Music+Sound Awards Winner Spotlight: Music Supervisor Rising Star, Droga5’s Mara Techam

Music+Sound Awards 2024 music supervisor rising star… Mara Techam at Droga5, New York.

Mara started working in the music industry as a junior music supervisor at ad agency, Droga5 in June 2022. Since then she’s contributed to various successful campaigns for brands such as LinkedIn, Levi's, The New York Times, Instacart, Hennessy, Chase, Meta, Accenture and Huggies.

Check out the reel she submitted that convinced the jury that she’s Music+Sound Awards’ 2024 MUSIC SUPERVISOR RISING STAR.

Here she gives us a little behind-the-scenes info about each job…

Levi’s: Legends Never Die + ‘One Fair Exchange’

These were two of three films in a music-led campaign we launched during the Grammy's. Each film was a true story and all three films were worked on simultaneously around the clock for six weeks. We provided over 20 rounds of tracks for each film while doing our own edits to picture, getting new directions/re-briefed nearly daily, and checking licensing costs for any liked tracks.

Levi’s ‘Legends Never Die’

• Release Date: 2nd February 2023
• Music Supervisors: Mara Techam, Mike Ladman
• Track Title: My Blue Heaven
• Artist/Band: Cliff Richards & The Shadows
• Label: Warner Music
• Publisher: Downtown Music, Sony ATV
• Agency: Droga5

Levi’s ‘One Fair Exchange’

• Release Date: 2ndFebruary 2023
• Music Supervisors: Mara Techam, Mike Ladman, Brandy Ricker
• Track Title: Mam Dasc
• Artist/Band: Kryzys
• Label: Independent
• Publisher: Independent
• Agency: Droga5

LinkedIn ‘Find Your In’

For this spot, we knew we needed something grand, joyful, and a little bit quirky to choreograph the dance to. Racing against the clock, this spot was shot with a different song before we landed on Guerilla by Remi Wolf. Droga’s music team pitched this song in the first round, it was an instant favorite but the team kept on pushing to see if we could beat it. We cast a broad net for quirky tracks with big hits in a range of languages, genres, and decades. The more options we tried, the more the team fell in love with the way that the track captured the young girl’s energy and the overall weirdness and imagination of the spot.

• Release Date: 15th May 2023
• Music Supervisors: Mara Techam, Mike Ladman
• Track Title: Guerrilla
• Artist/Band: Remi Wolf
• Label: Universal Music
• Publisher: Kobalt, Sony Music Publishing
• Agency: Droga5

Coors Happy Thursdays Launch Film

This spot was an extremely quick turnaround and needed to have that upbeat gen z energy that mirrored the colourful visuals. Racing against the clock, we tried everything from indie pop to hip-hop to electronic dance and found the sweet spot to be this electronic track with a cool disco sample.

• Release Date: 4th April 2024
• Music Supervisors: Mara Techam, Mike Ladman
• Track Title: I Think I Like It
• Artist / Band: Fake Blood
• Label: Believe
• Publisher: Wixen
• Agency: Droga5

General Entertainment Authority: Battle of the Baddest

This is a very unique boxing advertisement that shows no violence, but it's this deep cut unexpected cover of a known song that captivates the viewer and adds unique intensity. This song perfectly tells the story and emotion of our film in a fresh way transcending language and fandom for this sport. This is a :90 second film brought to life by the power of bold music. 

• Release Date: 14th October 2023
• Music Supervisors: Mara Techam, Mike Ladman
• Track Title: Bang Bang
• Artist/Band: Betty Chung
• Label: Universal Music 
• Publisher: Wixen, Warner Chappel
• Agency: Droga5

Safe to say, we’re going to be seeing lots more of Mara’s work in the future!