Listen to this

December 8, 2007 AEST — By Long Zheng

“Raw Deluxe”, the most elegant Zune video yet

Raw DeluxeIf animals eating each other or dancing pink bunnies aren’t your thing, rest assured Microsoft also has a Zune V2 promotional video up its sleeve catered towards the more conservative amongst us.

Thanks to a tip from reader Sajith, Seattle’s creative agency Digital Kitchen has worked with Microsoft to create what they call “Raw Deluxe” which they describe as “a product-driven video combining rich still photography and video to personify the raw-deluxe style of the Microsoft Zune”.

As far as I know, this video was not designed for mass-media advertising but instead as a launch promo for Microsoft events. But I’m sure they won’t mind if we took a peek.

One of the things you might notice is how strikingly familiar is the background music and tone of the video to the stunning title sequence of the television series House M.D. But that’s no coincidence. As it turns out the agency and one of its designers, Jake Sargeant, were responsible for both projects. Jake’s portfolio also includes many of HP’s “The computer is personal again” ads, which are considered some of the best in the industry.

23 comments

  1. Morten says:

    That sure is beautiful.

  2. mrmckeb says:

    Australia. Zune. Now.

  3. tino says:

    Very nice! I love the CI of the Zune.

  4. memberjoe says:

    Love this AD. I want a new Zune!!! Please, Microsoft! :)

  5. Fire says:

    Amazing ad. Wow.

  6. RC says:

    Liked it, also liked the one you linked to. However, Raw-Deluxe sounds like some kind of disgusting hamburger.

  7. Adi says:

    Great find Long.

    Lets see how long Giz or Engadget will take to ‘report’ this. Haha.

    Keep up the great work.

  8. mVPstar says:

    :(

    I kinda wish they’d make a Zune upgade program so that us old Zune owners can send back our Zunes for the newer models (for a charge of course).

  9. Pete says:

    Anybody know the name of the song in this ad?

  10. iSimx says:

    Yes, I wouldn’t mind knowing the name of the song too..

    anyone??

  11. Albert says:

    This sure gets the “WoW” response…and it’s not even the “WoW” campaign…funny.

  12. zzap says:

    I would also love to know the name of the song that they used in this ad. Sounds awesome, just like the one off House M.D..

  13. Long Zheng says:

    Well the House M.D. intro music is Teardrop by Massive Attack, and it’s probably as close as you’ll get since I’m certain this would have been specially composed just for this ad. I’ll see what I can dig up.

  14. Koogle says:

    a good tune, and surprisingly the only good commercial I’ve seen for the Zune..some of there other artsy fartsy stuff didn’t do it for me

    Roll on Zune v3 with an international release, and good features to knock the competition out of the way..And I’ll be the potentially interested buyer.

  15. Koogle says:

    my mistake.. this is what they use for promos at Microsoft events… wtf are they doing using that other crap adverst for “mass-media advertising”..

    jeesh Microsoft you don’t half have things messed up these days

  16. Arun Kumar says:

    amazing ad :) the music rocks! grt find long :) i wonder why MS doesnt uses this ad for masses? duh…

  17. S says:

    Hey Long,

    Good stuff as usual, but this video surfaced a little while ago at http://www.zune-online.com/news/zune/d-kitchen-zune-promo-video.html. Excellent media quality though.

  18. Chris says:

    why the hell hasnt this hit the tv … the video is wicked i wish more commercials like this for zune were on tv

  19. Jeffrey Quadra says:

    Wow, I wish they would sell the Zune in Canada.
    If I ever sold one of my concept media device to Microsoft, their would have to be a few requirments, one being: “International Release, or not at all”.

    I would want everyone to have one, not this dumb “testing the waters” idea. Its not like Microsoft is a new small company.

    Anyway, very nice commercial,
    it got me saying “wow”.


    JQ

  20. pas says:

    Nicely done. A compelling soundtrack with discernible visual and audio cutting. Best use of floaters I have seen so far.

  21. Canada says:

    I want a Zune NOW!!!!
    I don’t want to wait another 2 years for it to become available in Canada!
    I used to love Microsoft, but this project being USA-only has made me mad at them.

  22. Anonymous says:

    Nice theme, I hope that Long manages to dig up some info about it. While waiting for that, you can download the theme (extracted from the .mov version of this ad over at http://www.mn8studio.com) with the links below:
    For the 128 kbps MP3 version encoded using the Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec (~1 MB):
    http://www.snapdrive.net/files/349276/Documents/ZuneM.rar
    For the full, uncompressed WAV version (~6 MB):
    http://www.snapdrive.net/files/349276/Documents/ZuneW.rar
    PW for the .rar archives: zune
    Any audio artifacts you may hear are from the original .mov file, so I can’t fix them.

  23. Bananageddon says:

    Fantastic advert with some nice angles/camera work, and good music choice of course.

    For those with an eye for graphics you might like to see this http://www.rinzen.com/?id=539

    A pic produced for a web banner on the Zune’s site

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