Nicole Kidman's Birth To Score Latest Quaker Oats Commercial: "Wake Up, America"

Thanks to the Film Experience Blog for the heads up and the Chicago Sun-Times for the article which allowed us to find the commercial!







Alexandre Desplat's score for 2004's Birth is now featured in Quaker Oats' new "Wake Up America" Campaign. Looks like E! online skeptic Mimosa will have to ban another product from her home!


Quaker hopes to warm you up to waking up

August 30, 2010
LEWIS LAZARE llazare@suntimes.com

It's a new morning for Quaker Oats, one of the most iconic of all food brands. And it's the kind of morning a lot of people, we suspect, are going to warm to in a big way. Starting on Wednesday, Chicago-based Quaker Oats and its ad agency Juniper Park/ Toronto, are unveiling a massive new ad campaign that suggests hot oatmeal will make breakfast amazing. And even more important, help make the rest of the morning amazing as well.

"Wake Up, America," the launch 60-second anthem spot, is one of the niftiest pieces of TV commercial work we've seen in a while. From the first shot of a tea kettle rattling on the stove to the final frame with the tagline -- "Does Your Breakfast Make You Amazing?" -- "Wake Up, America" is an exquisitely rendered ode to the glories of the morning and, by extension, the breakfast that should kick off every amazing morning.

This debut spot is a lush montage of shots of sunrises and of people as they begin their daily routines. We see a young figure skater heading into the rink for morning practice. An early bird officer worker surveys the empty desks around him. A welder is perched high above the city on the metal beam of a new skyscraper under construction as he chows down on oatmeal from a Thermos while the day dawns magnificently around him. A runner stretches against the backdrop of a blinding sun on the horizon.

As the visuals unfold, a voiceover announcer offers up some intelligent ad copy about the significance of the morning in both specific and nonspecific terms. He tells us the morning is when we charge into the future. Morning is also when we blasted off to the moon for the first time and scaled the highest peak. In other words, mornings are a time for getting important things done.

As engaging as the imagery and the thought-provoking copy are, what really makes "Wake Up, America" more than just good is its musical underscoring. We have long contended -- and will continue to, well, forever -- that what really makes a TV spot special and memorable is a great musical track. And boy does "Wake Up, America" have one. While every aspect of this launch Quaker Oats spot is designed to evoke a tingling sense of anticipation and possibility, the commercial would not work as well as it does without the pitch-perfect, symphonic-sounding, subtly melodic piece of music that pulls together everything.

In addition to the anthem launch spot, Quaker is unveiling six other new spots. One zeroes in on that welder seen in the launch spot and employs a bit of wicked wit when it tells us Rome wasn't built in a day or on a coffee and danish. Another adorable effort pegs a tousle-haired youngster as the new chef in the kitchen as we watch him expertly mix Quaker Oats instant oatmeal.

Aside from TV executions and new print work that supports the amazing breakfast theme, Quaker Oats is making much of a new Facebook component that will allow people to share their thoughts about how to be more amazing and possibly win a coaching session with Bob Harper from "The Biggest Loser" reality TV show. Harper will be a visible presence on the Facebook site, which is mentioned at the end of every TV spot.

Quaker Oats marketing honcho Kirsten Lynch admits a lot of people simply don't make time in their busy schedules for breakfast. She hopes this campaign will push people to rethink breakfast and the role oatmeal can play. We think this new campaign just may be amazing enough to get people to do just that.

Lew's view: A-