FBI MEMOS
Memos from the ad agency

When a big ad campaign get the rights to popular music, the song is usually about 20 - 30 years old, I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, it’s cheaper. People who wrote songs that were big in the 70s that are irrelevant now have boat payments and college tuition for kids to worry about, and they are more likely to take what they can get for the songs they wrote that aren’t getting much airplay anymore. Also, people in charge of the campaigns — creative directors, chief marketing officers — are of the age where music from 20 - 30 years ago is right in their wheelhouse of fond memories.

Using this music is fine, providing the demographic you are going after is folks 35 - 55 or so. But you have to keep up with what the “kids” are into, and, more importantly, what the kids are not into. I was hanging out with a 27-year-old who works at a record company this weekend. Out of her mouth came this sentence, “I HATE the Eagles.” (She actually added a colorful descriptor between “the” and “Eagles” which I won’t repeat here.)

It never occurred to me that people could HATE the Eagles. Then I got to thinking about it. John Mellencamp to her is what Bill Haley and the Comets are to me. And Creedence to her is what Duke Ellington is to me. That point was further driven home with this snippet of conversation.

Me: “So, you were born under Reagan.”
Her: “Yep.”
Me: “Have you ever heard of Kennedy?”
Her: “I think I read about him in an Ancient History book.”

Ouch.

We have never licensed music for a commercial here at FBI. (Not that we haven’t tried on occasion, but when we have, budgets constraints got in the way.) So when music is needed, we record original music. Which, for us, is no big deal, after all, you can’t swing a dead cat in Nashville without hitting 10 musicians and 5 studios. But licensing music can be tricky, and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Remember, not everyone has fond memories of making out with a high school sweetheart to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

(This is the blog for Frank/Best International, a full service advertising, PR and multi media agency in Nashville, Tennessee where we make it a point to stay “hip with the kids.”)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 9:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.