Cold Feet
Songwriting, performance, content campaign (2018, Domain7)
In the spirit of the holidays, the digital agency I worked for wanted to create a memorable, warm and friendly seasonal campaign to honour their clients, employees and partners. Following in the multi-modal tradition of past holiday campaigns, I did what I do best: wrote a song, directed a video and co-created a multi-media outreach campaign to help launch it.
This campaign/project included the physical tie-in of custom-designed, company-branded "Cold Feet" holiday socks. The socks were designed, printed and distributed to hundreds of the org's clients, and ended up being an Instagram staple. The messages were communicated via the post, email newsletter, social media outreach; the song was distributed on Spotify, Amazon, YouTube; the campaign hub was an interactive microsite to host the video and invite sock-wearers to engage on the socials. Which they did:
Results: Domain7 retained the mind-and-heart-share of its close collaborators. This fostered well-being and retention for employees, led to client contract renewal, and increased brand relevance in the market. Additionally, sock drawers everywhere were enriched with decorative footwear, and spirits were lifted and enhanced through music and melody.
Credits:
Songwriting, vocals, performance and overall concept: Kevan Gilbert
Song production: Isaac Karns
Illustration, Animation and Video by Brennan Gleason
Commissioned and supported by Domain7 staff
Song themes
The themes of the song are threefold: social isolation, purposeful introversion, and design as a unifier.
- The first verse occupies the perspective of someone using the holiday season to accuse the listener of staying alone, glued to their devices, and invites you to come be more social. This is a classic nay-sayer voice, the tech-antagonist, who would expect holiday-driven social norms, and decry tech use overall.
- The response in verse two features a perspective that owns the reality of purposeful staying-at-home, decrying the social convention, and embracing solitude as a sensitive, purposeful one. (A precursor to WFH, lockdown preferences; but this was 2018).
- The third chorus brings the two voices together, unified through design, moving from I/you language to "we" language. In this context, the decorative holiday socks are the "design that lifts you up," but in the product agency/technology context where it was originally shared, this is a reference to design having the power to help users finding flourishing and well-being, as a design philosophy.
Lyrics
[Chorus 1 - the empathetic connection]
Holiday?
Feeling like you wanna hide away?
Do you have cold feet?
But you don’t want cold feet?
Stuck at home and zoning out
Feeling the fear of missing out
Staring at your phone screen
Getting cold feet
[Bridge 1 - the sell]
If those cold feet
Make you feel kinda awkward
Don't want cold feet?
Dig inside of that sock drawer!
[Chorus 1 - the invitation]
When you’re alone tonight
Picking your socks tonight
Find the kind with the right design to lift you up
Put on your holiday socks
Helping you walk the walk
Feel the heat in your cold feet, you’re warming up
[Verse 2 - the response]
Cold feet?
Guess you don’t know me
I’m not home alone
Baby I’m home free
Got my cup of tea
Got my Christmas tree
Y’all can party
I got a book to read
[Bridge 2 - the rebuttal]
When I have cold feet
I dig inside of my song drawer
But I don't have cold feet
The living room is my dance floor
[Chorus 2 - the reclaim]
When I'm alone tonight
Picking my socks tonight
I find the kind with the right design to lift me up
Put on my holiday socks
Helping me walk the walk
Feel the heat in your cold feet, I'm warming up
[Chorus 3 - unity]
When we're alone tonight
Picking our socks tonight
We find the kind with the right design to lift us up
Put on our holiday socks
Helping us walk the walk
Feel the heat in our cold feet, we're warming up