Fictional Heavy Metal Band MÜTTONGÜT Featured In GREYHOUND's 'Tour In Style' Commercial

July 17, 2014

Greyhound Lines, the largest North American intercity bus company, has released a new 60-second commercial in which a fictional heavy metal band selects a Greyhound bus as its touring vehicle of choice. Dubbed "Tour In Style", the spot features the members of the group MÜTTONGÜT politely and graciously interacting with the regular passengers. "Similarly, when you ride a Greyhound, that experience isn't necessarily what you expected either," Steve Mapp, creative director of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, which created the commercial, told Adweek.com. "We wanted to reset consumers' preconceived notions about Greyhound. … So the band is really a foil that lets us flip that switch for people."

Added associate creative director Eric Liebhauser: "We figured if we could portray rock stars rethinking Greyhound, we might inspire our target to do the same."

According to Adweek.com, the writers considered dozens of metal names before picking MÜTTONGÜT, which was said to be inspired by "Norwegian death metal." "The process is sort of: You come up with the wildest legally viable name you can think of," said Mapp, "only to find out it belongs to an existing band in Tampa with a MySpace page."

The song featured in the spot is "Snake Venom Cognac", an original MÜTTONGÜT track written by music house Squeak E. Clean. It will be released online later this year.

"Musical inspiration started with an exhaustive search of our own iTunes libraries," said Mapp. "We, of course, began with the classics: IRON MAIDEN, ANTHRAX, DIO. And we branched out from there."

The interior bus scenes for "Tour In Style" were shot by production house Tool's Erich Joiner in one night at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles and in a Greyhound parked outside.

Both actors and musicians were considered to portray members of MÜTTONGÜT. "In the end, we hired the guys with the best comedy chops, opting to stylize trained actors instead of training stylized musicians," said Liebhauser.

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