Unilever’s Geoff Craig jokes that if he’d been enlisted to come up with the music for Dove’s “Evolution” ad, it would likely have featured some kind of “geezer rock.”
Stepping in and sparing Evolution viewers from musical accompaniment by the likes of BTO or Grand Funk Railroad were the folks at Ogilvy & Mather (Toronto) and Vapor Music, a year-old Toronto production house.
Like the visuals in Evolution, the haunting music that accompanies Stephanie Betts’ transformation from attractive everyday woman to glamorous billboard model serves as a metaphor for humanity being profoundly altered by technology.
The music consists of a minor key piano progression augmented by literally hundreds of edited sound effects, ranging from galloping horses to a liposuction session to simple typing.
Most of the ideas that went into the sound design concept were elements that conveyed a sense of speed, says Roger Harris, Vapor’s president and creative director.
“The piano is representing the human element, and you’ve got this other thing that represents the technology,” says Harris, who also played a role in the music for Dove’s award-winning 1991 ad “Litmus Test.”
“It’s disparate elements coming to-gether to create this lovely combination of things.”
The Evolution music is a remix of the song “Passage D” by a Chicago artist called The Flashbulb that originally appeared on a 2005 album-since reprinted-called Kirlian Selections. The Flashbulb (real name Benn Jordan) is one of several in-house composers employed by Vapor.
Jordan’s original song was stripped down, while the array of sound effects was painstakingly layered to create the final piece. Harris describes the finished version as “aggressively elegant.”
It’s interesting to note, adds Harris, that while Evolution has spawned a number of YouTube parodies-“Slob Evolution,” “Revolution,” “Pumpkin Evolution” among them-all have retained the original music. “It’s the music that gives it its roots,” he says. “If you take that away, what have you got?”
Thankfully, not “Takin’ Care of Business.”
