John Smeddle, Head of Creative, WithFeelingDecades ago, two particular commercials for Levi’s charmed our pants off. The first showed a ridiculously handsome young guy walking into a launderette, taking off all his clothes (except his boxers, of course) and stuffing everything into a washing machine.
He then sat down and read his newspaper as if this was just normal behaviour. It was seriously stylish, beautifully filmed and driven by Marvin Gaye’s ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’.
The second showed a herd of cowboys posing like a team for a photographer in front of a campfire. The photographer, a gorgeous young woman with a mischievous glint in her eyes, asked them to crouch a little lower.
This brought the guy in the middle even closer to the fire and he was gamely trying to not react to a metal stud in his jeans getting hotter and hotter. The metal stud in question was in close proximity to his, err, jewels. At this point a title revealed that ‘1941 saw the end of the notorious crotch rivet’. This time, the soundtrack was the Johnny Cash song ‘Ring of Fire’.
The London ad agency responsible was Bartle Bogle Hegarty and there were numerous other Levi’s ads that followed which all used iconic songs. These commercials were so good they inspired an entire generation of incoming creative boys and girls.
From that moment, right up to the beginning of the digital era, an unbelievable percentage of award winning TV commercials featured popular songs.
But here’s the problem. A very believable percentage of ads are applauded for their entertainment value: “Did you see that brilliant ad with my favourite song?”, not: “Wow, did you see that new IBM ad?”.
The ads became a product of their own, not an ad promoting a product. A lot of them worked perfectly for the brands being promoted, to be fair. But most of just drew more attention to themselves than the brand.
Strategists and Creative Directors will argue that the use of popular music puts a brand on the same wavelength as their target market, and there’s no argument there. Or the other argument that the eighties and nineties were a different era, and that too is a relevant justification. But that’s not the issue.
The issue is that these ads spawned a new generation of creatives who prioritised an execution instead of an idea. Which means they weren’t thinking of about the brand at all, just their own portfolios.
So whatever opinion being voiced here comes with the benefit of hindsight. But when another eminent global creative director, as recently as five or six years ago, was overheard saying “Just find a great song. It’ll give the ad stature” it seems that many clients are still working for their agencies. Someone should tell them.
Imagine if the entire music industry had placed a moratorium on songs being sold to brands? Not an impossible scenario; Led Zeppelin only recently unclenched their tight grip on availability of their music.
Poor little copywriters and art directors would have had to think longer and deeper about the brands that were paying their salaries. Gasp! They might even have had to talk to musicians about generating original sound for their ideas.
You know what that means? Sonic branding (NOT audio signatures) would have been a viable, profitable marketing service forty years ago, contributing more to brands than purchased songs.
Oh yes, and not forgetting that small little detail that the advertising industry wouldn’t have embarked on its journey of self-congratulations.
Which has turned out to be rather self-destructive, as it happens.
By John Smeddle, Creative Head, WithFeeling
