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Nectar Mattress Skewers Dishonest Ads in Musical That's Totally Truthful (Probably)
DTC brand throws comic shade on industry
In a world where people are exposed to between 6,000 and 10,000 advertisements every day, it can be difficult to know who to trust, especially when it comes to making big purchases like a new mattress.
Nectar feels your pain. And now, the mattress brand comically targets too-good-to-be-true commercials, and the lying liars who make them, in a mini-musical of its own. Which you can totally trust. Maybe.
The spot was created in-house at Resident, Nectar’s parent company, with Tal Rosenthal and Noam Sharon writing and directing. (They also made “Make America Sleep Again” for Nectar, which tallied 24 million views and was voted YouTube’s Ad of the Year for 2018.)
Rosenthal and Sharon say it was a cathartic job in many ways.
“As commercial directors, we often get to be firsthand witnesses, and sometimes accomplices, to manipulations done by ads to consumers,” the pair tell Muse. “Honestly, we were just waiting for the right opportunity to poke fun at this industry, and luckily, Nectar is one of those brands who’s brave enough to go along with the truth.”
They also credit Amir Ariely, head of video and creative at Nectar partner Google, with being “a huge supporter of this idea very early in the process who encouraged us to go along with it.”
The songwriting process was pretty unique, too.
“We first wrote the song and then composed it live during a pitch to the client. The melody just stuck there ever since and so we never changed it,” the directors say. “We’ve had something like 15 different versions for the song [originally], with many jokes that were altered or replaced during the process. Unlike many other ads we write, which normally could take just two days, this took a few months.”
If any of you are Disney fans, the catchy tune might sound like one particular song from Tangled. But Rosenthal and Sharon say that wasn’t an inspiration. Rather, they drew inspiration from comic TV shows and plays such as South Park, The Book of Mormon and Family Guy.
Maria Tsangarakis is interning with Muse. She comes to us from the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. She is a double major in advertising and communications and social influence with a minor in psychology. During her free time, she enjoys reading, writing, hiking and spending time with her family and friends.
