The longer I work in advertising, the more respect I gain for ad agency account executives who succeed at getting good creative pushed up through the chain of command. Oh to be a fly on the wall when the newly appointed chief marketing officer tries to explain the virtues of self-deprecation – on national television at a cost of millions per day – to the chief financial officer.
So what happens when that conversation doesn’t go well? What happens when the creative team must deliver a great spot when no one can agree on the text?
Enter the “image” spot. As a music producer, I loved getting these phone calls. “Our original idea didn’t make it. We’ve kind of given up. If we just give you a montage of images can you score something cool under it?” You bet I can, client. Tell the voice-over guy to stay home.
I have no idea if that’s the story behind this awesome Netflix spot created by our good friends at Deutsche LA. But I’m going to imagine that, for whatever reason, a gifted editor artfully stitched a bunch of Netflix movie clips together with a great piece of music to create a spot that couldn’t lose:
The song is “Stars (Hold On)” by LA indie band Youngblood Hawke.
It’s from their album Wake Up. With its Mary Jane inspired lyrics and a lead singer who seems cut from the same cloth as fun’s Nate Ruess, this music track possess the exact kind of canyon-sized happiness a big national spot requires.
Our commendations and congratulations to the creative team at Deutsche LA. This spot was a lay up, but whatever. It’s the score that counts.
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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace with over 28,000 tracks online where media producers, video producers, filmmakers, game developers, businesses and other music buyers can license high-quality, affordable royalty-free music from an online community of musicians mbielenberg@musicrevolution.com. 
