The Work That Made Me: Kris Roggemann
Kris Roggemann is a creative producer and partner at Mophonics, a boutique music house specializing in music for advertising. Kris has lead Mophonics’ NYC studios for over a decade, providing creative strategy, bespoke music and music supervision for marquee clients. An industry veteran of nearly 20 years, Kris previously worked at Warner Music Group and Universal Music Publishing Group pitching music for ads.
The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Kris> Man – '90s jingles went SO HARD. They unapologetically had zero chill.
I can still hear the ‘i-e-i-e-i-e’ from the Carzilla commercials echoing in my head…
As a latchkey kid, the ‘pizzaaaaaa’ from the Bagel Bites ads was my afterschool rallying cry, which is probably why I took special satisfaction when Mophonics remade and remixed that jingle for Bagel Bites’ recent TikTok challenge.
And then finally, the unassailable earworm that is the Food Emporium jingle runs through my head at least once a day and is an all-time bop (that key change tho.)
The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Kris> 90’s film soundtracks really opened my eyes to the relationship between music and visual imagery. Judgement Night, Pulp Fiction, Reality Bites… these soundtracks were all individual works of art in their own right. Classic films like Goodfellas and Dazed and Confused would be worthless with no music. This will date me but I would spend all of my allowance and odd job money on CDs at Sam Goody, poring over the liner notes, trying to figure out what all of the credited people did.
The creative work that I keep revisiting…
Kris> Print-wise I will push to the front of the line to pick up any new book by George Saunders or Michael Chabon, and I devour music commentary and essays by Hanif Abdurraqib. Game-wise I’ll happily pick back up Zelda Breath of the Wild anytime and continue to explore that gorgeous open world. Film-wise I am a sucker for true crime, psychological and horror films (the darker the better – bring it, A24.) I perennially re-watch Zodiac for fun, and the original Oldboy to torture myself.
My first professional project…
Kris> My first paying music gig would have to be playing trumpet the summer of 8th grade in a local stage production of ‘Shenendoah’ at the New Rochelle Public Library. It probably didn’t hurt that my neighbour was the director…
As far as my more recent career, the first campaign I worked on that made a big splash came along when I was pitching music for ads at Universal Music Publishing Group. I managed to slip an editor a sampler of Simon & Garfunkel instrumentals and he slotted ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’ (a favourite song of mine growing up) into a four-spot Honda Accord ad. It was the first time an S&G original recording was featured in an ad (and it took a couple of tense weeks to track down Art Garfunkel for his permission) so there was a lot of high-fiving around the halls of UMPG.
The piece of work that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Kris> No disrespect buuuut those Jeremy Renner Jeep ads from 2019 really confused me narratively and musically. Also for the record SLC Punk always struck me as cheap American knock-off to Trainspotting and I told myself that I never wanted to do anything that blatantly derivative.
LBB> The piece of work that still makes me jealous…
Kris> Gah there is sooo much juicy work out there…… I friggin love the placement of Saint-Saëns’s ‘Dance Macabre’ (one of my all time favourite pieces of music) over this Jameson ad back when they were creating a fun mythology around the whiskey brand’s founder. The music was expertly chosen and arranged in my opinion.
Also – the placement of Flume’s remix of Disclosure’s ‘You And Me’ perfectly pairs with the hyperreality of the tension surrounding a couple’s first kiss in this Lacoste ad, says me.
The creative project that changed my career…
Kris> An inflection point of my career was getting to work with one of my musical idols Pete Townshend on 15 official remixes for The Who. The idea originally sparked from a conversation we were having with Pete’s publisher (Spirit Music Group) around doing something unique for the band’s 50th anniversary. They mentioned Pete had all of the original Who tapes in his possession which made us salivate instantly.
We decided to put together a corps of remixers to re-introduce this iconic music to a new generation and garner opportunities in the commercial space. Ever the innovator, Pete was very much a part of the process, sending us his notes and challenging us to try even more radical and transformative things with his songs.
(Funny aside, when we sent off our initial batch of remix ideas to Pete there was radio silence for two weeks…. We were crying in our pillows, sure that he was disgusted with us for desecrating his creations, only to find out that he’d been out sailing and incommunicado with the outside world. Once he docked the boat he sent us his praise and we all could breathe again.)
The project quickly yielded fruit, with remixes landing commercial placements for Optimum and GMC, as well as in trailers for Narcos and Kingsman 2.
The success of the Who remixes opened the door for Mophonics to work on many subsequent remix projects including Dean Martin, Henry Mancini, Frank Sinatra, and a triple vinyl release for Marc Bolan/T.Rex. It stretched our team’s muscles in new ways and built out a whole new capability set for Mophonics.
The work that I’m proudest of…
As much as I am happy to shill for corporations to help sell their products week in week out, it’s the cause and charity-based work that really drives my passions. Whether it be Family Equality, Planned Parenthood or Volunteers of America, we are always jumping at the chance to lend our talents to meaningfully help a cause.
One project in particular that stands out for me as a source of pride was ‘Dream’ for the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival. We were approached by DDB to create a modern version of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from Les Misérables to pair with beautiful animation by our friends at Zombie Films. Knowing this was a cause very dear to many musicians’ hearts, we managed to assemble a stellar group of talent to perform the animals’ voices, tapping our industry friends Ryan Merchant (Capital Cities), Natalie Bergman (Wild Belle), Keenan O’Meara and Tal Altman (nepo baby of my partners Steph and Shelley Altman, now a talented artist in her own right.) This film made a worldwide splash, put a huge spotlight on a local altruistic film festival and ended up winning a gold lion at Cannes for music.
Funnily enough, Wyclef was on that Cannes jury that awarded us the Gold… several years later I had the pleasure of meeting him at an event and he said ‘no one on that jury could finish watching the film without crying.’ It floored me to receive that high praise from a creative idol of mine. Wyclef and I then proceeded to demonstrate some aikido self-defence moves for the roomful of people. It was a wild night.
I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Kris> Right when I started at Mophonics we did a slew of PineSol radio commercials that would definitely not have aged well (if I could only find them! It seems they’ve been conveniently lost to the sands of time…) This hilarious K-Y spot we did makes me cringe only because of the thought of so many neglected grandmas out there being scrubbed from young men’s psyches…
The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Kris> We’ve been jamming on so many juicy projects lately but I probably got most excited for this film for GoFundMe… It was a dream working with ground breaking director Paul Trillo (having overlapped many years earlier on the Peach Kings music videos for ‘Be Around’ and ‘Lonely’, shot on the roof of Mophonics NYC!) and watching his mad genius AI visuals come to life. The creative team at AKQA lead by our buddy Emlyn Allen were dynamo and steadfast in their vision.
We obtained the publishing rights to the folk classic ‘Garden Song’ by David Mallett for which my colleague Steph Altman created a beautifully lush arrangement. The cherry on top was the transcendent vocal treatment added by Stella Webb, a talented singer/songwriter we discovered through our partnership with Berklee College of Music. And it was all for a good cause.
