Tiger Beer helps to uncover underground Kiwi musicians in new campaign via Saatchi & Saatchi

What happens when one of NZ’s most successful acts asks your underground band to collaborate and create a track? You jump at it like a tiger.

This was the premise behind the pairing one of NZ’s most successful bands, Drax Project, with an Auckland-based underground duo, imugi, in a project from Tiger Beer via Saatchi & Saatchi, New Zealand.

The music industry is unforgiving at the best of times. Add to that a global pandemic – which saw venues all around Aotearoa locked down – and Kiwi musos have been doing it tougher than usual. Tiger, a brand with the positioning ‘Bold Finds a Way’, wanted to help an emerging act by defying the usual industry conventions.

So, Tiger approached multi-award-winning Kiwi band Drax Project to uncover an emerging local artist, looking to defy the odds and catapult the new track onto the national stage. The project, dubbed Tiger Uncover, saw Drax Project push the boundaries of the familiar to collaborate with Auckland-based underground electronic duo, imugi.

The genre was a new experience for pop and R&B band, Drax Project.

Says Drax Project: “We’ve always really enjoyed collaboration with other artists. It’s always a learning process that ends up going both ways.

‘solace’, the single born out of this unlikely collaboration, was released by the two artists on Spotify and can be found here.

Says Fraser Shrimpton, marketing director at DB Breweries: “Tiger as a brand is bold, brave and courageous in the face of challenges, and despite the huge challenges the music industry has faced over the last few years we wanted to show that boldness always finds a way. We’re thrilled to support underground duo imugi with this opportunity to work with international hit-makers, Drax Project.”

The collaboration and making of the track was captured as a short content piece, and is being pushed out in social channels by both bands as well as above the line through Tiger. Music industry people and some lucky fans having already seen it performed live at a launch event in Auckland’s Ponsonby strip, where an accompanying music video was filmed.

The project mirrors some of Drax Project’s own origins, when the band would busk outside of some of the very stadiums they now fill.

Says Drax Project: “Sessions with young artists always make us think of our first session with SIX60. We were just starting out and they were SIX60, but they made us feel really comfortable and treated us like equals. We try and pass on this energy to anyone we work with.”

As well as facilitating the collaboration with Drax Project, the Tiger Uncover project will also support the release of imugi’s new track with long form video content, a music video and street posters.

DB:
Marketing Director – Fraser Shrimpton
Senior Marketing Manager Global Brands – Cormac van den Hoofdakker
Marketing Manager Global Brands – Brooke Freeman
External Communications Manager – Natasha MacKenzie

Creative agency – Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand
Steve Cochran – Chief Creative Officer
Jordan Sky – Executive Creative Director
David McIndoe – Chief Strategy Officer
Clinton Mellsop – Strategic Director
Aaron Hodgson – Group Business Director
Briar Dye-Hutchinson – Senior Business Director
Julia Lewisham – Business Manager
Jane Mill – Executive Producer

Production Company: Tutu Films
Director: Manu Walters
EP: Robin Walters