How KDSP and John Hillcoat found the key to therapy

Therapy is often about learning to listen to the more rational voice in your head, but Grow Therapy’s latest campaign asks what happens when that voice... starts singing. 

Created by KDSP, Key Change turns a series of familiar emotional flashpoints into miniature musical numbers, using subtle performances combined with delicate ditties to reveal the small shifts in thinking that therapy can bring. 

Here, ECD Brock Kirby and Skunk director John Hillcoat discuss finding the right tone, building the songs around the scripts, and creating a heightened reality without losing sight of the truth underneath.

Where did the original insight for Key Change [lovely pun, by the way] come from, and when did the idea of expressing someone’s inner monologue through song enter the picture?

Brock Kirby: Like most good things, it came from the constraints we had. We really wanted to convey change and growth. That’s a challenging thing to do in 30 seconds. Inner monologue felt like the only way, but I generally find voiceover narration to be boring, and Jeff [Dryer, ECD] hates it with the fire of a thousand suns.

So we tried pieces of found music. Jeff and I had luck treating found music as a proxy for inner monologue in past work, but these spots required much more specificity than we could find in any already-created song. So we wrote inner monologues and turned them into music. It’s only simple and logical in retrospect.

Mental health advertising can often focus on crisis and recovery, whereas these films are about much smaller, everyday moments of progress. What interested you about showing therapy in that way?

BK: I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of problem-solution in this category. But Mollie Partesotti, Co-Founder, Strategy at KDSP, and the team at Grow came up with a great strategy. The brief was to show someone applying the skills and tools they learned in therapy to their everyday life.

We didn’t want people to walk away from a therapy ad feeling sad or anxious.

This wasn’t about diagnosing; it was about meeting someone in the midst of their journey and showing the positive benefits of therapy. By changing their mind, they could change how they show up daily.

How did you come up with the individual scenarios, and how much insight did Grow bring to those?

BK: Well, we wrote a lot of them. Like, a lot of them. The ones we kept coming back to felt relatable and empowering. We didn’t want people to walk away from a therapy ad feeling sad or anxious, or like we were pointing out how people were broken. Nor did we want it to feel schmaltzy or saccharine. 

We wanted the viewer to walk away feeling like progress is possible, and it can come in small ways we’re all capable of.

How were the songs developed alongside the scripts?

BK: KDSP wrote the lyrics and prototyped the songs so that we could have 30-second timings as we shot. But Council Rock did an awesome job of finding the right voice, genre and pace to make each spot feel really unique.

With four films built around the same central conceit, how did you make sure each one felt distinctive rather than like a variation on the same joke?

BK: I think we’re all excited that you could do another 500 of them and they’d feel unique. The type of character, their inner monologues, what they’re growing through, what their therapist said that unlocked the change and the type of music that accompanies their thoughts are distinct enough variables to make each one feel fresh.

Why John Hillcoat? His feature work is often associated with fairly extreme circumstances and dramatic intensity. What made him right for stories built around such small emotional shifts?

BK: Jeff, Marshall Ball, SVP Marketing at Grow, and I had worked with John on a series of films for The Farmer’s Dog. One of those stories featured a beleaguered referee having a really bad day, but delivering zero words of dialogue throughout the long-form spot.

Therapy is actually all about the details and everyday contexts.

We knew from his other work and our direct experience with him on that project that he’s a master of creating an internal world for a character, which is exactly what this job called for. He also just knows how to find beauty in reality. He’s a naturally empathetic person, and that’s what we wanted for these.

You said you were attracted to the “modest simplicity” of these ideas. What did you see in them when the scripts first arrived?

John Hillcoat: It is extremely refreshing to be able to focus on the smaller, everyday moments, especially as so many commercials are so hyper-aggressive in their attempts to gain attention. They overcompensate with a spectacle of emotion and story.

Therapy is actually all about the details and everyday contexts. It is the day-to-day journey that counts, rather than the fireworks and headline sound bites.

How did the idea evolve once Hillcoat came on board? Was there anything in his treatment that significantly changed how you saw the campaign?

BK: Without John, there is no kid on a bicycle doing a wheelie while she eats her hot dog. That’s all him. It’s so subtle and elegant, and it’s those details that we knew John would bring. He always does. 

We’re lucky to be able to work with John and his immensely talented crew.

How did you sell the idea of using musical theatre to talk about therapy? Was there ever any concern that the device might make the subject feel too light?

BK: Yes, I think you’re always walking a tonal tightrope if you’re making something interesting and meaningful. But tone is always my last conscious thought creatively. Getting the story and what we’re trying to communicate right comes first, and then tone is found by playing out whatever is on paper as honestly and empathetically as possible.

I suppose there could have been worries that these would come off as too broad, but there was a lot of trust between us, Grow and John Hillcoat that we wouldn’t go there and we’d make something artful and unique.

The situations themselves are very recognisable, but bursting into song obviously isn’t. How did you approach that balance between an emotionally truthful moment and a deliberately heightened way of expressing it?

JH: I thought a lot about getting inside the main character’s head, so I pushed the cinematic language that helped with that, including the character’s point of view, sound design and subtle camera-speed changes.

I also worked on subtle and very nuanced performances that kept things grounded, so they felt almost documentary-like, yet the cinematic language heightened the reality of each circumstance.

What were you looking for in the casting, given that the performers needed both the acting chops to make these small moments believable and the musical ability to carry the concept?

JH: I was looking for people who could convey something going on inside their heads without doing a thing. People with an innate complexity, where we can almost hear their inner thoughts.

You’re always walking a tonal tightrope if you’re making something interesting and meaningful.

They also needed real acting abilities, where they knew how to express an emotion through only their eyes, and they had to be able to take direction, of course. But they also needed to feel interesting, with enough personality for us to buy them having their own sing-song style.

What was the thinking behind the overall look of the films, and how did you work with DoP Alexis Zabe to establish that?

JH: I really wanted a cinematic feeling, a celluloid feeling, with subtle mood and texture. Alexis Zabe had a grasp of all that and a clear ability to create a heightened realism, to create mood from the everyday.