MAXELL | INTO THE VALLEY | 1990
"Whose disease is cat's skin?" ... wait, what? / MAXELL "INTO THE VALLEY"
In 1990, cassette tapes were losing ground fast to CDs. MAXELL and HHCL's answer wasn't to explain sound quality—it was to talk about misheard lyrics.
The problem
In the age of CDs ruling the market, MAXELL, the biggest name in cassette tapes, hired a rising agency called HHCL. They were an agency making a name for themselves with unconventional thinking.
The insight
Everyone's had the experience of completely misremembering a song's lyrics. The Skids' "Into The Valley" is famous for its distinctive, hard-to-make-out pronunciation. The idea was to get across "you can actually hear the words clearly with MAXELL" not through specs, but through humor.
The idea
Mimicking the look of Bob Dylan's music video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues," young people hold up cue cards one after another showing lyrics they misheard—things like "Whose disease is cat's skin?" and "My picture is Hugh's toe," lines that make no sense at all. It ends with: "That's probably what they're saying. But you'll never know unless you listen on MAXELL." A follow-up version was also made using Desmond Dekker's "Israelites."
What happened
MAXELL's market share jumped from fifth place to second. The campaign won a Yellow Pencil in the Use of Music category at the D&AD Awards 1990.
Afterthought
Turning mishearing into comedy, and tying it right back to the product's strength—there's real beauty in that logic. Against a formidable rival like the CD, this was cassette tape striking back with humor.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 1990
Featured in
- The Ear Catches On FirstFrom an ad that introduced itself with four consonants, to a one-second quiz.
