This TV ad, is a reminder of the role Sony’s innovative technology has played in all our lives. Sony technology has been the means by which we have experienced, captured and enjoyed many memorable moments in modern times.

The ad opens on a group of people watching the moon landing on a Sony TV. Next, it cuts to a shot of two rollerblading beauties in LA listening to the original Sony Walkman. The Sony Handycam is the focus of the next shot as it records the fall of the Berlin wall. Then the shot depicts two teenagers deep in concentration playing the first PlayStation console and finally, the viewer is left with a vivid explosion of colour as we see a couple experiencing the Festival of Holi in India through their Sony smartphone.

The David Bowie track used on this TV campaign is the well known ‘Sound and Vision’, slowed to a pace that gives the viewer time to reflect on the beauty of the visuals.

The original script had the Walkman girls listening to David Bowie's 'Sound and Vision' on their headphones as they skated along the boardwalk in Venice Beach. We felt, right from the start, that this was the track we should be using throughout the ad. Although we loved the track itself (and it was a perfect fit title-wise for what we were trying to convey about Sony's involvement with sound and vision technology over the past 40 odd years), we felt it could be remixed to give it a whole new feeling and sound.

The client's concern was that David Bowie had dropped out of the media limelight some ten years previously and was rumoured to be in ill health. Was a 35 year old track by a reclusive artist the right thing to accompany a film extolling the virtues of Sony having reinvented the smartphone? Amazingly, the day after our initial meeting with the client to sell in the track idea, Bowie released his first single in ten years and became the talking point of the world media. Sonjay Prabhakar is a DJ and music producer and was known to one of our ECDs, but not widely known in the music industry. Bowie agreed Sonjay could work on the remix and constantly reviewed the mixes we sent over. Finally he approved the pared down piano version we used on the commercial.