Ads Boost Songs as Firms Get in Tune With Viewers

Prior to hitching a ride in a popular Mitsubishi Motors Corp. commercial, “Start the Commotion” was a little-known song from an unknown band.

But last month, the Wiseguys’ catchy blend of horns, techno-pop and Louie-Louie bass lines peaked at No. 31 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. The National Football League is using it as the soundtrack for pregame highlight clips broadcast on stadium Jumbotron screens. And Ben Stiller added the song to the soundtrack of the movie “Zoolander,” a comedy that opened Friday.

Whether it’s the late Nick Drake singing for Volkswagen of America Inc., They Might Be Giants lending a song to Chrysler or Iggy Pop drumming up business for Mitsubishi Motors Corp., commercials increasingly are doubling as powerful promotional tools for bands and labels whose music might otherwise be ignored.

“Artists who aren’t selling millions of albums aren’t able to purchase national television commercial time,” said Rob Seidenberg, president of Mammoth Records, the Wiseguys’ label. “So the exposure in a commercial obviously is immense. Viewership of network television is in the millions, even for a poorly rated show.”

Despite the growing financial value of a commercial placement, how songs get into spots remains more art than science.

The Wiseguys--in reality, a single disc jockey named Touche--ended up in the driver’s seat because creative types at Deutsch Advertising had the band’s little-known 1999 CD, “The Antidote,” in their personal collections. Chrysler dropped Swedish DJ Papa Dee into an upcoming commercial after a recommendation from Amy Rosen, a Santa Monica-based music consultant who places songs in movies and television shows.

“Nobody knows Papa Dee or They Might Be Giants from MTV or the radio,” Rosen said. “So this is as good as it gets. These two artists have really hit the jackpot.”

The process of matching up-and-coming bands with commercials, however, is growing more sophisticated as “record companies and publishers recognize the potential revenue stream,” Rosen said. “It’s not just the [usage] fees, it’s also what happens from an artist-development sense.”

Firms Choose Music That Sets Proper Tone

Some unknown tunes still go for a song, but industry executives said deals involving major labels or up-and-coming artists regularly produce six-figure pay checks for bands and labels taking the commercial plunge.

“The money stands somewhere between a nice payday and spending the rest of your life on easy street,” said Jamie Kitman, whose Palisades, N.Y.-based Hornblow Group represents the Violent Femmes and They Might Be Giants, which had an album release party in New York at midnight on Sept. 11.

But Kitman worries that powerful forces in the music industry will squeeze creativity out of the matchmaking process.

“All it takes is one stupid multinational record label going to an advertising agency and saying, ‘We’ll pay you to use our song in our commercial,’ ” Kitman said. “That would be a very dark day in music history, but it seems to be the inevitable next step. They pay to get their songs on radio, so why not on TV?”

Placing popular music into commercials isn’t a new idea. General Motors Corp. licensed “Light My Fire” by the Doors for a 1970 Buick commercial, the Beatles’ “Revolution” found its say into a Nike Inc. spot and the Rolling Stones licensed “Start Me Up” to Microsoft Corp. for the Windows 95 advertising campaign.

Familiar tunes continue to find their way into popular commercials--including Louis Prima’s “Jump, Jive an’ Wail” in a Gap Inc. ad and Levi Strauss & Co.’s use of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.” But car companies targeting 20-something consumers increasingly are likely to hook up with lesser-known songs and bands.

Chrysler for example, initially considered such staples as “Love Train” by the OJs and “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers to drive the soundtrack of the “Drive = Love” advertising campaign.

The car company instead features Canada’s Barenaked Ladies, Sweden’s Papa Dee, European band Blur and a techno-pop remake of a Nat King Cole ballad.

“We’re trying to change the whole tonality for Chrysler,” said Jeff Bell, DaimlerChrysler’s vice president of marketing. “So we made a conscious decision to use music that stretches the creative process and reaches a different audience.”

Mitsubishi also has opted for the less-traveled musical path since using Iggy Pop to help introduce its Galante in 1999.

“Other companies might borrow a top song, music that people are familiar with and attach it to their vehicle,” said Frances Oda, Mitsubishi’s vice president of marketing. “But we’re not trying to borrow from the recording artist to add something to our cars . . . we choose the music that’s a good match and bring the cars to life that way.”

As the stakes rise, record labels and bands no longer are content to rely upon serendipity for placement.

They Might Be Giants, a band that has earned critical success, has asked DaimlerChrysler for permission to place stickers on their new album noting that one song is featured in the new Chrysler spot. Some of the Chrysler spots were delayed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, when television networks shifted into around-the-clock news coverage.

Universal Music Publishing Group Inc. recently sent advertising agencies’ creative staffs a compilation disc titled “The Adrenaline Series,” which is filled with potential commercial cuts from such bands and artists as Apollo Four-Forty, Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers.

Band managers and labels are shipping MP3 tracks and CDs to music consultants who earn a living finding homes for songs in movies, television shows and, increasingly, commercials.

Commercial Songs Have Selling Power

There’s evidence that consumers like what they hear. Major retail chains report a steady stream of customers who want to buy music they’ve heard in commercials. Volkswagen has sold 6,000 copies of a CD with songs from its commercials, and UTV Records has sold nearly 50,000 copies of “As Seen on TV: Songs From Commercials.”

“You really do get wide distribution,” said Danny Benair, owner of Natural Energy Lab, a Los Angeles-based music marketing company. “We represent the woman who sings in a Verizon commercial that’s played so much that her mother called to say ‘Honey, we love you very much--but if we hear that song one more time, we’re going to kill you.”

Commercial soundtracks have proved powerful enough to revive the sales of Drake, a rocker who died in the 1970s after a brief and largely unsuccessful career.

Most important, disc jockeys in the rapidly consolidating radio industry are being forced to open their play lists to accommodate songs featured in popular commercials.

“It shows the power of what television can do for all the elements of a commercial, including the music,” said Tom Eaton, director of music for advertising, motion pictures and television at Universal Music Publishing Group.

It’s unlikely, though, that many commercial soundtracks will enjoy the success enjoyed by the Wiseguys. Mammoth cut a new video for the song that includes scenes from Stiller’s new movie, and the Starburst candy line grabbed a second Wiseguys tune for its new commercial. What’s more, “Start the Commotion” “has the potential to replace ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ as the league’s anthem or rallying cry,” said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, referring to the tune by Baha Men.

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Road Music

Music is so much a part of commercials that AdCritic.com, a Web site that tracks commercials, includes a listing of song titles that have appeared in TV spots. A sampling of auto ad tracks from nearly 270 selections listed in various categories:

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Advertiser Performer Title Acura Arling & Cameron Voulez-Vous Audi Bulgarian Women’s Choir Polegnala E Toudora Honda Danny Kaye I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts Infiniti Annie Lennox Why Jaguar Propellerheads History Repeating Lexus Chris Isaak Baby Did a Bad Thing Lincoln Rob D Clubbed to Death II Mitsubishi Spacehog In the Meantime Nissan Smash Mouth Then The Morning Comes Oldsmobile Fatboy Slim Right Here, Right Now Saturn Madness One Step Beyond Volkswagen Pitchshifter Subject to Status Volvo Dmitri From Paris Une Very Stylish Fille

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Source: AdCritic.com