A Sucker for blatant commercialism

Attention, people who work in advertising: you win. I am a total sucker for advertising. I love creativity in advertising, and a good, funny, original ad will grab my attention, and, I'll admit, probably make me more likely to buy the product being advertised. But most of all, I'm drawn in by music in commercials. In the past, I've bought CDs or individual songs because of songs I've heard in commercials for M&Ms, Vodafone, Levis (at least twice), Polaroid, Magnum ice cream bars, and others that I have forgotten. Volkswagen definitely wins the prize--I was one of many people who first heard Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" in a particularly memorable commercial, and I recently bought the new Wilco album after humming along to numerous VW ads. While I feel a little ashamed that I heard these songs by watching TV and not by seeing the bands in some live show, or hearing them on some independent radio station, or from a particularly culturally-savvy friend, I'll take good music and enjoy it no matter what the medium of discovery. However, I do feel a little saddened by the fact that popular artists so frequently pair up with companies in these displays of mutually-beneficial commercialism...not because the artists have "sold out" but because this kind of thing is no longer considered selling out at all but a normal part of our culture.

Anyway, the latest song to make its mark on me is Feist's ridiculously catchy "1 2 3 4", featured in the commercials for the new iPod nano. I'm on a zero-spending budget this month, but at some point when I feel a little more financially sound I'll pick up that CD. The video is really fun, too. If you haven't seen it, here it is. It obviously doesn't take much to amuse me, but I love the whole people-appearing-or-disappearing-from-behind-other-people trick, done well in this video. But if you want to see a really fun example, check out this creepy and odd example from British singer Bat for Lashes: