Mavado & Di Genius Teams Up For New HTC Campaign

After several years of making hits together, Mavado and Stephen "Da Genius" McGregor have scored big again with the Genius-produced "Di Gyal Dem," which spearheads the new European advertising campaign for HTC, one of the world's biggest makers of smartphones.

HTC is launching its new One X handset and contracted Da Genius to produce the music for the campaign's video clip. It is the next stage in HTC's "As Recommended By" campaign, highlighting the audio and video credentials of the new handset via a video shot at a party in Miami's Little Haiti, with Mavado and Da Genius providing the soundbed.

"Stephen created a riddim he christened One X and told us he was working on the HTC project," said Julian Jones-Griffith, Mavado's manager. "He said the creative directors putting the project together were huge fans of Mavado and would love to have him provide the vocals for the campaign. Genius sent us the beat, I spoke with the ad agency about direction and they said they wanted Mavado to just do his thing. Mavado recorded "Di Gyal Dem" at Platinum Sounds in New York and the ad agency loved it. Its a huge look for Mavado, Stephen and for Dancehall to be at the forefront of such a huge commercial campaign and hopefully helps to break another barrier."

The campaign launches in Germany this week, before spreading to Russia, Switzerland, Austria and Turkey and from there into Asia and the Middle East. There is a 60 second spot and a long-form 3 minute clip, both of which feature "Di Gyal Dem." 

Stephen plans to release "Di Gyal Dem,"  to radio immediately.