A Choir of Body Parts: Why Lucky Generals and PRETTYBIRD Gave the Body a Voice for Holland & Barrett

When it comes to health and self care many of us are guilty of only paying attention to our bodies when something goes wrong, rather than looking after ourselves as part of our daily routine. Holland & Barrett’s latest campaign ‘Back Your Body’, asks the nation to show a little love to the bodies that have been there for us our entire lives and listen to them when they ask us for support.

The film features a choir of body parts congregated in a village hall singing in unison to the classic 90s dance anthem ‘Show Me Love’ by Robin S, finally giving bodies a “voice” to be able to express how we can best take care of them. The campaign, the first from Lucky Generals for the brand, hopes to encourage people to take a more proactive approach to their health and wellbeing, and offer advice, tools and products to help. The ‘Back Your Body’ platform will also offer 300,000 free Wellness Check-Ins per month across stores nationwide.

Chief creative officer Shelley Smoler and  chief strategy officer Damien Le Castrec from Lucky Generals and PRETTYBIRD directors Bradley & Pablo sat down with LBB’s Cathy Meyer-Funnell to talk music choice, making body parts talk and the changing nature of the wellness industry.

LBB> What was the brief? Where did 'giving the body a voice' come from?

​Shelley and Damien> Holland & Barrett are on a mission to change the nation's relationship with health: from reactive to proactive. Basically, getting people to look after themselves before something goes wrong. So we asked ourselves, why do people wait until something breaks to act? And the truth is, listening to our bodies is tricky. We're busy, we've got enough to worry about, and so most of us just take our bodies for granted. Until something stops working. But we didn't want to be finger-pointy about that. We wanted to help. And because it's hard to listen to something that can't talk, we gave the body a voice. A voice that reminds us how amazing and loyal our bodies are. A voice that asks for a little more support, every day.

LBB> How did you take that brief and bring it to life?

Bradley & Pablo> Lucky Generals wrote an amazing initial script that really caught our imagination. At first the idea was to have each of the body parts singing in different locations. The opening scene took place on a stage with the mic dropping to the knee. We were so captivated by that scene that we wanted to live in it longer –we wanted to see the reactions in the room. And so we decided to make the whole film take place in one space and bring all the body parts together. This allowed the story to flow more spontaneously and we could see the emotional reaction of the ‘owners’. This gave us more space to play with the performances and became a crucial storytelling tool.

LBB> Talk us through the filming process and how the body parts were able to 'sing'.

Bradley & Pablo> One question on everyone's minds was, is the idea going to be legible? Without a more literal tool – i.e. a superimposed mouth – would the idea work? So a lot of the decisions we made were paying service to making sure the singing communicated.

Blocking and camera work treated the body parts like subjects with slow deliberate push-ins that made it obvious they were the focus. Sound design helped clarify where the voices were coming from, like hearing a muffled voice under a t-shirt. Sometimes we’d also use subtle movement in the body parts as if they were singing.

And as we touched on before, the performance was huge. Having everyone in the same room meant that we could lean on other people's or ‘owners’ reactions. The opening scene did a lot of heavy lifting by visually linking the microphone to the knee and seeing how people reacted to that.

LBB> What inspired the music choice?

Shelley and Damien> We looked for a track that felt like it could genuinely come from the body with poignant words that were about asking for support from something that’s been loyal and by your side the whole time.

There are a lot of songs that say that. The trick was finding one that didn’t feel heavy or finger-pointy, no one wants wellness to come with a guilt trip. Wellness as a category can be quite serious and judgemental. We wanted the opposite, something uplifting, rallying, and full of life.

Because if your body’s trying to get your attention, it’s not doing it to tell you off.
It’s more like, “Hey, I’ve had your back forever, any chance you could return the favour?”

LBB> How do you hope that a younger market will respond to this, and potentially change their behaviour?

Shelley and Damien> Young or less young, everyone's a bit confused about what's good for them. One day soy milk is the best thing ever, the next it's the worst thing you can drink. There are a lot of voices out there and it's hard to know who to trust.

So our aim was to position H&B as the trusted experts powered by science-led products giving people tools and confidence to support their bodies every day, not just when something feels off - the destination for understanding what your body actually needs. But that could come across as a bit dry. We needed an idea that makes wellness engaging.

And that's what the voice of the body gave us. It had a real purpose, voicing what the body needs. But it was also a brilliant device to have fun with. We could get bodies singing a 90s banger, which feels right when you see how many young people are catching up on those tracks lately.

But it’s also a device that will let us do so much more, in so many other places… more to come on that.

LBB> How does it feel like the wellness industry is changing, and where does this campaign fit into that?

Shelley and Damien> The wellness industry has become enormous but also quite noisy. Everyone's talking about wellness now: from tech brands to supermarkets to influencers, and most of them end up in the same space, talking about 'life'. Living your best life, life well lived, that kind of thing. It happens that life is quite vast and a rather big thing. But that's also what makes it generic, and when everyone's there, nobody stands out.

So our challenge was to find something as universal as life, but something H&B could claim more credibly than anyone else. That was the human body. We all have one. It's what H&B are highly trained and qualified, trusted experts in. And it's the thing we actually wanted people to act differently towards. So very early on we knew that owning 'body' would be both credible and distinctive.

LBB> How did the strategy and design teams work together to build the campaign?

Shelley and Damien> Design was part of the process from the very beginning, which matters because it meant when we landed on giving the body a voice, it wasn't a case of handing over a strategy and saying "make this look nice." It became a genuinely exciting design brief. How do we give the body a voice visually? And that's how the design and creative teams got to using the human body itself to create a unique typeface.

LBB> Where do you envision this campaign going?

Shelley and Damien> The campaign is launching 'Back Your Body', which is a platform idea bigger than just comms. Backing people's bodies is what everyone at H&B does and will continue doing: from giving expert advice in stores to creating new products and services. So there'll be plenty of evidence of Back Your Body everywhere.

Now from a creative point of view, we've only launched a few bits of the campaign so far. But there's a lot more to come. You might well be hearing a lot of bodies talking in the months to come.