When sound is the cavalry | part 2

With TV idents booked and the whistle about to blow on the start of the UEFA Europa League season, sponsors SEAT had only generic – and silent – driving footage to air. What was needed was some audio ‘glue’. 

The answer came from the cars’ radios. By having each car’s radio emit authentic-sounding match commentary the footage could, at a stroke, be made relevant. This solution would also enable us to seamlessly switch languages for the necessary pan-European roll-out.

In fact, to represent football’s reach, some idents feature more than one language (after all, it’s not important to understand every word – it’s the emotion-rousing tones that we recognise). Finally, for added contextual relevance, each ident was scripted to reflect a different part of a match – the warm-up, half-time etc.

In football-speak, the car radio allowed us to nimbly dodge what could have been ‘a hospital pass’.