markets of Coca-Cola, all marketing efforts around the release of the single, and provided talent management services to ensure perfect execution.

Result 

The single was regarded as the unofficial anthem of the 2010 FIFA World Cup for most and ended up being #1 in 17 countries. It’s regarded as the most successful element of Coke’s biggest ever campaign in their history generating millions of YouTube views. See below what Fast Company thought about the campaign in their 10-page story about this rare moment in history. Coca-Cola also named the #2 most innovative company in music industry category by Fast Company as an outcome of our work.

Fast Company Article -
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/150/waving-the-flag.html?page=0%2C6

CNN coverage about the partnership -
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2010/01/15/taylor.coca.cola.new.song.cnn?iref=allsearch

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/05/19/knaan.hip.hop.violence/index.html?hpt=C2

2010 FIFA World Cup Champion Spain’s Celebration featuring “Wavin’ Flag”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQCiKv_VycU

Coca-Cola World Cup Commercials -

History of Celebration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M3Q54rPjQw

Quest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueJsX6aRXJk

Border Crossing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqsC3CZEHPk

NBC Sing-off Performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KisksTpXRw&feature=related

2010 Coca-Cola Global Holiday Campaign 

Background

Refreshing a tradition of compelling holiday campaigns, The Coca-Cola Company embarked on a journey to create their first truly global holiday campaign. The campaign, an extension of the global “Open Happiness” marketing platform, was targeting more than 90 countries around the world through a new television commercial, digital experiences, in-store promotions and packaging. Coca-Cola had been using a song called ‘Holiday’s are Coming’ for the last 15 years, which had a lot of equity, but we felt it was a bit too old for the new generation of Coke fans.

Our Role

The Coca-Cola Company retained Deviant Ventures again to help them identify the sound of this massive campaign. We worked very closely with Coca-Cola Germany who were leading the campaign for the rest of the world for Coca-Cola with McCann, Madrid who were hired to shoot the commercial. Our challenge on this one was to come up with a new Christmas anthem that would appeal to all age groups. We recruited two-time Grammy winners, American rock band Train, for this difficult task. Train are known for their global hits such as “Drops of Jupiter”, “Calling all the Angels” and very recently the most sold single of 2010 on iTunes, “Hey, Soul Sister.” We recommended them as they were really successful in the early 2000s and they were making an amazing comeback in 2010, which made them appealing to variety of ages. We also recruited another great talent — singer, songwriter and producer Butch Walker to produce the single. Walker is known for producing mega hits for Avril Lavigne, Fall Out Boy, Pink, Weezer and many other popular acts. To be able to execute this global challenge, we formed an international alliance with Colombia Records and Sony Music Entertainment. At Deviant Ventures, we oversaw the talent search, execution of all contracts, production of the single, the music video and all marketing materials.

Results  

The outcome of this effort was a single named ‘Shake Up Christmas’ which became the main PR driver for this massive campaign. We will be sharing more detailed results in the future, but the single charted around the world while becoming the #1 holiday single on iTunes in Germany, Italy, Denmark, Mexico, Netherlands and Switzerland and hit in the top 5 in many other markets. It also performed well on the top singles charts on iTunes and hit the top 40 in many markets while being #4 in Germany and #7 in Netherlands. In the USA, the song became the #3 holiday single on iTunes, generated lots of radio airplay, hit #4 on the holiday charts and #11 on Mainstream AC radio charts. Famous American talk show host Conan O’brein even made a spoof of the commercial.

CNN Coverage -
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2010/12/15/pkg.train.coke.ad.cnn

Shake Up Christmas Music Video by Train - 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-8VCL4uSUc

Conan O’brein Spoof of the commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPtxaUC3rU8

Coca-Cola FIFA World Cup Anthem Localization 

Background

The FIFA World Cup 2010 campaign was Coca-Cola’s biggest campaign in their history, reaching over 150 countries. One of the toughest challenges in a global campaign of this magnitude, especially from a music perspective, is to make the music relevant in markets where local music acts are a lot more meaningful than international pop cultural acts. In our case, almost all key Coca-Cola markets wanted to localize the song into their respective languages with a local act. This would mean compromising the African flavor of the campaign and losing the halo effect from the success of an international hit single.

Our Role

Deviant Ventures was in charge of managing all music marketing needs for this enormous campaign. We came up with a strategic solution that fused the localization needs with the African flavor and international face of the campaign. We recommended localizing the single in the form of a duet, keeping half of the vocals by K’naan and allowing a local artist to contribute the other half of the song in their native language. Fans could now identify with their culture and be part of the global anthem that “Wavin’ Flag” had become for the World Cup. We worked very closely with K’naan’s management, our colleagues from Universal Music International, and each international market to bring this anthem to life and maximize the leverage in each local market. 

Results

We coordinated the localization of the song in 15 languages with most becoming a #1 single in the markets they were launched in. Localization became one of the most colorful aspects of this campaign, generating more than 80 million YouTube views around the world. We were honored by what Melinda Gates thought about this aspect of the campaign in her TEDxChange Speech featured above. 

African Book of Happiness 

Background

As part of 2010’s FIFA World Cup Campaign our client Coca-Cola took world football’s greatest prize - the FIFA World Cup trophy - on its biggest ever world tour reaching 86 countries in 225 days. The most epic part of this journey was the first leg of the tour visiting 50 of the 53 African nations, Heads of State and thousands of fans in each country, to celebrate the upcoming World Cup in Africa. This was an amazing story but the challenge was to push the impact and legacy of this journey beyond just a press release and into something influential and relevant in countries beyond Africa.

Our Role

We pitched the idea of creating a coffee table book around this epic journey to be able to share this exceptional story with rest of the world and extend the life cycle of this huge marketing investment. Coca-Cola’s campaign was about sharing a bit of happiness and celebration; we thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to create a book that would capture the optimism and happiness of the African people. For this challenging job we identified a very talented artist/photographer, Joseph Peter, a passionate former soccer player and student of Steve McCurry; the famed National Geographic photographer known for his iconic image of an Afghan girl. Peter’s lifelong dream was to travel around the world to capture happiness with his lens, we thought this match was a perfect pairing and brought him on board. Peter was a lot more than just an amazing photographer - he was a true artist. The heart and soul of the book was a limited number of handmade editions, which Peter painted, distressed and added rustic fabrics and materials collected from all the African nations during the tour. His images and art transformed the concept of a coffee table book into truly captivating form of art portraying a brighter side of Africa.  

Results

These unique artwork pieces were displayed at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, with exhibitions of the photographs in New York at the Paley Center and at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. One of these handmade books was recently auctioned in South Africa at the Mandela Foundation Gala and raised $15,000 for the charity.

Book 1 was presented by Peter to Nelson Mandela in his home the day after the World Cup Final in Johannesburg. It was a thank you gift for his inspiration in bringing the World Cup to the continent of Africa on behalf of FIFA, Coca-Cola and Deviant Ventures. The smile on his face at seeing the positive impact on his people and continent is one of the great successes of the campaign and beyond. 

Peter’s trade edition of the book, and future series, will be published by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House. It will be available for sale worldwide in 2011 with a portion of the sales proceeds being donated to Coca-Cola’s “Water for Schools” initiative. The “Water for Schools” program forms part of a $30 million legacy by Coca-Cola to provide at least 2 million people in Africa with clean water and improved sanitation by 2015.  

NBC Interview with Joseph Peter - 
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/station/as-seen-on/_Africa_Celebrates_the_World_Cup__Art_Exhibit_New_York.html

African Book of Happiness Artwork - 
http://www.theafricanbookofhappiness.com/

Press Kit - 
http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/presscenter/presskit_fifa_african_book_happiness.html

First Truly Global MTV and Coke Partnership

Background

MTV and Coca-Cola have had a love affair since MTV aired the very first music video in 1981. Oftentimes Coca-Cola has been the first advertiser for MTV, welcoming them in any country they were broadcast. Unfortunately, while both companies strived for a bigger, more integrated and most importantly truly global partnership that could drive scale and efficiencies, the complicated media buying and decision making infrastructure of each company did not allow them to have truly global programs beyond market level media buying.

Our Role

Having both Coca-Cola and MTV as clients at different time periods allowed us to understand the dynamics of each party better than anyone. Coca-Cola brought Deviant Ventures on board to help build a global partnership with MTV for 2011. We created a simple but powerful media buying model and content driven media strategy around Coca-Cola’s 2010 Holiday campaign featuring ‘Shake Up Christmas’ by two-time Grammy Award winning band, Train as a pilot.

Results

Our proposed strategy worked out great. We organized a concert in London featuring Train at a beautiful venue called Shepherds Bush Empire. MTV brought in 20 cameras to shoot this whimsical concert and aired it around the world as part of their MTV World Stage presented by Coca-Cola. This became Coca-Cola and MTV’s first truly global partnership reaching all markets broadcasted in by MTV. Further details can’t be provided due to our strict NDA’s with each company, but the program helped Coca-Cola to have another international hit single. Our proposed media buying strategy is still being utilized, the content driven model became the model for future projects for both companies and we are retained for two additional projects to curate similar programs for Coca-Cola and MTV. 

Concert clip featured above of Train in London at Shepherds Bush Empire for MTV World Stage presented by Coca-Cola.