Tag: ads

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Car makers still extending lifestyle with electronic music samples

America is the last major country on earth where the populous doesn’t appreciate the nuances of both electronic music and soccer. Despite flare ups of popularity of both (womans US World cup and olympic performance, Moby’s incredibly popular “Play” album years ago or today: Lady GaGa’s “The Fame” album) both still struggle with mainstream attention.

In the realm of electronic music, the only on going success has been in soundtracks, ESPN and shopping mall background music and in advertising. When I was ahead of the curve, buying white labels, in record pools and hanging out at record shops hours on end to get the latest music, if I heard anything I purchased, later turn up on a commercial that track would instantly go into my dead pool. Dirty Vegas’s “Days Go By” was a key example, made famous by the Mitsubishi Eclipse commercial.

I’m not so much on the forefront of music these days so a good background track on a commercial catches my ear and I will want to hear it again, maybe even buy it. This happened earlier this year when I caught a Scion tc commercial entitled “Samples”. Here’s the commercial:


Scion Samples TC

I did plenty of research on this one and found the track isn’t even a full track but was created by Face the Music (Executive Producer: Adam Joseph Composer/Sound Designer: Tony Shimkin Mixer: Tom Burbank) specifically for the commercial, rather than the marketer picking up an already produced track to match the commercial message.

FTM has done some quality work for commercials and I’m sure they claim to have a successful business out of their work, however, I’m putting a public request out for them to remix the Samples track into a full 12″ and I’m sure they can extend their music talents with a private record label.

Justice went the other way with a sample from their “Genesis” track at the end of the Cadillac Escalade commercial. The sample didn’t kill the track use in the club scene however, still drove home the point of the commercial.

As long as the style continues to permeate in American culture, I’ll continue to accept it, hoping one day electronic music becomes even half as popular as European football.

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In your face advertising

Like most people, I feel we’re living in the most over saturated environments (home, work, TV, magazines, movies, radio, roadside and fashion). One of the areas where American’s have gone to escape has been the TV but with the invent of the DVR we’ve all been able to knock out one of the major annoyances of TV (besides the TERRIBLE programing), the commercials. I don’t even watch TV live any more if at all, so I just record the shows of interest and pass through the commercials or delete the whole show if it’s crap.

With one of the only reality shows I’ve watched, Top Chef, the product placement every week within the show is out of control. Still and hold shots on product, announcements of product focus and even forcing the cheftestants to cook with specific products (Uncle Bens give me a fucking break).

TBS has just introduced what I had suspected would happen but worse… commercials DURING the show – Here’s and example where they actually have the character “walk” on to the screen and pause the show to pitch their product. It’s directly focused to get eyeballs on the DVR crowd and it does not make me happy.

For the first time, I’ve made a complaint to a cable network but in reality, they won’t do anything, so I’ll have to just stop watching TBS. Their loss. Check out the commercial break here: