Vice Magazine Poland Bets on Audio Storytelling With The Last Song
The Last Song is a 2014 audio-format advertising campaign created for Vice Magazine by Saatchi & Saatchi and Interactive Solutions in Warsaw, Poland, using a single narrative audio asset to position Vice as an authentic voice in Polish youth culture and contemporary storytelling.
Published in April 2014, the campaign arrives at a moment when Polish media consumption is in visible transition. Rather than competing on visual spectacle, The Last Song stakes Vice's brand proposition on something more intimate — the spoken and sung word, delivered as an immersive audio experience. The campaign carries a single media asset, a deliberate constraint that concentrates all creative energy into one precise expression of what Vice Magazine represents: depth, edge, and cultural fluency.
The campaign operates in Poland, a market where Vice is positioning itself among a niche but culturally engaged audience of young adults who seek media experiences beyond mainstream offerings. The brand proposition is clear: Vice is not simply a magazine but a platform that captures meaningful, often unconventional stories reflecting the pulse of subcultural movements. The Last Song translates that editorial identity into an advertising format — audio — that itself signals a departure from convention. The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting its creative distinctiveness within the audio advertising category.
Vice Magazine targets a culturally engaged, ad-resistant young adult audience in Poland, and The Last Song is built around a precise insight: narrative audio creates a degree of personal intimacy that visual formats rarely achieve at the same emotional register.
The strategic rationale is sharpened by the conditions of the Polish advertising market in 2014. Poland's total advertising market stood at approximately PLN 6.5 billion that year, according to Agora, with internet advertising accounting for roughly PLN 2.43 billion — approximately 37% of total spend, also per Agora. That same Agora report estimated overall market growth at between zero and two percent year on year, signalling a mature and competitive environment where differentiation through format and tone carries real strategic value. In 2013, as reported by Agora, internet advertising grew 7.5% year on year even as the broader market declined, confirming that Polish audiences were actively migrating toward digital and non-traditional media channels.
Within that context, television still commanded 49.5% of media advertising share in Poland in 2013, according to Agora, making audio a genuinely contrarian choice — and a deliberate one. By electing audio over video at a moment when most brands in Poland were doubling down on television and digital display, Saatchi & Saatchi positions Vice not as a media outlet trying to match mainstream competitors on their own terms, but as a brand that embodies editorial courage. The choice of format is itself a brand statement: Vice tells stories the way it wants to tell them, and The Last Song is proof of that conviction in a single asset.
The Last Song is constructed entirely within the audio medium, relying on narrative, voice, and original music rather than any visual component to deliver Vice Magazine's brand identity to a Polish audience.
On screen — or more precisely, within the listening experience — the campaign unfolds as a song-driven narrative. The audio piece draws on original music composed by Wojtek Urbański and Krystian Kościjański, with vocals performed by Maria Kozłowska, Krystian Kościjański, and Piotr Osiński. The result is a piece in which the advertising itself becomes cultural content, blurring the boundary between promotional material and the kind of music-led storytelling that Vice's editorial platform, Noisey, has championed since its launch in March 2011, as noted by Wikipedia. A video documentary component titled Only Only accompanies the campaign, extending the narrative into a second format without displacing the primacy of the audio asset.
The creative team at Saatchi & Saatchi and Interactive Solutions in Warsaw is led by creative directors Piotr Chrobot and Kamil Majewski. Art direction and copywriting are handled by Piotr Osiński, who also contributes vocals to the piece — a creative decision that collapses the distance between maker and material. Producer Anna Kwiatkowska oversees the production. The depth of that creative commitment is recognised formally: Piotr Osiński receives both a KTR Bronze and a KTR Silver award in 2014 for work on this campaign, as documented by the KTR award records. The dual recognition at Poland's premier advertising awards underscores that The Last Song is evaluated not merely as an advertisement but as a piece of craft worthy of distinction in its own right.
The Last Song accumulates 7,762 views, 24 likes, and five comments in its archived form, with the asset uploaded on August 8, 2014, as recorded in the campaign archive. These engagement figures represent an audience self-selecting around an audio-first, narrative-driven piece of content — a relatively specialised pool by the standards of mass-market advertising in Poland, but consistent with Vice Magazine's deliberate targeting of a culturally engaged niche rather than a broad demographic.
The most substantive performance signal for the campaign comes from its awards record. Piotr Osiński receives both a KTR Bronze and a KTR Silver award in 2014, as documented by KTR award records — Poland's most established creative industry recognition. Earning two separate distinctions for a single audio asset at a national level indicates that The Last Song is assessed by the Polish creative industry as an execution of genuine quality, not simply an unconventional format experiment. The dual award is a verifiable, externally validated measure of creative effectiveness in a market where audio advertising commands a small share of total investment. The campaign's structural effectiveness rests on format specificity — by committing fully to audio and to original music as its vehicle, Vice and Saatchi & Saatchi produce a piece that functions simultaneously as advertising and as cultural content, reinforcing Vice Magazine's editorial identity in the Polish market with a coherence that few single-asset campaigns achieve.
The Last Song is a 2014 audio-format advertising campaign for Vice Magazine, created by Saatchi & Saatchi and Interactive Solutions in Warsaw. It uses a single original audio asset — built around music and narrative vocals — to position Vice as an authentic, culturally engaged voice within the Polish youth media landscape.
The campaign is created by Saatchi & Saatchi and Interactive Solutions in Warsaw. Creative directors are Piotr Chrobot and Kamil Majewski. Piotr Osiński serves as art director and copywriter. Anna Kwiatkowska produces the work, with music by Wojtek Urbański and Krystian Kościjański, and vocals by Maria Kozłowska, Krystian Kościjański, and Piotr Osiński.
The Last Song wins both a KTR Bronze and a KTR Silver award in 2014, as documented by KTR award records. Both awards are attributed to art director and copywriter Piotr Osiński. The KTR is Poland's principal creative advertising award, making dual recognition for a single audio asset a meaningful industry distinction.
The choice of audio reflects Vice Magazine's editorial identity — favouring intimacy and narrative depth over visual spectacle. In Poland's 2014 advertising market, where television held the dominant share according to Agora, selecting audio as the primary medium is a deliberate brand statement, distinguishing Vice from mainstream competitors on its own editorial terms.
The Last Song receives a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's creative distinctiveness within the audio advertising category, acknowledging its unconventional format choice and original music construction while contextualising it within the broader range of work archived from the Polish market in 2014.
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