Across the months of July and August, we were involved in a very exciting production with Starbucks Australia.
The Starbucks brand globally had a master campaign that began in their US business that was a very emotive piece, consisting of storytelling, strong filmic visuals and one of the most famous music tracks ever created.
The campaign and the work is stunning but to be used in the local Australian market there were some nuances that didn’t quite fit and were better aligned with American customers. So, Starbucks Australia engaged us to help develop the content to be most suitable for Aussie’s.
Before we dive into what we did and how it all came together, it’s worth checking out the full length 60 second commercial for Starbucks Australia.
We began by collecting all of the footage from the original campaign and revisiting the script. The voiceover is more of a narration and storytelling piece than a straight voiceover, this was going to be one of the most important aspects in the success of the campaign to be fit for Australia. Without deviating from the main ideas in the Starbucks global campaign we rejigged the script in it’s wording and tone. Any stand out American phrases we reworked to be aussie.
The next task was to find the right voice actor to be the storyteller in this production. We engaged RMK Management and pulled together a short list of very high quality voice actors that would be right for the role. But we did instantly have one stand-out talent in the mix – that we hoped that we could convince the Starbucks Australia marketing team to select. It quickly became the same choice for everyone and we were very excited to be going in to record new voiceover elements with actor Gyton Grantley.
Once scripts were approved we all headed in for a big recording session with our audio partners at Sonic Playground in South Melbourne. Audio engineer Ed Coleman, Chris Martini, Nick Casey, Kelly Ward and of course Gyton Grantley were in studio for the session. We recorded the 60second version that you would have seen earlier in this article, but we also recorded shorter durations. It was a long but incredibly fun session to be in studio for.
These type of sessions don’t come around too often and out of hundreds of sessions that we are involved in – this was one that will go down in the books as of the best. We were able to take the time to really create something great. Gyton Grantley is an exceptional actor and voice actor, what he brought was something very unique. Working with Gyton, the scripts and our mission – we carefully read and recorded each section of the narration, and tweaked the reads, recorded and rerecorded as we went along. Listening back and reworking in different tones and inflections to craft our new Starbucks Australia specific narration. We even found some sections of background character voices that we needed to do some ADR to replace the American accents – this is where Matty Gerber-Corn headed into the booth and acted out those voice lines.
Audio engineer Ed Coleman edited the reads and mixed the audio with the music track Thunderstruck by AC/DC. And what a music track! With a series of completed audio mixes in various durations, we could then move onto the video edits.
Using the beautiful, filmed clips supplied from the US team and our new audio takes, Chris started editing the video ads. A 60 second version, a 30 second version and two 15 second cutdowns were created, along with new motion graphic end frames. We were also able to create bespoke mini-themes for the Australian market titled Lights On and Shaken. These weren’t used anywhere else globally and you can view them on our video production page. Final deliverables also included 6 second versions of the ads and resized to social aspects.
This campaign was a fantastic production to be involved in and we’re all so proud of the work we could create. As always, you can’t create great work without great people working collaboratively. So, a huge thank you to the team involved in this production.
Voice Actor: Gyton Grantley
Talent Agency: RMK Management
Agent: Phoebe Smithers
Producer: Leah Martini
Client: Starbucks Australia
Marketing team: Nick Casey & Kelly Ward
Audio Engineer: Ed Coleman
ADR Voice: Matty Gerber-Corn
Sound Production: Sonic Playground
Editor: Chris Martini
Production Company: Ottico Lab