California Milk Processors Board "White Gold"> You'd think a rock god would be more interested in promoting (and experiencing) the virtues of another kind of "white gold". But Goodby, Silverstein & Partner's latest work for the California Milk Processor Board's Got Milk? campaign sees golden-locked singer White Gold championing calcium.

White Gold's tunes needed just the right musical mix between OTT rock and rollicking melodic music. Director Tom Kuntz duly turned to frontman Tyler Spencer and guitarist Zach Shipps of Detroit-based Electric Six, for whom, as half of Kuntz & Maguire, he had shot the promo for their hit "Gay Bar". Kuntz's brief was simple: the music of White Gold should sound like it comes from "the love child of Prince and Frank Zappa". Reference material for the pair included Beck, Sparks and Flaming Lips. Lyrics were written by Goodby creatives and creative directed by Kuntz. After some initial back and forth Kuntz, Spencer and Shipps decided on a more laid back feel than the band's sound.

Although the songs took just a week for Spencer and Shipps to record between sessions laying down the new Electric Six album, they were heavily revised. Complete with five full-length songs, a MySpace page and (of course) ads, the campy campaign puts the music front and center. "It's funny, if you go on YouTube a third of the people don't know it's a milk commercial," says Spencer. "One comment will read, 'This band sucks' and then another will say, 'It's a milk commercial, you idiot!" EW

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners http://www.goodbysilverstein.com
Electric Six http://www.electricsix.com

Nokia "Get Out N Play"> When Swedish digital hot shop Farfar needed to find someone to create an appropriately unique yet somewhat retro music track for a stop-motion masterpiece for Nokia, it didn't have to look very far. The bleeps and bloops that serve as the soundtrack for "Get Out N Play", the film housed on the website of the same name, came from Thomas Söderlund, a Farfar interactive designer.

Turns out that Söderlund is also an 8-bit, or chiptune, music composer, meaning he creates music that sounds like the lo-fi electro themes that you'd hear on a Game Boy, or other similarly old-school consoles, by using the sound chips found within the machines. Making music under the name Covox, Söderlund is somewhat of a superstar in the 8-bit scene, and was thus a natural choice to score the webfilm and the site's other components.

"When we were roughing out the concept of the movie, doing tests at the office, we used one of my Covox tracks, 'Densha', as the background track," he says. "It turned out to fit the theme and rhythm of the movie perfectly, so we ended up using a re-arranged version of it for the final film as well." Though he'd created other tracks for the spot, "the feeling and vibe from 'Densha' happened to be exactly what we wanted."

For the game portion of the site, which he also programmed, he composed the music "using nothing but a Nintendo Game Boy running custom music software. Nothing else was added to the mix." BW

Farfar http://www.farfar.se
Covox http://www.covox.net

Budweiser "True Dedication"> A brief doesn't get much more open-ended than a couple of paragraphs about "a bunch of talented musicians who are extremely dedicated to their craft." When Fallon, London won Budweiser's UK account last October, the agency decided to counter the brand's frat boy reputation in Britain by asking directors to create a quintessentially American jam band. Of all the treatments received, Harmony Korine's suggestion to shoot in Nashville stood out. "We really needed a town full of musicians if we were going to make the ad as good as possible," says account director Alex Best.

He admits the "making the band" idea could've gone awry with the wrong director at the helm, but Korine's familiarity with the city's music scene and his rep as a feature director helped give the 10-spot campaign a documentary feel. The Mister Lonely director recruited local music producer Eric McConnell and auditioned 200 musicians, eventually casting six plus "motivator" Dave Cloud, the raspy-voiced frontman of Dave Cloud and the Gospel of Power.

The agency chose a list of 40 tracks - everything from Britney to The Stranglers - which was eventually whittled down to 13 based on availability and what McConnell could adapt for arrangements featuring instruments played with beer bottles. The production set up in McConnell's home and at the Springwater, Nashville's oldest dive, for the three-day shoot. Best says the creatives didn't know if beer bottles would sound good in a live band setting, but in the end, no post was needed. KR

Fallon, London http://www.fallon.co.uk

Pot Noodle "Moussaka Rap", "I Wish"> Mother's latest campaign for Pot Noodle riffs on homemade music videos as seen on YouTube, throwing in a dose of power balladry for good measure. For the campy spots, Hungry Man director Taika Waititi reprises the musical interludes of hapless Kiwis Brett and Jermaine in the hit comedy Flight of The Conchords. To craft the three songs in rap, rock and ballad styles, Mother turned to composer Andrew Hewitt, who penned the loving musical homage to '80s ballads, "One True Lover", on the cult BBC sci-fi comedy Garth Marenghi's Dark Place.

"They wanted to have a 1980s feel, slightly home-made, of blokes doing it themselves," he explains. "Even if they were a bit scruffy in their singing and delivery, or the flat was a bit dingy, I still had to successfully take off the three styles." Reference material for the work included Jay-Z and rock spoof classic Spinal Tap, with lyrics developed by Mother's creatives in conjunction with Hewitt.

The two actors sang the actual tracks (with a little tweaking), with instrumentation supplied by Hewitt. Copy changes proved most problematic: "We had [exactly] 28 or 58 seconds, which was hard, because if they came up with a line revision that would change how long it took to say. If it went over then it would just get chopped off. I was very concerned that that shouldn't happen, because that's just rubbish musically." EW

Andrew Hewitt http://www.andrew-hewitt.co.uk
Mother, London http://www.motherlondon.com

General Electric "Clouds"> It makes perfect sense - when you think of clouds, you pretty much think of rain. Thus, when it came time to settle on a musical approach for BBDO, New York's "Clouds" for General Electric's ongoing Ecomagination campaign, the rain motif was a given.

The spot, helmed by Traktor through Partizan, depicts scores of white-suited workers perched in clouds and corralling water to then dump back onto earth. Thus, a touch of whimsy was necessary in the accompanying music track."When [BBDO, New York's director of music production] Rani Vaz came to us she said, 'We're trying to find a song about rain, but a lot of songs about rain tend to be sad and that's not the right fit,'" says Mary Wood of New York-based Frisbie. Vaz asked the company to submit original material, as well as take a crack at covering a classic, Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"

Frisbie turned in two originals, as well as a new arrangement of the CCR tune, from Wood and fellow Frisbie folk PT Walkley and Scott Hollingsworth. Rendering the tune in ¾ time "gave it a charming quality," says Wood. BBDO's Vaz suggested having a female vocalist sing the track, and Mosquitos vocalist JuJu Stulback, already working with Hollingsworth on a record, was enlisted. Response to the track has been strong enough to merit Frisbie creating a full-length version, available through iTunes. BW

BBDO, New York http://www.bbdo.com
Frisbie http://www.frisbienyc.com

Discovery Channel "I Love the Whole World"> Those who have pleasant memories of summer camp are undoubtedly familiar with the "Boom De Ya Da" sing-along. The campfire ditty, long a favorite of the Scouts and Girl Guides set, has now received an update, courtesy of 72andSunny, Los Angeles' "I Love the Whole World" spot for Discovery Channel. The James Rouse-directed spot features a plethora of Discovery Channel hosts, including Man vs. Wild's appropriately-named Bear Grylls and Survivorman's Les Stroud, and science luminaries such as Stephen Hawking, weighing in with what they love about planet Earth to the tune of the old camp chestnut. Working with lyrics from the agency, Brian Chapman, Andrew Feltenstein and John Mau of Venice-based Beacon Street Studios took the basic framework of the song and amped it up with a 20-piece orchestra, and a gospel choir. "The piano's the underpinning accompaniment," explains Mau. "It was actually kind of challenging to work with, as it kind of is what it is, four revolving chords going over and over again." Given that some actors were shooting in locations that didn't allow for the best reference guides, some performances were uneven, to put it mildly. "We ended up replacing some of them, and with others they didn't keep what we temped in," says Mau. The sound design assignment, handled by Chapman, also had to contend with the numerous locations the spot whirls through, ranging from a temple filled with Buddhist monks to a tornado scene, to deep space itself. The spot, and its song, have taken off, with people posting YouTube clips of themselves taking a crack at the new "Boom De Ya Da." The Discovery Channel is now offering the tune up as a ringtone, an idea that was kicking around Feltenstein's head when asked about his personal highlight of the job, having Hawking type "Boom De Ya Da" into his voice synthesizer. "That would be a cool ringtone," he says. BW 72andSunny http://www.72andsunny.com
Beacon Street Studios http://www.beaconstreetstudio.com