In recent years commercials have demonstrated their power to fuel musicians’ popularity. Dirty Vegas is an example of that. Once its song “Days Go By” was featured in a Mitsubishi Eclipse spot, the act’s popularity in the States increased greatly. Spot projects are also enticing well-known artists like Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. She wrote “Hello Tomorrow” for the eponymous adidas spot and the song found a home in the marketplace on iTunes. This mutually beneficial relationship isn’t new–it’s been five years since Sting appeared in a Jaguar commercial to boost his album sales. However, the evolution of popular music in advertising continues as evidenced by the recent venture between bicoastal music company JSM and BBDO Detroit. The companies have united to market the full-length version of a song featured in the spots “Bikers” and “Dragster” for the launch of Daimler Chrysler’s new Dodge Charger.
The song “Unleashed” is a mash-up, a combination of 1970s rock band Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog,” which the band re-recorded for the project, and “Live & Loose” from Chris Classic, an emerging hip-hop artist on JSM Records. A mash-up involves taking two pieces of disparate music and laying them on top of each other. In the process, one must maintain awareness of key, tempo and phrasing to ensure the essence of each song is revealed. In this case, the endeavor has reached a new level with the production of a music video, for which JSM and BBDO split the cost.
KEEPING IT ALIVE
Since everyone involved in creating “Unleashed” liked it so much, there had been some initial talk of releasing a full-length version of the track, executive producer Michael Menlo of BBDO Detroit said. But once positive feedback for the song began to stream into JSM and Dodge, BBDO and the music house quickly decided to move on the idea.
“We got all of this interest and Mike and I both caught each other on the phone saying, ‘We’ve got to do something about this, we actually have demand without supply right now,’ which is a beautiful thing to be involved with,” said Joel Simon, president/executive producer/composer at JSM. (Nazareth, Classic and Ali Dee are also credited as composers on the new song. Dee and Alana De Fonseca were producers.)
Then, when the agency was discussing the media buy for the launch of the Charger with Yahoo!, the idea of putting a video on the site arose, Menlo related. Both the song and video are up on Yahoo! Music. “Live & Loose” is also up on the site.
“[BBDO] was totally into [the video], the client was very into it and the people fell in love with the track,” Menlo said. “The consumer, or public, response kind of confirmed what we had felt, that this could live beyond just the broadcast world.”
Classic stars in the video for which Menlo and Simon were executive producers/creative directors. Eric Heimbold of Plum Productions, Santa Monica, Calif., directed, with Thom Tyson as executive producer.
“We realized that we were trying to do a very specific product placement but we didn’t want to lose sight of the fact that this is not a commercial — so initially there was a lot of car footage in the treatment, and as it happens, to the credit of BBDO and Daimler, it’s one of those things we discussed amongst ourselves, meaning Mike and I, saying and understanding what we are trying to do here–we’re trying to sell records now, we’re not just trying to sell cars. If we sell the records, we’re going to sell cars,” Simon said. “– We cannot fool them. The audience that we are appealing to through this music video is more savvy than everybody gives anybody credit for. These people, if they think that you are trying to sell them something other than the track, they’re going to turn it off and it could have a very detrimental effect.
“An ad is an ad,” he continued. “We all know that, but the minute you blow it out to a three minute and fifteen second music video, it has to be legitimate to what the expectation is for a music video for this genre of music.”
For two days, Heimbold shot at JSM in Manhattan and then spent one day filming outdoor footage under an overpass at 135th and Riverside Drive. The images include party scenes and scantily clad women washing a red Charger as Classic raps in the foreground.
“We didn’t want to go, certainly, as far as many of the hip-hop videos that you see with a lot of skin, but we thought the carwash scene was a little tongue in cheek with regard to the [genre],” Menlo related. Simon expects the video to air on Fuse at the end of October and on MTV in November.
TWO TO ONE
On the decision to combine two full songs into one, Menlo explained that the new Charger is quite different from the original version produced from ’66-’78 because of its technological advancements and design. Therefore, neither the agency nor the client Daimler Chrysler wanted to lean on the heritage of the car. But the idea of taking a track from the era of the original muscle car and putting it with a yet-to-be-released hip-hop song suited the spot.
“[‘Hair of the Dog’] was perfect because it embodied the prowess of Dodge with a little muscle, a little edge to it,” Menlo said. “But, we could never use it in marketing particularly because of the lyrics, because the chorus is ‘Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch.’ “
Classic, the nephew of Run-D.M.C.’s Reverend Run, had been working on his album featuring “Live & Loose” prior to this project and the clean lyrics in the song were a draw for the agency. The combination of lyrics from Nazareth’s tune and the hip-hop track results in lines like, “Now you’re messing with–Everybody get live and loose.” Classic’s album, which will include “Unleashed,” is scheduled for release at the end of October. An upcoming album from Nazareth is also expected to feature the mash-up. At press time, Simon said the song should appear on iTunes around the middle of October as well as on outlets like Rhapsody.com and Napster.com.
“We’ve been very involved with mash-ups, mash-ups are a pretty big deal right now in the record world,” Simon said. “So their idea was, why don’t we take a song that was happening back when we first launched the Charger in the early 70s and then why don’t we mash it with something that’s contemporary right now and create a new master, a new piece of music that accommodates both of these tracks, one from the 70s and one from 2005.”
On his overall view of the project and the future of music in spots, Simon said, “[I’m] of the belief that if the agencies are spending money via their clients to move their product or service and just as a serendipitous event, they helped create a career or a following for an artist or song, whatever the case may be, I believe that they are entitled to participate in the success of the artist that they helped create.” He is aware of the fact that Daimler Chrysler has enjoyed success but added, “I don’t know of any public or private company that wouldn’t mind another column on their income statement.”