The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2021
Radiohead's If You Say The Word video hunts office workers back to their natural habitat
In Radiohead's If You Say The Word, suited office workers are hunted down in the countryside and brought back to their natural habitat: the office.
Radiohead
What it had to solve
If You Say The Word, an unreleased track from Radiohead's early-2000s sessions, was shared to announce KID A MNESIA, the triple reissue marking twenty years of Kid A and Amnesiac. The video had to make a two-decade-old song feel alive in 2021.
How it works
When Radiohead announced KID A MNESIA — the triple reissue marking twenty years of Kid A and Amnesiac — it shared If You Say The Word, a track left over from those sessions. The video had to give a two-decade-old song a reason to exist in 2021.
Directed by Kasper Häggström, it literalizes the office as a species' habitat: suited workers are hunted down in the countryside, captured like wild animals and brought back to London, their natural habitat, to resume office life.
The conceit turned a lost song's return into a wry comment on office work, giving the reissue campaign a haunting centerpiece and earning the video a place in D&AD's awards archive under Music Videos.
Why it lands
- The metaphor was carried all the way through: office workers are treated as wildlife from countryside to office, so the joke never breaks.
- It made an old song feel current by pointing the image at a familiar modern subject — the office worker's life — rather than at nostalgia.
- Deadpan framing let the absurdity stand without explaining itself, which suits both the band and the song's unsettling mood.
What it did
The deadpan twist gave the reissue campaign a haunting visual that made the song's comment on office life literal, and the work entered D&AD's awards archive under Music Videos.
What you can take
To make an old idea feel new, literalize its metaphor: treating office workers as wildlife turned an unreleased 2000s song into a fresh, unsettling picture of work.
Since then
The video appeared in September 2021, weeks before KID A MNESIA's November release, and remains in D&AD's awards archive under Music Videos. The archive records no view counts; what it preserves is the concept — office workers as a wild species that must be hunted down in the countryside and returned to their natural habitat, the office — and the choice to hang a two-decade-old song's comeback on that image.
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