Trailer Media Celebrates 20 Years with a Landmark Legacy Mash-up

Australia-based music supervision agency Trailer Media is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month coinciding with helming one of the biggest global syncs of 2021.

The global ‘Keep Walking’ campaign for Johnnie Walker via Anomaly UK, features a bespoke ‘mash-up’ of classics by Run DMC feat. Aerosmith’s, Lou Reed and Loretta Lynn representing a challenging set of clearance issues across the various rights-holders.

“The brief was to bring some of the most iconic music together in one mix for the campaign,” says Trailer Media founder, Anton Trailer. “Wrestling the likes of Steve Tyler through to the Lou Reed Estate took a mix of planning, patience, dogged resilience and some negotiating!”

Licensing these works individually would have been a task but bringing together such huge rights in a ‘mash-up’ for advertising was a first. According to Trailer, there were early doubters that the idea could even be pulled off. However, after the spot went live, Sony Music London (Aerosmith & Run DMC & Lou Reed) gave praise, saying it was the “biggest spot of the last decade and a first for a number of reasons”.

With offices in Sydney and London, Trailer Media’s first Australian collaboration came back in 2005 for The Glue Society where they scored a custom ‘rap’ for the award-winning Virgin Mobile '5 Cent’ Campaign (they were certainly different times!).  

Since then, Trailer Media has gone on to work with most of the country’s top agencies and brands including the NRL, whom they have worked direct on both sync and live events, Virgin Australia, Qantas, Hyundai, Audi, Kia, Subaru, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Optus, Belong, Virgin Mobile, David Jones, Kmart, Bonds, Kings Living, 7 Eleven, Aldi, Coca Cola, Pepsi Max, Fanta, Cadbury, Nescafe, KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Masterfoods, IAG, NIB, Visa, Cricket Australia, NRMA, Samsung, LG, OPSM, Macquarie Uni and Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Last year also saw the release of the film ‘Sweet River’, directed by Justin McMillan; Trailer Media’s first feature film music supervision credit in Australia.