What's Next in Adverts?

Back when VW used Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" in their much-hyped Cabrio ad (apparently 1999), I thought that was pretty cool that a multinational car company was doing so. Although I mainly knew the song through the cover by Sebadoh (#7, 1993)... that sure would have been interesting.



"Pink Moon" by Sebadoh, from Sebadoh vs. Helmet EP (1992)

Nowadays, similar scenarios are more likely make me wonder about what I have to look forward to in my declining years. Jackass using "Corona" probably kicked this off (c. 2000). I didn't ever watch the show, and initially I was happy for the band to be getting some recognition. But now I get the vibe that a great song has attached to kind of a dumb tv show, and overall it probably didn't expand the Minutemen's audience significantly.



"O Superman (For Massenet)" by Laurie Anderson, from Home of the Brave (1982)

Recently, I ran across this new T-mobile skydiving commercial, and was very surprised to hear "O Superman" played in the background. Never one of my favorites - a bit too artsy-fartsy & before-my-time together - but unique & memorable. It immediately made me want to check out the YouTube comments, to gauge the reaction.



That's how commercials work on me anymore. So like this... consecutive comments: "This has got to be the most annoying song of all time. I hope anyone that has an HTC breaks their phone", vs. "Thank you HTC for giving a new generation a chance to listen to this." Ladies and gentlemen, the internet!!



"Bees" by Caribou, from The Milk of Human Kindness (2005)

So there I was, during Thursday's Miami Heat-Indiana Pacers playoff game (that's pro basketball), when I went far beyond surprised - like hoping the DVR caught it, switching inputs, and rolling back to confirm what I heard... The Samsung Galaxy Note tabphone was soundtracked by Caribou (#4, 2007) - the song "Bees" from his dedicated Krautrock nod, definitely one of my tunes! Now this was simply bonkers, and I was more confused than anything else. What is going on??

And this Note ad uses a song by Air: "Alone in Kyoto." Although I have driven VW's for awhile (pre-'99), you're not getting me to buy your smartphone by licensing hip Canadian or French electronic acts for your adverts - but that's just me.



"Shit from an Old Notebook" by Minutemen, from Double Nickels On The Dime (1984)

In the future, tv advertisements will probably be customized for the audience, maybe cross-referencing your holo-music-library, like how internet commercials are calculated from Facebook or Google algorithms. I just hope there's a 'don't-piss-me-off' setting - where you can indicate you don't want your musical faves imported into YouMercials. Because interesting and novel or not, I absolutely want to continue auto-filing ads into my mental spam folder, without commercial breaks replicating a Shuffle-All mix on my own iPod.

Lyrics:

let the products sell themselves fuck advertising, commercial psychology psychological methods to sell should be destroyed because of their own blind involvement in their own conditioned minds the unit bonded together morals, ideals, awareness, progress let yourself be heard!

Smartphones... yeah.