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.

The main goal of the campaign with very small budget was to pay attention to the studio which creates custom music.

We chose the right target audience and found an insight that was ridiculed and beaten – so it touched everyone who works in the advertising industry. The video received thousands of comments on social networks from Russian creators and advertising agencies. We were not afraid and wrote about it in the main advertisement of the country's media – and got an incredible result.

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.