ASB and Youthline launch ‘Bagels’ by BENEE – a new song to help ease anxious feelings, part of a new campaign via The Monkeys Aotearoa
Providing Kiwi youth with a new tool to help them live life one step ahead, New Zealand bank ASB and partner Youthline have released Bagels, a new song scientifically designed and tested to help ease anxious feelings via The Monkeys Aotearoa, part of Accenture Song.
The Monkeys, alongside ASB and Youthline, has paired pop star BENEE with leading neuroscientists from Auckland University of Technology to compose Bagels, a song using anxiety-relieving elements.
The objective of the song is to be a free tool available to anyone who is feeling anxious or overwhelmed – by listening to the song, it can help ease these symptoms.
LISTEN TO THE SONG
VIEW THE CREATIVE CAMPAIGN
Using data and testing results by AUT, the agency briefed BENEE and her producer Josh Fountain to write a song using proven anxiety-relieving elements. These elements include guidance on musical keys, melody, tempo and chords. The song was then recorded by BENEE and evaluated by AUT professors to confirm it adhered to anxiety-reducing principles.
The Monkeys and leading New Zealand animation house Assembly also produced a music video for ‘Bagels’ that is as calming as the song. Using design principles based on scientific advice – from colours to shapes to eye movements – the animated video is visually relaxing for those who watch it.
‘Bagels’ is promoted via an integrated creative campaign appearing on social media, including TikTok and Instagram, along with digital, out of home and radio.
Says Helen Fitzsimons, chief marketing officer, ASB: “Our partnership with Youthline is about delivering to our purpose and contributing meaningfully to the lives of all New Zealanders. With this campaign, we set out to create a tool to help our young people ease anxious feelings.
“Alongside our partner Youthline and professors at AUT, we took the scientific findings and used them to create a new song that can help ease rangatahi in the moments they feel overwhelmed or under pressure.”
Says Dr Dan Shepherd, AUT lead professor: “We carried out neurological and physiological testing on 30 participants to test its effectiveness at reducing symptoms of anxiety. It works.”
Says Damon Stapleton, chief creative officer, The Monkeys: “We all know teenagers put their headphones on to escape the world so we wanted to tap into that insight to create a tool for them to help ease anxious feelings.
“The Youthline partnership is one we know ASB staff are incredibly proud of and we see them having a key role to play in supporting ‘Bagels’ and the wider creative campaign.”
Says BENEE: “I think music is such a powerful tool to help with peoples’ mental health. Being open with mental health is important because it’s been pushed aside for so long. I love what Youthline do and what they stand for, so when I was asked to be a part of this project, I was excited.”
Revenue from the track’s streaming will be donated to Youthline.
Client: ASB
Chief Marketing Officer: Helen Fitzsimons
Brand Experience Lead: Bianca Osborne
Marketing Manager, Community Partnerships: Hannah McHugh
Executive Manager, Commercial Partnerships: Mark Graham
Senior Social Media Manager: Jasmine Taggart
Senior External Communications Manager: Hannah Searle
Social Media Specialist: Christienne Jauregui
External Communications Specialist: Bisera Martinovska
Associate Marketing Manager: Samantha Wootten
Youthline
Chief Executive Officer: Shae Ronald
Clinical and Services Manager: Joanna Madsen
Fundraising, Marketing and Communications Manager: David Baker
Partnerships Specialist: Tiffany Eastgate
Creative Agency: The Monkeys Aotearoa, part of Accenture Song
Chief Creative Officer: Damon Stapleton
Chief Business Officer: Storm Day
Head of Strategy: Tom Sykes
Senior Strategist: Craig McLeod
Head of Integrated Production: Rosie Grayson
Group Business Director: Ruth Coulson
Senior Business Manager: Olive Broughton
Creative Director: James Conner
Creative Director: Christie Cooper
Senior Art Director: Liz Richards
Senior Copywriter: Nick Dellabarca
Art Director: Jack Close
Copywriter: Zak Hawkins
Design Lead: Lucinda Fortescue-Hansen
Senior Finished Artist: Lisa Stowers
PR Consultant: Kimberley Kastelan
Music production partners
BENEE – Songwriter/Artist
Josh Fountain – Songwriter/Producer
Tiare Kelly – BVs
Doug Clarke – Vocal engineer
Aaron Short – Mix engineer
Chris Chetland – Mastering engineer
Campbell Smith – Manager, CRS Management
Auckland University of Technology Academic partners
Dr Daniel Shepherd, Associate Professor AUT
Dr Mangor Pedersen, Associate Professor AUT
Dr Amy Kercher, Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist AUT
Geet Vashista, Post Graduate Student AUT
Production partners
Production Company: Assembly
Director: Matt Von Trott
Lead Art Direction and Animation : Josh Fourt-Wells
Art Direction and Animation: Frankie Principe
3D Animator: Elliot Stronge
Motion Designer: Will Bardebes
Executive Producer: Jane Oak
DOP: Darryl Ward
Photographer and retouching: Frances Carter, Loupe Agency
Agent: Emily Moon, Loupe Agency
Design Agency: One Design
Videographer: Finn Cochrane
Grade: Pete Ritchie
Online: Creature Films
Sound Mixing: Liquid Studios
Media partners
Dentsu NZ
Acquire NZ
Search Republic
39 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcOqJHEy7tI
I like it, well done Monkeys.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/relaxing-song-best-weightless-marconi-union-youtube-surgery-anxiety-a9011971.html
Such cool work and such an important cause. Well done to the absolute village who worked on this!
The song is pretty average. The client is getting little to zero coverage from this. She was on the project last night and didn’t mention asb once, same with when I heard her on George fm this morning.
Great campaign for youthline snd Benee. Not for asb
May as well credit Dentsu Creative as well right ASB given it’s almost identical to idea sold into ASB prior to agency change
An old CD of mine used to say ‘it’s not like we’re saving lives’ when everyone was stressed out. This could be the first time he might be wrong…
This is really nice work but how does it pay back to asb if no one knows asb has anything to do with this?
No asb mention in any of the PR including the project last night and the Rolling Stones magazine article and even on Benee social media posts.
Will look great in the case study though
Agreed. The point of a good deed isn’t in the deed itself, but in the bragging about it.
slay
Yep. I really like that.
Good work doing good.
Epic work J&Z
dolphin music…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tADnCEpbPI8
Fucking love it
Grand Axis for 2024 goes to…. This or women in sport campaign. Lock it in
Bloody good actually
I found it funny asb trying to charity wash us with an anti anxiety music track on the day the OCR goes up and they are the first and only bank to pass on this interest hike, off the back of making a record profit. No wonder they are desperate to appear to give a f
Your mum is pretty average. Well done to everyone involved. Massive effort x
This is exactly the type of work the big corporates should be doing. Helping to give back to NZ – and its a pretty cool cause. Good on ASB for backing it, for the right reasons.
As usual a great mix of anonymous comments from neutral observers with a reasonable IQ/ current agency employees/trolls from past agencies/people who got out the wrong side of bed.
I get that advertising is about improving the visibility (and profits) of a client, but sad that the bigger picture isn’t seen by the ASB shareholders who have joined the chat.
I’m sure everyone involved has meticulously planned the PR/Media spin and the only downside for me was Benee not wearing a bright yellow t shirt, with a gold bling ASB necklace and matching grill.
This tune is calming me down immensely, as my ASB home loan rate has me pretty stressed out.
But this music already exists. There’s buckets of it out there already for a reason. Cool video though.
ASB – creates an anti anxiety song when they were the first bank to raise interest rates off the back of the OCR rate hike today.
Nice outdoor though.
We used to call it Whale Music.
nice work but not that original
This is pretty cool, and it’s for a bank! Nice.
Good to see at least one corporate properly committing to a charity partner. Yes providing funding in return for logo association, but also doing stuff – funding more counsellors, making a song…
This is great. Nice track, awesome video, lovely outdoor.
Yes there’s plenty of meditation music put there. But nothing a 14 year old is going to listen to. I guess thats the whole point,
Shit hot
…
And people with depression should listen to Bob Marley singing “Don’t worry, be happy” on repeat. That’ll fix it!
Binaural beats, white noise, ‘sound healing’ has been around for decades. You can find all of that on youtube. There’s nothing new here. And it’s not actually effective. If it was, every counsellor or psychologist would tell you to listen to that stuff.
As someone suffering from an anxiety disorder I feel like you’ve made anxiety seem like something so minuscule, that a mere song can fix it.
All this is is a glorified music video that will win you some awards, because you used a famous singer and based it all on ‘science’ to make it sound more legit. But what you’ve actually done is completely disregard the clinical background of why people suffer from anxiety, and contributed to the narrative of anxiety= stress, essentially reducing it to ‘it’s all in your head, and you should just listen to this music’.
Not only have you missed out on a massive opportunity to actually make a difference and come up with an idea that can truly help people with anxiety (maybe you should have used creatives who actually suffer from it), but you’ve also made Youthline look like they know nothing about this issue, or how to help people suffering from it.
Bravo from making mental health even harder to deal with.
Nothing new here, bands have been working with sound therapists and scientists for years, Google Marconi Union. And, like a few others have said, a real shame they pushed it on the same day as ASB were the first to hike interest rates, causing guess what? Stress and anxiety for so many families.
This is great work.
ASB have always been up for delivering great work over the years such as Clever Kash and All Blacks/Eden Park and its cool to see this continue with a new agency and new CMO.
This should pick up many a metal trophy over the next 12 months.
We should celebrate and acknowledge that whilst ASB might chew through agencies faster than a packet of Hubba Bubba, they strive to do great work and are not afraid to take creative leaps.
Great idea. Really nicely crafted.
Listening to The Pixies still works better.
This is the most relaxing song in the world, according to science – Sydney Morning Herald
“Participants listened to six songs, including The Shape of You by Ed Sheeran, Weightless by Marconi Union (billed as the world’s most relaxing song), and two metal songs including System of a Down’s B.Y.O.B., which had the highest anxiety scores.”
“Bagels reduced anxiety by 5 per cent more than Weightless and the song had the strongest effect in suppressing connectivity in the brain out of all the tracks in the experiment.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/this-is-the-most-relaxing-song-in-the-world-according-to-science-20230525-p5db85.html
Just play some reggae…
The best song in.yhe world out of a possible six songs