by Has anyone else noticed the trend over the last few years for television commercials to use old hit songs as jingles rather than coming up with original ones?
I remember in the 1970s when Sunkist used the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations for their extremely popular commercials. Even as a kid, I
remember the controversy…people actually spent time discussing the ethical implications of using such a popular song to promote a product.
See the Sunkist commercial here!
Songs were once seen as art, not just a commodity. The thought of using Beatles songs in commercials was abhorrent just 15 or 20 years ago, and when Nike used the song Revolution I thought people were going to stroke out. Now, Beatles songs pop up everywhere, to sell anything.
What happened to the days when songwriters held their work in high regard? It makes me think of a scene from the movie The Doors, when Jim Morrison saw a cheesy commercial using the song Light My Fire and got so mad he threw the television across the room….AND HE DIDN’T EVEN WRITE THE SONG!
Some people say using a song in a commercial creates more exposure and success for the artist. While that is sometimes the case (Chevy using Bob Segar’s Like a Rock), many other times the song is obscure enough that no
one ever knows where it even comes from. How many people know that I Want it All, used to sell furniture, is sung by Queen? Or Target’s catchy jungle hook Junebug is actually performed by the B-52s?
Hear Target using the B-52s here!
Other companies just blatantly exploit popular music. A certain type of cleaning product is the worst offender, single-handedly using Devo (Whip It), The Human League (Don’t You Want Me), Blondie (One Way or Another), AND Heart (What About Love)!
On the flip side, many ORIGINAL jingles written FOR the product have persevered in the culture’s consciousness for 20, 30, 40 years or more. Even 10-year-olds are familiar with “Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too?”, even thought the commercial has not aired for nearly three decades.
Some even crossed over and became hit singles in themselves (who remembers “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke“?). And along with cockroaches and Cher, the one jingle that would survive a nuclear war would have to be “Double your pleasure…with Doublemint gum!”
See the Doublemint twins here!
But apparently coming up with a creative hook is something the corporate world is not interested in anymore. One rare exception is Quizno’s…a few years ago, the company came up with a brilliant marketing strategy-create an original, catchy jingle and then have it sung by creepy, nightmare-inducing rodent-things. People still talk about that song today.
Want to have nightmares for a week? Click here…
Are there even brainstorming sessions among the CEOs of these companies anymore? What, do they get together and just ask each other what they heard on the oldies station that morning and how much they think the songwriter would charge?
I think these companies need to quit being cheap, lazy, and unimaginative. Hire real, live jingle writers and come up with a “You Deserve a Break Today” of your own!!!
