MGM Resorts International’s “Universal Love” campaign, out of McCann NY, has earned a Brand Experience & Activation Gold Lion at Cannes Lions 2018. The project included a Kesha collaboration for her music video “I Need A Woman,” mixed by audio post production studio Plush sound mixer Rob Fielack. The campaign centers around artists selected to sing classic, yet heterosexually-charged love songs with swapped pronouns, broadening inclusion and celebrating love within the LGBTQ* community.
The campaign also earned three Silver Lions--in Brand Experience & Activation, Entertainment and Entertainment Lions for Music--and one Bronze Entertainment Lions for Music.
In “I Need A Woman,” Kesha officiates the wedding of superfans Dani and Lindsay at an MGM Resort hotel in Las Vegas. The short takes audiences on a desert road trip skirting Southwest sands, where Kesha belts lyrics to Janis Joplin’s “I Need a Man to Love,” swapping pronouns for the occasion. Kesha’s temptress desert performance is intercut with clips of the happy couple investigating their Vegas honeymoon suite, preparing for their prismatic nuptials and delivering thoughtful commentary on the state of marriage and love in the United States after the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015. The couple married on March 26th, the anniversary of the first legal U.S. same-sex marriage license.
