A Product Worth Singing About
As you know, we do a lot of really fun things here at Kimberbell. We design beautiful feature quilts and Bench Pillows and create innovative new projects for machine embroidery. We develop The Bella Box and come up with new tools like Orange Pop Rulers and Deluxe Scissors and Tools to make your stitching life easier.
But never, before now, have we ever produced a musical number. So why on earth would we dress up and sing and dance and share our (waaaaaaay off-Broadway) production with the world?
Because sometimes a product comes along that's just worth singing and dancing about. And Clear Blue Tiles is that product.
[embed]https://youtu.be/F4A_lQIbd4s[/embed]
The Backstory
It all began last April, when I was sitting in a Creative Team meeting and someone made the offhand comment of how fun it might be to do a song parody some day. We all laughed about that idea and moved on with our meeting.
Except...I didn't move on. Not really. Once I had the song parody idea in my head, I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was an itch I just had to scratch. So later that evening, as I was doing some grocery shopping at Lee's Marketplace ("You've got a friend at Lee's!") I wrote the lyrics to the commercial. As I recall, most of it came together in the produce section.
It was much more exciting than thinking about, say, celery.
When I got home from shopping, I threw on a dress, pilfered items from our family costume bin, and started singing and dancing around the house. My teenaged daughter thought I'd lost my mind.
It's okay. She frequently thinks this. And she's probably not wrong. :)
When my husband got home from work that night, I gave him my phone and asked him to record me. Then, despite my daughter's protestations, I sent the video to the Creative Team so we could all share a good laugh: https://youtu.be/f_HGZUppmrE
And that was supposed to be the end of the whole thing! But, as things turned out, it was just the beginning.
The Vision
Meet Stacie. She's awesome. By day, Stacie's on the Creative Team and puts together the Kimberbell emails. But in the evenings and on weekends, she directs students in the drama department at the local high school. Musical theater is her thing!
So when Stacie saw my (very, very rough) little video, she saw much more than a middle-aged woman being cheesy in her living room: she saw a whole musical production with an ensemble and tap dancing and forklifts...
She had a VISION.
And since Kim is so fantastic about letting her employees fly with creative ideas, we got the green light. Andrew (also shown above and also very awesome) came on board as our enthusiastic videographer and the Clear Blue Tiles musical number was officially underway!
The Bloopers
The day we filmed the Clear Blue Tiles commercial was seriously such a great day at work. What a blast! How often does one get to dress up and sing and dance around the workplace? Riding a forklift no less?
Not very often, I'll tell you that.
Here are some of the behind-the-scenes footage of that fun, fun day.
[embed]https://youtu.be/xnydRmtZJBs[/embed]
Isn't that a hoot? Anyone who wore their Kimberbell T-shirt that day was recruited to be in the ensemble, and nothing was pre-rehearsed. We learned the choreography for everything right before it was filmed (like, minutes before it was filmed) and just went from one scene to the next. At the end of the day, my face was aching from laughing so hard!
And, as it's safe to say I won't ever win a Tony, here's that award-accepting speech I'll never have the opportunity to give:
I'd like to thank Kim for letting us go out on a limb like this, and Stacie for the vision and incredible direction. Thanks to Andrew for filming, editing, and providing the announcer's voice. Thank you, Jayme and Sophie, for choreographing the dances and to Kaylee for her amazing performance. Shout-outs to Trina for pushing me through the warehouse in a shopping cart (no easy task) and to Emily, Michelle, Jessee, Ginger, Jensyn, and Jenn for the dancing and smiling and spinning and Clear Blue Tile jazz hands!
And from the bottom of my heart, I apologize for the song that was in all of our heads for weeks afterwards.
That's a Wrap
Well, that's it. We finished filming and got back to our "regular" jobs, while Andrew edited the video and prepared to send it to the world. We couldn't wait to share our little musical with Kimberbell fans during Stitched!
But as exciting as all of this was, the product itself is even better. Clear Blue Tiles really are worth all of the hype! If you're still wondering what they are, please read What You Need to Know About Clear Blue Tiles, or watch the introduction video below. More information will be coming soon!
Your life is gonna change with Clear Blue Tiles. :)
[embed]https://youtu.be/u23MGIMxAfY[/embed]
