Recycling old songs in advertising

[PirateLover]

Does this bother anyone else? I know that using pop songs has increasingly become common practice for advertising in recent decades, but lately they have been really getting on my nerves. I miss jingles. The use of some of these songs has almost ruined them for me and I get annoyed every time I see the commercials. Here are some recent examples off the top of my head:

Modern English- "Melt With You" for Taco Bell
Elvis- "Viva Las Vegas" becomes "Viva Viagra" :ack:
Violent Femmes- "Blister in the Sun" (I forget the product but I think it was fast food. Maybe KFC? This was actually my ringtone right before the commercial came out!)
Beatles/Badfinger-"Come and Get it" used in car commercial
Beatles-"Hellogoodbye" changed to HellogoodBUY for target ads.

I know there are many more, feel free to add.

[SBETigg]

A lot of those bother me, too. When it's a well-known song or artist that the corporate world seems to be cashing in on, I hate it.

But sometimes using old, more obscure tunes in an ad campaign can bring new awareness to an artist's music, and I think that's great. I love it when a new audience discovers old music. Like Nick Drake, after Pink Moon was used in a Volkswagen ad. Or Marc Bolan's T. Rex, when 20th Century Boy was used in a few ads. Those songs are too good to be forgotten, and now they're on ipod playlists all over the place.

[PirateLover]

A lot of those bother me, too. When it's a well-known song or artist that the corporate world seems to be cashing on on, I hate it.

But sometimes using old, more obscure tunes in an ad campaign can bring new awareness to an artist's music, and I think that's great.

Good point. I did love the old Gap ads where they danced to different tunes (like Mellow Yellow).

[Altair]

"Ain't singing for Pepsi,
Ain't singing for Coke,
Ain't singing for nobody,
Makes me look like a joke."

"This Notes For You"-Neil Young

[LibertyTreeGal]

Some of my favorite old jingles were simply rewording of old songs, like Coke's "I'd like to teach the world to sing," and "Put on that Windex Shine" (a redo of a famous song from Bye-bye Birdie)

[2Epcot]

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. One of the ones I thought was good was Toyota taking the "I want my M-T-V" and turning it into "I want my M-P-G". I'm guessing some other car makers wish they had thought of it first.

[JohnHMCWYG]

I was a young 80s fan before other young people had discovered the culture, and so I was aware of various things.

"I Melt With You" was a song about making love as the world ended. Imagine my surprise when, earlier this decade, I saw it being used in a Burger King commercial advertising their cheeseburgers.

I can't figure the advertisers out.

Sincerely,

John Kilduff

[Ian]

I find commercials these days dreadfully annoying, period. There's some clever ones, but (yes I'm old) none as good as the ones from 20 or 30 years ago, IMO.

Go out to YouTube or Google Video and pull up some of the classic commercials from the 60's, 70's, and 80's and try and tell me they're not WAAAAAAAAAYY better than most of the garbage out there today.

Where are the new jingles like "Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce" and "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese ... "?? Where are the great catch phrases like, "Where's the beef??" and "The quicker-picker-upper" and "You've got ring around the collar!"??

[2Epcot]

I will agree that the old commercials were much better then today. I loved the old McDonalds commericals ... lot of heart warming, great music, family oriented commercials ... all those "You Deserve A Break Today" McDonalds commericals that I grew up on. Many of the commericals of the 70s and 80s seemed to be more image based, rather then hard sell. I think of the new commercials Target is one of the few that comes to mind that I think does a decent image campaign. As annoying as some of the song recycling is, it does stick in people's heads, and that's the purpose of using the songs.

[Disney Babe]

Everybody makes such interesting points here.

Pirate Lover, you didn't happen to be bugging my house as I was complaining about commercials, did you? I have actually muttered around the house about this. Sometimes when I am in a good mood I will pick up the melody of the recylced music and sing something like, "I am such a bad ad man, I can think of anything original." Well, you have to be there I guess.:D

I am totally, I mean totally, annoyed with Target commercial especially. I mean, just tell me, "Go to Target, here are this week's sales, we have great stuff at great prices." They don't have one word to say about Target. Most of us try to get out of the room and do something real quick while the commerical is on. What kind of ad man thought of never saying the name of the product or store, just relying on us staring at the commercial on TV watching the images fly by! And it wouldn't be so bad if they actually used the Beatles so we could hear, "Hello, Goodbye" the way it's supposed to sound. They use someone with an annoying voice. I can't tell you how mad that makes me. Like they are ruining a great song with a great meaning.

Now, on the other hand. Kohl's just came out with a commercial that uses the old Dean Martin standard Sway. Some of the images on the screen sway and the singer is very good. That's a totally different experience.

In the end, though, were are all the good new jingles? I grew up in the 60's and they were all over T.V. It's a lost art. It's easy to pick an existing song and pay to use it. It's harder to come up with the Oscar Meyer song, the Jello Song, "Buy Mennen", "You deserve a break today".

Thank goodness Disney still uses creativity in their commercials!

[Disney Babe]

Oh, gosh, I forgot to add my thoughts on the new Charmin commercial. Two cartoon bears have just done their business and wiped their behinds with Charmin Bathroom Tissue, then the Hallelujah Chorus breaks out. Well, this is music that was written to praise God for our Savior, music that when first performed before a king he was so inspired that he rose to his feet (which is now a tradition) - being used to tout the virtues of how soft a certain toilet paper will feel against your butt when you wipe your poop from it! Disgusting!

[Momof2boys]

I have to say since getting Tivo we hardly see any commercials . . . and it really doesn't bother us. The only ones we seem to catch is whatever toy, cereal, or animated movie Nickelodeon & Disney Channel is promoting.

[2Epcot]

I have to say since getting Tivo we hardly see any commercials . . . and it really doesn't bother us. The only ones we seem to catch is whatever toy, cereal, or animated movie Nickelodeon & Disney Channel is promoting.

That's a good point. With so many people with Tivo, and DVRs and watching shows when they want to, most of these commercials are getting skipped anyway.


I am totally, I mean totally, annoyed with Target commercial especially. I mean, just tell me, "Go to Target, here are this week's sales, we have great stuff at great prices." They don't have one word to say about Target. Most of us try to get out of the room and do something real quick while the commerical is on. What kind of ad man thought of never saying the name of the product or store, just relying on us staring at the commercial on TV watching the images fly by! And it wouldn't be so bad if they actually used the Beatles so we could hear, "Hello, Goodbye" the way it's supposed to sound. They use someone with an annoying voice. I can't tell you how mad that makes me. Like they are ruining a great song with a great meaning.

The image commercials have worked very well for Target. I know so many people who won't step foot in a K-mart or Walmart, yet will go to Target in a heartbeat. They all sell basicaly the same things ... it all comes down to image.

[PirateLover]

The image commercials have worked very well for Target. I know so many people who won't step foot in a K-mart or Walmart, yet will go to Target in a heartbeat. They all sell basicaly the same things ... it all comes down to image.

Actually that's not exactly true. I myself prefer Target to Kmart and Walmart. Generally they are nicer (although the one by me is starting to fall a bit) but prices are not always comparable. Target tends to be a bit more expensive. They have clothing lines by real designers that are more expensive, and carry some higher end beauty products, bedding, and furniture than most of the other "box" stores.

For every 5 commercials that I hate that use old songs, there is probably one that I enjoy. I liked the first commercial that used Donovan's "Catch the Wind" but at this point about 4 other companies have used it as well. I do like songs in iPod commercials, but at least those ads are connected with music!

I'm trying to think of other jingles...
"Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there" (I wonder if that's why my parents chose them for their car insurance ;)

Meow Mix song. (I want to meet the genius who came up with those lyrics!)

Alka Seltzer "Plop plop fizz fizz"

Oscar Meyer wiener

Doublemint Gum... double your pleasure, double your fun!

Rice-A-Roni, a San Fransisco treat!

[Disney Babe]

Okay, now I am singing the Rice-A-Roni song!

"Rice-A-Roni the San Francisco treat. Rice-A-Roni the flavor can't be beat!" And the commercials always showed a cable car in San Francisco. Loved it.

How about the really, really old ones that were part of the old shows? Of course, I mostly saw these on re-runs. ;)

Dinah Shore Show

"See the USA in a Chevrolet. America is waiting for your call. Drive a Chevrolet through the USA. America's the best land of them all." I think I mixed up the words a bit.

Milton Berle Show (honestly, I really only saw this on re-runs, we have a local station that plays them)

A line of men in white work suits and black caps, almost military looking singing, "We are the men of Texaco. We work from Maine to Mexico. There's nothing like that Texaco of ours."

Just this weekend I heard the old Chevrolet commerical, "Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet." It was on a sports show about baseball that was sponsored by Chevrolet. I remember that song from childhood.

[conorsmom2000]

But sometimes using old, more obscure tunes in an ad campaign can bring new awareness to an artist's music, and I think that's great. I love it when a new audience discovers old music.
I agree with that - in some cases, I really like when they use the older songs and bring a new awareness to it. There are times when my 7 year old son, who thinks iTunes was just created for Radio Disney music, will hear me singing along and say "How do you know that song"???

But, I have to agree about the Elvis song for Viagra - that's just awful. :ack:

While some commercials are okay, even clever, the older commercials were so much better. But, I'm a sap and used to love the mushier commercials, like the Hallmark ones - and was it Folgers that had the commercial where the big brother comes home from College on Christmas and wakes the family up when he makes coffee? Even the old lifesavers commercials! :D

And now I have the old McDonald's commercial, with the little girls in the yellow ponchos singing "We are nipperslickers, you're in luck, if rains all day, we'll just quack like a duck, quack, quack, waddle, waddle...." stuck in my head!! :D

[Disney Babe]

Some of my favorite old jingles were simply rewording of old songs, like Coke's "I'd like to teach the world to sing," and "Put on that Windex Shine" (a redo of a famous song from Bye-bye Birdie)

I thought that I remembered the Coke song as being in the commercial first and then on the radio as a regular song. So I goggled it to see what I could find out.

The song was originally a jingle, written for the commericial. The jingle gained such popularity that a version was recorded without the references to Coke. In fact two groups recorded the song after the success of the commercial and they both did very well on the charts.

The jingle was titled, "I''d Like to Buy the World a Coke" and grew from an inspiration an ad man had when he was delayed in an airport and saw formerly grumpy passageners laughing together as they sat with bottles of Cokes in their hands. It was recorded by the New Seekers for the commercial.

The song was titled, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing". It was recorded after the success of the commercial by the Hillside Singers (a hillside was used in the commercial) and also the New Seekers.

[alphamommy]

I also miss the old commercials with their catchy jingles:

"I am stuck on Band-aids, 'cuz Band-aids' stuck on me!"

"Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us..."

"I'm a Pepper, You're a Pepper, He's a Pepper, She's a Pepper, Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?" (My high school marching band played this in a halftime show)

FYI - Lots of the great '70s jingles were written by Barry Manilow!

The Taco Bell commercial that uses "Melt with You" takes a great song and adds disgusting visuals to it - we don't like this one at all!