Mother London

0:04[Applause]

0:14thank you for having me I would prefer to have come before Martin Parr and his whole life in the photography but I guess I'll take the challenge so just very briefly our own mother for those of you who don't know mother's an independent creative companies 23 years old it's based in shortage and these are the photos of our mothers hanging out and reception.

0:37And we have a very simple philosophy we try to go there every day and to behave in a way and to make work that we make our mothers proud so I guess today counts as one of those so thank you very much doubly for having me. And if you don't mind I'm gonna eat into my ten minutes to prove to her that was actually here all right thank you very much.

1:00So I'm not here to talk about myself or mother today we're here to talk about IKEA this Swedish flat pack furniture giant mother.

1:07And I could go a long way back we've had them as a client for 10 years. And we have a pretty special relationship with them as clients we are very very fortunate to have the main client be the same client that we had for all this time and she happens to be a very very creative being herself and on this very specific topic she's also a massive grime fan so it wasn't that hard to sell this this out to her but a little fun fact yeah I'd hoped that those things would work a little fun fact that IKEA never done a Christmas out in the UK so this is the first one and and we we actually like to know much about how we'd go about doing this you know the first time and everything what would be the credible role for it.

1:59But we knew one thing that we didn't want to do like a saccharine overly manicured kind of expected type of Christmas odd we wanted to try and bring something new something fresh to the party and it turns out doing the research period of days and how I find a role for IKEA that like a really large number of people are not hosting and not bringing anyone home because they're incredibly ashamed of out there their home looks so and you know they really came out and research that people have this inner voices telling them.

2:35That's not good enough it's not perfectly enough it's not like it's not the model house looks like but but we actually very very quickly realize that with with small tiny kind of changes you can make a huge transformation if anyone watches queer I here you see the effect that it has but but then we took on the challenge so like this is really interesting it really kind of like a very unusual Christmas kind of topic to talk about. And it could last the whole year and and then just like to go into the process a little bit we wrote loads of scripts as you do when you get a brief like that present around five or six narrowed down to three and we made them into things that we call animatics to put into research so in case you're wondering animatics at this horrendous animations that we do to test ideas before the brands and millions back in them.

3:26So the first version of your idea you're gonna see is something like this and very curiously in this case to talk about the how brave the client is again we put three into testing and this one came bottom but gut instinct told us all that the the the bigger rewards were sitting here as well as the bigger risk so I apologize in advance to putting into through this I promise to make up for it later so this is the bit of the animatic there's no way that anyone here's gonna RSVP yes this place is a tired do yourself a big favor go to your uncle drives to an a boss did a way better days not to mention your whole color schemes babe this tables older than a pyramid but at least is younger than the mirror relates it's so smooth it's barely house nevermind the cat and well a lot has been talked about the the credibility of the actual track did how genuine it felt like but it turns out they're you know the two members of two members of our team the client herself and the copywriter massive grime fan so we ended up writing like quite a big chunk of the lyrics as if you know the actual film.

4:44So it was a real amazing collaborative thing so just a little bit of ideas well we tried to you know the some of our best work with them has had great tracks against them but never ever mainstream artists and more often we're trying to give it as a platform for unsung heroes or people that didn't have the visibility that they deserve and we actually funnily enough had such a privilege on this one because people the artists loved the ideas we had a final shootout between p-money and D EE and I'm not gonna pretend to be a grime literate myself but I've been told this was a pretty big deal and and then always spoke to them about is just like make you feel your own like make it feel like this could be in one of your albums so this is the secret to this being like loved and I've also been told that it has to be a 140 beats per minute that's that's how grime goes so there you go I know a little bit about grime now.

5:41So we had a casting sessions it's the most unusual casting session I've ever been so this sad bunch here are the rejects and this are the selects so you recognize them from it it was so much fun and literally when you're riding on to some of like this like you know it pretty immediately by exposing it idea to other creative collaborators how strong this could be so people jumped on it from you know props people to actual like storyboard artists that got really kind of like good it's actually depicting the final emotions they find in the ad but peculiarly this is really like boring sheets actually there's a lot of green screens a lot of inanimate objects so this is actually one of the most interesting shots from the actual shoot but the real magic on this one needless to say you know happen in post so scan the objects and then created the 3d versions of themselves so we started to see like wow this is gonna be really really special and you would you'd be amazed by how many back and forth we had in the expression of this teapot sorry for swearing might be in about a hundred emails but you know we were all really really desperately trying to not only just kind of breathe life into them but to actually create a little bit of that kind of like body language that swagger that kind of grime artists have when they perform and then so so many incredible commoners collaborated on this.

7:29But we really really study so the next step was to kind of drop them into the live action so you see like very crude rudimentary verses of this little fellas being dropped into the edit.

7:40So we could start finally seeing like the you know the light at the end of the tunnel like what this would actually end up being so loads of kind of like versions iterations everyday like a new thing dropping to the area and just giving us a sense of like what the real thing would be like unto after very very long and arduous process and loads of like people to our armies of people doing these animations we got to to the finished film so graded it afterwards and put it all together and yeah and it was it was like an incredible moment in time.

8:15So I'll play to you for those who haven't seen it if you can can put the volume louder so you guys can enjoy it fully so here's the here's the actual final product the state of the floor is just depressing this tables older than the mirror is this place is smooth never mind you can swing it's like somebody here with a bulldozer if your house is a car that would get pulled over this is very very very very very very very unacceptable silence the critics akia the wonderful everyday fresh clean [Applause]

10:06so we were we're expecting like good reaction.

10:09But we weren't quite prepared of like to the to what happen out there so like being like advertising being reached about in the Guardian about the credibility of a track choice for a Christmas ad it's not something you're planning on getting but I guess you know the the authenticity was something that everybody fought very hard on the beginning of this journey to to keep actually end up ended up paying dividends and and people genuinely enjoy the craft and the art and the unexpected nature of like IKEA bringing grime to the masses you know people are quite savvy these days they kind of see stuff that is expected and to bring something quite fresh to cause this reaction is real privilege there was no there was no pre agreement between us d EE right in the middle this is like the mother team or the music guys of actually like releasing the single because artists are always quite Precious about their image credibility themselves but it became an inevitability once it kind of broke and he started to become really popular famous and actually add to the credibility of of the artists himself so he's back in the studio two days later and finished the single so in a couple of days we had to do a single cover which is one of the best briefs I've ever got and and again this this gift that keeps on giving Greg James massive fan and actually broken and breakfast with Greg James and BBC Radio 1 so this is a little snippet after how he announced there.

11:46And now a world exclusive first play on radio on breakfast this is d double e fresh and clean with grit James and when you've heard this you'll be up to date with all the latest things ridiculous and obviously any any respectable single deserves music videos so the creative directors on the account doubled up as music video directors so two weeks later we had this ♪

12:32I must confess this place ain't bless this place is a mess no you don't deserve no gas in here in hey I don't want to lay down arrest crazy that crack in the wall needs addressing the state of the floor is just depressing and and to finish water to get even more ridiculous believe me or not and this is the last piece but it just came out yesterday so Greg James couldn't get enough of it he got Dida bleep back in there and got listeners to send what they thought should make part of retrospective of 2019 to be sung by him you know incorporated in this track so this is a snippet of that the social media online you're gonna be moving smartly number four when I make it ♪

13:53and that's me thank you so much guys [Applause]