Notes
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.
This idea of turning popular songs into mini pieces of musical theatre to transmit a powerful advertorial message can be seen in numerous advertising campaigns. I will touch on just one other for now to finalise my point; that of Nescafe in 1998.
1) A woman has been driving all night. In the dim dawn light she drives her Volkswagon Beatle to the edge of a cliff. We can hear the noises of the drive. She looks as though she has been crying. She reaches behind her and sees a jar of Nescafe in her back-the intro music to Johnny Nash’s ‘Clearly Now’ starts-she adds water to the coffee, plugs a portable heating device into her car battery- The music heightens- as the coffee is shown to be ready she steps out of the car to greet the sunrise-the chorus kicks in and the audient hears “I can see clearly now the rain has gone.” A miniature piece of melodrama is created out of a popular hit song.
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.
As with Tetley tea, Nescafe coffee is shown to be a great comforter.
What is additionally interesting about all these last three examples is that the music chosen is ‘cool’ music. We are not talking cheesy pop- Beach Boys and Right Said Fred. The advertisers have chosen rhythm and souls classics from the 1970’s. As well as being catchy and lodging in your mind, the song choice and it’s clear suitability to the advertising narrative actually endorses the quality of the product and endows the product with its sense of cool. In my next post I will go on to look at some examples- successful and not so, of how genre manipulation in advertising aims to attract a musical niche to a product which they might otherwise have little interest in or desire to consider.
