When your ad agency brings you an idea for a TV commercial based on a piece of pre-existing music, please ask them to play the whole song before you approve it.
We all know that we can't blame copywriters and art directors for insipid, peculiar advertising anymore, don't we? Think about it. The ad agency business has been so decimated in recent years that now, the people coming up with the ads we see on TV are either burned out hacks or callow punks who never even heard of the people their agency initials (DDB, JWT and BBDO) once stood for.
Most of these folks have retained their jobs through tsunamic tides of layoffs for one reason: they work relatively cheap. And like the management who runs the agencies, they all live for one thing: approval from their superiors, their peers and their clients. And approval means they get to keep making payments on their lake houses, boats, and McMansions.
No, we can't really blame the copywriters and art directors when we see a TV spot that makes us scream, curse, throw food or, more often, just say "huh?" Instead, the blame must be placed further down the sticky birth canal of advertising, with the creative directors, agency heads and clients who approve the ideas and misguided production.
So, we're forced to ask, who the hell approved the use of "London Calling," the Clash's vitriol-fueled, ur-punk rant about a desolate, post-apocalyptic England where "London is drowning" in a meltdown-swollen Thames, to promote Jaguar Cars and the giveaway of a trip to that very same (we must assume, undrowned) city?
Who the Hell approved Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" for Royal Caribbean Cruises? Maybe no one bothered to listen to the whole song: especially the lyrics about "liquor and drugs" and doing "a little striptease." I like to imagine that they actually filmed the scenes that illustrated those lyrics -- wild, decadent debauchery aboard a floating sin palace -- but had to leave them on the editing room floor in favor of shots of healthy-looking families swimming with stingrays and chowing down on lobsters the size of Harley-Davidsons.
Even more bizarre is the use of certain songs in the pharmaceutical category. Both Schering-Plough's Claritin and Merck's Vioxx are running commercials scored with insipid top-40 songs from the mid-1970's; "The Rain, The Park and Other Things" (more commonly, but wrongly, known as "I Love The Flower Girl") by the Cowsills, and "It's A Beautiful Morning" by the Young Rascals (actually, I think they were just The Rascals when this tune was released).
Why? Think about it. Can't you just visualize the meeting? Jill, the 26-year-old Associate Account Planner in the Chevignon-Humphrey glasses and Prada knockoffs is wowing the clients with a PowerPoint presentation that illustrates how baby-boomers in their mid-forties who are beginning to suffer with allergies are nostalgic for their teenage years...back when they were young and carefree and could breathe worth a damn. And so, the link between 30-year-old, candy-coated pop music and post-nasal drainage is indissolubly forged. Of course, this reasoning is as spurious as that of the man who covers the floor with newspapers "to keep the elephants away." But no matter. The writers and art directors will march forth from that meeting to create advertising based on this sweeping insight; the clients will feel brilliant for understanding the bizarre connection and we'll all furrow our brows over it during the commercial breaks in the Today show.