Popular Music and the Marketplace

From Earworm to Narrative (part 2)

Lovely Day was such a success for Tetley they repeated the process again with their next advert.  This time the tune chosen was ‘I’ll be there’ by the Four Tops:

1)      Sydney has been to a football match and ‘feels like he can’t go on’ and all of his life’s in ‘confusion,’  after shedding tears for his team’s defeat he ‘reaches out’ for a cup of tea and everything gets better.  Sydney’s narrative of loss and comfort is linked perfectly to the lyrics of the song in an emotive and symbiotic relationship.

2)      The song, being popular and catchy gets stuck in the mind.

3)      Each time the song is recalled the narrative is recalled.

4)      Each time the narrative is recalled the product’s place in the narrative is recalled.

The end result is that Tetley tea is linked to the idea of comfort in the face of catastrophe.

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From Earworm to Narrative (part 1)

But perhaps more interesting than these examples are examples of advertisements that manipulate the Earworm affect, but add an extra layer; an emotional layer or narrative.  The music paints the story of the otherwise silent or relatively silent actors or animations. The model being:

1)      The song becomes associated with a particular narrative.

 2)      The song gets stuck in the mind.

3)      The narrative gets stuck in the mind.

4)      The product’s association with the narrative gets stuck in the mind.

In my previous examples a popular song is mad to make the audient directly think of a product, but will it make them buy it?  Not necessarily. In my following examples the song remains an aid to memory, this time conjuring up the narrative and the product is linked to the narrative and therefore to a situation.  The idea being that the audient will now have a desire to buy the product in a particular situation. And they will remember the narrative because of the clever use of diegetic, already popular, music.

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The Earworm Effect

In this second post I will discuss ‘catchiness’ and the ‘Earworm Effect’ (1).  The concept is simple.  An advertiser manipulates a popular song to work not only as a soundtrack to their advert, but as a diegetic force.  With new lyrics the popular song becomes the song of the product.

Thus the popular song subconsciously becomes the property of the product rather than simply a means of enhancing the mood of an advert.  This works providing the song is so apt for telling the particular story or its adaptation so cleverly handled as to fit the product wholly. In successful cases it will seem to the audient impossible that the song could be extricated from the product or advertising narrative.  Furthermore, the song’s popularity and its catchiness work in the advertisers favour.  The song becomes easily lodged in the viewer’s mind as an ‘Earworm,’ and so too does the product itself.

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The devil’s tunes: The rise of popular music in advertising

My interest in the inter-play between music and advertising was roused in 1997 during the general election campaign, when, for the first time, a leading party saw fit to adopt popular a song to rally the nation.  As ‘Cool Britannia’ wailed Things Can Only Get Better under the auspices of their conspicuously young new prime minister, what struck me was that the nation’s optimism was the product, not of the policies of a shiny new leadership, but of the words and melody of D:Ream’s 1994 club hit.

In 2010 there were rumours that both the Conservative and Labour parties were wooing Will Young as a potential voice for their campaigns.  Fortunately both parties failed and the nation was saved another wave of poor dancing from the backbenches.  But why music, why D:Ream? Why Will Young?

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