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Bob Dylan’s fans
are upset. They haven’t been this exercised since they booed the former
Robert Zimmerman off the stage at Newport in 1965 because he had the gall to
show up with an electric guitar. But this time, they’re not mad at Bob.
They’re furious at the Bank of Montreal for launching its mbanx campaign
with a version of Bob’s forgotten chestnut, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
The campaign’s been greeted with a wheezy howl of betrayal from the refugees
of the Love Generation, as if to prove that a position in middle management
is not at odds with purity, grooviness and freaky naiveté.
Here’s a news
flash, Maynard G. Krebs: Music is product. The crowning of Bob Dylan as
“voice of a generation” didn’t come from the streets, folk-music scholars or
campus radicals. It came from the marketing folks at Columbia Records. Any
artist has to sign off on having his or her music used for any purpose. The
Beastie Boys wanted to use a line from Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”
as a sample on their 1992 album, Check Your Head. They had to get
Bob’s permission. Bob said sure. Bob already okayed “Times” for a commercial
for a U.S. accounting firm three years ago, after reacquiring the rights in
1991. Pop music’s distributors see it as product. Despite public claims to
the contrary, some practitioners do, too.
Microsoft wanted to
launch Windows 95 with an R.E.M. tune, “The End of the World As We Know It.”
Michael Stipe said no; Microsoft had to settle for the Stones’, “Start Me
Up.” True to their generational imperative, Mick and Keith tripped over
themselves rushing to sell out as fast as possible. . . because they’re not
rich enough, see? Bob gets a little more mileage out of one of his earlier,
lesser efforts and it’s a big problem. How come nobody popped a rivet when
Nike resurrected The Beatles’ “Revolution” 10 years ago as a jingle in a
commercial for tennis shoes?
It’s just one of
the many baffling conundrums that lurk at the nexus where music – even
self-righteous, quaint folk songs like “The Times They Are A-Changin’” –
meets selling.
But the mbanx spot
works. And it answers the question of what the Bank of Montreal was planning
to do to top its forlorn “urban Okies” campaign; you know, the Walker
Evans/Dorothea Lange-style shots of mopey, downsized Joads holding up
placards wondering about their futures. This new spot is a logical
progression. Now we’ve got a song by Dylan, who always made it clear he
wanted to be Woody Guthrie, folksong laureate of the Great Depression, when
he grew up. It’s consistent, with a nice “new depression” continuity to it.
Others have done worse.
Rock’n’roll’s
backfire potential as an element of marketing was put into razor-sharp focus
with the last of those summertime “big-famous-band-in-a-dinky-club” Molson
promotions. Somehow, rumors led fans in Toronto to think they were going to
see Pearl Jam in late August. Instead, they got the “fat and forty” Sex
Pistols and were greatly unamused. The band cut short its set after a lot of
peeved heckling.
It’s no worse a
strategy than other Molson campaigns, like the one that tries to make your
beer brand a matter of national identity (“I am . . .” drunk? DWI? full of
wicked gas? using a fake ID? “. . . Canadian.” Huh?), or personal integrity
(“Ex says it all.” Yeah – unfortunately what it says is, “I’m dumb, lazy,
mean, drunk and, perversely enough, proud of that”). They do get points for
employing Toronto band Raggadeath’s “One Life” in their “I Am Snowboarding”
spot.
Others have shown
that using rock’n’roll to sell your product can work well. Weiden &
Kennedy’s work for NIKE is smart about music and music people. Its
“Revolution” spot featuring John McEnroe’s tennis tantrums was eye- and
ear-catching and groundbreaking. Similarly, employing Red Hot Chili Peppers
Anthony Kiedis and Flea to sell tennis shoes also flew: the bouncy urgency
of the Peps’ punk-funk gumbo lined up nicely with the amped-up, relentless
athleticism the target demo liked to believe typified its tennis playing.
This year, they’re doing it again with a cover of Iggy Pop’s incendiary
“Search & Destroy.” Matching a high-speed scorched-earth anthem to scenes of
athletic brutality works. Toyota’s RAV4 spots using Todd Rundgren’s “Bang
The Drum All Day” to equate abandonment of worldly cares with driving
Japanese sport-utes gets it message across effectively.
Conversely,
Toyota’s use of Van Morrison’s “Bright Side of the Road” to push Camrys
doesn’t work – too literal. Sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,
guys, but the song is a metaphor; Van wasn’t thinking about traffic when he
wrote it.
There are a couple
of constants at work in this seemingly eclectic round-up. The spots that
don’t work use rock’n’roll as a single lumpy source-heap for rebel cachet
and hipster credentials. That approach hasn’t made sense for about 30 years,
if it ever did. The spots that fly find a song that communicates the central
message, regardless of whether it’s Dvorak, Danzig or Dylan. I know it’s
only rock’n’roll. But it’s product. |
