Hundreds of Canadians banded together - ok we couldn’t help ourselves with “banded” – to create a digital musical mosaic that is not only fun to play with, it actually helped Canadian musicians keep on playing.
‘Play’ is a great word to add to the brand persona of the client we did this for – [yellow tail] wine leaves the snobbery to others and instead has chosen the path of being the accessible beverage for the spontaneous good times of your life. The disruption that has created a whole new space for [yellow tail] is in recognizing that really, most of us just want to enjoy a good glass of wine and to share it with our friends. Wine culture makes a lot of us edgy, and takes some of the fun out it – so [yellow tail] focused on that unpretentious side and is the easygoing, social brand that you can enjoy on your terms, your way.
It’s a great persona to work with – so we came up with an idea that would hit all the notes (sorry!) that say “[yellow tail]”: Our idea was social; fun; share-able as a great bottle of wine; and a bit silly yet also exactly the kind of thing we do when we’re happy.
We created the [yellow tail] Wine Orchestra. We called on Canadians to upload on to wineorchestra.com a webcam video of themselves clinking, dinging, tapping and rubbing their wine glasses and [yellow tail] bottles to create a rhythm, a sound, a bit of music all their own. Each entry within the Orchestra is added as a tile on a virtual wall of sound – no mean feat technically, but loads of fun to play with – and then we made sure that by highlighting the tiles and moving them around you can blend sounds and beats to create a sort of a symphony. You can take a break in your otherwise hectic and tune-free day to become an ubercool DJ, or conductor, or creator of your own special sound track.
We were inspired by the music of the street, when you see a guy start to drum on a couple of buckets and suddenly a crowd appears spontaneously, all caught in the unavoidable impulse to stop and enjoy the moment. That celebration is exactly what [yellow tail] is all about.
We took the Wine Orchestra a step further. We gave all that sound to composer Kutiman to use as raw material, and he has created an orchestral piece entitled The Wine Orchestra Players — where he sampled from those hundreds of video uploads of Canadians having fun with their favourite [yellow tail] bottle or wine glass as instruments.
For anyone who doesn’t know him, Kutiman is the Israel-born musician is known for his innovative 2009 release ThruYOU, an online music video project mixed from samples of YouTube videos. ThruYOU received more than 10 million views in the first weeks of launch and was named one of the best inventions of the year by TIME magazine.
The Kutiman-created holiday composition and video will be released on wineorchestra.com this week, supported by a multi-media campaign including outdoor boards, rich media online banners, print advertising and point of sale material.
Kutiman’s piece is a great gift from [yellow tail] to you, just in time for the holiday season.
The generosity runs a little deeper, too. For each submission from the May launch until September 30, [yellow tail] donated $1 to the Unison Benevolent Fund which helps musicians keep playing by offering financial assistance to anyone in the industry facing hard times. Great Big Sea front man Alan Doyle joined the campaign to help support other Canadian musicians through Unison, and his own video is included among those created by [yellow tail] fans. Both Doyle and [yellow tail] were united in the desire to help musicians continue to colour our lives.
So go colour yours! Check out wineorchestra.com and put some ‘play’ in your day.
