Popular Music and the Marketplace

Apple advert featuring Chilly Gonzales - ‘Never...

Mon, 16 May 2011 14:24:00 +0100

Apple advert featuring Chilly Gonzales - ‘Never Stop’.

Chilly Gonzales - ‘Never Stop’

Mon, 16 May 2011 14:14:00 +0100

Chilly Gonzales - ‘Never Stop’

Exposing new artists and the badge of affinity

Mon, 16 May 2011 14:13:00 +0100

The pervasive exposure of advertising relative to the increasingly fragmented nature of “traditional” media means that commercials now serve a useful role in exposing new artists. This is not the safe recycling an already-a-hit but often leveraging the cool brand to provide the listener with a badge of affinity (halo effect).

Apple’s use of the introduction of Chilly Gonzales’s ‘Never Stop’ is a recent example of this.

Factory Farming Song - Ladybugs

Fri, 13 May 2011 17:12:36 +0100

Factory Farming Song - Ladybugs

Hovis adverts

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:46:00 +0000

Hovis adverts

Coke - I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:04:00 +0000

Coke - I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.

Yeo Valley Rap Advert

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:03:00 +0000

Yeo Valley Rap Advert

From Story Narrative to Narratives of Self—music genre as interpolation in advertising

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:03:00 +0000

In this section I shall get to the heart of the matter that I outlined in my introductory post. That is “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.”

I will first discuss two successful attempts at such a venture. I will then, continuing to move backwards through time, look at a third piece of footage, one that was never released, but which I was lucky enough to come across in the course of first hand research.

The Yeo Valley Boys

The recent Yeo Valley Campaign presented by ‘The Yeo Boyz, feat Lil’ Massey’ is not quite what you would expect from an organic dairy producer. Of course, on one level the idea of a group of farmers rapping like gangster rude-boys as they till the land is purely ironic. However the message remains clear; “Organic Yoghurt is not just for aging upper-middle class predominantly white families, it is for everyone.”

This is an intelligent campaign that works on many levels. The almost unbelievably clunky nature of the lyrics and the ridiculous moments in the film (such as a break-dancing tractor) ensure that the advert works on a purely comic level and that what might be considered Yeo Valley’s target audience (those upper-middle class educated oldies) are not lost.

However, the single’s release over Youtube and its style make it undeniably aimed at ‘the Youth’ element. While one can hardly expect thousands of rap and hip hop lovers to start ‘getting down’ to the Yeo track, the pastiche has the same softening affect on them as watching Labour Politicians desperately attempt to ‘boogie’ to Things Can Only Get Better by D:Ream. And just as they might disseminate clips of Tony Blair doing ‘big-fish little fish cardboard box’ among their friends, so too will they spread the link to The Yeo Boyz. Testament to this is the video’s 99,741 (more by now most likely) hits.

And once in dissemination, though comic rather than truly a work of great music, the message is clear—“OK, we are not like you, we are country farmers in wellingtons driving tractors, not city kids in trainers catching buses, but neither do we take ourselves totally seriously, and, we are here for you.”

Essentially, a genre is manipulated to encourage an unlikely audience to see a product as part of their culture where they would not have done otherwise.

One can break the process down as follows:

1) Target audience chosen

2) Music genre that unites the audience adopted

3) Genre and product identified as in symphony by a commissioned track

4) Target audience hear track and identify with it either genuinely or for its comic value

5) Target audience therefore identify with product

6) Track gets fixed in audience’s mind (Earworm affect)

7) Track gets hugely successful

8) Target audience re-identifies with product each time the track is played

9) A new market is opened up

I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke

In 1971 Coca Cola released a revolutionary advert. They gathered a group of young people on a hillside in Italy to perform a commission track entitled “I’d like to buy the world a coke.” The idea was to transform a popular but faceless product, a soft-drink into an ideology of unity and world peace; a symbol for young people the world over.

1) Target audience of young, politically aware idealists chosen

2) Music genre that unites them chosen- the pop/folk genre of the song, the sort of jingle one can strum on a guitar in a field, at a demo against Vietnam or on a Greenpeace demonstration, or while travelling the world with your friends who form the first every gap-year generation

3) Genre and product identified as in symphony by a simple and affective commission track with a simple but perfectly fitting chorus and harmonies

4) Target audience hear track by people like them the world over and identify

5) Target audience therefore identify with the product more actively than ever before

6) Track gets fixed in audience’s mind (Earworm effect)

7) Track gets hugely successful (Bill backer, the man behind the campaign organises it’s release as a single by the New Seekers and it tops the charts for two weeks)

8) Target audience identifies with the product each time the track is played

9) A new market is opened up

This is an incredibly clever process. However, it is not one that is always easy to judge or necessarily successful.

One example of how such a project might have failed:

Imaging Nike had adopted Coca Colas campaign. Imagine that in 2001, at the time of the fair-trade uproar and the release of Naomi Klein’s Bestselling work ‘No Logo’ that Nike had released ‘I’d like to dress the world in Nike,’ targeting the campaign at the politically aware youth the world over. I will hesitate to make this speculation; the campaign would have been catastrophic.

And this brings me to a piece of footage I discovered by a girl band called “The Ladybugs” from 1965.

The Ladybugs

The premise is simple and follows our stages. The target audience chosen are young people, the new teenage generation discovering pop-music for the first time; disco goers, Dusty Springfield fanatics. The track is commissioned. The idea that factory farming is a good thing is expressed in the popular song genre of the day by two attractive young women expressing their sexuality in a way their forebears could never have imagined doing. However, this is where the project un-sticks. Identification with the track is impossible, just as identifying Nike with folk-pop would have been in 2001. Why? Because the advertising ploy in both cases is overtly reactionary; an attempt at self defence, rather than a genuine appeal to a new market or for a new level of appreciation.

The 1964 release of Ruth Harrison’s famous book Animal Machines meant that public feeling had been very much turned against the ideas of factory farming by the end of 1964. In such a climate genre manipulation could not, I would argue, have worked. Instead of acting in symphony or creating sympathy, the genre would have expelled the Ladybug’s track as a disgusting appropriation of a musical form most easily linked to ideas of liberation, not ideas of caging.

In a way, ‘The Factory Farming Song’ would have been the equivalent of John Major fighting the 1997 election to Bon Jovi’s ‘Keep the Faith.’

Tetley tea - I’ll be there

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:07:00 +0000

Tetley tea - I’ll be there

Nescafe - Clearly now

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 10:06:00 +0000

Nescafe - Clearly now

From Earworm to Narrative (part 2)

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:20:00 +0000

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.

Tetley tea - Lovely Day

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 11:27:00 +0000

Tetley tea - Lovely Day

From Earworm to Narrative (part 1)

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 11:06:00 +0000

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.

I will draw on a couple of examples here so as not to cause confusion. The first are a collection of Tetley Tea adverts.

During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s Tetley became masters of popular music manipulation. It all started with their adverts for the (at the time) revolutionary round teabag. Two adverts came out in close succession. One manipulating the lyrics of another Beach Boys hit Get Around and the other appropriating Elvis Prestley’s Hound Dog. Tongue in cheek lyrical abominations abound in both. From ‘you’ll want nothing but a round bag’ to ‘cups are round, cakes are round, saucers are round, the sugar-bowl’s round and the teapot is round…Tetley’s are round.’ Both adverts use music as outlined in my Fruitella and Babybel examples. However, a later coupling of Tetley adverts reveals a subtle shift.

In 1993 Tetley successfully used the 1977 hit single Lovely Day by Bill Withers in a slightly different advertising campaign. It is firstly important to note that in 1992 the track had gained a new wave of popularity due to a cover version which was used in the Box Office Smash ‘The Bodyguard.’ So while an old favourite it was certainly a tune in the popular eye (or rather, ear). Instead of the Tetley Folk spoofing the song, changing the lyrics in order to ‘tea-theme’ it for laughs, the song becomes a diegetic soundtrack to the story of a tired and depressed Sidney (one of the Tetley Folk) as he struggles to get out of bed.

Just as the song hits the line ‘then I look at you’ Sidney looks at Gaffer and Gaffer makes a ‘T’ sign with his hands and we see a cup of Tetley being made. The tea automatically wakes Sidney up, and the advert ends on the line ‘Lovely day, Lovely day, Lovely day’ as Sidney skips over his garden fence and off to work.

The use of the popular song is becoming more subtle and the way it works upon the recipient, more sophisticated.

1) The already popular song gains a fitting narrative element—the advertising company create a powerful snippet of musical theatre. Now the song is associated with Sidney’s morning routine.

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 the audient automatically links Tetley tea with victory over horrible mornings, and that this link is made as many times as the Earworm song is hummed over in the audient’s inner-ear. Success for Tetley.

Barbara Ann - Beach Boys

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:09:00 +0000

Barbara Ann - Beach Boys

I’m too juicy - Fruitella advert.

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:05:00 +0000

I’m too juicy - Fruitella advert.

I’m too sexy - Right Said Fred

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:04:00 +0000

I’m too sexy - Right Said Fred

The Earworm Effect

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:19:00 +0000

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.

The kind of music use in advertising I am here considering is that such as Babybel’s use of ‘Barbara Ann’. This song, already recorded and re-recorded and made famous by The Beach Boys was manipulated by the advertising agency so cleverly that a generation of television watches mightn’t even know that the song’s lyrics are anything other than ‘ba, ba, ba, ba babybel.’ One only needs to log-onto the Babybel website to see how the song has, effectively, become the property of babybel, or search “babybel song” on any search engine to see how a whole generation view Barbara Ann as little more than a cheese jingle.

Or we might reflect on Perfetti Van Melle’s manipulation of Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy.’ Only a year after the band’s sensational (and perhaps with hindsight, unbelievable) success with ‘I’m too Sexy,’ ‘Fruitella, Too Juicy’ appeared.

In each of the above examples a song that easily gets lodged in the mind (or, in the case of ‘I’m Too Sexy’ is still ringing in the ears, fresh with chart success) is directly associated, by lyrical manipulation, with a product. While there is no subliminal messaging at work here, i.e. “I listen to Right Said Fred’s style of music ergo I must buy Fruitella,” the music becomes forever associated with the product, and each time the music is recalled, so too is the product. In addition, the cleverer, or more comic the advertising agency is in their manipulation of the song, the more tongue in cheek the mis-usage of it is, the better. The audient begins to side with the advertiser, almost against the musician, and mock the original song in favour of the spoof.

(1) James Kellaris (University of Cincinnati) is credited with popularising the term “Earworm”. http://magazine.uc.edu/issues/0408/doctor-earworm.html

Babybel TV advert.

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:51:00 +0000

Babybel TV advert.

Things Can Only Get Better - D:Ream

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 11:36:00 +0100

Things Can Only Get Better - D:Ream

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

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:22:00 +0100

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.