Ad of the Day: a girl rocks her mustache in Olivia Wilde’s first spot for Amazon
It’s the first in a series of ads from the Don’t Worry Darling filmmaker and is part of the ‘It’s On Prime’ campaign.
During last night’s Academy Awards, Amazon launched a new global campaign to highlight how people use its Prime service. In the spot titled ‘Tache,’ viewers see a young girl encountering some unwanted facial hair for the first time. Her initial response is to remove it, before she notices that some of her heroes rock a mustache too, like Freddie Mercury, Frida Kahlo and Eddie Murphy.
In the end, she orders a bright yellow jacket, similar to the iconic one worn by the Queen frontman at Wembley Arena in 1986, and embraces her new look. The ad also features the song Cool Cat by the band.
"The brief is the result of a process initiated by Amazon to help solve a brand challenge," Charlie Lanus, creative director at Wieden+Kennedy London told The Drum.
"In the past Amazon had talked about its Prime membership by focusing on one part of the offering at a time - whether that be promoting the latest shows on Prime Video or demonstrating the fast and free delivery. Amazon felt this didn't do justice to the offering as a whole." The creative goes on to say that the brand wanted to highlight the many benefits of Prime under the one brand platform and creative campaign in the hopes of developing emotional connections with customers.
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He continued: "During our first internal conversations we focused on thinking about what, from a consumer's perspective, could unite Prime's multifaceted benefits. We found an answer to people’s interests and passions. A topic that crosses the boundaries of Prime's offering. A passion could be fuelled by music, film, purchases, or all three. But it also offered an interesting point of view: there are moments when our interests have profound impacts on our lives - where our passions take us to new experiences and possibilities, or lead us to discover a new journey altogether and Prime helps make life easier every day."
On the 'Tache' concept, creative duo Georgina Brisby and Marcelo Duarte added that they loved the idea of a young woman questioning her facial hair. "It felt like such an unexplored, yet extremely relatable territory where Prime could play an inspiring role," they added. "We imagined her using Prime to learn more about incredible mustacheo-ed icons; listening to Queen, admiring Eddie Murphy’s thick ‘tache in Coming 2 America and picking up a Freddie Mercury-style jacket.
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It was a long creative process, too. "We re-wrote the script several times to try and land on the perfect balance of something which felt fun, surprising and authentic," Brisby continued. "When we reached a version we were all happy with, we approached directors to see how they would bring their own vision to it.
When it came to working alongside actor Olivia Wilde, Duarte noted that they had been longtime admirers of her work and it was a joy to work with her over the three-day shoot. "She had such a strong vision for the script, and put a lot of energy and love into bringing it to life,"
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"We loved the way she tackled teenage comedy and coming of age in 'Booksmart' and were excited to see what she could bring to this script. We also felt that this was an inherently female story, so were keen to work with a female director to bring it to life. Olivia was the perfect fit, we knew that she could make this film feel fresh, fun and cinematic."
In addition to this spot, Amazon will run a digital campaign featuring the singer Lizzo in Watch Out For The Big Grrls and actor John Krasinski in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.
Interested in creative campaigns? Check out our Ad of the Day and the Best Ads of the Week sections.