When you want to make a point, sometimes a big, over the top love ballad says it all. Marmoset’s recent project with Wieden+Kennedy for Old Spice definitely brings the big, epic, power ballad… and it felt so good.

Fittingly titled “The Truce,” Old Spice once again fans the flame of playful absurdity for the grand finale of the campaign. Capping off a 9-part series for longtime Old Spice characters Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa — they finally meet (and battle) in the same bizarro world they’ve dominated since the campaign’s inception back in 2010. For this endeavor, Marmoset was asked to craft an original soundtrack for the grand finale of the campaign, highlighting an unlikely friendship that dramatically creshendos in only 12 seconds.

We were honored to learn “The Truce” will premiere tonight on ESPN’s Sportscenter.

Behind the process…

Led by Marmoset’s Director of Original Music, Rob Dennler, our team scored the power ballad soundtrack for “The Truce” based on a script written by our friends down the street at Wieden+Kennedy’s Portland, Oregon HQ, working closely with agency producers, Lindsay Reed and Nicole Kaptur. Once the initial ideas were fleshed out, Rob hit the ground running with Marmoset’s team of creatives and composers.

“The initial demo phase was a lot of fun,” Rob says. “The team at W+K handed us the script and talked us through the core concepts, yet also gave us a lot of latitude and encouragement to explore many different musical approaches. They knew they wanted a male vocal and needed the song to be convincingly earnest in its delivery. We had a blast fleshing out creative directions, which mostly consisted in listening to a ton of 80’s pop-rock ballads.”  

Through collaborations, experimentations and several revisions, we landed on a ballad of friendship with blunt, literal lyrics at the forefront. Once Marmoset composer Kerry Smith completed the score, the W+K team shot the footage to the spot, custom tailoring the imagery and scenes around the sound. In fact, rumor has it Mustafa and Crews loved it and had fun singing it on set during the production.

It’s always an honor collaborating with our neighbors at Wieden+Kennedy. This collaboration brought the campaign to a hilarious finale, a fitting nod to all of the cliched tropes we know and love in any over-the-top piano ballad — along with the extreme absurdity only Old Spice can bring.