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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?
Of course, Things Can Only Get Better represented a direct attack on 18 years of Tory rule. But the music was more than that. Music, unlike many popular media is an unmistakable shibboleth. One of the first questions you might ask a new acquaintance or a date is “what music do you like?” It is a question that appears on 99% or personality questionnaires also. The idea that linking such a strong cultural identifier to a product, service or morality can encourage members of musical communities to become buyers or voters is not as farfetched as it may first sound. If, for instance, I had walked down the streets humming Things Can Only Get Better in 1997, regardless of my political leanings, I am certain any person passing on the streets would not have assumed me to be right wing.
The popularity and of D:Ream’s sound, and the vast number of young people who, although they felt embarrassed by the ‘moves’ of their elders, pitched the Labour party as on the same side as the young, disillusion clubbing generation.
As for Will Young, in an increasingly ‘celebrity’ focused age; we might consider ourselves lucky that he decided not to align himself with a particular party. The point being that, democracy and the freedom to choose might well be undermined by the need to choose based on the choices of your peers.
Let us imagine that I am a nineteen-year-old Will Young fanatic, with numerous nineteen-year-old Will Young fanatic friends. The chances are that I might not vote at all. But should Will start singing a ballad to Conservative social policy, conversations would start about his new song, and these would then touch upon the policy which would now be seen through my rose tinted spectacles. I would be bound by the rules of fanaticism to vote Tory.
And let’s not forget Will Young’s gay audience. Whichever party would win Will’s crooning would be literally winning ‘The gay voice.’
My argument, therefore, is that music is powerful not just because it is a wonderfully catchy medium and an exceptional aid to memory, but, because, over the past fifty years especially, the kind of music one listens to has become symbolic of the type of person one is, particularly in more susceptible (i.e. less educated) social circles; among young people and lower social classes.
Most commonly in advertising music is at one with product, providing the advert is not a deliberate spoof. For example; advertising Hovis bread with Dvorak’s New World Symphony, advertising extreme play-station games with heavy rock, advertising shampoo with wishy-washy euro-pop. In each case the product and its audience is specifically framed or targeted by the extra-diegetic soundtrack.
I am less interested in this use of music in advertising. My interest lies in those times at which advertisers attempt to accrue a musical audience wholesale by attaching the ideology of that music to the ideology of their product, or their own morality. The genre of music is specifically made to tell the story the advertiser intends in the hope that the diegetic sound will enter into synergy with the morality or the product of the film’s purveyor.
It is this connection that I will be exploring during the course of my next blog posts. But first I will make some other; I hope helpful, observations of how different advertisers have used music to aid their campaigns.
