BUPA turned your lifestyle into a Futureheads gig: 54 versions of 'Heartbeat Song'

The premise: if your body were a band, how would it perform? The guitarist is the liver, the drummer the heart, and each participant's quiz answers change how the band plays their 2010 hit.

WCRS London copywriter James Hodson and art director Jason Keet built the interactive experience around four health questions with three possible answers each — the combination the 'tech guys' calculated as the sweet spot — generating 54 different videos of the band's performance.

Every participant got a video of their own body's performance, deliberately unlike the one their friend just made; no view or share figures were reported.

In April 2016 health and care company BUPA launched an interactive music video asking a simple question: if your body were a band, how would it perform? English post-punk band The Futureheads performed their 2010 hit 'Heartbeat Song', with each member standing in for a body part — the guitarist the liver, the drummer the heart.

Participants answered four health-related lifestyle questions online. Their answers changed the band's performance in unexpected ways: admit to drinking too much, for example, and the guitar turns into a dog.

Executing it was harder than the idea sounded. Copywriter James Hodson and art director Jason Keet at WCRS London wanted the experience to feel personal and unique — 'we needed as many combinations as possible' — so the team settled on four questions with three answers each, producing 54 different videos so no one got the same performance as their friend.

The metaphor carried the health message without lecturing: organs as band members out of sync say 'your lifestyle affects everything' in four minutes of fun.

The 54-video build made the output feel like a personal diagnosis disguised as entertainment.

A real, recognizable band — post-punk veterans with a known hit — gave the health quiz cultural pull.

The quiz structure meant the audience volunteered their lifestyle data in exchange for the joke.

Personalization beats broadcast: 54 variants of one song made a health quiz shareable because no two friends got the same video.

The experience launched on 4 April 2016, covered by Fast Company's Creativity section the same day. Fast Company headlined it as showing 'the importance of keeping all your body's elements in sync'; no performance figures were reported.