We decided to make fun of the situation and to create an advertisement for our friends at to420, a creative studio composing custom music. We created a video appealing to our colleagues all over the world, urging them to stop using the same monotonous music for their projects.

We created a simple ad with no images (just text) and sad music. We had no media spend at all and instead leverage our own Vimeo and YouTube channels. We partnered with a few influencers to initiate a conversation which resulted in immediate reactions – more than 100 comments in one day.

With zero promotion, almost 500,000 people watched the video in the first month;

After the launch, the to420 creative studio website was visited more than 37,000 times in one week; Music orders rose by 30%.

#HatePiano has become a staple at creative and advertising conferences in Russia as an example of a simple, creative and effective viral ad.

We look at the product in a new way. We decided to do a message for all the people who use music at their work and laugh at the thing that everyone know.

We demonstrate that same music in every ad can be really boring, and that there is an easy way to make your video better: order music from the professionals. Mocking the industry, we proposed a solution in ridiculous commercial video.

Target audience: The Ad Industry: creators, copywriters, strategists, production studios and anyone who is part of the advertising process.

Objective:

To suggest advertisers choose custom music for their creations.

After viewing hundreds of advertising works from all over the world it appears that the favourite musical instrument of all advertisers is a piano. As soon as we hear some melancholy piano notes – we know some type of sad PSA will follow. Moreover, all these sad melodies are like each other because advertisers use the same musical patterns from stocks and free websites.