Man handled

Musical manipulation

Wrangler’s new digital promotion for its Blue Bell Spring/Summer 2010 range is kind of a drag. The jeans brand’s ‘manipulate a man’ digital campaign enables users to drag a male model around the screen and tear off parts of his clothing – making it the polar opposite of Burger King’s recent Showercam campaign.The ad also showcases the ambient music of Markus Hasselblom and the soundtrack featured on the site is available for free download. As are various photos of the model in a state of undress – If you like that kind of thing. The filming of the campaign sounds equally painful for the model (Tony Ward). “We tied him up with wires and dragged him around on the floor,” said Jimmy Herdberg the campaign’s creative director.  Apparently it took a month to remove all the wires from the shoot.

What’s particularly interesting about his campaign is how the music works in sync with the visuals. “We love to work with the music a lot. We had to do a couple of songs before we found the one that worked. The music had to have a strong rhythm to match the movements and inspire the user,” said Herdberg. However, a possible additional element here would have been the ability to control the music as well as the model. A simple system whereby the user could manipulate the soundtrack – say via the construction of various musical stems into their own personalised creation – could have given the site a whole other dynamic. Perhaps then these musical creations, accompanied by remixes of the stripping/dragging visuals, could have been made available for sharing online. It’s a visually well-crafted campaign, but maybe it could have let its users get even more ‘hands on’ with the content.