Bring’s James 'Griff' Griffiths and the world’s first user-generated lyric video

Paige Murphy
By Paige Murphy | 2 July 2019
 

Universal Music creative agency Bring’s creative director James ‘Griff’ Griffiths says the results of Adobe’s Lyrical Masters campaign with Australian band The Presets exceeded expectations.

The Presets partnered with Adobe earlier this year in a campaign which called on students across Asia Pacific to create graphics with Creative Cloud for the band’s lyric music video for Tools Down.

Griffiths joined The Presets duo Kim Moyes and Julian Hamilton on stage at the Adobe Symposium in Sydney to discuss results of the campaign.

“Adobe approached us with a really simple brief. They wanted to engage the student community and they wanted to educate them on the power of Creative Cloud with the tools,” Griffiths says.

“We wanted to make sure that what we did with Adobe not only brought to life the product and the unique features of what Creative Cloud can do in a cool way. We wanted to make sure that our insights were based on genuine stats and data.” 

He says that Bring’s data team began to crunch the numbers in search of “something juicy” and found a lot data available on streaming platforms including YouTube.

It found that 30% of all music content consumed on YouTube were artists’ lyric videos which went on to inform the campaign concept.

“We were going to create the world’s first user-generated lyric video alongside one of Australia’s greatest artists,” Griffiths says. 

The Presets were in the midst of their latest album and Griffiths saw the band drew a strong student audience leading him to approach them for the project. 

“We were about four singles deep into our most recent album and about looking to release Tools Down as a single and you know usually that comes with trying to find a director to make a video for it,” Moyes says.

“So, this one sort of fell into our lap and it seemed like a really interesting way to do what we would normally do.”

Designer Jonathan Zawada, who designed The Presets first EP in 2003 and has continued to work with the band throughout their career, was brought on to create the brief for students.

Griffiths worked with Zawada to send out a brief that was open but also steered people in the right direction. 

The call for submissions was sent out in February with nearly 500 entries submitted and 70 winners chosen. 

“It doesn’t sound like a lot but actually we’re asking quite an interaction from the audience,” Griffiths says. 

“We’re asking them to really spend some time crafting and creating something. So, we were really blown away by that.” 

Bring drove a media strategy throughout the campaign which involved content creation for a number of channels, working with Spotify to engage music fans, working with creative blogs and creating influencer content.

“It exceeded expectations in terms of the sign up for the product and the templates and things that we created to inspire newcomers for the software really resonated and it allowed people to jump on and try the product for free,” Griffiths says.

“The guys have been extremely collaborative in the selection process throughout and I think it’s a real genuine way to showcase what product can do when it’s in the right hands.”

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