The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising 9780190691240, 9780190691271, 0190691247

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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

M USIC A N D A DV E RT ISI NG

The Oxford Handbook of

MUSIC AND ADVERTISING Edited by

JAMES DEAVILLE, SIU-LAN TAN, and

RON RODMAN

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Deaville, James Andrew, 1954– editor. | Tan, Siu-Lan, 1963– editor. | Rodman, Ron W. (Ronald Wayne) editor. Title: The Oxford handbook of music and advertising / edited by James Deaville, Siu-Lan Tan, and Ronald Rodman. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020036741 (print) | LCCN 2020036742 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190691240 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190691271 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Music in advertising. | Advertising—Music. | Advertising—Psychological aspects. | Music in advertising—History. | Advertising—History. Classification: LCC ML3790.O98 2021 (print) | LCC ML3790 (ebook) | DDC 781.5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036741 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036742 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables About the Contributors Preface

xi xv xvii xxvii

Introduction: Music and Advertising: Production, Text, and Reception Siu-Lan Tan, Ron Rodman, and James Deaville

1

PA RT   I   P RODU C T ION Edited by James Deaville Production: Music and the Creation of the Advertising Text James Deaville Music and Advertising Before 1900 1. Advertising the English Glee to Women, 1750–1800 Bethany Blake 2. Advertising Millie-Christine, or the Making of the Two-Headed Nightingale Remi Chiu and Dana Gorzelany-Mostak Selection and Marketing of Music 3. Fitting Tunes: Selecting Music for Television Commercials Peter Kupfer 4. Blank Music: Marketing Virtual Instruments James Buhler 5. Contextual Marketing: Analyzing Networks of Musical Context in the Digital Age Willem Strank

25

34

51

72 93

119

vi   contents

Music for Advertising and Labor 6. Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising: Music Unions and J. Walter Thompson Jessica Getman 7. Jazz Works: Music, Advertising, and Labor in Toronto, 1955–1980 Mark Laver Branding Through Music 8. Designing Identities: Sound and Music in Automotive and Appliance Branding Ken McLeod

142 163

186

9. Music Supervision and Branding in an Era of “Convergent Advertising”203 Tim J. Anderson Advertising Corporate Style Through Music 10. The Conquest of Kool: Jazz, Tobacco, and the Rise of Market Segmentation222 Dale Chapman 11. Loathsome Deutschtum? Wagner and Advertising as Propaganda in American Industrial Films of the 1930s and 1940s Julie Hubbert

240

12. About a B(r)and: Geffen Records, Universal, and the (Posthumous) Packaging of Nirvana Laurel Westrup

265

Advertising Audiovisual Entertainment 13. Music and the Formal Structures of Contemporary Action Film Trailers Catrin Watts

286

14. Creating Big-Screen Audiences through Small-Screen Appeals: Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound James Deaville

303

15. “Have You Played Atari Today?” Music and Audience in an Early Video Game Advertising Campaign William Gibbons

322

contents   vii

Selling on Radio 16. “All those Homes Beyond the Microphone”: Advertising, Domesticity, and Early Country Music Variety Programs in the 1930s David VanderHamm 17. Music and Institutional Advertising: Consolidated Edison and Echoes of New York Rika Asai

336

352

PA RT I I   T E X T Edited by Ron Rodman Text: Analytic and Historical Perspectives on Music and Advertising Ron Rodman Approaches to Analyzing Music and Advertising 18. Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In: From Cultural Goods to Commodities Timothy D. Taylor

373

378

19. The Sounds of Coca-Cola: On “Cola-nization” of Sound and Music Nicolai Jørgensgaard Graakjær

397

20. The Persistence of Memory: Structural Functions of Music in Commercial Jingles Ron Rodman

414

Musical Genres and Advertising 21. Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out” Bethany Klein

436

22. “Search and Destroy”: Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture Jay Beck

452

23. Selling “David Bowie”: Commercial Appearances and the Developing Bowie Star Image Katherine Reed

474

viii   contents

24. Medievalism goes Commercial: The Epic as Register in Contemporary Media David Clem

488

25. “Pushin’ it”: Sounding Difference Through Humor in Geico’s 2014 Salt-N-Pepa Spot Joanna Love

505

Music and Advertising Genres 26. “Once you Hear this, Act Fast”: Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements, 1950–1970 Reba A. Wissner 27. “Everything is not Awesome”: Playful Adaptation and the Aurality of Ecoconscious Media in Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” Campaign Kate Galloway 28. Exploiting the Frontier: Advertising and the Western Soundtrack Mariana Whitmer

524

541 567

Music and Political Ads 29. Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election590 Lisa Scoggin 30. As Heard on . . . : The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads Justin Patch

604

31. From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing: How U.S. Campaign Ads Use Music to Evoke Four Basic and Two Compound Emotions Paul Christiansen

625

PA RT I I I   R E C E P T ION Edited by Siu-Lan Tan Reception: Empirical Approaches to the Study of Music and Advertising Siu-Lan Tan Frameworks: Models, Mechanisms, and Methods 32. Toward a Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music Lincoln G. Craton

645

652

contents   ix

33. Hearing, Remembering, and Branding: Setting Strategic Directions for Sonic Branding Research Vijaykumar Krishnan and James J. Kellaris

674

34. Methods for Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising and Brand Communication Daniel Müllensiefen

697

Cognitive and Affective Responses to Music and Advertising 35. Commercial Sound: A Review of the Effects of Popular Music in Radio and Television Advertising David Allan

722

36. Music with the Message in Mind: Cognitive Responses to Background Music in Advertising Cynthia Fraser

742

37. Musical Congruity in Advertising: Established and Emerging Themes Steve Oakes and Morteza Abolhasani

757

38. Audiovisual Advertising: Effects of Music on Psychological Transportation and Narrative Persuasion Madelijn Strick

775

39. Music as Advertisement: Capturing and Sustaining Attention in the Attention Economy Era Hubert Léveillé Gauvin

794

Music and Sound in (Multi)Sensory Marketing 40. Sensory Marketing in Advertising and Service Environments Bertil Hultén

818

41. Sound in the Context of (Multi)sensory Marketing Klemens Knoeferle and Charles Spence

833

A P P E N DI X Edited By Ron Rodman The Ad Creation Process: From Production to Reception Lawrence Harte Index

859 879

List of Figures

0.1 A typology of commercials.

8

2.1 Handbill on yellow paper advertising Millie Christine, the “TwoHeaded Nightingale,” and Harvey’s Midges (smallest people in the world: Princess Lottie, Prince Midge, Miss Jennie Worgen, and General Tot), appearing at the Piccadilly Hall, London, February 17, 1885, Wellcome Library, London (EPH499b).

56

2.2 Millie Christine Carte de visite, taken by W. L. Germon at “Temple of Art” atelier, Philadelphia (1871), British Library (shelf mark 10,882.g.52).

57

2.3 “The Whip-poor-will’s Song,” refrain.

59

2.4 African Twins United by Nature, Advertising Circular (image only), January 19, 1857, Private Collections PC.266.1 Folder 4, State Archives of North Carolina of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina.

60

3.1 The journey of a song in advertising. Created by Jordan Passman/Score a Score (Jordan Passman/Jake Weinreb)/Tangent Agency.

85

4.1 Promotional image for Orbit (Wide Blue Sound).

97

4.2 Promotional images for (a) Quantum Leap Storm Drum 2 (East West); (b) Damage (Heavyocity); (c) Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble (Soundiron); and (d) Drums of War (Cinesamples).

101

4.3 Promotional image for Jaeger (Audio Imperia).

104

4.4 Promotional image for Hans Zimmer Strings (Spitfire Audio).

107

4.5 Promotional image for Albion V: Tundra (Spitfire Audio).

110

4.6 Promotional image for Natural Forces (Heavyocity).

112

4.7 Promotional image for Momentum (Impact Soundworks).

115

5.1 Prosumer recontextualization: Filtr Sweden’s “Old School Hip Hop” playlist on Spotify.

126

5.2 Hypertextuality and vertical integration of intertexts: Luciano Berio and Olivier Messiaen on YouTube.

128

5.3 Paratextual information and alternate interpretations: Miles Davis and Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez on YouTube.

129

5.4 Paratextual and intertextual relations via segment tagging: Counting Crows’ “Anna Begins” on YouTube.

129

xii   list of figures 5.5 Reviews, expressive markers, and micro-paratexts: Mahler’s Third Symphony on SoundCloud.

131

5.6 Randomization, de-medialization, and deconstruction of categories: The StumbleAudio interface.

133

5.7 Contextual substitutes and intermedial intertexts: User carmenboutot’s 8tracks playlist “A Clear Midnight.”

134

5.8 Prosumer multimodal recontextualization: User ellejolene’s 8tracks playlist “Jazz & Books.”

139

11.1 Master Hands (5:50). Workers smelting ore to be poured into industrial casts (first instance of the Siegfried quotation).

252

11.2 Master Hands (13:30). Workers use industrial machines to polish engine coils (second instance of the Siegfried quotation).

253

11.3 Master Hands (26:02). Final assemblage of the automobile begins (third instance of the Siegfried quotation).

254

11.4 Master Hands (29:47). A car nears completion (final instance of the Siegfried quotation).

255

13.1 Chart showing average section lengths for the six trailer types identified in the corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

290

13.2 Examples of SSSL trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage.

292

13.3 Examples of SSLS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

293

13.4 Examples of SLLS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

294

13.5 Examples of MMMS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

295

13.6 Examples of LSMS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

296

13.7 Examples of LLS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

297

15.1 The “hook” of Atari’s television advertising campaign. Composer unknown, transcription by the author.

325

17.1 Edisoneer John T. King’s part for “Blue Skies,” used in Echoes, Episode No. 4. Accompanied by the radio orchestra, the performance by Consolidated Edison’s company chorus served as a form of institutional advertising. Credit: Josef Bonime Collection of Radio Music, Music Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

365

18.1 Victor advertisement of Enrico Caruso, 1921 (author’s collection).

385

list of figures    xiii 18.2 Victor advertisement, Caruso and others listening to a recording, 1914 (author’s collection).

386

20.1a Linear diagram of “See the U.S.A.” jingle, foreground.

422

20.1b Linear diagram of “See the U.S.A.” jingle, middleground.

422

20.1c Linear diagram of “See the U.S.A.” jingle, background.

423

20.2 Linear diagram of “Liberty Mutual” jingle.

426

20.3a Linear diagram of “Like a Good Neighbor” jingle, foreground.

428

20.3b Linear diagram of “Like a Good Neighbor” jingle, middleground.

428

20.3c Linear diagram of “Like a Good Neighbor” jingle, “hook.”

429

24.1 Conceptual integrated networks (CIN) showing the mapping of epic onto “O Fortuna.”

492

24.2 Venn diagram of overlapping registers.

502

25.1 Salt-N-Pepa help an unsuspecting man enter a building. Still from “Push It: It’s What You Do,” Geico, 2014.

511

25.2 A man reveals the punch line while mowing his lawn. Still from “Push It: It’s What You Do,” Geico, 2014.

513

26.1 “Duck and Cover” melody.

530

27.1a Scenes from the opening of “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” before the oil spill.

545

27.1b Scenes from “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” during the oil spill.

546

27.2 Stills from Greenpeace’s campaign videos.

552

28.1 “I dreamed I was . . . in my Maidenform bra.” (Used by permission of Hanesbrands, Inc.)

571

28.2 Accompaniment to “Herding Cats” (composer unknown).

577

28.3 Main title, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (excerpt, Ennio Morricone, composer).578 28.4 Accompaniment to “Outfit Showdown,” Gilt.com (composer unknown).

579

28.5 Melody from “The Ecstasy of Gold” from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (excerpt, Ennio Morricone, composer).

581

28.6 Drumbeat from Bandini remix of “The Ecstasy of Gold” (Morricone).

582

32.1 The original model of consumer response to advertising music (Lantos & Craton, 2012).

661

33.1 Examples of pitch-related independent variables for a sogo.

685

33.2 Sonic branding conceptual framework.

688

33.3 Sonic branding propagation outward from the sogo.

691

38.1 Mean narrative transportation for the negative and positive ad with moving or non-moving music (based on Strick et al., 2015, Experiment 1). The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the means.

784

xiv   list of figures 38.2 Percentage of participants who were willing to donate money (left panel) and participants’ mean willingness to pass on the video (right panel) when ads featured moving or non-moving music (based on Strick et al., 2015, Experiment 1). The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the means.

784

38.3 Mean inferences of manipulative intent when ads featured moving or non-moving music (based on Strick et al., 2015, Experiment 2). The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the means.

785

39.1 The attention economy model discussed by Goldhaber (1997), Davenport and Beck (2001), and others predicts that, as the disparity between available human attention and information content increases, so does the value of attention. In this visual representation, the scarcity-based increasing value of attention is represented by the darkening of the shaded area.

795

39.2 Proposed cognitive model of music listening choice behavior (MLCB) featuring a three-stage screening process. The last stage should be approximately three times the length of the first two stages combined but was spliced for space considerations (as indicated by the two oblique slashes). Although visually illustrated as three independent stages, the screening processes presented in the MLCB model are likely to temporally overlap with one another.

804

40.1 The firm, the five senses, and the individual.

819

40.2 There is increasing interest in the question of how music may shape shoppers’ perceptions of the myriad brands and products available to them, and more generally how music may influence shoppers’ cognitions, emotions, and behaviors (Creative Commons).

824

41.1 People’s average crispiness rating of potato crisps as a function of overall sound level (0 dB, −20 dB, −40 dB) and frequency manipulation (high frequencies attenuated, amplified, or unchanged). Error bars represent the between-participants standard errors of the means (Zampini & Spence, 2004; reprinted with permission from Wiley).

838

41.2 Coffee machine sound modulates consumers’ liking of coffee. The effect obtained irrespective of participants’ attention to the sound (manipulated through a sound rating task). Error bars represent 95% between-participant confidence intervals (Knoeferle et al., 2012).

839

41.3 Participants were 35 ms (ca. 3%) faster in finding a fictitious brand of detergent on the virtual shelf if a jingle that had been learned in three brand-jingle exposures was presented again during search (see Knoeferle et al., 2016).

847

A.1 Advertising media and campaign development process with music.

860

List of Tables

1.1 Madrigals Retitled as “Glees” in Warren’s Collection.38 2.1 Millie-Christine McKoy’s Known Repertoire.

67

15.1 Atari’s Multigenerational Commercial.

326

17.1 Echoes of New York, Episode No. 1, October 1, 1946, Outline.

356

18.1 Typical Investment by a Major Record Company in a Newly Signed Artist (IFPI, 2012, p. 11).

389

18.2 Layering of Texts in Musical Production (from O’Reilly, Larsen and Kubacki, 2013, p. 136).

391

19.1 Overview of the “Taste” Commercial for Coca-Cola (2015).

398

24.1 Sampling of uses of “O Fortuna” in multimedia.

493

25.1 “Push It,” sampled lyrics.

509

29.1 Dewey train.

595

29.2 The Politician’s Trap.

601

34.1 Adjectives of the Short Version of the Semantic Differential Tool for Assessing Music-Brand Fit (as Suggested by Baker, Trahan, & Müllensiefen, 2016).

703

35.1 A Summary of Some Relevant Theories and Models in Music and Advertising.

724

35.2 Overview of Some Relevant Effectual Research Involving Advertising and Popular Music.

729

39.1 Overview of Research Literature Discussed in Chapter, Listed by Topics Relevant to Attention Economy.

808

About the Contributors

Morteza Abolhasani is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Open University Business School in the United Kingdom. His main research interests concern consumer behavior and consumer psychology, exploring the underlying processes determining consumers’ emotional, mental, and behavioral responses and choices. Particularly, he is interested in exploring the effects of music used in advertising and service/retail environments on consumers’ affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses. David Allan is Professor of Marketing at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Allan has a BA in Communications from American University, an MBA in Marketing from Saint Joseph’s University, and a PhD in Mass Media and Communications from Temple University, and spent over 20 years in radio before academia. He has published numerous articles (Journal of Advertising Research (JAR), Journal of Business Research (JBR), Journal of Consumer Research (JCR)) and books (This Note’s for You and Hit Play), and has been quoted in Billboard, NYT, Reuters, and WSJ. Tim J. Anderson teaches in the Department of Communication and Theater Arts at Old Dominion University, Virginia. His research focuses on popular music with a specific focus on those cultural and industrial forms and systems that “make music popular.” In 2006 he published the study Making Easy Listening: Material Culture and Postwar American Recording with the University of Minnesota Press, and in 2014 the monograph Popular Music in a Digital Music Economy: Practices, Problems and Solutions for an Emerging Service Industry with Routledge. He has contributed chapters for numerous collections and has published articles in a variety of academic journals. Rika Asai teaches music history and culture at the University of Pittsburgh. She contributed a chapter, “ ‘From Operatic Pomp to a Benny Goodman Stomp!’: The National Biscuit Company and Let’s Dance,” to Music and the Broadcast Experience: Performance, Production, and Audiences, an anthology edited by Christina Baade and James Deaville (Oxford University Press, 2016). She has presented her work at regional and national American Musicological Society (AMS) conferences, as well as international conferences including “Music, Festivals, Heritage,” in Siena, Italy, and “A ‘Musical League of Nations’?: Music Institutions and the Politics of Internationalism,” in London, England.

xviii   about the contributors Jay Beck is Associate Professor and Chair of Cinema and Media Studies at Carleton College (United States) and the author of Designing Sound: Technology and Sound Aesthetics in 70s American Cinema. He coedited Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound and is American coeditor of the journal Music, Sound, and the Moving Image. Bethany Blake (née Cencer) is a Lecturer in Music History and Literature at the University of Vermont, where she also teaches applied piano. Her work looks at amateur music activities as a site for expressing and contesting British identity during the Georgian era. She has used the 20th-century concept of middlebrow culture to offer an alternative perspective on amateur vocal genres during the long 18th century. Bethany also works on performance practice and ritual, focusing on music’s materialities and earlier performance and listening cultures. James Buhler is a professor of music theory at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses on music and film sound. He is author of Theories of the Soundtrack (Oxford University Press, 2019) and coauthor of Hearing the Movies (Oxford University Press, 2016, second edition). He is coeditor of three anthologies: Music and Cinema (Wesleyan University Press, 1999), Voicing the Cinema (University of Illinois Press, 2020), and Music in the Action Film: Sounds Like Action! (Routledge, forthcoming). He has published widely in anthologies and journals, especially on the topic of music in soundtracks. Dale Chapman is Associate Professor of Music at Bates College, Maine, where he also teaches in the programs in Africana and American Studies. His research examines jazz, African American music, and contemporary popular music as cultural practice, with a particular focus on the context of the relationship between music and market logics and institutions. His book, The Jazz Bubble: Neoclassical Jazz in Neoliberal Culture, was published with the University of California Press in 2018. His work has appeared in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the Journal of the Society for American Music, and Popular Music, among others. Remi Chiu is a musicologist and Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Loyola University Maryland. He received his PhD from McGill University, and specializes in the history of music and medicine, especially of the early modern period. He is the author of Plague and Music in the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and editor of Songs in Times of Plague (A-R Editions, 2020), a companion volume of Renaissance vocal polyphony. He has also contributed articles and book chapters to leading publications in musicology and has given peer-reviewed and invited presentations at national and international musicological conferences. Paul Christiansen is Associate Professor of Music at Seton Hall University. Focused on Czech music, Haydn, popular music, and music in political advertisements, his work has appeared in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Journal of

about the contributors   xix Musicological Research, Notes, ECHO: A Music-Centered Journal, Journal of the Society for American Music, and other scholarly journals. His book Orchestrating Public Opinion: How Music Persuades in Television Political Ads for US Presidential Campaigns, 1952–2016 was published in 2018 by Amsterdam University Press. David Clem teaches courses in music history and film music as an Instructor of Music History at the Greatbatch School of Music, Houghton College, in Houghton, New York. He has published work on the role of music in filmic adaptations and on applications of register theory to the analysis of film and television music. His research interests include intersections between philosophy, cultural criticism, and musical multimedia. His research also focuses on hermeneutic approaches to analyzing film and opera, and the study of pre-existing music that is recontextualized in multimedia settings. Lincoln  G.  Craton is Professor of Psychology at Stonehill College, Massachusetts, where he teaches Psychological Science, Research Methods, and Advanced Research courses. His music cognition research explores the musical qualia evoked by chords and tones, the biological basis of chord perception, and the diverse mechanisms underlying musical response more generally. Along with colleague Geoff Lantos, he has developed an influential model of the factors that shape consumer response to advertising music, highlighting the multifaceted nature of musical response. James Deaville is Professor of Music in the School for Studies in Art & Culture at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He edited Music in Television: Channels of Listening (Routledge, 2010) and with Christina Baade coedited Music and the Broadcast Experience: Performance, Production, and Audiences (Oxford University Press, 2016). He has published articles on music and sound in trailers in Music, Sound and the Moving Image (2014) and in the Journal of Fandom Studies (2016), and is author of the essay “Trailer or Leader? The Role of Music and Sound in Cinematic Previews” in the Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound (2017). He is currently publishing the article “The Trailer Ear” in The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening, edited by Carlo Cenciarelli. Cynthia Fraser is Associate Professor of Marketing at the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia. She holds a PhD in Marketing and Econometrics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Music from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory. Her research focuses on quantifying the impacts of diverse music backgrounds on short- and long-term consumer learning from advertising. Her current research is devoted to the comparison of background music impacts across Eastern and Western cultures where tonality of language may impact the processing of background music. Kate Galloway is Lecturer in Musicology/Ethnomusicology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York. She specializes in North American music that responds to and

xx   about the contributors problematizes environmental issues, sonic cartography, new media studies, digital humanities, and other topics. She has contributed to numerous journals and scholarly books. Her monograph Remix, Reuse, Recycle: Music, Media Technologies, and Remediating the Environment examines how and why contemporary artists remix and recycle sounds, musics, and texts encoded with environmental knowledge. Jessica Getman is a film musicologist focusing on music in television and science fiction media, and is Assistant Professor of Music (Musicology/Ethnomusicology) at California State University, San Bernardino. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan, for whom she subsequently served as the Managing Editor of the George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition. Her areas of study include music in science fiction media, music production in mid-20th-century American television, popular music in screen media, and amateur music in media fandom. She has recently published on George Gershwin, Lolita Ritmanis, and fan engagement with the soundtrack of Twin Peaks: The Return. William Gibbons is Associate Professor of Musicology and Associate Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth. His research focuses primarily on the development and uses of musical canons, as well as the interpretation of musical multimedia. In addition to dozens of articles on these topics, Gibbons is the author of Building the Operatic Museum (University of Rochester Press, 2013) and Unlimited Replays: Video Games and Classical Music (Oxford University Press, 2018). He is also coeditor of the essay collections Music in Video Games (Routledge, 2014) and Music in the Role-Playing Game (Routledge, 2019). He holds a BA in Music from Emory & Henry College and a PhD in Musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dana Gorzelany-Mostak is a musicologist and Associate Professor of Music at Georgia College. Her research on music and U.S. presidential campaigns appears in Music & Politics, the Journal of the Society for American Music, and American Music. GorzelanyMostak is the founder of Trax on the Trail, a website that tracks and catalogs the soundscapes of U.S. presidential elections. Her work on Jackie Evancho appears in the edited volume Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music: Performance, Authority, Authenticity (Routledge). Nicolai Jørgensgaard Graakjær is Professor of Music and Sound in Market Communication in the Department of Communication and Psychology at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. His research interests include various aspects of branding in music and sound, advertising, sports, and atmospheres of television, radio, web, and video games. His publications include the book Analyzing Music in Advertising: Television Commercials and Consumer Choice (Routledge, 2015) and numerous articles in scholarly journals. Lawrence Harte is a tech media expert, editor of IPTV Magazine, and CMO of VegiPlus.tv. He was the chief marketing officer of Crumbs Music, which provides

about the contributors   xxi precleared licensed music for movies, TV shows, commercials, and other media. As chief executive officer of LearnQIC.com, he is responsible for content and media production, licensing, and advertising systems. Harte has created thousands of articles and media posts that he managed on hundreds of media channels. He is author of numerous marketing, business, and technology books. Julie Hubbert is an Associate Professor of Music History at the University of South Carolina, where she is also on faculty in the Film and Media Studies Department. She has written articles on a variety of film music and media topics including silent film, documentary film, compilation soundtracks, and Scorsese. She is the author of Celluloid Symphonies: Text and Contexts in Music History (University of California Press, 2011). In 2019 she was awarded an NEH Fellowship for the Humanities to work on her second book, Technology, Listening and Labor: Music in New Hollywood Film (1967–1980). Bertil Hultén is Affiliated Professor of Marketing at Linnaeus University in Sweden, and a pioneer in sensory marketing research. His research about sensory marketing and multisensory brand experiences have been published in the European Business Review, Journal of Brand Strategy, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, and other journals. The books Sensory Marketing by Hultén et al. (2009) and Sensory Marketing: Theoretical and Empirical Grounds by Hultén (2015) have received Swedish awards. James  J.  Kellaris is the Womack/Gemini Corporation Professor at the University of Cincinnati, Lindner College of Business. He is also a professional musician and composer of contemporary art music. Kellaris’s research on various influences of music on consumers has appeared in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Consumer Psychology, and in media outlets such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and CNN Headline News. Kellaris’s musical compositions are published by Joachim Trekel Musikverlag, Hamburg, and are widely performed internationally. Bethany Klein is Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Her research interests include commercialism and the media, popular music culture, social issues and entertainment television, and media policy and regulation. She is the author of As Heard on TV: Popular Music in Advertising (Ashgate, 2009) and Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2020), and coauthor of Understanding Copyright: Intellectual Property in the Digital Age (SAGE, 2015). Klemens Knoeferle is Associate Professor of Marketing and co-founder of the Center for Multisensory Marketing at BI Norwegian Business School in Norway. He studies how people’s decisions and well-being are influenced by sensory properties of products, communications, and (retail) environments. His research has been published in internationally renowned scientific journals, has received awards such as Best Paper at

xxii   about the contributors the Association for Consumer Research Latin American Conference 2017, and has led to consultation projects with firms in various industries. Vijaykumar Krishnan is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Marketing at Northern Illinois University, United States. He is also a professional violinist in the Indian classical carnatic music style. Krishnan’s research interests on identities for a brand including sonic branding have appeared in the Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of International Marketing, and elsewhere. Krishnan has performed widely as a violinist, including seven performances at the prestigious Chennai Music Academy in India. Peter Kupfer is an Associate Professor of Musicology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on the Soviet musical comedy films of Grigory Aleksandrov and Isaak Dunayevsky. His research concerns music, ideology, and moving images, with particular interests in Soviet (film) music and classical music in popular media and advertising. His work has appeared in the Journal of Musicology, 20th-Century Music, Music and the Moving Image, BACH, and Music & Politics. Mark Laver is an Associate Professor of Music at Grinnell College, Iowa. As a performer, he has shared the stage with leading jazz and improvising artists. His current research project is a biography of iconic Canadian clarinetist, composer, and educator Phil Nimmons. His first book, Jazz Sells: Music, Marketing, and Meaning (Routledge, 2015), explores the use of jazz music in advertising, marketing, and branding. His second book project was a collection of essays, coedited with Dr. Ajay Heble, called Improvisation and Music Education: Beyond the Classroom (Routledge, 2016). Hubert Léveillé Gauvin earned a Doctorate in Music Theory at the Ohio State University and is now the operations coordinator at Soproq, a not-for-profit collective rights management organization for makers of sound recordings and music videos in Canada. His primary research interest is the analysis of popular music using empirical, corpus-based, and computer-assisted approaches. He is interested in the impact of technology on compositional practices and music listening behaviors. Joanna Love is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Richmond (United States). She has written extensively on popular music in U.S.  national brand and political advertising. Her recent book, Soda Goes Pop: Pepsi-Cola Advertising and Popular Music (2019), was supported by a fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She has forthcoming chapters about music in television commercials in two edited collections and is coediting an interdisciplinary book, titled Contested Frequencies: Sonic Representation in Music, Media, and Culture. Ken McLeod is an Associate Professor of Music History at the University of Toronto. He has published widely on identity politics in popular music, popular music appropriations of art music, and the intersections between technology, science fiction,

about the contributors   xxiii and rock music. His first book, We Are the Champions: The Politics of Sports and Popular Music (Ashgate, 2011), examines the interconnection of sport and popular music in constructing racial, gender, socioeconomic, and national identities. His second book, Driving Identity: At the Intersection of Popular Music and Automotive Culture, was published by Routledge in 2020. Daniel Müllensiefen is Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the United Kingdom, where he is Co-Director of the Master of Science program in Music, Mind, and Brain. His scholarly work comprises many areas of music psychology, including computer models of music perception, the measurement of musical skills, and the development of musicality, and he is Co-editor of Empirical Musicology Review. He also worked as Scientist in Residence with London-based advertising agency adam&eveDDB, where he investigated how music can affect the perception of advertising and brand communication. Steve Oakes is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Liverpool Management School, United Kingdom. His main research interests focus on consumer responses to music in advertising and service environment contexts. He has published music and marketing articles in numerous journals including Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Advertising Research, Marketing Theory, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Journal of Marketing Management, and Journal of Services Marketing, among others. Justin Patch is Assistant Professor of Music at Vassar College, New York, where he is also affiliated with American Studies, Media Studies, and Asian Studies. His research focuses on sound and emotion in contemporary U.S.  political campaigns and has appeared in many music journals and several edited volumes. His monograph, Discordant Democracy: Sound, Affect, and Populism in the Presidential Campaign, was published by Routledge in 2019. He is currently writing an introductory textbook on sound studies for Bloomsbury Press with Tom Porcello. Katherine Reed is an Assistant Professor of Musicology at California State University, Fullerton. Her research interests include musical semiotics, the use of pre-existing music in film, and British popular music. Reed’s recent research has appeared in Popular Music and Society, Music and the Moving Image, and Musicology Now. She is the coeditor of the forthcoming collection Music in Twin Peaks: Listen to the Sounds (Routledge), and is at work on her current book project, Hooked to the Silver Screen: David Bowie and the Moving Image. Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota (United States) where he teaches courses in music theory, film and television music and conducts instrumental groups. His research interests include analysis of music in television and film, posttonal theory in the 20th century, structural analysis, musical signification, music and narrative, and early 20th century popular music. He has published numerous articles in collections and journals, including the entry for

xxiv   about the contributors television music in the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. His book, Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He has also written a blog on television music for Oxford. Lisa Scoggin completed her PhD in Musicology at Boston University and received degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She has presented papers internationally at various music conferences. She specializes in music in American animation, film music, music in television, ludomusicology, and 20thcentury American and British art music. She has taught at Boston University, St. Anselm College, and Tufts University. Her book The Music of Animaniacs: Postmodern Nostalgia in a Cartoon World is now available. Charles Spence is Professor of Experimental Psychology and head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. He researches the factors that influence what we eat and what we think about the experience, with world-leading chefs and food and beverage companies. He is author of the 2014 Prose prize-winning The Perfect Meal with Betina Piqueras-Fiszman (WileyBlackwell), the international bestseller Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating (Penguin Viking, 2017, winner of the 2019 Le Grand Prix de la Culture Gastronomique from Académie Internationale de la Gastronomie), and Multisensory Packaging (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019). Willem Strank is a postdoctoral research fellow and master’s coordinator (Film & TV Studies) at Kiel University. He is the cofounder of the Kiel Society for Film Music Research and coeditor of the e-journals Kiel Papers on Film Music Research and Rock and Pop in the Movies and the annual book series FilmMusik. Apart from numerous publications in the field of film music research, he wrote his dissertation about twist endings in films in 2013 (published in 2014) and is currently working on a book about representations of capital and control in American and federal German films of the 1980s. Madelijn Strick is Associate Professor of Social Psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She teaches courses on social influence, public communication, and consumer decision-making. She has published extensively on the psychology of advertising, focusing (among other subjects) on the impact of humor, being moved by music, and narrative transportation and music. Strick and her colleagues have developed an influential model that explains and predicts the influence of humor in advertising on brand attitudes and choice. Siu-Lan Tan is the James A. B. Stone Professor of Psychology at Kalamazoo College, United States. She completed undergraduate degrees in Music, graduate studies at Oxford University, and a PhD in Psychology at Georgetown University. She is coauthor of a leading text in her field entitled Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance (Routledge, 2018) and coeditor of The Psychology of Music in Multimedia (Oxford University Press, 2013), consolidating the empirical research on music in multimedia in

about the contributors   xxv the context of entertainment, education, and advertising. Her research has been published in many journals including Music Perception, Psychology of Music, and Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, & Brain. Timothy D. Taylor, a Professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA, is an interdisciplinary social scientist who studies capitalism and other economic issues, globalization, and technology as they relate to music. He is the author of numerous articles and books, and a foremost authority on music and advertising. His book, The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture (Chicago University Press, 2012), is a much-sought-after resource on the topic. His current book projects include an ethnographic study of film and television musicians in Los Angeles, and The Oxford Handbook of Economic Ethnomusicology, coedited with Anna Morcom. David VanderHamm is a Lecturer in the Department of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Central Oklahoma, where he teaches courses in interdisciplinary humanities. He earned his PhD in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he completed his dissertation on the social construction of virtuosity. His current research explores how displays and discourses of musical skill carry meaning for U.S. audiences during the age of electronic media. He has presented at conferences in musicology, ethnomusicology, and popular music studies, and he has published in American Music, Oxford Bibliographies, The Public Historian, and the Journal of the Society for American Music. Catrin Watts received their PhD in music theory from the University of Texas at Austin, where they wrote a dissertation on the relationship between musical characteristics of popular music and the kinetic action of contemporary action film. Watts’s work on the film collaborations between Joe Wright and Dario Marianelli is published in the Music and the Moving Image Journal, and further music in action film research is forthcoming in Music in the Action Film: Sounds Like Action! Laurel Westrup, PhD, is a Continuing Lecturer with Writing Programs and the Honors Program at UCLA. Her research explores the intersections of media and popular music. She is coeditor of Sampling Media (Oxford University Press, 2014, with David Laderman) and The Soundtrack Album: Listening to Media (Routledge, 2020, with Paul Reinsch). Her work has also appeared in the journals Projector, Film Criticism, Flow, and Spectator, as well as in several collections. Mariana Whitmer (United States) is a film musicologist who specializes in the music of the classic Hollywood western. She has published film score guides on Jerome Moross’s The Big Country and Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven, and has contributed to volumes such as Music in the Western (edited by K. Kalinak, 2010) and Double Lives: Film Composers in the Concert Hall (edited by J. Wierzbicki, 2019). Among other publications, Whitmer recently coedited a collected volume of essays titled ReLocating the Sounds of the Western (Ashgate, 2018).

xxvi   about the contributors Reba A. Wissner is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Columbus State University’s Schwob School of Music in Columbus, Georgia. She previously served on the faculties at New York University, Ramapo College of New Jersey, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, and Montclair State University. A historian of midcentury television music, she is the author of two books, A Dimension of Sound: Music in The Twilight Zone and We Will Control All That You Hear: The Outer Limits and the Aural Imagination, and is finishing her third book, Music and the Atomic Bomb in American Television, 1950–1969.

Preface

In the postindustrial capitalist society of the 21st century, advertising is ubiquitous, whether in the images and sounds of television commercials and ads in social media and the internet, the catchy musical jingles on commercial radio, the billboards on the highway shilling goods and services, the full-page ad in the local newspaper, or even a friend’s word-of-mouth testimonial. While advertising has always been considered primarily as a visual medium through its development in print media in the 18th and 19th centuries, the multiplication of multimodal media (radio, television, and internet) in the 20th century and the ascendancy of audio-only formats in the 21st have given rise to considerations of the sonic qualities of advertising as well. The marketing industry that employed graphic designers, layout artists, typesetters, and others has made room for sound engineers, music directors, music producers, and composers. Since the cries from ancient marketplaces to the first musical jingle—the 1926 radio jingle “Have You Tried Wheaties”—and beyond, music has played an important role in advertising in public spaces, on radio, television, and the internet. Music is used in these advertising formats both to entertain the public and to engage their attention: The experiences of the advertising industry and the findings of academic research have demonstrated that music can compel TV viewers, radio listeners, moviegoers, mall shoppers, restaurant customers, and internet browsers to attend and respond to these ads cognitively and emotionally. The practices and ubiquity of advertising in turn inspired the emergence and development of an academic discipline dedicated to studying their effects. The resulting literature ranges from “how to” manuals on creating effective advertising to market research and cognitive studies on the effects of ad campaigns. The literature abounds in professional journals on advertising, including the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, and Psychology and Marketing, and myriad books on advertising and marketing have been published from such perspectives as production, psychological effects, and analysis. Nevertheless, little of this vast body of research considers music, despite its key role in audiovisual advertising media. Against this background a small yet seminal body of work has arisen, with early articles on the topics written by David Huron (1989), Nicholas Cook (1994), and Ron Rodman (1997), and full-length studies more recently by Bethany Klein (2009/2016), Nicolai Graakjær (2014), and Lesley Meier (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising takes these studies as its starting points, building upon the findings of the researchers who have come before and (in some cases) are members of our team. Our body of contributors embraces a wide range

xxviii   preface of specialists from such fields as musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, film studies, media and communication studies, marketing, and psychology. The authors’ breadth of expertise provides a wide array of perspectives from which to approach the intersections of music and advertising, while their depth of knowledge ensures that the analyses they undertake are probing and informed by serious research. As an appendix we include a valuable practical contribution (a primer on the ad creation process) by someone who has made a living in the field of music for advertising. The core of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising is organized around the three processes of communicating the advertising message, the three stages of the message exchange, as articulated by Chris Wharton: “encoding/production, text in temporary isolation, and reception/decoding” (2015, p. 103). Hence, the three main sections of this book are labeled (I) Production, (II) Text, and (III) Reception. Wharton argues that this conceptual framework will enable the study of “the whole process or totality of the chain of production and exchange” (2015, p. 103), which is our intention, albeit from the perspective of music’s unique and powerful contribution to the advertising message. The inspiration for this anthology came to James out of his teaching of music and media and his research into film advertising. Having drawn for years upon Ron’s important publications about music in television and in commercials, James felt he would be a logical choice as coeditor. By chance, James met (psychologist) Siu-Lan when she served as the Keynote Speaker for an international film music conference (Music and the Moving Image) at New York University in 2015; afterward he invited her to round out the editorial team, recognizing the need to include the perspective of a social scientist in the collection. This trio of experts—musicologist, music theorist, and music psychologist—formed the nucleus for the project, which Oxford University Press accepted and actively supported for inclusion in its handbook series. The three coeditors assembled a collection of 47 prominent scholars and researchers, from a number of different fields (including musicology, music theory, marketing, business, psychology, communications, and many others, as noted previously), representing nine countries. The coeditors would be remiss not to thank Norm Hirschy and Lauralee Yeary of Oxford University Press in the warmest terms for their ongoing belief in the value of this unique example of interdisciplinary research, in a field of music so understudied in the past. And we also acknowledge with thanks the timely and efficient assistance of Adrian Matte, graduate student and research assistant from Carleton University. James Deaville, Ontario; Siu-Lan Tan, Michigan; Ron Rodman, Minnesota

Reference Wharton, C. (2015). Advertising: Critical approaches. New York, NY: Routledge.

I n troduction Music and Advertising: Production, Text, and Reception Siu-Lan Tan, Ron Rodman, and James Deaville

In his influential 1973 essay “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse,” Stuart Hall established the “encoding/decoding” model of communication (Hall, 1973, 1980), which has served as the framework for numerous studies within the field of communications (Dicks,  2000; Houston,  2019; Pillai,  1992; WrenLewis, 1983). The underlying process can be divided into three stages: the encoding of a message by a sender, its transmission/distribution, and its decoding by a recipient. The communication flow represented by the model is well suited for application to advertising: industry encodes or produces the message and the consumer decodes the message. Wharton and others have argued that “the addition of ‘texts’ between the encoding and decoding aspects of the model gives emphasis to its necessary but unstated element” (Wharton, 2013, p. 56). He conceives the advertising framework as more of a loop or circuit, in which “cultural ideas, images and representations circulate and are formed, selected and incorporated into advertising campaigns” (Wharton, 2015, p. 4). The editors of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising (OHMA) have adopted a tripartite structure for this volume, in accordance with the three stages of communicating the advertising message established by Chris Wharton (2015, p. 103): (I) “Production,” (II) “Text,” and (III) “Reception.” Each of the three coeditors has been responsible for editing and introducing one of the sections according to their expertise (Deaville for “Production,” Rodman for “Text,” and Tan for “Reception”), although we all had oversight over the project as a whole. This means that sections may vary in style in ways that reflect their content, yet the reader will benefit from the depth of specialization each editor brings to their respective section. And with editors and authors working under a uniform set of guidelines for content, we believe the OHMA provides the most extensive exploration of music’s contribution to advertising up to the present time.

2   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville

Production In Wharton’s paradigm, the concept of encoding serves to explore the background processes of advertising/cultural production and its grounding in the economy and culture of a period, the choices that are made about the use of specific advertising forms selected from a range of technical, practical and cultural possibilities.  (Wharton, 2013, p. 56)

The first section of this book takes as its focus the production of advertising music from musicological, marketing, and industry perspectives—in essence, it establishes a context for the advertising texts analyzed in Part II and for the human reception of such advertising studied in Part III. Whereas the second section of the book adopts diverse approaches in analyzing the music of specific advertisements and the third section applies empirical methods in studying the perception of those musical messages, this part addresses advertising music primarily through the lenses of cultural studies and allied disciplines, occasioning the “messiness” that Angela McRobbie (2003) has identified as essential to the survival of the inherently interdisciplinary field. Nevertheless, the methods we deploy in studying production include such established approaches as archival, ethnographic, and digital research, the results of which our authors then interpret from the most diverse perspectives. It might be useful to begin unpacking the theme of production with a series of questions that our authors address, beginning with the general inquiry: What factors have influenced and motivated the use of music in audio and audiovisual advertising? For specific marketing campaigns, we would like to know how the music selected reflects the corporate culture, the taste and style behind a brand, and how the music in turn contributes to the branding of a given commodity. How does industry market music itself? What role does demographics play in the targeting of consumers through music? We also ask what is the balance between economic-financial and creative-aesthetic considerations in advertising music, and more broadly, how is music valued in the marketing industry? To what extent has the political economy of neoliberalism and its imperatives affected the production of music for advertising? Indeed, what are the industrydetermined labor practices and the union-negotiated work conditions for music in advertising?

Literature and Context Such questions have directed our authors in their quests, and their answers inform the pages of this section. Some scholars whose work has significantly studied production aspects of music and advertising—Bethany Klein and Tim Taylor—are represented in the handbook, but not in this section. However, the findings of their research serve as

Production, Text, and Reception   3 major sources for our chapters (Klein 2008, 2011, 2016; Klein & Meier, 2017; Taylor 2003,  2005, 2007, 2012, 2016). Beyond their work, the researcher could point to publications by David Huron (1989), Nicholas Cook (1994), Mark Shevy and Kineta Hung (2013), Nicolai Graakjær (2014), Mark Laver (2015), Johnny Wingstedt (2017), and Joanna Love (2019), among others. However, much of the work to date on production has privileged recognizable popular music placed in advertising texts: corporate partnerships and brand associations with performing artists are typically identified as “reinforce[ing] brand identities and build[ing] brand equity” (Meier, 2017, p. 101). With the possible exception of Graakjær (2014), the authors construct their analyses upon the premise that the industry relies on the “band/brand” recognition pairing for prerecorded popular music, which their highend interlocutors happily confirm. Commercials exploiting well-known classical music tracks by Beethoven, Grieg, Delibes, or Mozart (among many others) have little or no berth in these studies of music in advertising, valuable as they may be for their ethnographic work with industry insiders and professionals. For that matter, the literature is even sparser for the generic industrial tracks by unnamed composers that are selected for their utility and conformity to expressive traditions and intentions. Meier (2017) devotes several pages to music licensing software, where she addresses the powerful trend toward “categorizing affects, calculating effects” through “specialized software that sorts songs according to various tagged keywords” (p. 136). Whether called production, library, catalog, or stock music, such tracks are created for and sold by the music industry according to affect in a taxonomy driven by mood and purpose. A handful of authors have approached the daunting ubiquity of this music more intensely from diverse perspectives: as a corporate production (Fink, 2000), as a product of workers (Nardi, 2012), and as a creative practice (Sheinkop, 2016). Whatever the style and source of the music—ranging from the classical canon to the creations for music production houses—its selection remains crucial to the tone of any audiovisual advertising. The choice and placement of music in promotional texts is an imprecise science, however, despite the efforts of specialists in cognition and perception to understand consumer choices. Our chapters often proceed from the question of why one set of musical sounds was considered most appropriate to make a given promotional pitch. The advertising industry may draw upon statistics and empirical study, yet it ultimately relies upon the subjective qualities of taste and style in anticipating the effectiveness of the components of a particular marketing message (Taylor, 2012). Understanding the instinctive, intuitive, yet “so calculated and purposive” nature of decision making for advertising music leads the researcher to probe more deeply, to uncover and analyze the historical and contemporary contexts for the specific selection (Klein, 2016, p. 5). We might study the music from the viewpoints of the prevailing political landscape at the time (Can,  2015), the target demographic for the ad (Lantos & Craton, 2012), or the financial situation of the sponsor and/or musician (Klein, Meier, & Powers, 2017). In doing so we could consider the individuals directly involved in working with the music (composers/performers, arrangers, music supervisors), the framework of corporate entities funding and overseeing the production of advertising

4   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville (sponsors, ad agencies), the broadcast outlets that distributed the messages, the political and social conditions influencing the consumer of the time, and of course the products themselves. Thus, the study of production opens up windows on the society and culture that spawned the advertised commodities. We learn, for example, how marketers sold Barack Obama as a “cool celebrity” president in part through their musical choices in television commercials for the incumbent candidate (Love, 2017). Or we discover that in the corporate culture of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, commercials intentionally exploit music not only to sell the product’s effectiveness and social utility but also to distract the consumer from the verbal risk warning (Tavassoli & Lee, 2003). Or more generally, we gain insights into how the profits from advertising placements helped the music industry at a time—around the new millennium—when it was undergoing a major downturn (Klein, 2016, pp. 59–78).

Branding and Producers In these and other cases, Madison Avenue has sought to establish above all the practice of sonic branding for its commodities (among others, Graakjær,  2014; Gustafson,  2019; Klein, 2016, pp. 79–96; van Leeuwen, 2017). As music industry executive Eric Sheinkop observes, “Music brings value to a brand in three ways: identity, engagement, currency. Specifically, using music to establish an emotional connection with a brand increases brand recognition, creates excitement . . . and can empower consumers” (cited in Olenski, 2014). Still, according to Klein, the deployment of sound logos and jingles serves the ends of “false consciousness, constructing a link that appears natural, but in fact has no natural basis.” Klein notes how already in 1962, Raymond Williams argued that “as the object itself is not enough to sell it; it must also be linked to some sort of personal meaning,” which for her is the essence of branding (Klein, 2016, p. 81). Nevertheless, Klein does not deny music’s effectiveness in branding strategies and campaigns, as it enables what Leslie Meier calls “the enveloping logic of branding” (Meier, 2017, p. 5). The saturation of the advertising market by music in all of its forms (Love, 2019), and especially the proliferation of promotion based on band-brand relationships (Klein, 2016; Meier, 2017), have cut across promotional platforms and product types. Film trailers, for example, have come to rely upon the topical cover song to sell a film, a trend that the cross-promotion of the film Pineapple Express (2008) and MIA’s song “Paper Planes” (2007) brought to the fore (Deaville & Malkinson, 2014) and that the choral re-visioning of Radiohead’s “Creep” confirmed in the trailer to The Social Network (2010). The ironic use of pre-existing music in that trailer and many others since then, however, mitigates against time-worn practices in the production of advertisements, which for the benefit of branding have advocated “the need to have congruence between music and message” (King, 2015, p. 296). Considering branding and its reliance upon, and even exploitation of, “creative meaning makers, such as musicians” (Carah,  2011, p. 428), returns the discussion to the

Production, Text, and Reception   5 ­ roducers of audiovisual advertising. These practitioners, these creators are “cultural p intermediaries” for Pierre Bourdieu (1984, p. 359); they are “specialists in symbolic production” (Featherstone, 1991, p. 35), creating messages that are intended to encourage consumption (Adams, 2017). In the realm of sound and music the producers (also called creatives) include composers/song writers, performers, licensing managers, and especially music supervisors, who “can play a significant and powerful role in cultural production” (Klein & Meier, 2017, p. 281). Indeed, as the creatives who select the tracks used in commercials, music supervisors occupy a key position within the production process (Meier, 2017, pp. 36–37) and, at least for Klein and Meier, are regarded as ultimately “reaching into all corners of the audiovisual and digital world” (Klein & Meier, 2017, p. 289). Not only must they possess a wide-ranging knowledge of music, but also they should be intimately familiar with copyright laws and be capable of negotiating licensing agreements. As a result, we might consider them as the central figures for the production of music for audiovisual advertising. One sign of their importance is the annual awards for music supervision conferred by the Guild of Music Supervisors, which not only recognizes work for film and television but also includes professional contributions in the categories of “Trailers & Promos” and “Advertising.” Of course, music supervisors are only one actor in a collaborative process “that involves the input of both active and passive agents, including the creatives, planners and account executives, clients and also research participants (consumers) and regulators” (Hackley & Hackley, 2018, p. 205). The cultural perspective on advertising production conceives of it “not as a by-product but as its fundamental mode of operation . . . which emerges from the interactions of many parties” (Hackley & Hackley, 2018, p. 205). Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of “new cultural intermediaries” in analyzing a Japanese commercial for Nike, marketing researchers have recently illustrated how participants in “creative/cultural labour” serve as “cultural intermediaries” who, through mediation and legitimation, “shape, and are shaped by, the link between production and consumption within the global culture industry” (Kobayashi, Jackson, & Sam, 2018, p. 141).

Present and Future Challenges The authors in the “Production” section of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising add to such worthy studies of production the sonic domain, the dimension of music and sound that is so crucial for the effectiveness of the advertising message. By interrogating the processes and producers behind the music in audiovisual advertising, we hope to fulfill the expectations of contributor Tim Taylor (2015) when he requests that “researchers take advertising music seriously as a field of cultural production” (p. 162). Certainly our contributors have approached their topics with an acute awareness of how music (and sound) centrally function in their particular instantiations of marketing.

6   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville While we have made every attempt to present a diverse array of research topics and approaches, it stands to reason that this section cannot serve as a comprehensive survey of music in advertising production. The multifarious complexity of the field, especially in the Digital Age, prohibits such coverage, even with 17 chapters. For example, future researchers should take a closer look at the comparative effects of regulatory agencies on the sounds of the advertising product. Furthermore, the complexities of music licensing agreements deserve attention in and of themselves; after all, revenue from the use of sound recordings in broadcast and public performance—including synchronization— amounted to $3.1 billion in 2018 (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, 2019, p. 13). Of course, in that same year, Statista estimates that the global advertising industry spent $560 billion (Statista, 2019). We have made considerable progress in understanding the processes and procedures underlying the encoding of commercial messages, in other words, the production of advertising, and yet the study of one crucial component in the ecology of marketing, music, lags significantly behind. Our authors hope to have filled some of the gap by providing insights into specific cases of music’s role in the construction of advertising messages and by furnishing models for further research in this dynamic field.

Text The second section of this book consists of traditional analyses and close readings of music in advertising texts. Many of the chapters in this section deal with the perennial topic of genre in media texts. In this section, genre is approached in several ways: (1) by describing the use of musical genres, or styles, in advertising texts and (2) by describing music in different genres of advertising themselves. On the former topic, much has been written about the use of pop music styles, such as rock, pop, and later hip-hop, and how this trend superseded the use of jingles from the 1940s and 1950s. See, for example, works by Ron Rodman (1997) and Joanna Love (2015), in particular. The other main area of inquiry in this section is how music conveys meaning in advertising, especially in the electronic media, notably, how music can express extramusical ideas and emotions by tapping into the collective subconscious of its audience. Advertisers have long recognized the power of music to express emotion or at least represent emotional states, such as happiness, contentment, and intimacy, but also how music (especially popular music) is used to convey what Thomas Frank (1998) refers to as “cool,” or “hip.”

Genre The process of analysis involves breaking down a corpus of texts and labeling them according to their common elements. In media texts, one way of parsing is according to

Production, Text, and Reception   7 genre. The first issue in genre analyses is to define what we mean by genre, especially as it pertains to advertising. What are the genres of advertising, and how have advertising genres evolved over time? Business trade books and websites define advertising genres by a “modes of production” model; that is, ads are defined by the media in which they are contained. One website describes advertising genres as print, signage (billboards, kiosk, trade shows, events, marquees, etc.), radio, TV, online, covert (product placement in movies), surrogate (substituting for banned substances like alcohol or tobacco—mineral water, candy, etc.), PSAs, digital signage, smartphone, niche (sports channels), and user generated (e.g., customers create brands, à la eBay). One might add video games to that list. In the electronic media, especially television where much advertising takes place, theories of genre draw more upon narrative archetypes of drama, melodrama, and comedy. The root of these categories stems from Aristotle’s style characteristics of storytelling: comedy, tragedy, and the epic (Clinton, 2004). These so-called storytelling genres in electronic-media advertising have been classified by some authors, such as Geis’s (1982) narrowing down the options to two: the testimonial and the mini-drama. The testimonial is an authoritative voiceover or onscreen narrator, who uses various rhetorical devices to convince the viewer of the benefits of buying/using the product. The testimonial format is found in the majority of locally produced commercials (like local car dealerships) to show or demonstrate the qualities of a product (like cleaning products where demonstrations are fast and show effective results). The mini-drama is based on the social interaction of characters on the screen and falls into two subcategories: the interview and the mini-narrative. An interview is usually between two or more fictionalized characters on the screen in which one character describes the product to another, lesserinformed character. This interview may be in the form of a straight sales demonstration or may be fictionalized for its entertainment value. These interviews tend to blend in with the mini-narrative, or a sort of “slice of life” vignette where characters are engaged in normal activities in naturalistic settings (Geis, 1982, p. 131). Nick Lacey characterizes genre as a “repertoire of elements” that consists of certain sets of character types, settings, iconography, narrative, and style (Lacey, 2000). Lacey’s approach tacitly adapts Northrup Frye’s concept of genre, which takes an ahistorical approach to literature and identifies archetypes, drawing the conclusion that there is really nothing new, but rather all genres are a re-working of previous literary formulae (Frye, 1957). Applied to advertising, we might categorize ads in binaries of the elements reproduced, such as dialogue/nondialogue, musical/nonmusical, narrative/nonnarrative, and so forth. Some contemporary business writers have attempted to define advertising genres in several different ways, including by narrative types. Hannah Worboys (2013) classifies narrative structures in advertising as (1) flashbacks, (2) journey, (3) linear or sequential, (4) nonlinear or nonsequential, and (5) endings. Worboys’s narrative taxonomy is overlaid by another list describing advertising genres of (1) realist, (2) anti-realist, (3) animation, (4) talking heads, (5) documentary, (6) series, (7) surreal, (8) humorous, (9) dramatic, and (10) parody. The latter list of genres is a sort of “modes of production”

8   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville model, although some areas like “humorous” and “surreal” are more about content, while others are more about production style. In this section, genre is dealt with in two primary ways. First, some chapters consider how musical genres are used in ads. These genres include jingles, pop tunes, punk rock, and classical music. As ads began to move away from jingles to pop tunes, the notions of celebrity and “selling out” became issues for discussion in the popular press and academic writing. Secondly, the section deals with the topic of advertising genres themselves. In this section, there are chapters covering music in traditional television commercials, but also public service announcements, protest videos, even political campaign ads.

Musical Advertising Genres Music’s role in advertising provides another taxonomy of ads, as enumerated here. A general delineation of musical versus nonmusical commercials forms a “tree” diagram with each type spawning subtypes, as seen in Figure 0.1. The diagram shows a general delineation of ads that use music versus those that do not, as indicated at the top. The musical ads are then subdivided into how music is used in an ad: either “constituent” (or foregrounded) or “background” music. Constituent music is that which is intended to be heard consciously in the ad, such as jingles or familiar pop tunes. Background music is music that is subordinated to the background, either to accompany visual images and dialogue of characters in a commercial or as the voiceover of a narrator. Jingles are further subdivided based on their length (as explained by Rodman in this volume) by their tags or hooks, donuts, etc. Jingles are “explicit” in their approach to advertising, appealing directly to the consumer to purchase the product advertised. Pop tunes tend to be more “implicit,” appealing to the consumer’s musical taste to create a positive feeling about the ad and thus the product. Nonmusical

Musical Constituent Jingles Tag (Hook) Logo

Background

Pop Tunes/Styles Original Artists

Vignette

Narrative Mini-Narrative

Cover

Donut Explicit

Testimonial

Implicit

Figure 0.1  A typology of commercials.

Testimonial

Production, Text, and Reception   9 The ads that use music as background are “vignettes,” or the lyricized “slices of life” ads, and mini-narratives, which differ only by degree: the mini-narrative usually has a bit more storyline, while the vignettes may consist of fictional characters in dialogue (or interview), often followed with music in underscore to a voiceover narrator. The true “mini-drama” is a brief narrative with a beginning, middle, and end accompanied by a cinema/televisual-like musical underscore.

Musical Expression and Representation The other key issue in advertising is music’s role in ads and how music expresses or represents the ideas and emotions of the ad. One of the earliest scholarly works to identify the function of music in commercials is David Huron’s  1989 article, “Music in Advertising: An Analytic Paradigm.” In this essay, Huron points out that studying music in advertising is an effective tool for understanding the social function of music in general. He distills a list of functions for music in advertising that speaks to both corporate and audience perception. Music in advertisements such as TV commercials (1) should be entertaining to the audience; (2) should provide structure and continuity to the ad; (3) should be memorable; (4) should contain a “lyrical language”—that is, a sung/poetic message will be more effective than a spoken one; (5) should be able to target a certain demographic or sociographic population; and (6) should possess an authorial voice, enticing the consumer to consider the product. While Huron’s work is less analytical than descriptive, it does lay the groundwork for subsequent explorations into musical meaning and advertising. Another early work that grapples with music and meaning is Linda Scott’s  1990 “Understanding Jingles and Needledrop” article. Here, Scott draws upon numerous resources, ranging from notions of culture, rhetoric, and symbolism of Kenneth Burke and Clifford Geertz; to the theories of extramusical meaning of Leonard Meyer, Victor Zuckerkandl, and Susanne Langer; to psychological studies of Jay Dowling, Dane Harwood, and others; to ethnomusicology of Steven Feld, John Blacking, and others. Having cited these works, Scott focuses on the rhetorical functions of music in advertising, where music acts as a sort of speech to communicate with consumers. In this regard, the study is one of the first to tie music in with the cultural milieu of the advertising audience. Nicholas Cook’s (1994, 1998) work on music and advertising is an extension of both Huron’s and Scott’s work. Cook is one of the first to articulate the phrase “composing with styles” in describing how advertising musical works with cultural tastes to reach audiences. “Musical cultures are not simply cultures of sounds, nor simply cultures of representations of sounds, but cultures of the relationship between sound and representation” (Cook, 1998, p. 220). Cook considers musical meaning as exemplified by music in television commercials. In one instance, he argues that the overture to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro provides a clear component of meaning when coupled with specific images of an automobile. Since meaning is constructed within the context of the commercial, “instead

10   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville of talking about meaning as something that the music has, we should be talking about it as something that the music does within a given context” (Cook, 1998, p. 9). Ron Rodman continues Cook’s idea of musical style as a cultural resonator in his “And Now an Ideology From Our Sponsor” (1997) article. In this work, the author sites musical styles used in advertisements about luxury cars and pickup trucks. Different styles of music tend to identify and be identified by certain social classes. In the article, the luxury car commercial uses a sort of “smooth jazz/New Age” musical style that Rodman claims would appeal to upper class viewers of the 1990s, while the pickup truck ad uses a pop song by rocker Bob Seger that would appeal to his fan base of American blue-collar workers. Advertisers are aware of the demographics of listeners and their musical tastes, and music is selected based on the culturally-coded perceptions of the target audience. Hermeneutics and the field of semiotics have been especially fruitful methods for analyzing meaning and emotion in advertising music. The early works by Huron, Cook, and Rodman mentioned earlier took the semiotic works of authors such as Roland Barthes (1964), Umberto Eco (1978), and Winfried Nöth (1987) and adapted these for the study of advertising music in a scholarly context. This section provides further research into both areas of genre study and the tracing of emotion and meaning in advertising texts.

Reception As mentioned in the opening of our chapter, the structure for this book draws on Wharton’s (2015) framework for communicating the advertising message: Part I (“Production”) addresses the production of advertising music from musicological, marketing, and industry perspectives; Part II (“Text”) provides close readings and analyses of music in advertising texts; and in Part III, we turn to the topic of “Reception.” The last section adopts an empirical approach to the study of how advertisements are “received” or perceived by human participants in lab research and by actual and potential consumers in the case of field studies and industry research. As adapted for the purposes of this book, this involves the formulation of models and theories, and the implementation of research methods to examine how music may influence people’s attitudes, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in the context of advertisements and within service environments such as stores, restaurants, and banks. Compared to the steady growth of scholarship in the humanities, the empirical work on advertising music has advanced at a significantly slower pace (Ruth & Spangardt, 2017). Previous books on the topic of advertising music have rarely encompassed both humanistic and empirical approaches (with very few notable exceptions, e.g., Graakjær & Jantzen, 2009, based on researchers in Nordic countries). The present handbook includes a multi-chapter section addressing theories and experimental research on advertising music conducted by leading researchers in the fields of

Production, Text, and Reception   11 ­ arketing, psychology, and musicology—with the aim of stimulating greater crossm ­fertilization of ideas between disciplines and encouraging further interdisciplinary ­collaboration in this area.

Challenges for Empirical Research In Wharton’s view, “Reception” refers to the decoding stage of the advertising framework: “It is the place in the advertising process where the public receives and interprets advertisements” (2015, p. 101). Drawing from the work of Hall (1980), who first proposed these ideas to study audiences’ responses to news stories, the three possible outcomes include the “preferred reading,” in which the audience receives “the meaning intended by the producer”; the “negotiated reading,” in which the audience receives the general features of the ad message but derives the meaning in ways that reflect the personal experience and contextual variables of the individual; and the “oppositional reading,” in which the audience rejects the preferred meaning (Wharton, 2015, p. 103). From the social scientist’s perspective, the “preferred reading” of an ad is more of a theoretical notion or ideal: it is the meaning that the producers of the ad intend for the audience to receive. Much of the experimental research conducted by academics and industry professionals is aimed at assessing to what degree an ad has reached this goal. A variety of research techniques can be used to address questions such as: How well does the audience attend to, comprehend, and remember an ad’s message, and does music play a role in facilitating these processes? How effectively does an ad convey the intended brand image, and how does music contribute to this identity (for instance, what meanings and connotations are expressed by the music, as argued in Part 2)? And how do different music tracks alter attitudes toward an ad, product, or brand? Such responses are not always easy to measure or detect; several chapters in the “Reception” section explore new techniques that may be applied in academic or industry research. The task becomes more complex when we consider “negotiated readings,” as audiences are not passive recipients of the message; they “locate its meaning in a personal, local sense associated with that individual’s experience and place in the world” (Wharton, 2015, p. 103). For instance, the same piece of music used in the same ads may be perceived differently by men and women (e.g., Kellaris & Rice, 1993; Meyers-Levy & Zhu, 2010), and responses to music have also been found to differ for members of different cultural groups. For example, although studies show that some emotions expressed by music are correctly identified across cultures (e.g., Balkwill & Thompson, 1999), specific differences in judgments of mood have also been revealed (Lee & Hu,  2014). Responses to music also vary with personality traits such as introversion/extraversion (Cassidy & MacDonald,  2007) and openness to experience (Liljeström, Juslin, & Västfjäll,  2013). Thus, studies may yield general trends and patterns, but specific responses to ad music are difficult to predict. Similarly, the possible reasons that audiences may take “oppositional readings” of an ad and reject the intended message are not easy to pinpoint.

12   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville In addition to the challenges already mentioned, another possible reason for the limited empirical studies is the complexity of the materials (especially in audiovisual ads), which makes it difficult for researchers to isolate certain variables, while keeping others constant for experimental control. Music is multidimensional—with many interacting elements such as melody, harmony, tempo, mode, timbre, range, fluctuations in loudness and pace, etc., combining in unique ways to bring about certain effects. In au­di­o­vis­ ual ads, the variables often include additional audio elements such as narration and dialogue and sound effects, in addition to moving images, visual special effects, and text. Thus, the complex interplay of music with other features of an audiovisual advertisement makes it hard to disentangle the effects of the music from the other elements of an ad, making it difficult to extract general principles about how music functions in ads (for further discussion, see Tan, 2017). Another issue is the disjunct between academic and industry research; collaboration is rare because each sector adheres to a different set of goals, values, and practices. Industry research is driven by more pragmatic goals than the theoretical questions usually motivating academic research (e.g., see Kupfer in Part I). Advertising professionals are generally interested in the overall impact of an ad, and variables such as music or sound are rarely isolated. The data are usually proprietary and not publicly shared, and there are no expectations for peer review. On the other hand, academic studies (especially those conducted by social scientists) are usually designed with the goal of addressing larger theoretical questions in which an applied problem may be embedded, as opposed to solving practical problems as the primary objective. Academic studies are often conducted in lab settings using convenience samples such as university students, raising some questions about the extent to which findings can be generalized to the “real world” consumer. Although results are disseminated, academic research reports are couched in technical terminology, making it difficult for industry professionals to access. Thus, there is not much coordination between researchers across academic and industry contexts. (A notable exception in the “Reception” section of this book is the contribution by author Müllensiefen, who served as scientist-in-residence at a London advertising firm while holding a university post, and contributed a chapter that draws on his experience in both academic and industry sectors.)

Psychological Underpinnings Psychologists have played an important role in the study of advertising and marketing since the late 1800s (Benjamin, 2004). Among the early contributors was Walter Dill Scott, who was instrumental in helping advertisers understand that persuasion is not just a matter of appealing to the rational side of humans, but to their emotions and propensity for suggestion (Buckley, 1982). Another early figure was J. B. Watson, founder of behaviorism, who was hired by the prestigious advertising firm J. Walter Thompson in New York in 1920 and, over the next decade and a half, played an influential role in

Production, Text, and Reception   13 numerous ad campaigns. Among the campaigns with which Watson was involved were a series of ads for Maxwell House, showing images of coffee drinkers relaxing in lavish settings and popularizing the concept of the “coffee break,” and ads for Pond’s, which used celebrity testimonials by European royalty to endorse cold cream (Benjamin, 2004). Although the early psychologists’ work did not focus on music, their emphasis on emotion, suggestion, and association led advertising professionals to pay more attention to the emotional and evocative elements of ads—including the role of music. Today, researchers in this area continue to draw on concepts and principles gleaned from various areas of psychology. Developments in the domain of cognitive psychology involving attention, comprehension, memory, and specific concepts such as processing fluency, distraction, and cognitive load are foundational to the research on advertising music. For instance, musical congruity has emerged as an important factor influencing consumers’ responses to an ad (as discussed further in the chapter by Oakes and Abolhasani). Musical congruity (or “musical fit”) refers to the degree to which there is a perceived match between some qualities of the music and certain extramusical features of an ad, bringing attention to the shared attributes between the music and the ad. A good “fit” between the music and the product, brand, or message can facilitate processing fluency (i.e., ease of processing) and enhance reception of the ad message by evoking message-congruent thoughts, whereas attention-grabbing music that is a poor fit can be distracting and increase cognitive load (Kellaris, Cox, & Cox,  1993; MacInnis & Park,  1991). The link between processing fluency and musical congruity is further explored in the “Reception” section, as it pertains to eliciting positive responses to ad music (see the chapters by Léveillé Gauvin and Craton), designing effective sonic logos (see the chapter by Krishnan and Kellaris), and applications to multisensory marketing (see the chapter by Knoeferle and Spence). Researchers also draw on social psychology for frameworks to explain attitude change and persuasion. Dual-process theories such as the elaboration likelihood model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) underpin much of this research. The ELM outlines two main routes to persuasion: a central route (involving cognitive effort toward evaluating the content of an ad message, such as its logic) and a peripheral route (focusing on peripheral details requiring less cognitive effort such as attractiveness of spokesperson, or color scheme). Music is often viewed in the context of the peripheral route, but this may differ with the function of the music and level of viewers’ involvement. In one study, participants who watched a TV ad to guide their subsequent purchase of an item (high involvement) responded more favorably to the ad and brand if they perceived a good “musical fit” with the product, whereas those who watched the ad as a passive observer (low involvement) responded more favorably to the ad and brand if the music merely sounded familiar (Park, Park, & Jeon, 2014). This suggests that a popular tune may be effective for creating a general positive response (such as reinforcing a brand’s image), but a close match between music and product may be more conducive to viewers focusing on the content of the ad. In the more “applied” realms of social psychology, there is also much interest in the possible effects of in-store music on zoning, perception of waiting time, quality of

14   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville s­hopping experience, and sales (as discussed in chapters by Knoeferle and Spence, Oakes and Abolhasani, and Hultén). Although empirical work in this area is still limited, music is one of the five most widely studied variables in the research on “store atmospherics” (Ramlee & Said, 2014) and has also been studied in virtual and online shopping environments (e.g., Cheng, Wu, & Yen, 2009). Many early studies were conducted by researchers in the field of marketing (e.g., Milliman,  1982,  1986; Yalch & Spangenberg, 1993), while psychologists have focused on identifying possible mechanisms to explain how in-store music may influence attitudes, emotions, behaviors, and purchasing patterns. These include the effects of music on physiological arousal, priming, and eliciting emotions (North & Hargreaves, 2008). More recent studies explore interactions between music and contextual and personal variables. For instance, music may mitigate the effects of retail density (i.e., the number of people and items in a store): slow music/high density and fast music/low density pairings have been shown to yield more favorable evaluations from shoppers than other combinations of tempo and density (Eroglu, Machleit, & Chebat, 2005; though see Knoeferle, Paus, & Vossen, 2017, for effects on spending). Perhaps the most specialized domain of psychology informing the empirical work on advertising music is music psychology—surveyed in books such as Music, Thought, and Feeling (2014) by Thompson and Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance (2018) by Tan, Pfordresher, and Harré. Almost all the chapters in Part III have some anchoring in the empirical literature on music cognition or emotion. Especially influential are the proliferation of studies exploring the emotional effects of music, reviewed in books such as The Handbook of Music and Emotion (2010) edited by Juslin and Sloboda. Many researchers also draw parallels between audiovisual advertisements and research studies examining the role of music in film and other multimedia, as reviewed in The Psychology of Music in Multimedia (2013a) edited by Tan, Cohen, Lipscomb, and Kendall. The research on how users engage with various multimedia is increasingly relevant to researchers interested in audiovisual advertising, extending the scope of study to the digital realm, to examine users’ responses to music in virtual and online contexts, and in interactive media. In sum, the empirical research on the role of music in advertising is inherently multidisciplinary, combining knowledge from many fields including marketing, business, communications, psychology, and musicology (as represented in the “Reception” section). In particular, the experimental work in this area draws heavily on research techniques, theories, and principles from various domains within the field of psychology.

Toward an Integrative and Multidisciplinary Approach Advertising music represents a lucrative portion of “sync” licenses (which grant permission to use music with moving images), and costs related to music are a significant item on the budget for most commercials. Fees paid to the songwriter and music publisher for the use of a hit song can range from about $10,000 for a local ad to over $1,000,000

Production, Text, and Reception   15 for a major campaign (Brabec & Brabec,  2018). Industry professionals often rely on instincts and experience to make critical choices that can have costly consequences. Further, multiscreen engagement has become the norm as people often divide attention between multiple devices (such as scrolling through phones while television ads are playing). Thus, music and other audio elements play an increasingly important role in calling attention to an ad, maintaining the audience’s attention, and conveying coherent messages from the sound of the ad alone, when not gazing at the relevant screen. For many reasons, it has become increasingly important to gather reliable data on how people respond to music and sound in advertisements, and to better understand how music and sound work effectively in audio and audiovisual ads. However, the role of music has been largely overlooked in the general advertising research, and the body of empirical work in this area has been characterized as “diverse and unstructured” (Ruth & Spangardt, 2017, p. 13). Central concepts such as “musical fit” and “congruity” have been defined and operationalized in various ways by different researchers, making it difficult to compare results and consolidate findings (Herget, Schramm, & Breves, 2018). As Ruth and Spangardt conclude in their review, “the major problem so far is that research only takes place in isolated spaces” (2017, p. 20). One avenue toward greater cohesion in this area is to venture beyond the currently rather insular style (as researchers in marketing, psychology, musicology, etc., tend to work with others within their own fields) toward more multidisciplinary approaches (in which colleagues from different disciplines work together, each contributing their specialized knowledge) and interdisciplinary collaboration (involving deeper integration of skills and knowledge from several specialties). Ideally, projects would dovetail questions of import to several fields, addressing both theoretical and practical problems. (See, e.g., Repko & Szostak,  2017, on the broad model approach to interdisciplinary research, including preparation and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration.) Indeed, conducting research in this area draws on skills and knowledge in several fields. Beyond a knowledge of marketing principles, relevant psychological theories and concepts, and research methodology, sufficient familiarity with music is needed to select appropriate stimuli and interpret findings meaningfully. The inclusion of a musicologist would enrich many projects, as many published reports lack a clear rationale for the selection of musical stimuli, provide vague descriptions of the musical stimuli, and offer insufficient interpretation of findings with respect to the music. The creation of stimuli also poses challenges to researchers, as low production values—such as poor sound quality or crude alterations to the soundtrack—may be distracting to participants and can serve as a confound to a study. Some researchers even hire ad agencies to produce or modify professional-quality stimuli for academic studies (e.g., Park et al., 2014). In addition, team collaboration with colleagues with music editing and media production skills would be advantageous during many phases of the project. Lawrence Harte’s overview (in the appendix to this volume) provides some insight into the wide range of skills and expertise involved in the process of ad creation and evaluation. Co-investigators from a number of specialized fields could enrich each step of the research, from the initial formulation of testable questions to more comprehensive discussion of the significance of the findings.

16   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville

Linkages Between Production, Text, and Reception In preparing The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, the editors sought to bring together the work of leading scholars from many disciplines to examine topics ranging from the production to the reception of advertisements. The primary goals of the OHMA are to expand the scope of both humanistic and scientific research on the topic of advertising music, and to inspire further productivity and collaboration between scholars in different fields. (For similar directives for research on music and multimedia more broadly, see Tan, Cohen, Lipscomb, & Kendall, 2013b). A few common observations and themes noted by chapter authors in the book include: •  The surprising lack of attention to the study of music in advertising, despite the ubiquity of music in advertisements in various media; in (real and virtual) commercial environments such as shops, restaurants, and virtual stores; and in many other contexts such as public service announcements, political propaganda, and campaign ads •  The increasing importance of music and sound for building and managing corporate identity and branding, and in product design •  The widespread use of popular music in advertising and commercial environments, and growing opportunities for lucrative partnerships between brands and musicians (solo artists or bands) The instrumental role of music in storytelling or narrative features of •     advertisements •  New opportunities for the integration of music in advertisements and (real and virtual) commercial environments with advances in technology, and with the growth of multisensory marketing •  The challenge of increased cognitive load and greater competition for consumer attention, in the age of media multitasking (or multiscreening) •  The need for more scholarship and research on how individual listener characteristics (such as culture, gender, age, and personality traits) mediate responses to music in ads and music in commercial environments We hope that the ideas, observations, and research findings discussed in the “Production,” “Text,” and “Reception” sections of this book will inspire future directions for empirical investigation, and stimulate more discourse and analysis among scholars in the arts and humanities. Gaining knowledge of industry practices (Part I)—such as how advertising professionals work with clients and focus groups to develop ad campaigns, how music is selected or created for ads, and the complexities of music licensing—may inspire research questions that have both theoretical import and powerful “real world”

Production, Text, and Reception   17 implications. Textual analyses based on close examination of advertisements (Part II) may help generate original, testable questions to delve deeper into how music functions in ads. In turn, findings yielded by experimental studies (Part III) may provide valuable insights into the role of music on the perception, cognition, and emotional responses of consumers for those involved in the academic study or practice of advertising. Ideally, this book will also encourage more cross-fertilization of ideas among colleagues in various disciplines, as there is much to be gained from greater collaboration between individuals with different skills and expertise from multiple fields, toward a more integrative understanding of the production, text, and reception of advertising music. The editors and chapter contributors of this book may bring various perspectives to the topic at hand but share a united aim: to illuminate music’s vital contribution to the advertising message.

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18   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville Dicks, B. (2000). Encoding and decoding the people: Circuits of communication at a local heritage museum. European Journal of Communication, 15(1), 61–76. Eco, U. (1978). A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eroglu, S. A., Machleit, K. A., & Chebat, J. (2005). The interaction of retail density and music tempo: Effects on shopper responses. Psychology & Marketing, 22(7), 577–589. Featherstone, M. (1991). Consumer culture and postmodernism. London, UK: Sage. Fink, R. (2000). Orchestral corporate. Echo: A Music Centered Journal, 2(1), n.p. Frank, T. (1998). The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of criticism: Four essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Geis, M. (1982). The language of television advertising. New York: Academic Press. Graakjær, N. (2014). The bonding of a band and a brand: On music placement in television commercials from a text analytical perspective. Popular Music and Society, 37(5), 517–535. Graakjær, N., & Jantzen, C. (2009). Music in advertising: Commercial sounds in media communication and other settings. Aalborg, Denmark: Aalborg University Press. Gustafson, C. (2019). Sonic branding: From brand image to brand imagination. In M. Grimshaw-Aagaard, M. Walther-Hansen, & M. Knakkergaard (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of sound and imagination (Vol. 1, pp. 359–375). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hackley, C., & Hackley, R. (2018). Advertising and promotion. London, UK: Sage Publications. Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and decoding in the television discourse. Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham. Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, media, language: Working papers in cultural studies, 1972–79 (pp. 117–127). London, UK: Routledge. Herget, A.-K., Schramm, H., & Breves, P. (2018). Development and testing of an instrument to determine musical fit in audio-visual advertising. Musicae Scientiae, 22(3), 362–376. Houston, E. (2019). The impact of advertisements on women’s psychological and emotional states: Exploring navigation and resistance of disabling stereotypes. Media, Culture & Society, 41(6), 791–807. Huron, D. (1989). Music in advertising: An analytic paradigm. Musical Quarterly, 73(4), 557–574. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. (2019, April 11). IFPI global music report 2019. Retrieved from https://www.ifpi.org/news/IFPI-GLOBAL-MUSIC-REPORT-2019 Juslin, P., & Sloboda, J. (2010). Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kellaris, J. J., Cox, A. D., & Cox, D. (1993). The effect of background music on ad processing: A contingency explanation. Journal of Marketing, 57(4), 114–125. Kellaris, J. J., & Rice, R. C. (1993). The influence of tempo, loudness, and gender of listener on responses to music. Psychology and Marketing, 10(1), 15–29. King, R. L. (2015). Proceedings of the 1991 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) annual conference. Cham, Germany: Springer International Publishing. Klein, B. (2008). In perfect harmony: Popular music and cola advertising. Popular Music and Society, 31(1), 1–20. Klein, B. (2011). Special issue: Popular music and marketing. Popular Music and Society, 34(4). Klein, B. (2016). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. London, UK: Routledge. Klein, B., & Meier, L. M. (2017). In sync? Music supervisors, music placement practices, and industrial change. In M. Mera, R. A. Sadoff, & B. Winters (Eds.), The Routledge companion to screen music and sound (pp. 281–290). New York, NY: Routledge.

Production, Text, and Reception   19 Klein, B., Meier, L. M., & Powers, D. (2017). Selling out: Musicians, autonomy, and compromise in the Digital Age. Popular Music and Society, 40(2), 222–238. Knoeferle, K. M., Paus, V. C., & Vossen, A. (2017). An upbeat crowd: Fast in-store music alleviates negative effects of high social density on customers’ spending. Journal of Retailing, 93(4), 541–549. Kobayashi, K., Jackson, S. J., & Sam, M. P. (2018). Multiple dimensions of mediation within transnational advertising production: Cultural intermediaries as shapers of emerging cultural capital. Consumption Markets & Culture, 21(2), 129–146. Lacey, N. (2000). Narrative and genre. New York, NY: Macmillan. Lantos, G. P., & Craton, L. G. (2012). A model of consumer response to advertising music. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 29(1), 22­–42. Laver, M. (2015). Jazz sells: Music, marketing, and meaning. New York, NY: Routledge. Lee, J. H., & Hu, X. (2014). Cross-cultural similarities and differences in music mood perception. In M. Kindling & E. Greifeneder (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval conference (pp. 259–269). Urbana-Champaign, IL: Ideals. Liljeström, S., Juslin, P. N., & Västfjäll, D. (2013). Experimental evidence of the roles of music choice, social context, and listener personality in emotional reactions to music. Psychology of Music, 41(5), 579–599. Love, J. (2015). Becoming an American b(r)and: Pre-existing music in television commercials. Online resource for J. Covach & A. Flory (Eds.), What’s that sound?: An introduction to rock and its history (4th ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Love, J.  K. (2017). Hearing across party lines: Music in U.  S.  presidential commercials. American Music, 35(4), 517–523. Love, J. K. (2019). Soda goes pop: Pepsi-Cola advertising and popular music. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. MacInnis, D. J., & Park, C. W. (1991). The differential role of characteristics of music on high- and low-involvement consumers’ processing of ads. Journal of Consumer Research, 18(2), 161–173. McRobbie, A. (2003). In the culture society: Art, fashion and popular music. London, UK: Routledge. Meier, L.  M. (2017). Popular music as promotion: Music and branding in the Digital Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Meyers-Levy, J., & Zhu, R. (2010). Gender differences in the meanings consumers infer from music and other aesthetic stimuli. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 20, 495–507. Milliman, R. E. (1982). Using background music to affect the behavior of supermarket shoppers. Journal of Marketing, 46(3), 86–91. Milliman, R.  E. (1986). The influence of background music on the behavior of restaurant patrons. Journal of Consumer Research, 13, 286–289. Nardi, C. (2012). Library music: Technology, copyright and authorship. In S.  Moreno Fernández, S.  El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, P.  Roxo, & I.  Iglesias (Eds.), Current issues in music research: Copyright, power and transnational music processes (pp. 73–83). Lisboa, Portugal: Colibri. North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (2008). The social and applied psychology of music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Nöth, W. (1987). Advertising: The frame message. In J. Umiker-Sebeok (Ed.), Marketing and semiotics (pp. 279–294). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. Olenski, S. (2014, February 6). Why music plays a big role when it comes to branding. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/02/06/why-music-playsa-big-role-when-it-comes-to-branding/#2fd842427b6b

20   Tan, Rodman, and Deaville Park, H. H., Park, J. K., & Jeon, J. O. (2014). Attributes of background music and consumers’ responses to TV commercials: The moderating effect of consumer involvement. International Journal of Advertising, 33(4), 767–784. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123–205. Pillai, P. (1992). Rereading Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model. Communication Theory, 2(3), 221–233. Ramlee, N., & Said, I. (2014). Review on atmospheric effects of commercial environments. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 153, 426–435. Repko, A.  F., & Szostak, R. (2017). Interdisciplinary research: Process and theory (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Rodman, R. (1997). And now an ideology from our sponsor: Musical style and semiosis in American television commercials. College Music Symposium, 37, 21–48. Ruth, N., & Spangardt, B. (2017). Research trends on music and advertising. Mediterranea, 8(2), 13–23. Scott, L. (1990, September). Understanding jingles and needledrop: A rhetorical approach to music in advertising. Journal of Consumer Research, 17(2), 223–236. Sheinkop, E. (2016). Return of the hustle: The art of marketing with music. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Shevy, M., & Hung, K. (2013). Music in television advertising and other persuasive media. In S.-L. Tan, A. J. Cohen, S. D. Lipscomb, & R. A. Kendall (Eds.), The psychology of music in multimedia (pp. 315–338). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Statista. (2019). Global advertising spending from 2010 to 2019. Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/236943/global-advertising-spending/ Tan, S.-L. (2017). From intuition to evidence: The experimental psychology of film music. In M. Mera, R. A. Sadoff, & B. Winters (Eds.), The Routledge companion to screen music and sound (pp. 517–530). New York, NY: Routledge. Tan, S.-L., Cohen, A. J., Lipscomb, S. D., & Kendall, R. A. (2013a). The psychology of music in multimedia. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Tan, S.-L., Cohen, A. J., Lipscomb, S. D., & Kendall, R. A. (2013b). Future research directions for sound and music in multimedia. In S.-L. Tan, A. J. Cohen, S. D. Lipscomb, & R. A. Kendall (Eds.), The psychology of music in multimedia (pp. 391–405). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Tan, S.-L., Pfordresher, P., & Harré, R. (2018). Psychology of music: From sound to significance (2nd ed.). London, UK: Routledge. Tavassoli, N. T., & Lee, Y. H. (2003). The differential interaction of auditory and visual advertising elements with Chinese and English. Journal of Marketing Research, 40(4), 468–480. Taylor, T. D. (2003). Music and advertising in early radio. Echo: A Music-Centered Journal, 5(2), n.p. Taylor, T. D. (2005). Music and the rise of radio in twenties America: Technological imperialism, socialization, and the transformation of intimacy. In P. D. Greene & T. Porcello (Eds.), Wired for sound: Engineering and technologies in sonic cultures (pp. 245–268). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Taylor, T.  D. (2007). The changing shape of the culture industry: Or, how did electronica music get into television commercials? Television & New Media, 8(3), 235–258. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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pa rt I

PRODUC T ION Edited by James Deaville

Production Music and the Creation of the Advertising Text James Deaville

This opening section of the handbook dedicates itself to what we have designated as “production” aspects of music and advertising, as defined in the introductory chapter. Even as the creation of audio or audiovisual texts varies substantially according to subject, medium, and time, so too do our 17 chapters, from “down home” radio advertising in the living rooms of the 1930s to theatrical trailers for action films of the current day, from Wagner in industrial promotional film of the 1930s to cool jazz in a cigarette advertising campaign of the 1980s. In their efforts at uncovering and understanding the historical, industrial-commercial, and cultural contexts for audiovisual advertising, authors have engaged with a multitude of sources in diverse ways: interviews with ad producers, research in historical and corporate archives, searches for audio and video sources, and, of course, extensive surveys of the literature. Whatever their sources, contributors to this section have investigated the processes, practices, and policies that have informed the uses of music in their advertising for specific tangible and intangible commodities, applying the resources of cultural studies and allied disciplines to arrive at their interpretations. That which unites our seemingly heterogeneous chapters is the reliance upon music to “make the pitch,” functioning as the “ultimate hidden persuader,” in the words of Nicholas Cook (2000, p. 122). Readers are invited to pursue certain threads or through-lines as they work through this section of the volume. The concept and constituent elements of production necessarily link all of the chapters, yet specific themes reappear with some regularity between the contributions. Prominent among them is the practice of branding through music (and sound), to the extent that it most readily affects us cognitively, emotionally, and physiologically. A related concept is that of appeal through music, which the advertising industry can mobilize to invoke nostalgia (older songs known to the consumer) or currency (songs popular in the present) and thus create a hook for the consuming public. The tension between convention and creativity plays out in several chapters, typically influenced by budgetary concerns. Indeed, the economics of advertising through music

26   Deaville is a factor informing those chapters not only about decision making on Madison Avenue but also about the labor of music and the role of unions in negotiating rights for musicians. The role of digital technology in the creation and circulation of advertising is one further theme that is repeated between chapters. Other through-lines exist within this section, which we encourage those interested in the topic of music and advertising to explore on their own by reading through and comparing the chapters. We have organized chapters in this section into seven clusters, according to subject matter: they roughly follow the course of production of advertising music from conception through labor practices to uses of the finished product. However, the clusters— pairings and trios—exhibit a porosity of boundaries in content, approach, and even outcomes, so that another scholar might have grouped the chapters quite differently. In other words, the clusters represent one interpretation of the combinatorial possibilities afforded by the contributions of the authors for this section. The section begins with two chapters about music and advertising before the 20th century, one from the 18th century, the other from the 19th, but both can be considered as case studies that model approaches appropriate to those eras. The following threechapter grouping considers the selection and marketing of music, whether selecting it for advertising in general, using its potential to sell a musical commodity, or marketing it through contextual meanings. As the next cluster of two chapters reveals, the advertising industry must rely on skilled workers, whose collective voices expressed through unions were historically beneficial for musicians recording or composing for the industry. Then we pair chapters that study how products—whether high-end cars and appliances or music itself—are branded through music and sound. A cluster of three chapters picks up the corporate discussion, investigating the exploitation of music for the advancement of corporate image and style, for tobacco manufacturers, a car company, and the recording industry. The audiovisual formats of film, television, and video games all have spawned trailers and spots, which have been featured on large and small screens to advertise the future pleasures of consuming their commodities. Not to neglect radio, which has acquired renewed interest through the audio-only trend and podcasting, two of our chapters dedicate themselves to broadcast music, one to instantiate the domesticity of country in 1930s radio, the other to illustrate a utility’s attempt to woo its listening public in the 1940s.

Music and Advertising Before 1900 Bethany Blake’s chapter introduces us to the world of late 18th-century advertising of music in England, looking at glees and how publishers variously targeted women as consumers. She leads us through the ingenious strategies mobilized by publishers to increase market share, including references to leading singers and novel music formats. We also discover the performance history of the glee, which over the course of 50 years was transformed from an all-male entertainment to a middlebrow

Production   27 e­ ntertainment ­consumed by women. Blake demonstrates that while promotional methods may have differed, there is much that is contemporary in the publishers’ tactics of appeal. The chapter by Remi Chiu and Dana Gorzelany-Mostak takes us into the mid-19th century and the troubling exploitation of Black bodies and voices by interrogating the story of conjoined African American twins Millie-Christine McCoy. The authors investigate how the marketing of the twins mapped problematic conceptions of normal versus “freakish” personhood onto white constructions of race. Using the polysemic image of the “nightingale” as their touchstone, they compare the rhetorical advertising strategies deployed for Jenny Lind and the McCoys to reveal the interchanges between exceptional ability and disability and issues of gender, race, and class in the 19th-century musical marketplace.

Selection and Marketing of Music Peter Kupfer’s chapter draws upon extensive interviews with advertising music professionals and documentary sources from the industry to furnish us with insider perspectives on the business of music in commercials. His guiding question concerns the processes involved in the selection of music for audiovisual advertising, and in the answer he leads us through the complex web of factors behind such decision making: budget, lyrics, “feel,” and hipness all count among the considerations. Kupfer takes us through to the finished product, concluding that “creativity” is the crucial yet illusive element that unites the disparate aspects into a successful commercial and for which no quantitative measure exists. Jim Buhler provides us with insights into the challenges of marketing equipment and software for music production, with a focus on the industry mindset and rhetoric in selling virtual instruments. As he shows, the advertising must play on the desire to make music effortlessly, and yet the demo used in the marketing must be such that the target audience can hear their own music-making in it. In developing these ideas, he focuses on marketing appeals to composers’ fantasies of the “epic” and “atmospheric,” of control over the machine. The chapter concludes with an explanation of why these two musical tropes (but especially the epic) have commanded such an influence over industry and consumer alike. Willem Strank’s chapter introduces the concept of contextual marketing, whereby listeners to music advertise it through their participatory fan practices of labeling and compiling. He argues that such uses of music add layers of meaning and context to it, and these fan approaches then inform professional online contextualization, which leads to a new network of references and pop-cultural connections. As he guides us through various streaming services of the digital age, Strank shows how these techniques work and how the related platforms provide a snapshot of the status quo of online music distribution. In the end he considers the consequences of contextual marketing for the way we perceive and construct musical affiliations.

28   Deaville

Music for Advertising and Labor Jessica Getman opens to us the world of musicians’ unions between the 1950s and 1970s and how they contributed to the landscape (or soundscape) of the advertising industry. She has examined the papers of an executive with the major marketing firm J. Walter Thompson to uncover details about negotiations between the firm and its unions. In part due to the revitalized organized labor culture of the time, the musicians’ unions succeeded in obtaining updated guidelines regarding its members’ working conditions as well as improvements in salaries. Getman observes that the resulting benefits would impact the future use of music in commercial advertising across the industry. Through Mark Laver’s chapter, we are invited to (re)consider assumptions about jazz and its musicians: he presents Toronto as a hot music industry pocket from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, with the jingle houses seeking jazz players for their lucrative work. As a result he proposes we rethink the presumed antagonism between jazz and commerce and reconsider the relationships between labor and play and between musicians and industry, especially as mediated by the union. He concludes his study at the outset of the 1980s with reflections on the deleterious impact of neoliberal business practices and government regulations on social networks among musicians and the musical work that sustains them.

Branding Through Music Ken McLeod directs our attention to the sounds of everyday technologies for the purpose of audio branding, the creation of an entire sonic language for a brand. The sounds of cars and appliances can be intentionally designed to appeal to certain demographics by virtue of identity categories like gender, race, and social status; thus, BMW delineates distinct musical identities for their Rolls Royce and Mini Cooper brands. McLeod observes how such sonic tactics increasingly extend to other appliances, such as stoves, dishwashers, and computers, mediating our relationship with machines and playing a unique yet little-understood role in the construction of consumer identity. Tim Anderson presents the practice of branding in the music industry of the 21st century in its intersection with one particular aspect of music supervision, the placement of precomposed music in audiovisual media. Through the trade literature he demonstrates how this convergence has resulted in a shift in the music industry, from the sale of records to the marketing of reputation based on the licensing of intellectual properties. As an example he studies in detail the long-standing symbiotic relationship between media actor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and the Who. As Anderson concludes, music’s meanings can never be fully dissociated from issues of exchange and profit.

Production   29

Advertising Corporate Style Through Music The chapter by Dale Chapman takes us into the boardroom of corporate America, where we discover a firm exploiting music to market a hazardous product during the 1980s: the company is the Brown and Williamson (B&W) tobacco firm, and the music is jazz. His study of corporate correspondence reveals how, in planning the company’s “Musician” campaign for its Kool brand, the executives tried to identify the music’s affective resonances and its appeal to specific race and class demographics. We learn that B&W believed in the style’s ability to signify luxury taste and to mark upward mobility, yet the campaign failed, not least because of their ability to recognize the altered class valence of both jazz and cigarette smoking in the 1980s. In Julie Hubbert’s chapter, the complex interactions of music, moving images, ideologies, and industrial production play out during the war years of the 1930s and 1940s. She takes the GM promotional film Master Hands as the basis for consideration—after sketching the history of Wagner on film soundtracks, Hubbert contextualizes GM’s attempts to establish its benevolence and belief in progress through technology. We discover how Master Hands had its origins in Detroit and the Jam Handy studios and how composer Samuel Benavie drew upon Wagner at a time when the German composer’s star in America was in decline. But Hubbert concludes that Wagner’s music came to serve as the soundtrack for industry and anti–New Deal propaganda. The chapter by Laurel Westrup provides a fine-grained analysis of the music industry’s posthumous marketing of Kurt Cobain’s band Nirvana. In it, she establishes how Nirvana’s recordings and Cobain’s unreleased solo tracks have served as lucrative assets for Geffen Records and their corporate parent, Universal. Westrup surveys Geffen/ Universal’s strategies in packaging and marketing Nirvana; Geffen initially followed Cobain’s lead, striking a balance between underground credibility and mainstream promotion, while Universal increasingly lost that balance. Her case study demonstrates the complex negotiation of industrial forces, legal concerns, fan demand, and artistic integrity involved in marketing a major act like Nirvana.

Advertising Audiovisual Entertainment The chapter by Catrin Watts analyzes in detail structural conventions as well as innovations in cinematic trailers for contemporary action films. Following an introduction to the study of music and sound in trailers, she proceeds to examine the six principal types of structure in these trailers, dividing them into segments according to visual, formal, and musical articulations. Then Watts compares the lengths and order of trailer sections to arrive at a typology, basing her observations on study of 50 action-adventure trailers.

30   Deaville She concludes that music plays an integral role in unifying and organizing the trailer’s materials into a compact audiovisual experience, but opines that more analysis is needed to understand how music taps into mechanisms of appeal. James Deaville’s chapter addresses the overlooked audiovisual format of the television trailer or spot as a form of last-minute advertising for a feature film. After discus­ sing the role of music and sound in the TV spot, he explores the early history of television and traces the fraught relationship between film and television through Hollywood’s gradual recognition of the value of TV as a promotional vehicle in the 1950s. Analysis of the soundtracks to the cinematic trailers and television spots for Goldfinger and Barbarella in the 1960s and The Dark Knight Rises in the 2010s demonstrates the increasingly central role of music in creating the urgency behind the audience appeals of the spots. William Gibbons considers the successful television advertising campaign for a video game console, the Atari VCS console, in the context of industry struggles in the early 1980s over how to market their products. In particular, Gibbons explores the company’s “Have You Played Atari Today?” campaign in terms of how they used it to shape a home audience for game consoles and, in doing so, established standards for the industry. For the ads, Atari created a jingle with a memorable musical hook, variable lyrics, and flexible musical style that was effective in conveying its message of the VCS as a game system that belonged in the home while bringing together neighborhoods and creating community.

Selling on Radio David VanderHamm introduces us to radio programs of the 1930s called barn dances, which provided listeners with “downhome” country music and comedy. With broadcasters as “radio friends” emanating a rhetoric of warmth and naturalness, we can understand how the music programs and friendly address enabled sponsors to unobtrusively insert advertising into rural forms of sociality. Through business correspondence, transcription discs, listener surveys, and scripts, VanderHamm demonstrates how musical performances, advertising, and on-air patter worked together to cultivate a mediated friendship and to promote an idealized rural past that provided a perfect context for advertising pitched to the domestic consumer. In her chapter, Rika Asai closely examines the relationships between a radio-variety program of the late 1940s, Echoes of New York, and its sponsor, New York City’s electric utility, Consolidated Edison. By consulting scripts, scores, and financial documentation, she also establishes the role of advertising agency McCann-Erickson, which created the show and was responsible for its musical component. Consolidated Edison’s advertising was not product driven but centered primarily on enhancing the company’s image, on creating “good will” with its listening community by offering the public musical entertainment as well as educational programming.

Production   31

Appendix Lawrence Harte’s chapter forms a pendant to that by Peter Kupfer (see Chapter 3), leading the reader through the process of setting music to moving images in the service of advertising. His insider’s perspective provides insights into such topics as the purpose of music in audiovisual marketing, the processes behind the selection and licensing of advertising music, the synchronization of music and video, and the measurement of music effectiveness. The division of the text into short paragraphs facilitates the chapter’s use as a reference source that illustrates the many stages and considerations involved in the production of music for advertising.

Reference Cook, N. (2000). Music: A very short introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Music and Advertising Befor e 1900

chapter 1

A dv ertisi ng the English Gl ee to Wom en, 1750 –1800 Bethany Blake

The glee reached the height of its popularity during the 1780s and 1790s in London through publications that embraced women as potential consumers and performers. Only a few decades prior, however, this harmonized English genre was strongly connected with all-male associations. Elite vocal clubs such as the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club (hereafter “Catch Club”) had been responsible for the glee’s ascendancy in the mid-1700s, promoting the genre as a worthy successor to the 16thcentury English madrigal through private concerts and aristocratic patronage. As vocal clubs sought to present the glee as an elevated form of art music, they also took advantage of London’s burgeoning music market to build the genre’s reputation. The glee assumed greater prominence in performance and print outside of associational culture, leading to transformations in compositional style that accommodated both household performance and public performance by women and mixed-gender forces. This transformed the glee from a genre with highbrow aspirations into something akin to middlebrow culture. As an aesthetic category, the middlebrow label is typically applied to late 19th- and 20th-century Anglo-American musics that occupy a middle space between highbrow art and lowbrow popular culture (see Jaillant, 2014; J. S. xRubin, 1992). It is often used in reference to high culture that is popularized in some way. In suggesting that the 18th-century glee can also be viewed as middlebrow, I call attention to the ways in which coinciding social and aesthetic aims gave rise to fluctuating and sometimes contradictory criteria for assessing cultural value. The glee’s transformation into a middlebrow genre was primarily catalyzed by the ways in which it was marketed to broader audiences, through techniques that emphasize its growing mass appeal over its initial cultural rarefication. Since the history of the glee is interwoven with the history of English gender conventions, to a large extent

Advertising the English Glee to Women   35 the marketing of glee publications was contingent upon the gender of targeted consumers (Cencer, 2017). Methods of advertising the glee thus reflect broader ideas concerning 18th-century marketing practices and gender, which is the focus of this chapter. The chapter is divided into three main sections. The first encompasses a brief overview of the early phase of the glee’s history, which was shaped by all-male aristocratic connoisseurs within the predominantly private environment of the homosocial club. I explore how the initial patrons of this genre, in most cases Catch Club members, worked to generate a canonical body of glee repertoire through an annual competition and related club publication. Their intention was to purpose the glee as representative of an English national music identity, one that could hold its own in comparison to musics performed in mainland Europe. The second section considers how methods of advertising glee publications changed in response to shifting consumer demographics. Aristocratic endeavors to fashion the glee as a cultivated, national art song ultimately backfired. Club competitions and publications led to more public performances of glees, which in turn created more opportunities for glee composers to publish outside of the club’s purview. As the glee became more mainstream (and profitable), its ambitions of high art status began to dovetail with commercial aspirations. The biggest impetus for developments in marketing approaches involved selling the glee to women. Beginning in the 1770s, glees were written for mixed-gender performing forces for public concerts and theatrical entertainments with mixed-gender audiences. As some of those glees were subsequently sold as sheet music, publishers undoubtedly realized that women constituted a relatively untapped market for the domestic performance of glees. As we shall see, glees marketed for female consumers were published in anthologies, periodicals, sheet music, and novelty formats, such as music printed on folding fans and playing cards. The final section of this chapter considers more broadly how the glee’s circulation within a capitalist music market impacted the genre’s compositional style, performance practices, and ultimately longevity. For example, prior to 1780, keyboard accompaniment parts in glee publications represented the exception rather than the rule. By the end of the 18th century, obbligato piano accompaniments had become standard to glee publications. During the last two decades of the century, instrumental arrangements of glees became popular as well. Moreover, a particular type of glee emerged that greatly expanded the body of glee repertoire: the harmonized solo song. More often than not, aristocrats who had promoted the glee in its earlier phase declared that such arrangements were falsely advertised as glees, since they did not originate as polyphonic music and were typically simpler in harmonic language and level of musicianship than the type of glee composed for all-male clubs. Composers, on the other hand, were eager to profit on harmonized glees, due to their relatively low effort-to-profit ratio. The harmonized glee constituted the closing phase of the glee’s heyday.

36   Blake

The Glee as Cultivated Art Song Several all-male partsong societies were founded in London during the 18th century. In addition to the Catch Club, which still exists today, other examples of all-male clubs include the Madrigal Society (also still active, though now of mixed gender), Glee Club, Anacreontic Society, Concentores Society, Graduates Meeting, and Harmonists Society. The Catch Club was the most influential of these societies: it was founded in 1761 by eight aristocratic amateur musicians and one antiquarian musician, Edmund Thomas Warren, who fulfilled secretarial duties. The aristocratic amateurs quickly realized that they would benefit from professional musician members for both composing new partsongs and performing them at meetings. Within two years, the club had therefore expanded to accommodate two types of members: aristocratic amateur musician members and professional musician members referred to as either honorary or (ironically) privileged members because they did not pay club dues. Privileged members were denied voting rights, which kept associational power firmly within the hands of the aristocrats. Their membership included titled earls, dukes, viscounts, and baronets, and untitled judges, doctors, and major generals. The Prince of Wales, who became George IV in 1820, was the club’s most prestigious member (Robins, 2006, p. 157). Privileged members included famous composers such as Thomas Arne, Samuel Webbe, Benjamin Cooke, John Stafford Smith, and John Wall Callcott, and weekly meetings were held in a private tavern room in London. The Catch Club initially met at the Thatched House Tavern, then moved to St. Alban’s Tavern, both owned by William Almack (the Duke of Hamilton’s steward; the Duke was a Catch Club member). These meetings were neither advertised nor reported upon, but the club relied heavily on its prestige to endorse publications of winning songs generated through the annual competition. Yet in entering the music publishing market, the Catch Club ultimately lost control of the genre they had worked so hard to promote. During the 17th and 18th centuries, British associational culture was primarily an allmale affair. Women’s music making was typically confined to the domestic realm, which precluded their participation in such associations. For vocal clubs such as the Catch Club, whose meetings usually entailed lavish dining and the sustained alternation of toasting and singing after the meal had concluded, female attendance would have challenged the normative codes of conduct. Song lyrics promoted brotherhood, treated women as lovers or shrews rather than equals, and contained suggestive jokes seen as unsuitable for mixed company. An anecdote concerning the Anacreontic Society illustrates the implications of inviting women into the men’s space. At a meeting in the early 1790s, the society invited the Duchess of Devonshire to visit the singing portion of the meeting. The singers compensated for the Duchess’s presence by performing the usual meeting repertoire (with lyrics deemed inappropriate for female ears) in a more inhibited manner. This affront to the usual gregariousness upset several members, prompting their resignations and disbanding the club (Parke, 1830, p. 83).

Advertising the English Glee to Women   37 One exception permitted women to attend club meetings, designated as “Ladies Nights.” Several all-male vocal societies hosted such events, in which the men performed for their wives, mistresses, and female friends. However, these evenings were by invitation only, and the featured music was censored so as not to offend “the fair sex.”1 Women rarely participated in singing at Ladies Nights, in part because the vocal parts favored lower singing registers. Through curating both the repertoire and attendees at Ladies Nights, the Catch Club managed to align their conception of the glee as a high art song with its initial promotion to a male consumer base. For the club’s aims of forming an English vocal canon, the glee offered many points of connection with the Elizabethan madrigal. Unlike the short and succinct catch, glees were multisectional songs for three or more voices that often concluded with a refrain set in all voices. Catches had been popular since the 17th century, as demonstrated by Henry Aldrich, John Eccles, and Henry Purcell (Hilton, 1652; Purcell, 1732). They were prized for their display of polyphonic wit and entertainment value, but English critics did not consider them as artistic or timeless as the madrigal, which might have hindered their popularity (see Austern, 2013). Furthermore, in a musical climate where cosmopolitanism and Italian music dominated, connecting the lesser known English glee to the more familiar Elizabethan madrigal proved effective in identifying both with English national identity. In an essay from 1801 relaying the history of the Catch Club, John Wall Callcott writes: It may be observed that the Madrigal to [originally “words of poeti” crossed out, then “poetical” crossed out] is the original source of the Glee as the Motett is of the Anthem and that our own composers, two hundred years past equaled if not excelled their contemporary Italians in the Time of Weelkes, Wilbye, Bennet, Morley and etc. To revive neglected music of that period and to encourage the efforts of rising talents a few of the English Nobility and gentry in Nov. 1761 formed the design of establishing a Catch Club and the Earl of Eglinton and Sandwich were the first institutions of the society.  (Callcott, 1797–1801, pp. 143–144)

Callcott’s revision regarding “poetical” reveals his attempt to link the cultural status of the glee to that of the madrigal through their shared integration of literature and music, a useful strategy for promoting the glee. Other privileged members of the Catch Club, including Richard Clark and William Hayes, echoed Callcott’s arguments in their own publications (Clark, 1824, pp. i–ii; Hayes, 1757, Preface). The Catch Club’s promotional practice of relating the glee to the madrigal is supported by Warren’s occasional classification of Elizabethan madrigals as glees in both the club’s music manuscripts and annual Collection of Catches, Canons and Glees (Table 1.1). The 1  Consistent records of repertoire sung at meetings and Ladies Nights date from 1828: Glees Performed, 1828–41, GB-Lbl, British Library Music Collections, H.2788.ddd; Glees Performed, 1841–71, GB-Lbl, British Library Music Collections, H.2788.eee. Ladies Nights repertoire was recorded for June 30, 1828; July 7, 1829; June 19, 1838; June 25, 1847; and July [n.d.], 1848. Sometimes Ladies Night is indicated with a date, but the repertoire is not listed, as in June 25, 1839, and June 27, 1845.

38   Blake Table 1.1  Madrigals Retitled as “Glees” in Warren’s Collection Orlando Gibbons, 1612

“The Silver Swan”

John Bennett, 1599

“When as I Look’d on My Dear Love”

Thomas Weelkes, AD 1600

“The Nightingale”

Thomas Morley, 1596 [misattributed, should be John Farmer]

“Fair Phyllis”

Michael Este, n.d.

“How Merrily We Live That Shepherds Be”

Morley, 1600

“Within an Arbour of Sweet Bry’r”

Ravenscroft, 1614 [misdated, should be 1609]

“We Be Three Poor Mariners”

Nicholas Freeman, 1667

“Of All the Brave Birds That Ever I See”

Thomas Ford, 1620

“Since First I Saw Your Face”

William Byrd, 1563

“How Oft the Heathen Poets”

Huberto Waelrant, 1590

“O’er Desert Plains and Rushy Meers”

Collection was edited by Warren and contained partsongs that had been awarded prizes the previous year in the club’s annual composition competition, as well as other newly composed partsongs by members and (occasionally) 16th- and 17th-century madrigals or catches. The inclusion of new and old music helped to reinforce the perceived link between glee and madrigal. The late 19th-century historian David Baptie even declared that the glee had achieved more historical prominence than the madrigal, writing, “While in the madrigal our composers have never been surpassed, we can proudly add that in the glee we are—and ever have been—absolutely unrivaled” (Baptie, 1895, p. 152). Shortly after the Catch Club formed, its members sought to commission glees through a competition. The minutes of the May 1762 meeting recorded a resolution: Resolv’d, that a Premium of a Gold Medal of ten Guineas value, or ten Guineas be given for the best Catch, Canon and Glee, words and Music new, and a Premium of half the value, for the second best of Each and that Mr. Secretary Warren do publish the same in the Daily Papers from time to time.  (H.2788.rr, 1762, p. 3)

The reference to the “Daily Papers” is important, for it indicates the efforts put forth to adequately advertise the competition to attract skilled composers. As early as 1764, the competition was announced in foreign papers as well, with the instruction that the advertisement “be Translated into French and Italian in order to be inserted in the Foreign Gazettes.”2 In advertising internationally, the club aimed to increase continental awareness of both the catch and the glee, and to promote international representation 2  Mr. Phelps, the club’s treasurer, agreed to supervise its translation. Minutes, GB-Lbl, British Library Music Collections, H.2788.rr, 39.

Advertising the English Glee to Women   39 through the allowance of foreign language submissions. However, from 1769 on, the competition clearly positioned the glee as the predominant English national genre over the catch and canon, reflected in the creation of two separate categories for “cheerful glees” and “serious glees,” as well as the elimination of the foreign language glee category (Cencer, 2017, p. 84). Having two categories affirmed the wide-ranging subject matter glees could cover and likely encouraged the practice in the late 18th and 19th centuries of classifying glees according to their textual content, as in fairy glees, humorous glees, commemorative glees, and so on. The competition continued through 1794, after which it was temporarily discontinued due to the death of Thomas Warren, its primary or­gan­ izer.3 Nevertheless, over these three decades, the club had commissioned hundreds of glees through the competition.

New Methods of Advertising Glee Publications Through their composition competition and Collection publications, the Catch Club promoted the glee as they had conceived of it and performed it: a genre for male voices. This qualification is maintained to this day, as exemplified by the club’s most recent historical account published in 2014, in which current member James Wilkinson defines the glee as “an unaccompanied part song, usually for three or more male voices, which flourished in England from about 1750 until the First World War” (Wilkinson, 2014, p. 47). Wilkinson simply cites “Grove” as his source. Yet David Johnson’s current Oxford Music Online entry is slightly different, beginning with this sentence: “A type of unaccompanied partsong, typically for male voices though often including female voices [italics mine], which flourished in England from about 1750 until World War I” (Johnson, 2001). Wilkinson’s omission of Johnson’s reference to female voices demonstrates that the Catch Club continues to characterize the glee as an all-male genre. This is not at all surprising, considering that their meetings, apart from Ladies Nights, are (and always have been) limited to men. By the 1770s, however, the glee had increasing public purchase as a mixed-voice genre. Both performers and audiences were typically of mixed genders in public venues where glees were featured, including pleasure gardens, theaters, and concert series. Unlike on the European continent, in England women were allowed to attend pleasure gardens, theaters, and concert venues unescorted by men, which implies that women made up a substantial proportion of the audience (Weber, 2008, p. 24). The glee was first 3  The competition was eventually revived in 1811 and continued to occur sporadically throughout the 19th century: in 1812, 1821, 1822, 1827–1835, 1839, 1844, 1861, 1866, 1869–1879, 1880, and 1881. These dates are based on cross-referencing club indices; see Willetts (1970, p. 94) and Wilkinson (2014, pp. 5, 8–60).

40   Blake introduced to the concert stage through the pleasure gardens, with the first documented pleasure garden concert of catches and glees occurring in 1765, only a few years after the formation of the Catch Club (Robins, 2006, pp. 109–110). In the early 1770s, concurrent with the emergence of Ladies Nights, Thomas Arne began presenting catch and glee concerts paired with theatrical productions that featured mixed-gender ensembles, and other composers followed suit. By the early 1780s, audiences expected to hear premieres of new glees in plays and ballad operas, revealing the extent to which glees had become integrated into public performance culture. Chapter Nine of The Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum-Book of 1780 supports these observations. The chapter’s title, “The Most Esteemed New Songs, Sung at Vauxhall, Ranelagh, the Theatres, and Catch Club,” demonstrates that there was indeed an overlap in song repertoire between the private club and the public theater (The Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum-Book, 1780). In the attempt to render the music more suited to stage performance, partsongs that had been sung in the manner of chamber music, with one on a part during club meetings, acquired a choral element either through increasing the number of individual vocal parts or by assigning multiple singers to each part. Similarly, partsongs that had been sung a cappella by clubs were enhanced by piano or orchestral accompaniments. Voice doubling and accompaniments had been added to a cappella glees in pleasure garden concerts since the late 1760s (Robins, 2006, p. 108).4 The end result was an amplification effect, fitting for the less intimate performance environment of the public concert. Since women were performing glees and attending concerts featuring the genre, it follows that composers and publishers began to market glees to them for domestic performance and entertainment. Most aristocratic women studied music at home, and by the turn of the 19th century the piano had become a staple accoutrement of the wealthy household. To accommodate women’s vocal ranges, SATB arrangements of AATB glees became prevalent beginning in the 1780s. All vocal parts except the bass were notated in treble rather than alto and tenor clefs (E. Rubin, 2003, p. 394). Treble clefs rendered the music more accessible on two levels: amateurs tended to be most literate in treble notation, and both sopranos and tenors could sing the same parts (with tenors an octave lower), thus increasing the consumer base for publications in these notational formats. Retaining the bass clef for the lowest part encouraged mixed-gender performances in the home, either with family members and friends or perhaps with female pupils and their male music instructor. The addition of keyboard accompaniments, initially more so as figured bass symbols and then more frequently as obbligato written-out parts, made it much easier for amateurs to sing the correct pitches and enabled women to accompany themselves as they sang. The added accompaniments also made it possible to omit the bass, as it would have been covered by the keyboard part. Many of these adaptations

4  Arne’s Ranelagh concert on May 12, 1767, made a significant impact in the press and is the first known instance of these genres being expanded from one-per-part a cappella performance to a chorus with instrumental accompaniment.

Advertising the English Glee to Women   41 acknowledge the growing presence of the piano in the aristocratic home, thus fulfilling a demand for repertoire that was suitable for performance in the salon setting. In addition to arranging AATB glees for amateur domestic performance, composers created new glees specifically for women. Such glees were often published in anthologies for various combinations of upper voice parts, including SSA, SAT, SSB, and SATB. Indeed, the most common publication format for glees during the second half of the 18th century was the anthology (both single and multiauthor), featuring a multitude of glees, often composed within a span of a few years. The Catch Club paved the way for this format with their annual Collection. In marketing to women, composers simply modified their approach by designating their intended audience through title and subject matter. As early as 1762, Samuel Webbe published The Ladies Catch Book: Being a Collection of Catches, Canons and Glees: The Words of Which Will Not Offend the Nicest Delicacy, which was so successful that it was reissued throughout the 1760s and 1770s. Another anthology, The Ladies Collection of Catches, Glees, Canons, Canzonets, Madrigals, &c., was published in several editions between 1787 and the early 1800s and featured a variety of composers, thereby broadening its appeal. Other examples include Musicae Vocalis Deliciae and Apollonian Harmony—both were published around 1790, are composed of two volumes, and in good marketing fashion proclaim that the words to the songs are “consistent with female delicacy.”5 Samuel Webbe Sr. also edited a collection titled Six Glees, with the inscription “composed by an amateur, and most respectfully inscribed to Miss Fisher” (1785). The emphasis on an undisclosed amateur composer, combined with the dedication to the famous British courtesan and actor Kitty Fisher, effectively advertised the volume to female amateur musicians. Richard John Samuel Stevens’s Eight Glees Expressly Composed for Ladies of 1796 exemplifies how glees were composed and published with a female clientele in mind. Stevens was a Catch Club member, as well as a founding member of the Harmonists Society. Before publishing Eight Glees, he introduced manuscript glees at multiple Ladies Nights concerts for the Harmonists Society, claiming he was “glad of the opportunity of exhibiting them to so much advantage” (Argent, 1992, p. 98; see also p. 107). Musicologist Mark Argent suggests that the female attendees may have sung the occasional soprano parts during these concerts (p. 98). If Argent is correct, it is likely Stevens used the concerts to evaluate glees he had written for female singers. Eight Glees contains the following songs, several of which are based on texts by Shakespeare: • “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind” • “Send Home My Long Stray’d Eyes” • “Doubt Thou the Stars Are Fire” • “Belinda See from Yonder Flowers” 5  The concern with censoring the language of Catch Club compositions intensified during the Victorian period, about which an anecdote claims that due to the uncouthness of many catches in Collection volumes, “many copies of his edition were bought up and destroyed while others went up in flames in a fire at his house” (Wilkinson, 2014, p. 51).

42   Blake • “Now the Hungry Lion Roars” • “She Is Faithless and I Am Undone” • “Charming to Love Is Morning’s Hour” • “Balmy Gale” Stevens dedicated the collection to two sisters, Maria and Frances Simpson, “by their most obliged humble servant” (Argent,  1992, p. 106). Stevens states in his memoir, Recollections, that both women were his pupils, that they granted him permission for the dedication, and that Frances, being the eldest, gave him 10 pounds as recompense (Argent,  1992, p. 106). Stevens’s anthology contains glees written for SATB and SSB voices. As all eight songs contain bass parts, they would have been particularly appropriate for vocal masters to sing with their aristocratic students in a domestic setting, as Stevens and the Simpson sisters certainly did. In dedicating his collection to his students, Stevens effectively advertised it to other vocal instructors. The song lyrics and vocal scoring also enhance the anthology’s marketability by supporting repertoire appropriate for all singers regardless of gender. As a more affordable alternative to the established anthology format, sheet music increased in sales in conjunction with a growing middle-class consumer base. Sheet music was more ephemeral than anthologies, and publishers maximized its sales potential by linking individual songs with professional female artists, foreshadowing the Tin Pan Alley approach of using singers as song endorsements. For example, Samuel Webbe Jr.’s glee “British Sentiments” is “respectfully dedicated to” Elizabeth Billington, a singer who became famous in the 1780s and 1790s by performing at the Handel centennial commemoration concerts, Concerts of Ancient Music series, Professional Concerts, and Vauxhall Gardens. “British Sentiments” had recently been premiered at Samuel Harrison and Charles Knyvett Sr.’s Vocal Concerts, a prominent subscription concert series founded in 1792 by privileged Catch Club members. Even though “British Sentiments” was performed by men, Webbe’s dedication to Billington was intended to increase sales by drawing on her lofty reputation as a professional singer. The Vocal Concerts did feature mixed-gender glee performances, however, as evidenced by this statement from the second edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (in reference to the 1790s concerts): “Mr. and Mrs. Harrison and Bartleman were the principal singers, and were assisted in the glees, which formed the principal feature of the concerts, by Mr. Knyvett jun., Master W. Knyvett, and others.” The author adds that Mme. Dussek and Miss Poole (afterward Mrs. Dickons) joined the regularly featured female vocalists in 1793 (Fuller-Maitland, 1910, p. 359). Sheet music containing glees from the 1790s and 1800s frequently mentions the Vocal Concerts and various performers associated with them, thereby serving a valuable promotional function. Finally, in addition to anthologies and sheet music, serial anthologies were especially popular during the second half of the 18th century. More affordable than bound books, they provided a wider consumer base with the option of purchasing each issue as it was published. Wealthier consumers then had the option of overcoming the periodical’s

Advertising the English Glee to Women   43 ephemerality by binding various periodical installments (either related or not) together into larger volumes, demonstrating that the miscellany concert principle of combining various vocal and instrumental genres was also realized through print (E. Rubin, 2003, p. 394). This practice may have been modeled on literary periodicals, which contained a mixture of poetry, prose, word games, song texts, and the occasional music score, as in The New Lady’s Magazine; or, Polite and Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (ca. 1786). In short, these periodicals functioned as affordable, renewable sources of entertainment. The recreational connotation of periodicals, combined with their conveyance of current news and fashion advice, located them within the domestic domain, although as literary scholar Shawn Lisa Maurer argues, the periodical genre contributed “to the construction of a class-specific gender identity that succeeds as ideology not, as is usually assumed, by separating the feminine private sphere from the masculine public one, but by delineating the private as an important locus of masculine control” (1998, p. 3). Maurer cites how men’s periodicals such as Edward Cave’s Gentleman’s Magazine reinforced pervasive beliefs concerning masculine identity in part through refashioning women’s gender roles (p. 4). Similarly, the censorship of song content in music periodicals marketed to women reflects an effort to maintain masculine control over the domestic sphere. The most well-known partsong periodical was Amusement for the Ladies: Being a Selection of Favorite Catches, Glees and Madrigals, Several of Which Have Gained the Prize Medals of the Noblemen & Gentlemen’s Catch Club. It was originally issued around 1780 as three volumes of three books each by Longman and Broderip, a prominent publisher that highlighted its reputation as music sellers to English royalty.6 Publication dates were not printed, but the chronology of subsequent reissues can be surmised through a comparison of extant sources and their publishers. It appears that Longman and Broderip reissued all three volumes between 1785 and 1795 under this modified title: Amusement for the Ladies: Being a Selection of the Favorite Catches, Canons, Glees, and Madrigals; as Performed at the Noblemen & Gentlemen’s Catch Club Including the Most Popular Which Have Gained the Prize Medals. The new title inserts both a statement claiming the songs were actually performed at club meetings and the word “popular.” These edits lent a sense of quality and authenticity to the music by demonstrating their deliberate cultivation by the Catch Club, as a means of using the club’s prestige for commercial appeal. Longman and Broderip published volumes 18 through 31 of Warren’s Collection between 1779 and 1792, when Amusement for the Ladies was first issued. Around 1800 Broderip and Wilkinson reissued Amusement for the Ladies again, and around 1810 it was reissued by the original publisher, Longman and Broderip, as well as by Preston, another London publisher. This rich publishing history, possibly spanning 6  Longman and Broderip’s imprint read, “London, Printed by Longman and Broderip No. 26 Cheapside and No. 13 Haymarket. Manufacturers of Musical Instruments in general, and Music Seller to Their Majesties, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of York and Clarence, and all the Royal Family.”

44   Blake 30 years and involving three publishers, attests to this anthology’s relevance for extending the glee’s consumer base, as well as the extended appeal of a specific body of repertoire. In each of the nine books, the majority of songs are glees, supplemented by madrigals, nonbawdy catches, and the occasional canon, rondo, round, or elegy. The glees are mostly pastoral or patriotic in nature. The presence of madrigals is reminiscent of repertoire performed at Ladies Nights, and the expectation was that women would have already been familiar with them. Written for three to four a cappella voices (usually SSB or SSTB), these songs would have been appropriate for female singers. Individual books within the Broderip and Wilkinson issue at the Bodleian Library are signed by the Countess of Mansfield, evidence that these books were patronized and possibly used by female consumers (Harding Mus. E 646–48). Other serial music anthologies aimed at women often contained solo songs with accompaniment, as in The Lady’s Musical Magazine; or, Monthly Polite Repository of New Vocal Musick by the Principal Composers in Europe (1788). The Piano-Forte Magazine, printed between 1797 and 1802, contained various vocal and instrumental genres, including catches, canons, and glees consisting of 16 volumes in all. Warren was responsible for editing a periodical that was colloquially referred to as “Warren’s Monthly Collection,” which was likely first published as early as 1765. The entire collection was then reissued as a single volume entitled A Collection of Vocal Harmony around 1775. Warren’s periodical demonstrates that the Catch Club was well aware of the potential of periodicals to promote the glee genre. One periodical, The Gentleman’s Musical Magazine; or Monthly Convivial Companion, functioned as a male corollary to periodicals for ladies (1788). It contained “Anacreontics, Cantatas, Catches, Glees, Hunting Songs, and Sea Songs.” Anacreontics, poems written on topics of love and wine in the style of the Greek poet Anacreon, were common to most men’s periodicals, both music and literary, pointing to intertextuality within periodical and partsong culture. By the late 18th century, the music market was saturated with glee publications, prompting some publishers to seek out new methods of commodification. One solution was to utilize items associated with female leisure. For example, images related to dancing or music were engraved on ladies’ folding fans, as in the “New Opera Fan for 1797,” which included a depiction of the opera boxes with corresponding names of occupants. Musical instrument maker and publisher George Smart appears to have achieved financial success by printing partsongs in an unconventional format. He issued two collections of songs, both entitled The Vocal Pocket Companion, around 1785 and 1789 when the glee was at the height of its popularity. This music appears on individual cards resembling a deck of playing cards and is stored within a portable slipcase. Smart advertised these musical cards through their novelty appeal and through their dedications to female aristocratic socialites. The dedication to the first collection reads, “Humbly Inscribed to Mrs. Crewe by Her Most Obedient & Obliged Servant G. Smart.” Baroness Frances Anne Crewe was the wife of Baron John Crewe, a member of Parliament. She cultivated a career as a political hostess and gained a reputation for throwing lavish

Advertising the English Glee to Women   45 ­ arties. The wording for the second dedication to Lady Elizabeth Yonge is similar. She p was the daughter and heir of a wealthy London pewterer and wife of Parliamentarian Sir George Yonge. Card playing was a popular pastime among the elite. Smart targeted the aristocratic consumer through his presentation of The Vocal Pocket Companion as a leisure item dedicated to renowned women. It is possible that these female dedicatees bestowed commissions on Smart as payment for his dedications. As precedent, the wives of other important aristocrats are known to have acted as patrons for 18th-century glee anthologies. The cards’ financial value reinforces their status as fashionable commodity, since, priced at 10 shillings six pence, these cards sold for the same price as full-size anthologies of partsongs. Sheet music, by comparison, was typically one shilling, which itself was the usual daily wage for most laborers. The Vocal Pocket Companion’s cost delimited its audience, thus rend­er­ing it as a status symbol.

Redefining the Glee as Middlebrow By the turn of the 19th century, composition and performance practices associated with the glee had changed significantly, mostly in response to a growing female consumer base. Changes in vocal scoring, textual content, and the addition of piano accompaniment parts all contributed to this transformation. The Catch Club has remained firm in the performance of unaccompanied glees to this day, yet some of its members were pioneers in this practice, including William Jackson, Callcott, and Stevens. Moreover, Stevens arranged his three-voice glee “O Strike the Harp in Praise of Bragela” for a “double accompaniment for the piano forte,” in which two players could accompany themselves on one piano. Stevens claims that he was the first to compose double accompaniments, and that he did so for two sisters, Anna Maria and Susan Jeffery, with whom he sang the bass part (Argent, 1992, p. 96). Benjamin Cooke’s “Hark! The Lark,” a four-voice glee performed at Vauxhall Gardens, includes both violin and harpsichord accompaniments. The composer states at the top of the printed music that the violin part may alternatively be “played an octave higher (with very little omission or variation) by another hand on the same Harpsichord.” During the last two decades of the century, instrumental arrangements of glees became popular as well, thereby joining the new accompaniments in promoting glee performance to broader circles. Perhaps the most revolutionary change, however, was the clever approach of harmonizing solo songs and marketing them as glees. Such harmonizations greatly expanded the core body of glee repertoire. This practice greatly irritated many of the aristocratic members of the Catch Club, who perceived that composers were betraying the integrity of the genre for the sake of a profit. Ironically, one reason for the increase in harmonized glees was a lack of interest in new glee composition; while the Catch Club’s competition ceased in 1794 due to Thomas Warren’s death, it had attracted significantly fewer entries

46   Blake during the 1790s than several decades prior. Since it was easier to arrange preexisting songs than compose new ones, several privileged members capitalized on their harmonizations. For example, in Stevens’s Eight Glees, “Doubt Thou the Stars Are Fire” is specified as “Harmoniz’d From a Song of the Authors.” Harmonized glees were especially popular with female clientele, and their heyday coincided with the advent of private subscription salon concerts hosted by upper-class women. It appears that such events arose in the 1790s to maintain a level of class exclusivity in response to the growth across social ranks in public concert attendance. Musicologist Ian Taylor suggests that the declining levels of exclusivity amongst audiences at venues such as the Hanover Square, Willis’s and the King’s Theatre concert rooms may have played a pivotal role in the development of an alternative strand of concert-giving, through which those in control were allowed to regain complete authority over the attendant audiences. Like the previously cited Concerts of Ancient Music, these domestic performances allowed for both the restoration of the sort of studied social framework now felt to be so lacking in the West End and for the provision of an ideological rebuke to the emerging commercial class, their location within the homes of the city’s landed elite offering a very obvious illustration that money could not ultimately buy acceptance or success.  (2010, p. 123)

One such series known as the Ladies Concerts occurred between 1791 and 1807 in the homes of its female subscribers. The concerts featured mostly vocal music with some orchestral pieces. Such private concert series provided women with the rare opportunity to serve as patrons and directly impact musical life in London. These activities intersect with opportunities women writers had achieved by the 1790s, when women experienced an unprecedented degree of public visibility as booksellers and periodical/newspaper editors. More women became self-sufficient also as cultural producers, educators, and stage performers (Guest, 2013, p. 8). As early as 1760, the operatic soprano Teresa Cornelys hosted concerts in Carlisle House, her rented mansion. Despite the elite audience, miscellanystyle Ladies Concerts programs included three-voice harmonized glees, as in “A Shepherd Once Had Lost His Love” (ca. 1795), an anonymous SSB arrangement of a solo song by Storace originally sung by Mrs. Bland in the comic opera The Cherokee. This song would have been familiar to audiences at the time, and the triadic melodies and Alberti bass accompaniment patterns would have been manageable for amateur performers in domestic settings. In addition to composers arranging their own solo songs for public consumption, they often arranged those of their colleagues. For example, professional singer Mrs. Harrison is listed in the Vocal Concerts program for April 25, 1793, as one of the performers of William Jackson’s harmonization of Thomas Arne’s air “Where the Bee Sucks” ([1780]). Michael Arne (Thomas’s son) composed “Sweet Poll of Plymouth” for John O’Keeffe’s farce The Positive Man (1782); the song subsequently appeared both as sheet music and in the Edinburgh Musical Miscellany (1793), and its ensuing popularity must have inspired Samuel Webbe Sr. to harmonize it. Webbe also

Advertising the English Glee to Women   47 arranged songs by other well-known glee composers, such as Thomas Arne’s “What Pleasing Pains,” William Boyce’s “What Medicine Can Soften,” and several traditional Scottish airs. The latter were particularly popular at the time, ensuring that consumers would recognize the titles of original tunes and be more inclined to purchase the harmonizations.7 Publication of partsong anthologies and periodicals decreased after 1800, but releases of individual harmonized glees increased between 1800 and 1820. Musicologist Emanuel Rubin suggests that this could be due to the affordability of single publications, as well as their ephemerality, pointing to the glee as newly commodified for domestic entertainment. Anthologies, by contrast, were becoming more appropriate for association libraries and serious collectors (E. Rubin, 2003, p. 392). By the late 19th century, glees had been reframed as “classic” songs that were easier to sing than the newer, chromatic ones (E. Rubin, 2003, p. 393). Late 18th- and early 19thcentury anthologies were often reissued over a period of a few decades, as in Webbe’s Convito armonico, originally published in 1808 with multiple reprints into the 1830s. Convito armonico features a variety of partsong composers and genres, but songs are reduced to two staves to facilitate accompaniment. Thus, the practice of repackaging old glees in new formats continued into the 19th century. By the 1810s, the glee in its original form as an all-male art music genre was barely recognizable, and it had become firmly entrenched as a middlebrow genre, with considerable assistance from promotional practices. On its journey from the exclusive all-male club, to the public concert hall, before finally residing in the family home, the glee was transfigured from a national cultural emblem into a domestic pastime, from a cultivated art song to a commodity subject to the vagaries of commerce. Catch Club aristocrats have consistently promoted the glee at their meetings, but the types of glees they have historically endorsed are generally representative of the midrather than late 18th century. To acknowledge the genre’s full history, historians of the glee must instead take its marketing to women into account, as fundamentally altering the texts, compositional style, performance practices, and very performers and listeners of glees. They must also question the connection between cultural and gender hierarchies, positioning the shift from a highbrow all-male to a middlebrow mixed-gender genre as a transformation wrought by changes in music circulation in London rather than the dilution of the genre’s quality. In promoting their glee anthologies, publishers relied in part on the recognized prestige of the Catch Club, but they also based advertising decisions on consumer demographics and current views on music aesthetics and affect. The prestige factor formerly supplied by the Catch Club’s name was later fulfilled by the prestige of female dedicatees. Such advertising practices facilitated a broader shift in the framing of the glee genre, from a national symbol of Englishness to a commodity primarily representing entertainment and leisure. 7  Additional examples include Samuel Harrison’s four-voice harmonization of “Oh Nanny! Wilt Thou Gang With Me” and William Knyvett’s “Lochaber: A Favorite Glee,” further revealing that such harmonizations were promoted through the Vocal Concerts.

48   Blake

Recommended Readings Maurer, S. L. (1998). Proposing men: Dialectics of gender and class in the eighteenth-century English periodical. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Robins, B. (2006). Catch and glee culture in eighteenth-century England. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press. Rubin, E. (2003). The English glee in the reign of George III: Participatory art music for an urban society. Detroit, MI: Harmonie Park Press. Weber, W. (Ed.). (2004). The musician as entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, charlatans, and idealists. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Weber, W. (2008). The great transformation of musical taste. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

References Amusement for the ladies (ca. 1785–1810). London, UK: Longman and Broderip. Amusement for the ladies, Bodleian Library, Harding Mus. E 646–48. Apollonian harmony (ca. 1790). London, UK: Printed for S.A. & P. Thompson. Argent, M. (Ed.). (1992). Recollections of R.  J.  S.  Stevens: An organist in Georgian London. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Austern, L. (2013). Music and manly wit in seventeenth-century England: The case of the catch. In R.  Herissone & A.  Howard (Eds.), Concepts of creativity in seventeenth-century England (pp. 281–308). Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press. Baptie, D. (1895). Sketches of the English glee composers. London, UK: William Reeves. Bland, J. (Ed.). (ca. 1787. Further editions were printed in the 1790s and 1800s). The ladies ­collection of catches, glees, canons, canzonets, madrigals, &c. [London]: sold by him [Bland] at his music warehouse, No. 45. Holborn. Callcott, J. W. (1797–1801). Essay III on the Catch Club. In Essays on musical subjects, British Library Add MS 27646. Cencer, B. (2017). London partsong clubs and masculinities, 1750–1830 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Stony Brook University, New York, NY. Clark, R. (1824). The first volume of poetry; Revised, improved, and considerably enlarged, containing the most favorite pieces, as performed at the noblemen and gentlemen’s Catch Club, the Glee Club, the Harmonists’ Society, the Argyll Glee Club, the Lodge of Antiquity, the Somerset House Lodge, the Lodge of Inverness, and the Lodge of Prudence, 122, of Freemasons, the Amateur Glee Club, evening parties, and all public societies, in general. London, UK: Printed for the editor. Cooke, B. (n.d.). “Hark! The Lark.” London, UK: Muzio Clementi & Co. Fuller-Maitland, J. A. (Ed.). (1910). Grove’s dictionary of music and musicians (2nd ed., vol. 5). New York, NY: Macmillan Company. The gentleman’s musical magazine; or monthly convivial companion containing, Anacreonticks, Cantatas, Catches, Glees, Hunting Songs, Sea-Songs, &c. (1788. Reissued ca. 1810). 1(1), London, UK: Printed for Harrison & Co. Guest, H. (2013). Unbounded attachment: Sentiment and politics in the age of the French revolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Advertising the English Glee to Women   49 Hayes, W. (1757). Catches, canons, and glees for three, four, and five voices (Bk. 1). [Oxford, UK]: Printed for the author. Hilton, J. (1652). Catch that catch can, or, a choice collection of catches, rounds & canons for 3 or 4 voyces. London, UK: Printed for John Benson & John Playford . . . Jackson, W. ([1780]). Six quartets for voices . . . Opera XI. London, UK: Printed for the Author and sold by John Preston. Jaillant, L. (2014). Modernism, middlebrow, and the literary canon: The Modern Library series, 1917–1955. New York, UK: Routledge. Johnson, D. (2001). Glee. In Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/ music/11269. The ladies new and polite pocket memorandum-book, for the year of our Lord 1780. (ca. 1780). London: Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72, St. Paul’s Church-yard. The lady’s musical magazine; or, monthly polite repository of new vocal musick by the principal composers in Europe (Vol. 1). Published as vol. 1 in 6 parts, containing 4 songs each. 24 songs, mostly for voice and harpsichord or continuo, some with versions for flute. (1788). London, UK: Printed for Harrison and Co. Maurer, S. L. (1998). Proposing men: Dialectics of gender and class in the eighteenth-century English periodical. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Minutes. GB-Lbl, British Library Music Collections, H.2788.rr. Musicae vocalis deliciae. (ca. 1790). London: Printed for T. Skillern. The new lady’s magazine; or, polite and entertaining companion for the fair sex: Entirely devoted to their use and amusement. (ca. 1786). London, UK: [Printed, by Royal Authority, for Alex Hogg, at the original King’s-Arms, no. 16, Paternoster-Row (by whom the communications of ingenious persons—post paid—will be received, and immediately transmitted to the editor)]. Parke, W. (1830). Musical memoirs: Comprising an account of the general state of music in England from the first commemoration of Handel in 1784 to the year 1830 (Vol. 2). London: Colburn & Bentley. The piano-forte magazine. (1797–1802). London, UK: Printed for Harrison and Co. [etc.], No. 18, Paternoster Row. Purcell, H. ([1732?]). The Catch Club: Or, merry companions: Being a choice collection of the most diverting catches for three and four voices. London, UK: Printed for I. Walsh. Robins, B. (2006). Catch and glee culture in eighteenth-century England. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press. Rubin, E. (2003). The English glee in the reign of George III: Participatory art music for an urban society. Detroit, MI: Harmonie Park Press. Rubin, J. S. (1992). The making of middlebrow culture. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. “A Shepherd Once Had Lost His Love.” (ca. 1795). Bodleian Library, Mus. Voc. I, 98 (8). Sime, D. (Ed.). (1793). The Edinburgh musical miscellany: A collection of the most approved Scotch, English, and Irish songs, set to music. Edinburgh, UK: Printed for J. Elder, T. Brown, & C. Elliot. Accessed as GB-Lbl, British Library Music Collections, I.375.b v. 1. Smart, G. (Ed.). (ca. 1785). The vocal pocket companion: Being a select collection of the most favorite catches glees and duetts. London, UK: Printed for the editor at his music warehouse corner of Argyll Street Oxford Street.

50   Blake Smart, G. (Ed.). (ca. 1789). The vocal pocket companion: Being a new collection of the most favorite catches cannons glees and duetts. London, UK: Music Warehouse, corner of Argyll Street, Oxford Street London where may be had the first collection. Taylor, I. (2010). Music in London and the myth of decline: From Haydn to the Philharmonic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Warren, E.  T. (Ed.). (Issued periodically from ca. 1765). A collection of vocal harmony: Consisting of catches canons and glees never before publish’d: To which are added several motetts and madrigals composed by the best masters, selected by [Edmund] Thomas Warren. London, UK: Printed by Welcker in Gerrard Street, St. Ann’s Soho. Webbe, S. (ca. 1800). British sentiments, a glee for four voices, as performed at the vocal concerts, By Messrs. Harrison, Barthleman, & Greatorex. London, UK: Printed by Broderip & Wilkinson. Webbe, S. (Ed.). (ca. 1808, 1820, 1826, 1828, 1830, 1834. Publication dates for reissues are approximations, as reissue dates for anthologies were often not printed). Convito armonico; A collection of madrigals, elegies, glees, canons, catches and duets, selected from the works of the most eminent composers, and for the most part compressed into two lines for the facility of accompaniment. London, UK: Printed & sold by Chappell. Webbe, S. Sr. (Ed.). (ca. 1762. Further editions were printed in 1764, 1770, 1773, and 1778). The ladies catch book: Being a collection of catches, canons and glees: The words of which will not offend the nicest delicacy. London, UK: Printed for S. and A. Thompson. Webbe, S. Sr. (Ed.). (ca. 1785). Six glees, composed by an amateur & most respectfully inscribed to Miss Fisher. London, UK: Napier. Weber, W. (2008). The great transformation of musical taste. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wilkinson, J. (2014). To drink, to sing: The Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club. London, UK: The Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club. Willetts, P.  J. (1970). Handlist of music manuscripts acquired 1908–67. London, UK: British Library.

chapter 2

A dv ertisi ng Mil lie- Chr isti n e , or the M a k i ng of th e T wo -H e a ded N ighti nga l e1 Remi Chiu and Dana Gorzelany-Mostak

In his book on 19th- and early 20th-century “freak shows,” Robert Bogdan recounts the circus lore that surrounded Jack Earle, an exceptionally tall student at the University of Texas. Earle was in the audience of a Ringling Brothers side show when he was spotted by its manager, Clyde Ingalls, who approached him and asked, “How would you like to be a giant?” Earle agreed and began a 14-year career as the Texas Giant. For Bogdan, this origin story clarifies a fundamental point about so-called “freaks”: “being extremely tall is a matter of physiology—being a giant involves something more” (1988, pp. 2–3). A significant part of that “something more” is advertising—necessarily hyperbolic and outlandish—to promote a character or a gimmick to arouse curiosity and direct audience expectations. For some performers, music was an important part of their act as well as their marketed persona. Such was the case with Millie and Christine McKoy (1851–1912), African American conjoined twins who performed under the title of the “Two-Headed Nightingale.”1 Born to bondsmen parents in North Carolina, Millie and Christine McKoy appeared in “freak shows” across the United States and Europe between 1853 and 1902. In her mature act, she would typically enter the hall clothed elegantly and converse with her manager-as-compère, sometimes speaking simultaneously in English, German, Italian, and Spanish. When foreign press was present, she would engage with reporters in their respective languages. Then her manager would ask her to sing and dance. Without loss of 1  The authors would like to thank Kira Thurman and Andrew Dell’Antonio for their expert reviews of initial drafts of this chapter.

52   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak modesty, Millie-Christine would sometimes exhibit the upper portion of her dorsal connection to the audience. While the strangeness of her body was plainly evident—much as Earle’s eight-foot-six-inch frame—a concerted program of advertising was necessary to transform her into a “freak.” Early ephemera advertised Millie-Christine as the “Celebrated African United Twins,” the “African Twins,” or the “Carolina Twins.” In many instances, publicity materials referred to the duo with the singular “Millie-Christine” or “Twin,” rather than “Millie and Christine” or “Twins,” as a marketing strategy intended to pique the public’s curiosity as well as allude to the confounding notion of two persons occupying a single body. It was W. J. L. Millar, an early manager, who referred to his charge as the (singular) “Two-Headed Nightingale,” which would become an indelible sobriquet that was taken over by subsequent marketers (Millar, 1864).2 This ornithological persona points to musical performance as the most noteworthy aspect of her act and suggests that her character was constituted as much in the realm of the aural (the nightingale as a symbol of superior musicality) as it was in the visual (“two-headedness”). Beginning in the 1980s, historians turned their attention to the academic study of the “freak show.” Although now considered an outmoded and insensitive descriptor, the term “freak” was used throughout the 19th and early-20th centuries to describe people with “unusual” physical features. “Freak show” is an umbrella term that refers to the exhibition of such human “oddities” alongside exotic animal curiosities. While “freak shows” in the U.S. date back to the early-18th century, the practice did not become institutionalized and broadly profitable until the mid-19th century (Bogdan, 1988, p. 11). The extent to which individual performers such as Millie-Christine profited (in multiple senses of the word) from this institution is unclear. On one hand, Millie-Christine was well remunerated for her labor—at the height of her fame in 1883, she earned the current equivalent of $1900 per week, plus expenses, and kept three servants—and eventually purchased the plantation where her father was enslaved (The Pall Mall Gazette, 1883; Daily Enterprise, 1900, p. 2). On the other hand, a copious amount of evidence documents Millie-Christine’s exploitation. During her early years, she was kidnapped twice, with several parties claiming “ownership” and bringing the courts into the mix. And like other “human oddities” of the period, she captured the attention of the medical establishment, which subjected her to countless invasive examinations under the guise of scientific inquiry.3 The question of exploitation—especially for successful performers such as Millie-Christine—is therefore complicated, especially given the limitations placed on her livelihood at the time on account of her gender, race, and disability.4 Recent studies of “freak-show” culture generally, and of Millie and Christine in particular, have examined aspects of textual and visual depiction in the presentation of 2  Millar alludes to the moniker in an 1864 article published in the Dundee Advertiser (Scotland). While singing was a part of Millie-Christine’s act as early as 1855 (see ad “REMARKABLE HUMAN PHENOMENA!), the “Two-Headed Nightingale” billing was not in consistent use until the 1870s. 3  With the exception of direct quotations, we have chosen to refer to Millie-Christine in the singular for stylistic consistency with the majority of her promotional materials which used the singular pronouns to heighten her conjoinment. 4  For a critique of Bogdan’s optimistic view of the performer’s agency, see Maris (2018, pp. 241–42).

Advertising Millie-Christine   53 “freaks” (Frost, 2009; Gold, 2010; Martell, 2000; Samuels, 2011). Taking the metaphor of the nightingale as the central conceit, this present study expands the scope of earlier work and explores the aural aspects of the Nightingale persona. A large portion of our primary evidence includes English-language promotional materials, press articles, reviews, medical exposés, (pseudo) biographical and autobiographical pamphlets, cartes de visite, and the twin’s musical repertoire. A consideration of the sonic elements described by these texts, affords a new way to understand the relationship between music and advertising. What emerges is an account of an advertising strategy that relied on the consumers’ biased musical expectations with regard to gender and race, while cultivating new sonic fantasies about the conjoined body.

The Other Singing Nightingale Millie-Christine was not the first nightingale to grace American stages—nor even the first to be associated with “freak shows.” For mid-19th-century American audiences, the “Nightingale” title would certainly have brought to mind, in the first instance, the “Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind, who toured the country between 1850 and 1852, partly under the management of legendary showman P. T. Barnum. Sympathetic critics praised Lind for her magnificent voice and a natural musical ability ordained by God or bestowed by nature, rather than cultivated through mechanical practice. For example, one reviewer for the New-York Daily Tribune explained that Lind sings without relying on the machinations of the typical singer who offers “smooth and finished tones that seem to have no heart-wood in them” or “a barren catalogue of technicalities” (NewYork Daily Tribune, 1850, p. 1). In this sense, the nightingale nickname was apt for Lind, as it was acknowledged since the time of Aristotle and Pliny that it was in the nature of the songbird to sing incessantly, sometimes for 14 days at a time.5 Only to an attenuated extent could Millie-Christine claim this idea of the nightingale as a superb singer. It is abundantly clear that the twin did not sing with the same level of virtuosity as Jenny Lind. Reviewers routinely described the twin’s singing as “sweet” and “clever” rather than, say, “powerful” or “moving.” Moreover, of the approximately 20 songs that Millie-Christine purportedly sang in her act, only one—“Sweet Spirit Hear My Prayer”—is an operatic air (and a slow cantabile, at that); the rest are parlor songs intended for accomplished amateurs (see Table  2.1 in the Appendix). In this regard, there is some irony in naming Millie-Christine a “nightingale” in the shadow of Lind.

5  For more on the superiority of the nightingale as songbird, see Bechstein (1856, pp. 364–370). Many other performers who sang beautifully, including Black singers, were also described as nightingales, often poetically and casually in reviews, but at times with greater intent, as with the case of Kate Kelley, named the “Nightingale of the West”; see Abbott and Seroff (2009, p. 53). For more on advertising and Lind’s American tour, see Gallagher (1995) and Samples (2017).

54   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak

The Uncanny Nightingale While audiences and reviewers did not afford the Two-Headed Nightingale’s voice the same kind of praise they showered on Lind, the twin’s ornithological namesake nevertheless carried polyvalent meanings that may more aptly apply to the promotion of her persona. There was a second, oft-repeated fable about the nightingale. Besides being unparalleled singers, nightingales also have a propensity for uncanny mimicry. An anecdote reported by the 16th-century naturalist Conrad Gessner, reprinted in encyclopedias and magazines throughout the 19th century, tells of a man who was staying at an inn whose keeper owned three nightingales. One night, he heard the birds downstairs speaking to each other in human voices, recounting the stories that they had heard from guests earlier in the day. All this they did “with such modulations and inflections that no man could have taken to come from such creatures” (Goldsmith, 1824, pp. 339–340). The gap between what the lodger knew of nightingales and the unexpected voices that emerged from them so shook him out of his beliefs that he even became a believer of Pliny’s incredible fables. This mismatch between the nightingale’s voice and body is precisely the same sort of confounding mismatch that advertisers used to enhance the “freakishness” of the TwoHeaded Nightingale. The Liverpool Leader stated, for example, that “the notes issued from two heads, and yet but one trunk supplied the verve” (italics in original; cited in Biographical Sketch 1902–1912?, p. 17). Certainly, seeing her person alone is well worth the price of admission, other advertisers suggested, but you must hear the voices produced by that one person to be truly astonished. One 1855 promotion proclaimed, for example, that “they sing, with wonderful precision, the Native Melodies of their own Country, and thus the unparalleled circumstance of a Duet, arising from Two Voices, but originating in the direction of One Mind, may be said to form the last, greatest, and most startling Novelty EVER YET RECORDED IN THE ANNALS OF THE MARVELLOUS” (Ad, 1855, Wellcome EPH499a). The audience evidently concurred; in a review of a show nearly two decades later, a reporter wrote that when Millie-Christine entered the room, “our astonishment was great indeed, but it was considerably increased when the lady sang a duet” (Police News, 1871). And the marvel did not end at her singing. Advertisements frequently proclaimed that audiences will be amazed by Millie-Christine’s ability to hold simultaneous conversations in different languages and on different topics (The Dart: The Midland Figaro, 1884, p. 6). These sensational descriptions traded on the confusion over MillieChristine’s physiology and cognitive functions. For her polyphony to be truly compelling and marvelous, there must be certain beliefs (or suspended disbeliefs) about the physical and mental sources of the two voices—one must imagine two sounds emanating from the same body and, as the previous advertisement stated, “in the direction of One Mind.” In truth, Millie-Christine’s medical records, well established and publicized since her youth, reveal nothing particularly startling about her vocal apparatus. From a young age, Millie-Christine was subjected to incessant and highly invasive examinations by

Advertising Millie-Christine   55 doctors upon arrival at each new city where she would be displayed. These examinations were motivated as much by scientific curiosity as by the desire on the part of promoters to publicly legitimize the twin as an authentic “human oddity.” Not only were the results of these examinations published in respected medical journals such as the Lancet and as independent treatises outright, but excerpts of the reports, with varying levels of detail, also found their way into the twin’s promotional materials (Lancet, 1871, Wellcome EPH33). The 1871 London Biographical Sketch listed the names of “eminent” Liverpudlian doctors who visited her and expressed the unanimous opinion “that Millie Chrissy is the most extraordinary phenomenon the world has ever seen” (pp. 17–18). The 1869 Buffalo pamphlet and the Cincinnati Biographical Sketch (1902–1912?) were more extensive in their descriptions, detailing the location where the bodies were joined, the formation of their private organs, and their autonomic responses, motor functions, and cognitive faculties. From the amalgamation of these reports, we know that MillieChristine had separate upper bodies (four arms, two hearts, two sets of lungs) and was joined at the sacrum and coccyx. She had four legs, with Millie controlling the motor functions of one pair and Christine the other. Sensation in the bodies was separate above the point of their union, but both felt touch and kinetic movement below. It is clear from these accounts that Millie-Christine’s upper torsos (and sound-producing mechanisms) and cognitive functions were entirely separate and, in that sense, quite ordinary. These medical accounts, necessary for establishing authenticity to potential audiences, did not deter promoters from contravening the “facts” and exaggerating the extent of Millie-Christine’s union, both physical and psychological. In an 1885 pamphlet advertising her farewell tour at London’s Piccadilly Hall, for example, Millie-Christine appears to share only two arms and one single torso as shown in Figure 2.1; here she is truly “two headed” and, appearing to share one set of lungs, her singing must have therefore defied nature (Ad, Wellcome EPH499b). And lest we think this is merely artistic licence on the part of the engraver, Millie-Christine herself may have participated in a similar ruse to enhance her conjoinedness. In a copy of the Biographical Sketch published in 1871 and housed at the British Library, the original owner, Robert Barclay, pasted two cartes de visite from W. L. Germon’s Philadelphia atelier onto the opening flyleaves. The first photograph shows Millie-Christine posing with a guitar and possibly a piece of sheet music in hand, iconographically denoting her musicality.6 The second shows each sister posing with one leg lifted onto a ledge behind her and out of sight, as shown in Figure 2.2. Barclay captions the photo, “This is intended to describe walking on 2 legs instead of four.” Such visual depictions, circulated along with frequent declarations to the effect that Millie-Christine had a “union more complete than that of the Siamese Brothers” (Times, Wellcome EPH499a), suggest a hitherto unknown level of physical conjoinedness that could only enhance the extraordinariness of her act. In addition to a fascination over the union of her body, there was also much curiosity about Millie-Christine’s intellectual interdependence. Certainly, no one could have 6  For more on the production of cartes de visite of “freaks,” see Tromp (2008).

Figure 2.1 Handbill on yellow paper advertising Millie Christine, the “Two-Headed Nightingale,” and Harvey’s Midges (smallest people in the world: Princess Lottie, Prince Midge, Miss Jennie Worgen, and General Tot), appearing at the Piccadilly Hall, London, February 17, 1885, Wellcome Library, London (EPH499b).

Advertising Millie-Christine   57

Figure 2.2  Millie Christine Carte de visite, taken by W. L. Germon at “Temple of Art” atelier, Philadelphia (1871), British Library (shelf mark 10,882.g.52).

e­ arnestly believed that the sisters shared the same mind, but literature on the twin ­frequently emphasized her agreement in thought and general acquiescence. The psychologist Jules Fournet (1874) even described such harmony in musical terms: When asked about her subjective “inner world,” Fournet reported, “they immediately relate the same things, the same taste, the same desires, the same impulses, to the same degree and at the same moment, as would two instruments of music of the same kind, making the same sounds under the same touch” (p. 18). Conversely, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch furnished an experiment that “proved” the opposite: each sister was asked to respond separately and simultaneously in writing to the same set of questions, such as whether women should have the right to vote, whether each suffers from the same ailments, or whether she should take two husbands (1897, p. 27). The answers of “The Brain at the Left” and “The Brain at the Right” were not particularly revealing, as they mostly consisted of “maybe” and “I don’t know,” but divergences in four answers were enough for the paper to declare that the “two brains work independently.” Significantly, the authors of this personality test prefaced the results with a brief description of her voices: “You may call the combination Millie or Christine, or Millie-Christine, but whatever name is chosen two pairs of lips respond in two voices, so similar that not even their manager can, with closed eyes, tell from which of the two heads the voice comes.” This

58   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak j­uxtaposition between her vocal similarity and her mental independence reverses the formulation of the previously cited advertisement that described Millie-Christine’s singing as “Two Voices, but originating in the direction of One Mind.” Two minds/one voice, or two voices/one mind? These promotional narratives created uncertainty of Millie-Christine’s personhood in relation to her polyphony. Judging from audience reports and from the songs that Millie-Christine performed, we can discern certain moments in her act that may have exploited this sonic uncertainty. The reviewer for the Police News, for example, remarked that “by way of assisting the confusion of ideas by which it is sought to represent the two girls as one, a rapid recital of rhymes, professing to be autobiographical, is given by both voices at the same time, with a concurrence of emphasis which has a rather comic effect” (June 3, 1871). The rhyme (Millie-Christine calls it a song) in question is likely the one printed in her 1869 autobiography, in which she describes in first-person singular her unusual body (“Two heads, four arms, four feet / All in one perfect body meet”), her novelty (“None like me, since days of Eve / None such perhaps will ever live”), and her pious contentment (“I love all things that God has done / Whether I’m created two or one” (History and Medical Description, 1869, p. 18; italics in the original). We can imagine how this self-reflexive song, sung rapid-fire by the sisters with voices so similar that not even her manager can tell them apart, heightened the bodily confusion for audiences. Given this strategy to confuse her listeners, we can also imagine Millie-Christine exploiting the evocative and clever effects in another piece from her act, “The Whippoor-will’s Song.” The first line of the text sets the scene: Millie-Christine beckons the listener to meet her “when daylight is fading / And is darkening into the night / When song-birds are singing their vespers / And the day has far vanished from sight” (Biographical Sketch, 1871, pp. 12–13). It is at this twilight moment, when sight begins to fail, that one hears the whippoorwill’s song. From the start, then, the song situates the listener in an uncanny, darkening space where the familiar becomes unfamiliar, and the aural begins to replace the visual. (Significantly, a number of her other songs evoke such liminal times and spaces: “O’er the Waves We Float,” for example, describes her gliding out to sea and disappearing from view, and in “Watching the Daylight Fade,” she goes to the brook alone to celebrate the coming of night.) The opening measures of the refrain in “The Whip-poor-will’s Song” then play with this confusion of the senses, calling for direct echoes of the singer’s triadic figures, as seen in Figure 2.3. The Oliver Ditson edition (1865) even suggests that this echo “may be repeated by another voice at a distance, or in another room, with very fine effect.” Millie-Christine, of course, could not have achieved this “fine effect” through spatial separation; rather, she would have produced an echo with a similar timbral quality from roughly the same source. As a result, MillieChristine defamiliarizes the expected acoustic effect. She is not producing the echo in the naturalistic sense, but rather the echo in the sense of mimicry and reproduction in an almost mechanical way. One sister doubles the other, like a Freudian doppelgänger.7 7  According to Freud, the feeling of uncanny is often provoked by the return of something that has been repressed. Among the triggers of the uncanny are repetitions and other doubles (Freud, 1919, pp. 217–256).

Advertising Millie-Christine   59

Figure 2.3  “The Whip-poor-will’s Song,” refrain.

Such uncanny moments in Millie-Christine’s musical act along with the promotion of her “extraordinary” voices enhanced her mystery and “freakishness” by blurring the borders of her body and, indeed, her personhood. Unlike the doctors who trained their (white) clinical gaze on the twin to establish what they perceived as the cold hard “facts” of her physiology and psychology, audiences were encouraged to doubt their eyes and their reason, embrace ambiguity, and imagine a single nightingale singing out of two heads.

The Nightingale Metamorphized Aside from being a natural singer and an uncanny mimic, the nightingale was also a symbol of metamorphosis. In the Ovidian tale of Philomela (Metamorphoses VI), the Athenian princess was raped and made mute by Tereus to cover up his crimes. After exacting her revenge, she is transformed into a nightingale by the gods; she is thus lifted up from her disabled, material body and granted a voice that ultimately becomes a source of aesthetic pleasure. It is finally to this transcendent aspect of the nightingale that we now turn. Millie-Christine’s promotional apparatus and presentation deployed music and the elevating cultural refinement it represented to soften prevalent racial stereotypes and renegotiate the performer-spectator relationship with an audience accustomed to owning and gazing upon black bodies as human commodities.8 This marketing strategy had the effect of paradoxically making Millie-Christine both familiar and strange to her audiences, thereby enhancing once again her appeal. Before the widespread adoption of the nightingale nickname, Millie-Christine was marketed in what Bogdan (1988) calls “the exotic mode” of presentation, “which cast[s] the exhibit as a strange creature from a little-known part of the world” (p. 97). Bogdan presents evidence that promoters tended to cast Blacks as “savages” or “missing links,” while Caucasian, native-born American performers were less typically presented in this 8  For more on the institution of slavery and disability, see Boster (2013).

60   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak manner (p. 107). The exoticized presentation of Millie-Christine is evident in an 1857 Edinburgh broadside with the headline “The Greatest Wonder of the Age! THE AFRICAN TWINS UNITED BY NATURE.” The accompanying image establishes two spaces, as seen in Figure 2.4. The smaller space on the right side depicts vegetation, evocative perhaps of an African jungle or the landscape of the American South (both likely to be equally exotic to the Scottish viewers). But even within this exoticizing image, we see hints of a future representational strategy that Bogdan (1988) calls the “aggrandizing mode,” which establishes a disassociation between an unfamiliar body and familiar behavior by “imbu[ing] the freak with titles, an elevated social position, cultural sophistication, or an extraordinary talent” (p. 97). In the Edinburgh broadside, the space on the left features a more familiar interior dominated by a grand wrought-iron staircase, with a large urn of flowers and an ornate divan. Millie-Christine and her mother, Monemia (carrying a pocket watch), stand in the foreground, dressed richly in Western-style attire as they appear to move from the “uncivilized” to the “civilized” space. Promotional images such as this highlighted the family’s exotic “African” attributes and heritage while domesticating the twin as a respectable,

Figure 2.4  African Twins United by Nature, Advertising Circular (image only), January 19, 1857, Private Collections PC.266.1 Folder 4, State Archives of North Carolina of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina.

Advertising Millie-Christine   61 familiar human spectacle.9 In later, fully aggrandized representations of MillieChristine, African exoticism was almost entirely suppressed in favor of establishing respectability and culture through symbols associated with white femininity. She was routinely shown in European styles of dress, carrying props such as a fan, parasol, or basket. Even her physical features were altered; in Figure 2.1 earlier, for example, the twin is depicted with Caucasian features and long dark hair with ringlets. Other promotional images presented her with an exaggerated hourglass figure, light skin, small feet, elongated necks, and slender limbs. Another aspect of this aggrandizing mode relied on narratives of her emancipation from slavery. An 1857 ad, for example, described the twin’s origins as follows: They were born in Slavery; and their Guardian . . . legally apprenticed them to Mr. Thompson . . . who instantly freed them from their degrading Bondage, and determined to appropriate the Receipts arising from their Public Exhibition to the purpose of Emancipating the Parents of the Children. . . . The better feelings of Humanity, as well as the strongest impulses of Curiosity, are therefore to be jointly gratified by their inspections.  (Ad, EPH499a)

It is significant that Millie-Christine is here “apprenticed” to Mr. Thompson and immediately freed, which conveyed a (false) sense of “skills acquisition” or “self-­improvement.” The promise that the proceeds will help emancipate the twin’s parents suggested that the audiences could attend to exercise not only their curiosities but also their better feelings of humanity; audiences were reassured that they were not complicit in exploitation, but were instead, patrons of charity. One additional aspect of the aggrandizing presentation tied together MillieChristine’s ostensible intellectual and artistic cultivation with her moral improvement. As Fournet (1874) remarked, “Both [sisters] have an equal and marked taste for music, painting, theatre, and poetry. They have an equal degree of aesthetic sensibility, and they delight in the true and the beautiful” (p. 12). Fournet’s invocation of “the true and the beautiful” implies the third term of the commonplace triad, “truth, beauty, and goodness,” concepts that project her artistic tastes and cultivations onto her moral conduct. And what is the common source of her aesthetics and ethics? In the “autobiography,” the twin credited Mrs. Smith: It was a joyous night when we arrived there and found our “white ma,” Mrs. Smith, waiting to receive us. . . . She taught us our first precepts of religion, and assumed the duties of preceptress, our ideas of a Deity being very imperfect. . . . Mrs. S. instructed us to read and write, to sing and dance, and thus, while being able to enjoy ourselves, and to employ our time usefully, to contribute in no small degree to the amusement of those who called to see us. (History and Medical Description, 1869, p. 12) 9  According to Bogdan (1988), “freaks” represented in the exotic mode were often depicted with jungle scenes or images of foreign lands in the background (pp. 105–106).

62   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak According to this narrative, it was the loving, cultural, and spiritual cultivation of MillieChristine’s “white ma” that formed her artistic and moral character. Images such as Figure 2.1, which whitened Millie-Christine, serve as an outward, visual manifestation of this ostensible internal cultivation. This fictionalized narrative, like the 1857 ad, attempted to assuage audience guilt over possible exploitation. Millie-Christine’s musical act itself, including her vocality (Christine sang soprano and Millie alto) and choice of repertoire, played an equally important role in establishing her cultural sophistication. For example, the word “sweet” was used in several promotional accounts to describe her voices. The Police News described the twin singing popular duets “sweetly and cleverly” (1871). Similarly, the New Orleans Democrat (1879) claimed that she “blend[s] harmoniously” and described her voices as “very sweet” (p. 4). Along with such descriptions, the published keys of her repertoire place the melodies in a middle to high vocal range. In the 19th century, vocal register was closely tied to race, gender, and, in some cases, even “freakery” in the critical imagination (Chybowski, 2014, p. 145; Stoever, 2016, p. 86). For example, one reviewer criticized renowned Black singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (1819–1876), who showcased her ability to sing in the baritone range, stating that “the idea of a woman’s voice is a feminine tone: anything below that is disgusting: it is as bad as a bride with a beard on her chin and an oath in her mouth” (New-York Daily Tribune, 1853, p. 6). For Black singers like Greenfield, who had to contend with “dominant associations of ‘blackness’ with masculinity and hypersexuality,” a low singing voice might make them appear less feminine and even “grotesque”—not unlike the “bearded-lady” who appeared in “freak shows” (Stoever, 2016, p. 86). Thus, Millie-Christine’s repertoire, confined to the middle and upper part of the vocal range, was a vehicle for asserting a distinctly feminine— and non-“freakish”—identity. Millie-Christine’s command of multiple European languages as well as her speaking voice, too, set her apart from prevailing racial stereotypes; one promoter claimed that audiences would be “surprised at the purity and correctness of her accent, and wonder at the utter absence of the lisp” that they considered to be characteristic of her race (Program, 1885, Wellcome EPH499b). Such references to linguistic “purity” and the “sweetness” of the vocal timbre therefore signified whiteness as well as a code of etiquette defined by restraint, modesty, and gentility to an audience of her day.10 The representation of white femininity and respectability also extended to her repertoire, which was primarily drawn from the large body of parlor songs published during the last quarter of the 19th century. The domestic orientation of the repertoire established a more intimate atmosphere in the singer’s public performances. The press noted this aspect of her act. According to one New Orleans paper, the twin “make[s] melody which would be welcomed in the proudest drawing-room on the avenue” (New Orleans Democrat, 1879, p. 4). Nearly all of Millie-Christine’s parlor songs were of the “sentimental” type in which she explored the generic topics of unrequited love, loss, and nostalgia to evoke a sense of 19th-century American sentimentalism that celebrated 10  For more on music and racial essentialism, see Radano (2013) and Eidsheim (2019).

Advertising Millie-Christine   63 sympathy and aimed to establish human connections (Bechtold, 2013, p. 499). The lyrics drew attention to the interiority of feelings, but in a highly conventionalized and ironically impersonal way. Her repertoire therefore allowed her to sing in clichés from the perspective of stock personas (the grieving sister, the country girl) and thus reclaim some measure of modesty and privacy that was previously inaccessible to her. This was particularly important for Millie-Christine because, as Beverly Guy-Sheftall (2002, p. 18) and Patricia Hill Collins (2000, p. 146) have noted, Black female bodies were routinely marked by their lack of privacy, whether in the medical theater, on the “freakshow” stage, or on the auction block. The broader connotations of the drawing room evoked gendered codes of behavior and reinforced the notion of female containment that informed other facets of the twin’s performative modesty, such as her disinterest in politics, which she felt was better left to the gentleman (The Dart: The Midland Figaro, 1884, p. 40). Through this repertoire, audiences were able to catch a glimpse of Millie-Christine’s inner life, but one that was decidedly ordered, restrained, and conventional, and so they were reassured by both the advertising and performance that despite their differences, the twin’s desires aligned with their own—a desire to gaze at the moonlight, listen to the songbirds, or even fall in love. Additionally, because this repertoire of parlor songs was generally marketed and sold to the same public that attended Millie-Christine’s performances, the songs she performed on the “freak-show” stage were also sung in the audiences’ own homes. The publication of her song list at the ends of her biographical pamphlets may have even encouraged listeners to acquire the music for themselves. There is an album of seven pieces of music—five parlor songs and two dances—sold under the title “Nightingale Music,” that was marketed specifically as “composed and arranged for Christine Millie, the Two-Headed Nightingale” by William Wilson (n.d.).11 Her choice of a familiar repertoire, which listeners can seek out and perform themselves, therefore established a shared cultural connection between the Black performer and her white audience. In sum, then, the “mismatch” between the racial markers of MillieChristine’s presentation (her mode of dress, her voice, her repertoire) and her Black body, and between the familiar and unfamiliar, produced yet another kind of uncertainty of identity that compounded the marketed confusion of her physical one-ness and vocal polyphony.

Unmaking the Two-Headed Nightingale Ultimately, it is difficult to determine the extent to which the promotional narratives surrounding the Two-Headed Nightingale, particularly those dealing with gentility and

11  We were only able to locate the cover of this album which is located in Yale’s Beinecke collection.

64   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak transcendence, truly reflected Millie’s and Christine’s lived realities. Revisions of some of the “transcendence” stories described in this chapter reveal this difficulty:12





1. The 1857 ad claiming that Millie-Christine was apprenticed to Mr. Thompson is problematic, as he may have in fact kidnapped the twin (from an earlier Texan kidnapper). Mr. Smith and Monemia were looking for the girl in 1857 and, upon discovering her in England, took Thompson to court. In the custody trial, Thompson claimed that he had discovered Millie-Christine in Philadelphia under the management of a drunk who took poor care of her and turned her over to an orphan’s court, which then legally transferred her to Thompson. Millie-Christine biographer Joanne Martell (2000) could find no evidence of this transaction in the docket indices of the Philadelphia Orphans’ Court (p. 57). In any event, Thompson lost the trial and the twin was returned to her mother and “owner.” 2. The relationship between Millie-Christine and her “white ma,” Mrs. Smith, may not have been benevolent. According to the autobiographical History, Millie-Christine continued to live under the “guardianship” of Mrs. Smith after the Emancipation and described their ongoing relationship in warm and affectionate tones (“we can trust her, and what is more, we feel grateful to her and regard her with true filial affection” [1869, p. 14]). However, Ellen Samuels (2011) has published a letter addressed to the Freedman’s Bureau in 1866, in which Jacob and Monemia (through a proxy) claim that Mrs. Smith coerced her into signing over her parental rights. Despite Mrs. Smith’s promise to “treat them well” and pay the twin a quarter of the profits from exhibitions, the parents desperately wanted their child returned (pp. 63–65). This letter troubles the “benevolent slave owner” narrative oft repeated by proslavery apologists. 3. Biographical pamphlets were typically sold as souvenirs whenever “freak show” performers were on display. These promotional products may include images, medical testimonies describing the performer’s physiology, and a sensational narrative that was often only loosely—if at all—based on the performer’s own  biography. In this context, the contents and even the authorship of Millie-Christine’s autobiographical History itself, subtitled Told in “Her Own Peculiar Way” by “One of Them,” might very well be spurious. While it is meant to serve as evidence of Millie-Christine’s intelligence and literacy, there is little reason to believe, as Samuels (2011) argues, that it was not written by a manager (pp. 60–61).

12  Disability scholars may see in these transcendence narratives the “overcoming” trope, prevalent in many stories that depict disabled persons.

Advertising Millie-Christine   65 The unreliability of the autobiography’s authorship and of the narratives therein is emblematic of the difficulty in parsing out Millie-Christine’s agency within the sensationalizing promotional ephemera more generally. However, we can occasionally glimpse signs of this agency in her resistance against personal intrusion in some interviews, ­occasions where her voice was slightly more evident. Depending on how we read some of these interviews, such as the earlier thought experiment by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, she may have protected her privacy or displayed modesty, especially with regard to questions about romance and sex. Dr. Fournet (1874) described such a disposition clearly: “I search vainly to broach those ideas [of marriage] with them by the question if blondes please them more than brunettes. . . ? They respond, as if it were a question for the birds, that ‘it does not matter to them.’ However, the sentiment of modesty and reservation that one notes in them are not only in their instinctive character, but evidently also in their thoughtful character” (p. 11). Further, Fournet even feared that he had offended the twin with his intrusive questioning: “When I explain to them the fear of being ­disagreeable to them, they respond that my person is agreeable to them, but that my investigations of their persons and their lives are not; they say this, nevertheless with as much good will as good grace” (p. 13). Millie-Christine extended her resistance to physical intrusions as well. Starting at the age of 14 (perhaps on account of the freedom afforded by Emancipation or perhaps coinciding with the onset of puberty), the twin refused to submit to some of the more invasive medical examinations described ­earlier. Fournet explicitly gave the reason for the twin’s refusal: “The express and equal wish of these two young girls to disallow all examinations that would seem to affect their modesty prevented [him] and anyone else . . . from removing doubt [concerning her anatomy]” (p. 4). Millie-Christine’s performance of modesty on one hand played into the aggrandizing mode of presentation; on the other, this resistance worked against the sensationalizing marketing machine of the “freak-show” industry. Moments such as these highlight the difficult but important task of holding apart the person from the persona.

Conclusions For Millie-Christine, being conjoined was a matter of physiology—being the “TwoHeaded Nightingale” required a concerted promotional program that relied on her musical abilities as a way of shaping audience expectations about the nature of her act as well as her cultural persona. Quite apart from Millie-Christine’s actual lived experience, her musicality allowed narratives of virtue, cultivation, femininity, and transformation to cohere in a way that made her respectable and, indeed, morally edifying for her audiences; she was sold to them as an example of how industriousness and an education can

66   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak overcome the historical disadvantages that arise from the treatment of disabled and Black people. Such aggrandizing cannot be taken at face value, of course, and its ­calculated effect on patrons was dependent on a measure of audience condescension. At the heart of this textual, visual, and aural aggrandizing was a kind of incongruity born ­precisely from the intersections of gender, race, and disability. Part of what made Millie-Christine’s mode of dress, singing, dancing, and linguistic skills worth the price of admission was precisely the gulf between her capabilities and the prevailing expectations regarding black and disabled women (many reviewers expressed surprise at her intelligence)—such “overcoming” had to be seen and heard to be believed. While such a use of music and its civilizing connotations familiarized MillieChristine, promoters also exploited the imprecision and elusiveness of sound to defamiliarize and sensationalize. Advertisers freely described her vocal apparatus—was it one voice and two heads, or two heads and one voice?—and thereby sowed confusion over her physiognomy to heighten the mysteries of her body. Both uncanny and transcendent, the Two-Headed Nightingale used music and vocality to simultaneously enhance physical difference and minimize moral distance. Narrowly, this study offers important insights into the process of aural “enfreakment” and how advertisers created “freaks” for their shows. More broadly, we have in Millie-Christine an example of how 19th-century advertising employed sound in its capacity to encode aspects of race, gender, and disability to direct consumer expectations and condition their responses.

Appendix The following are songs that Millie-Christine purportedly performed in her shows. This information comes from her biographical pamphlets and an album of sheet music. Composers and lyricists are given according to the sources; those in parentheses are based on our research. The following sources were used: A. Biographical Sketch of Millie Christine, the Two-Headed Nightingale. (1871). London. B. Biographical Sketch of Millie Christine, the Carolina Twin, Surnamed the Two-Headed Nightingale, and the Eighth Wonder of the World. (1902–1912?). Cincinnati, OH: Hennegan and Company. C. History and Medical Description of the Two-Headed Girl: Told in “Her Own Peculiar Way” by “One of Them.” (1869). Buffalo, NY: Warren, Johnson & Co. D. Nightingale Music: Written, Composed, and Arranged for Christine Millie, the Two-Headed Nightingale by William Wilson. (1870s?). London and Manchester, UK: Emery. Sources A and B contain separate sections that provide the lyrics of the songs, with some overlap of material. Source D also includes two dances, “Nightingale Schottische” and “Nightingale Mazurka.”

Advertising Millie-Christine   67 Table 2.1  Millie-Christine McKoy’s Known Repertoire Title

Composer

Lyricist

Sources A

“It’s Not Modest of One’s Self to Speak”*

B

X

D

X

(The) Dear, Dear Friends at Home

W. Wilson

W. Wilson

X

From Our Merry Swiss Home (Duet)

[C. W. Glover]

[E. M. Spencer]

X

God Bless the Little Church

D. S. Wambold

G. Cooper

X

In Her “Little Bed” We Laid Her; Answer to Put Me in My Little Bed

C. A. White

D. Smith

X

Little Footsteps

J. A. Barney

[M. B. Leavitt]

X

Love among the Roses

[E. N. Catlin]

[W. H. Delehanty]

X

Mother Would Comfort Me

C. C. Sawyer

C. C. Sawyer

X

Mother, Where Is Father’s Grave

W. J. Bullock

W. J. Bullock

X

My Heart Is Over the Sea

Claribel (C. A. Barnard)

Claribel

X

O’er the Waves We Float

S. Glover

J. E. Carpenter

X

X

Put Me in My Little Bed

C. A. White

D. Smith

X

X

How the Gates Came Ajar

C

X

X

X X

Sisters We, Gay & Free (Duet)

X X

(The) Song of the Nightingale

X

Strangers Yet

[Claribel] (C. A. Barnard) [Lord Houghton] (R. M. Milnes)

Sweet Spirit Hear My Prayer (From the Opera of Lurline)†

V. Wallace

Under the Daisies

H. Millard

Under the Snow

J. R. Mains

Wandering in the May-time

[S. & C. Glover]

[E. Fitzball]

X X X

G. T. Evans

X

X X

Watching the Daylight Fade

X

Where the Warbling Waters Flow (Duet)

B. Richards

X

X

Whip-Poor-Will’s Song

H. Millard

X

X

X

* “It’s Not Modest of One’s Self to Speak” is the first line of an untitled song written for and about Millie-Christine; its text was included in Source C because Millie-Christine “has so often been requested to give copies of [it].” † This appears to be the only operatic air in Millie-Christine’s repertoire.

68   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak

Recommended Readings Bogdan, R. (1988). Freak show: Presenting human oddities for amusement and profit. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Frost, L. (2009). Conjoined twins in black and white: The lives of Millie-Christine McKoy and Daisy and Violet Hilton. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Martell, J. (2000). Millie-Christine: Fearfully and wonderfully made. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair. Samuels, E. (2011). Examining Millie and Christine McKoy: Where enslavement and enfreakment meet. Signs, 37(1), 53–81. Thomson, R.  G. (Ed.). (1996). Freakery: Cultural spectacles of the extraordinary body. New York, NY: New York University Press.

References Primary Sources A. Millie-Christine Press Articles/Advertisements The African Twin Monstrosity (1857, January 26). [Unidentified clipping]. Wellcome Medical Library, EPH33. A brief sketch of the world’s wonder. (n.d.). Wellcome Medical Library, EPH499b. The Daily Enterprise. (1900, December 4). The gossip’s bowl. (1884, November 14). The Dart: The Midland Figaro, 421, 4. The greatest living wonder!! Miss Millie-Christine [Program]. (1885, February 17). Wellcome Medical Library, EPH499b. A human wonder. (1879, February 9). New Orleans Democrat, 4. Joined twins. (1871, June 1). Times. Wellcome Medical Library, EPH499a. Millar, W. J. L. (1864). Two-headed nightingale: How I found and lost her [Parts I and II]. Dundee Advertiser (Scotland). (As cited in Gold, S. E. [2010]. Millie-Christine McKoy and the American freak show: Race, gender, and freedom in the postbellum era, 1851–1912. Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, 23[1].) Millie-Christine and her two heads. (1897, February 28). St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 27. Millie-Christine: The wonderful twin. . . . (1881, June 26). Daily Constitution, 4. Miss Millie Christin [sic], the two-headed nightingale. (1871, June 3). Police News, 7. Wellcome Medical Library, EPH33. Remarkable human phenomena! The African twins. (1855, September 17). [Advertisement]. Wellcome Medical Library, EPH499a.

B. Millie-Christine Broadsides and Pamphlets Biographical sketch of Millie Christine, the Carolina twin, surnamed the two-headed nightingale, and the eighth wonder of the world [Pamphlet]. (1902–1912?). Cincinnati, OH: Hennegan and Company. Biographical sketch of Millie Christine, the two-headed nightingale [Pamphlet]. (1871). London. EXTRAORDINARY AND MOST WONDERFUL NATURAL CURIOSITY THE UNITED TWINS OF AFRICA! [Broadside]. (1855). Millie-Christine Collection, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.

Advertising Millie-Christine   69 The greatest wonder of the age! THE AFRICAN TWINS UNITED BY NATURE [Broadside]. (1857). Millie-Christine Collection, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC. History and medical description of the two-headed girl: Told in “Her Own Peculiar Way” by “One of Them” [Pamphlet]. (1869). Buffalo, NY: Warren, Johnson & Co.

C. Others A juvenile political organization. (1856, November 19). Nashville Union and American. Bechstein, J. M. (1856). Cage and chamber-birds: Their natural history, habits, food, diseases, management, and modes of capture (H. G. Adams, Trans.). London, UK: H. G. Bohn. Fournet, J. (1874). Problèmes de psychologie à propos de Millie-Christine. Paris, France: Donnaud. Goldsmith, O. (1824). Of the nightingale and other soft-billed songbirds. In A History of the of Earth and Animated Nature (Vol. 2). (pp. 338–43). London, UK: William Charlton Wright. Jenny Lind. (1850, September 27). New-York Daily Tribune. Misses Millie and Christine. (1871, May 27). Lancet. Wellcome Medical Library, EPH33. Music. (1853, April 2). New-York Daily Tribune. The passing throng. (1905, October 20). Seattle Republican.

Secondary Sources Abbott, L., & Seroff, D. (2009). Out of sight: The rise of African American popular music, 1889–1895. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Bechtold, R. (2013). “She Sings a Stamp of Originality”: Sentimental mimicry in Jenny Lind’s American tour. ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, 58(4), 493–528. Bogdan, R. (1988). Freak show: Presenting human oddities for amusement and profit. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Boster, D. H. (2013). African American slavery and disability: Bodies, property, and power in the antebellum South, 1800–1860. New York, NY: Routledge. Chybowski, J.  J. (2014). Becoming the “Black Swan” in mid-nineteenth-century America: Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield’s early life and debut concert tour. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 67(1), 125–165. Collins, P.  H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Eidsheim, N. S. (2019). The race of sound: Listening, timbre, and vocality in African American music. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Freud, S. (1919). The ‘Uncanny’. In J.  Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete ­psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917–1919): An infantile neurosis and other works (pp. 217–256). London: Hogarth Press. Frost, L. (2009). Conjoined twins in black and white: The lives of Millie-Christine McKoy and Daisy and Violet Hilton. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Gallagher, L. (1995). Jenny Lind and the voice of America. In C. E. Blackmer & P. J. Smith (Eds.), En travesti: Women, gender subversion, opera (pp. 190–215). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Gold, S. E. (2010). Millie-Christine McKoy and the American freak show: Race, gender, and freedom in the postbellum era, 1851–1912. Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, 23(1), 1–43. Guy-Sheftall, B. (2002). The body politic: Black female sexuality and the nineteenth-century Euro-American imagination. In K. Wallace-Sanders (Ed.), Skin deep, spirit strong: The black female body in American culture (pp. 13–35). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

70   Chiu and Gorzelany-Mostak Maris, C. (2018). Tolerance: Experiments with freedom in the Netherlands. Law and Philosophy Library, Vol. 124. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Martell, J. (2000). Millie-Christine: Fearfully and wonderfully made. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair. Radano, R. M. (2003). Lying up a nation: Race and black music. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Reiss, B. (2001). The showman and the slave: Race, death, and memory in Barnum’s America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Samples, M. (2017). The humbug and the nightingale: P.  T.  Barnum, Jenny Lind, and the branding of a star singer for American reception. Musical Quarterly, 99(3–4), 1–35. Samuels, E. (2011). Examining Millie and Christine McKoy: Where enslavement and enfreakment meet. Signs, 37(1), 53–81. Stoever, J. L. (2016). The sonic color line: Race and the cultural politics of listening. New York, NY: New York University Press. Tromp, M. (Ed.). (2008). Victorian freaks: The social context of freakery in Britain. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

Selection and Marketing of Music

chapter 3

Fit ti ng T u n e s Selecting Music for Television Commercials Peter Kupfer

In the words of advertising legend Al Ries, “Consumers select the programs they want to watch. But outside of the advertising industry, who has ever said, ‘Let’s turn on the television to watch the commercials?’ Consumers merely tolerate the commercials. Music can help solve the problem” (Ries, 2015, n.p.). These thoughts underscore the importance that many advertisers assign music in commercials. Indeed, a 2008 content analysis of American television commercials (Allan, 2008) found that 86 percent contained some type of music. Another study of 670 award-winning “effective” commercials found that 83 percent of them included music (Marshall & Roberts, 2008, pp. 94, 111). More recently, a study by Nielsen of 600 commercials concluded that those “with some form of music performed better across four key metrics—creativity, empathy, emotive power, and information power—than those that didn’t” (“I Second That Emotion,” 2015, n.p.). By and large, it seems that advertisers agree with Ries. Research on music in advertising has borne out these intuitions: it has been shown to aid in creating mood, eliciting emotional responses, promoting recall, building personal connections to products and brands, and more (for overviews of this research, see Craton & Lantos, 2012; North & Hargreaves, 2008, pp. 256–267; Shevy & Hung, 2013).1 Furthermore, there is a wealth of research that shows how musical taste and preferences are tied to demographics and personality (North & Hargreaves, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2008, pp. 75–142), both of which are also key factors in how brands define target audiences. But how do those who make commercials view the role of music in ads? How do they go about picking what music to use? What factors are most important to them? Furthermore, who actually makes such decisions and who evaluates them, both before airing and after? These are the motivating questions for this chapter. Their answers are 1  The scope here is the American market. For international perspectives on music in advertising see Bullerjahn (2006) and Graakjær (2009, 2015).

Fitting Tunes   73 based on interviews and personal communications with advertising professionals (including creative directors, copywriters, musicians, music supervisors, producers, directors, lawyers, and business managers); published interviews with industry professionals; trade press articles and “how to” books on music in advertising; and academic research from the fields of advertising, marketing, consumer science, musicology, and the social psychology of music. The chapter begins by briefly outlining the commercial-making process to identify the key decision makers and when musical choices enter the picture. We then very briefly recount the history of music in advertising in the last 20 years to show how these developments have significantly altered the relationship between music and advertising and greatly affect how musical decisions are made today. The third section summarizes the major criteria that advertisers use when selecting music for commercials. The final part of the chapter considers how attitudes toward creativity and techniques of measuring effectiveness shape current practices.

How Commercials Are Made To understand how, and particularly when, music is selected for commercials, it is important to know how commercials are made. While there is no single standard procedure for this—the creative director Dan Kroeger has said that “it’s kind of like the wild west . . . as traditional agencies seem to be dying and new models are popping up everywhere” (personal communication, November 20, 2017)—there are certain common steps:2 • An advertising agency’s planners (also known as strategists) will work with a client to come up with a creative brief, which is, in essence, a strategy for the commercial. It explains what the company stands for, what the advertising objective is, who the target audience is, what the customer benefit is, and so on. It sets the voice and tone of the ad, and usually also a schedule. The creation of the brief is typically based on discussions with the client; knowledge of the company, product, or serv­ ice being advertised; and experience of the advertisers, but—especially for companies with the resources and desire—it may also involve some preliminary research into demographics, psychographics, and/or sociographics of the target audience. • Next, the planners hand over the brief to the so-called creatives, typically a creative director who leads a team consisting of (at least) a copywriter and an art director. Depending on the schedule set in the brief, the creative team will “jam on the brief ” for anywhere from a few days to a month, brainstorming ideas to best communicate the ad’s message (Kroeger, personal communication, November 20, 2017). Ideas are 2  The following summary is based on several interviews as well as Pinsker (2017) and Zager (2015, pp. 1–27).

74   Kupfer refined with the help of the creative director, who then shares it with the entire agency for further feedback before a finalized storyboard is pitched to the client. Once production is approved by the client, the creative team, with the aid of a producer (who may be in-house or not), is then responsible for production and postproduction. • After the producer has completed the preparatory steps—hiring a director and actors, booking locations, etc.—the shoot itself can take anywhere from a day to several weeks depending on the scope of the concept. After the shoot wraps, postproduction work (the fine-tuning of the ad’s appearance, sound, and pacing) can take another week to a month. For companies with the inclination and resources, it is during this final stage that an ad might be shown to focus groups for testing, which could include comparing different musical tracks. With the client’s final approval, the ad is released into the world. Unless a major musician is already a spokesperson for a brand or an ad is designed around a particular musician and/or song, musical decisions most typically come toward the end of this process (indeed, music is usually a line item in the postproduction ­budget). Paul Greco, the head of Music and Radio at the J. Walter Thompson agency in New York, describes this in rather alarming terms: It is funny the way it works because music happens at the end, it becomes the bastard stepchild in some ways because they have exhausted all their money on the locations and talent and things like that and now we only have so much left so we still have to post mix and color correct and all that other stuff, it suffers in that respect.  (Cited in Jackson, Jankovich, & Sheinkop, 2013, p. 8)

Leta Baker, a past creative director for Ancestry.com, has said something similar, though in less fatalistic terms: In most of our video and TV projects, the music comes toward the end of production. We need to first wrap our minds around what the piece is saying, the tone it’s taking, the order and focus of topics covered, and the performances of the individuals involved before we can know what sort of music we might like to accompany all of that. We sometimes choose a “scratch track” as a placeholder during the editing process, but then we’ll focus more intensely on music after the picture is close to final.  (Personal communication, March 5, 2012)

Kroeger notes that the timing of the musical choices can depend on the nature of the creative team: “Music is key. It’s often thought of early on in the process by the creative team. If they’re that kind of team, into music” (personal communication, November 20, 2017). But, as the other remarks indicate, this is the exception to the rule—final music decisions are typically made near the end of the process, even if temp or scratch tracks are used during storyboarding or production and ultimately are chosen for the final cut (a not uncommon phenomenon).

Fitting Tunes   75 Furthermore, musical ideas—whether guidelines for the style, genre, or general sound of originally composed music or an idea for a pre-existing track—can come from anyone on a team or at an agency (rarely do they come directly from the client). However, as Kroeger’s earlier comment suggests, teams can be more or less musically inclined. If musical ideas are needed, particularly given the vast amount of music now available, music supervisors are often called in to help. They can work within an agency, like Greco, or for independent music companies specializing in music selection, composition, licensing, and/or talent pairing. Dozens of companies like these—such as Walker,3 Nue,4 Yessaien,5 Heartbeats International,6 or Score a Score7—have sprung up in the last decade to mediate the changing relationships between advertisers and music and musicians. How the process continues depends on the type of music chosen: needledrop, original, or pre-existing. For the first kind, production libraries will be consulted, whether by someone within the advertising agency or at a music production company. If original music is desired, a music production company will be hired and given whatever direction the creative has come up with. While licensing known songs can have great advantages, there are dangers too. As one creative director has said: “Using a known . . . piece or any familiar song—pop, rock or otherwise—can be tricky as the song can be so familiar that it overshadows your commercial. . . . Also, if the brand and the song don’t fit together, have some shared value or vibe, you can be remembered for ruining someone’s favorite song” (Erich Pfeifer, personal communication, August 27, 2013). Regardless of the type of music selected, a handful of tracks are usually tested against the commercial for the creative team and client to review. Once an appropriate track is selected, it is licensed according to the scope of use for the ad or campaign and edited into the final cut. The ratio between the different types of music used in commercials has been changing: in his content analysis of music in commercials, Allan found that 81 percent used needledrop music, 14 percent popular music, and 5 percent jingles (2008, p. 404). More recently, the music supervisor Josh Rabinowitz estimated that at his agency 65 percent of music was original and 35 percent was licensed songs (cited in Kawashima, 2014, n.p.). Since the 1990s there has been a shift away from jingles and an increase in the licensing of popular music, especially that of new or unknown artists. Much of this has to do with changes in the music industry, which have led to a new model for the relationship between advertising and popular music.8 3  Walker Music Supervision & Sound Company. (n.d.). About. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from http:// www.wearewalker.com/about 4  Nue Creative Music Agency. (n.d.). About. Retrieved May 10, 2019, http://nueagency.com/#about 5  Yessian Music, Sound Design, & Mix Company. (n.d.). About us. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://www.yessian.com/about 6  Heartbeats International. (n.d.). About. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from http://heartbeats.fm/contact/ contact/ 7  Score a Score. (n.d.). About. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from http://scoreascore.com/#about 8  For a longer history of these changes, see Haynes (2013); Klein (2009); Powers (2010); Samples (2018); Taylor (2012).

76   Kupfer

A New Model These changes were precipitated by groundbreaking moves in the late 1990s by artists like Moby and Sting, who actively sought out ways to license their music for use in commercials, and by companies like VW, who famously and “artistically” used a relatively unknown song by the long-deceased folksinger Nick Drake.9 To respond to declining income, record labels hired marketing consultants whose job was to place recordings, and advertising agencies began looking out for new music. This led to an entirely new business model, in which the music supervisors and music supervision agencies described earlier play a central role.10 Apple especially took up this practice of using new or obscure music in their commercials, beginning famously with its use of Canadian singer Leslie Feist’s song “1-2-3-4” in an iPod Nano commercial in 2007 (Powers, 2010).11 Looking to unknown artists has advantages for both sides: for the artist it means income and wide exposure; for the brand it means cost savings and the social and cultural cachet of having “discovered” cool or “hip” acts. Agency music specialists are thus often on the lookout for the latest trends and tap contacts at record labels and music publishers, artist managers, entertainment lawyers, and other industry insiders for music. But like the Nick Drake example, “unknown” can also mean something old or “forgotten.” As one commercial director noted, “Everyone’s scared to do old tracks in commercials, but our philosophy is, if we find something timeless, but also speaks to the moment, then we have a total winner. It’s certainly better than a Top 40 pop hit, which might be cool now, but will be played out by next week” (Isaiah Seret, cited in Trakin, 2017, n.p.). But it is not only new or obscure artists whose music is used in advertising. Changes in the music industry have affected established artists as well and the licensing of wellknown popular music continues (if budgets allow). In either case, advertising partnerships with musicians are now often seen truly as joint creative ventures (see especially Taylor, 2016, pp. 54–62). The stigma of selling out by allowing one’s music to be used in advertising has largely disappeared (Klein, 2009; Sanburn, 2012; Taylor, 2012, 2016). An extreme phase of this was reached in 2007, when Wrigley Chewing Gum commissioned the song “Forever” from the contemporary R&B singer Chris Brown. The core of the song began as a jingle using the brand’s famous lyrics “double your pleasure, double

9  On these examples see Haynes (2013); Klein (2009); Sanburn (2012); Taylor, 2012. 10  For a detailed discussion of this new profession and its economic, cultural, and social implications, see Taylor (2012). 11  Feist 1234 Apple iPod Nano commercial. (2010, April 30). Youtube.com. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://youtu.be/sijSh4tMPVg. See also http://www.applemusic.info/ (retrieved May 10, 2019), a crowd-sourced, “definitive list of songs used by Apple Inc. in commercials, keynote addresses, presentations, and other marketing materials.”

Fitting Tunes   77 your fun,” but which Brown expanded into a full-length, seemingly unrelated hit song.12 The track was released like any “regular” pop song, became a top 10 hit, and was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award; only later did the original, shortened jingle version appear in a commercial for the gum featuring Brown himself (Taylor, 2012, p. 225).13 Citing a trade press article, Taylor notes, “this was the first time that a song had been ‘seeded’ in a ‘real’ song before being employed in a commercial” (2012, p. 225). Such examples reveal that advertisers—at least those corporate entities with the means—no longer merely comb culture looking for trends they can tap into, but are actively seeking to set those very trends themselves. Taylor thus suggests that there has been an “erosion of meaningful distinction between the advertising and music industries” (2012, p. 224), which is emblematic of the extreme commodification and commercialization of cultural goods in late, neoliberal capitalism. But we must remember that even if such examples of popular music in advertising are among the most memorable, pleasurable, and relatable ones (whether they employ known or unknown tracks) and may well boost consumer engagement (Vines, 2017), they do not, as we have seen, constitute the majority of musical types in commercials. As viewers, we encounter needledrop production music and original scores far more often. Which type of music is picked can depend on a wide range of factors, to which we now turn.

Random Acts of Music As described previously, the process of making a commercial is dynamic and, while musical decisions often come late in the game, they are no less fraught with considerations for budget, style, taste, impact, and so on. And, like the overall process, there is no single standard practice for how these decisions are reached. Nevertheless, several common criteria are regularly cited by those in the industry.

Nature of the Ad, Brand, and Product The most basic decisions about music in an ad are based on the type and goals of the commercial. As the veteran copywriter and creative director Ted Naron explained: Commercials vary greatly in their intention. Some are intended to get people into the dealership this weekend; some are intended to make product fly off of grocers’ shelves over the next period of several weeks or months; while still others are 12  chris brown-forever w/ lyrics. (2008, April 26). Youtube.com. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://youtu.be/yZ2GUhSBbL4. The words appear for the first time at 1:14. 13  Chris Brown Forever Wrigley Doublemint commercial. (2008, August 1). Youtube.com. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://youtu.be/enJbXlb4zqo. The song was released as part of Brown’s album Exclusive: The Forever Edition on November 6, 2007, and as a single on April 29, 2008. The commercial aired in the summer of 2008.

78   Kupfer intended to improve or maintain a client’s reputation in the consumer’s mind, a project that has been ongoing for years and will continue on for years, in which this particular commercial is called upon to play its part. (Personal communication, January 4, 2018)

These different kinds of ads will generally vary in their style and substance, with those in the first two categories being more informational, and thus usually involving more words, whether displayed onscreen or spoken by characters or a voiceover. In such cases, music serves a secondary role and will thus play in the background and consist of “generic” needledrop or originally composed music. In commercials of the third type, comparison between products and services or explanation of benefits is typically replaced by emphasis on identities and values. These usually have little to do with the factual or functional features of the goods or service and have everything to do with the emotional, psychological, and/or value benefits associated with purchasing that product. As Winston Fletcher writes, consumers want these purchases to “make them feel more glamorous, or younger, or cleverer, or in-the-know. They may want their brand’s image to make them feel more masculine, or feminine, or more healthy, or a more sensible shopper, or a better parent, or more ecologically conscientious” (2010, p. 12). In other words, the goal of much advertising is to positively reinforce the consumer’s values, feelings, identity, or lifestyle aspirations. But given that such knowledge is, at least for most advertising firms, rarely based on extensive or rigorous research of consumers’ musical preferences and more so on intuition and experience, these decisions tend to draw on an imagined sense of the target demographic, heavily filtered through the creatives’ own (musical) identity and values. In addition, the music must make sense for the type of product or brand. As one composer and music producer stated: The music needs to do a number of things: 1.) Make the client happy 2.) Achieve the clients’ goal 3.) Be right for the spot. [S]ometimes a client will like a Nike spot. And they’ll want their spot to have the same impact. But if you’re selling hamburgers, that’s gonna be a really tall order. (John Hunter, personal communication, September 16, 2013)

Budget How much money is allocated for music obviously plays a hugely important role as well. Though the average 30-second commercial costs about $400,000 (at the time of writing), the costs for music will vary widely depending on its type. For licensing popular music, Rabinowitz explained (in 2014) that it depends upon whether a song is famous, and if the artist is well known. In each case, we work out a fair price. . . . For a major network commercial the low end would be $10,000 (for the publishing and master rights combined) and the high end can be

Fitting Tunes   79 huge—perhaps $1 million for a Beatles or Rolling Stones song. If the song is unknown, the range is between $5,000 and $50,000. It also depends on whether the commercial is for TV, radio, online, or all three media. If the commercial is just for online use, the fee is generally lower.  (Cited in Kawashima, 2014)

For originally composed music, the range is also wide, depending on the musical intricacy of the request (the amount of music, the number of musicians needed, the time needed to record, etc.) and also on the licensing and how widely it will be used. Typically such music will cost $15,000 to $50,000 (Berger, 2011, p. 3; Sanburn, 2012; phone interviews with David Hall, a brand management principal, July 23, 2013, and Greg Gibson, a director of broadcast production, August 14, 2013). At the lowest end is needledrop or stock music, which usually will command fees in the $1,000 to $5,000 range, depending, again, on licensing and how widely it is used (Gibson, phone interview, August 14, 2013). Once a budget is set there is often some flexibility, however. As Naron recounted: I started with a sound in mind, involving a certain complement of musicians and singers, and then let the agency producer on the project (part of whose job was to be the numbers guy) tell me, if he had to, that we needed to figure out a less costly way to get to a musically good-enough result in order to stay within the budget for the entire production. . . . Generally we were on the same page in terms of valuing the contribution of music to the final product, so compromises (if they had to happen) were more sensible than they were destructive. (Personal communication, January 27, 2018)

Nevertheless, budgets do set limits for the choices of the creatives, especially when licensing of popular tracks comes into play. This is big business, and the dangers of copyright infringement are real and expensive (Klein,  2009; Samples,  2018). Indeed, “an international brand” spends on average $10 million to 20 million annually on musicrelated rights and licenses, multiplied by a factor of five through media dollars. In other words, “a big brand’s annual spend, estimated conservatively, is between $50 million and $100 million, specifically allocated to help associate themselves with music and musical talent” (Jackson et al., 2013, p. 3).

The “Feels” Branding and advertising are intimately connected to emotions. As Elisabeth Grace, a veteran industry writer and producer, remarked: I mean when I was doing film advertising and TV advertising all I was selling was emotional experiences because that’s what the product is. . . . You can’t sell it by saying what [the product] is. It has to give you a particular feeling and that’s what advertising does. It creates a brand identity that plays at or preys upon your e­ motions

80   Kupfer and convinces you that you want to have that emotional experience associated with it. . . . They’re messing with your head basically. (Personal communication, June 24, 2015)

This is centrally understood within the industry. The CEO of advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts, even went so far in the early 2000s to suggest that the idea of the brand itself needed to be replaced by the “Lovemark,” a marketing concept that draws on a consumer’s love and respect for a company and its products. For Roberts, connections with consumers are purely about emotion: “there is no competitive advantage left in having information. . . . Competitive advantage is in inspiration—and at its best inspiration is about love. We are most inspired by the people, places, and products that we fall in love with” (2014, p. 373; see also Roberts, 2005). Thus, a primary, if not the primary, criterion for virtually all those who have commented on the role of music in commercials is how it helps create emotional impact. As Mike Ladman and Ryan Barkan, music supervisors at the agency Droga5, note: “Music is the great connector of human feelings. It has that intangible way of eliciting emotions from people—what we call ‘the feels’ ” (cited in Finkle,  2016). Gibson likewise explained: “Music drives the emotion, definitely. Music can drive the rhythm, and do other things, but it always ties back to the ‘feel’ of the whole thing” (personal communication, August 14, 2013). The composer and music producer Stephen Arnold similarly said that “sonic branding” was for him “pretty simple”: it’s about creating “an emotional connection or reaction to the product or promo” (personal communication, July 25, 2013). This perspective is the same from the client side too. Jerry Dow, a managing director for advertising for several major corporations, observed that music’s emotional impact must be the first consideration for its use in a commercial. For him this was in particular because of the speed with which music can elicit emotional reactions: it is a “shortcut to customers’ emotions about the brand. [It’s] an amazing thing, in five or six notes, to be able to conjure up people’s emotions for the brand” (personal communication, August 14, 2013). The veteran advertiser Al Ries has argued the same (2015), in particular because he believes music can stay with the viewer much longer than sounds, images, and words can. The writers of a guidebook on music branding also emphasize how musical decisions must be driven by consumers’ emotions: “The real user and the one at whom all music choices should be aimed is the consumer, because brands need music not for music’s sake, they need music in order to help them connect on an emotional level with the audience for their goods and services” (Jackson et al., 2013, p. 12). Tim Taylor summarizes this perspective neatly: “branding is a complex process that involves interpellating consumers emotionally. Branding is a way of inserting a product into the culture and people’s consciousnesses, not just the market. . . . The goal for many in the industry is to make a brand seem to possess the characteristics of people, so that the brand can become akin to a trusted friend” (Taylor, 2016, pp. 56–57). In sum, then, advertisers believe that the quickest way to consumers’ wallets is through their hearts.

Fitting Tunes   81

Lyrics Words that are integrated into a song as lyrics can amplify the meaning of the whole and lead to greater recall (witness the jingle). Kroeger revealed that “in general music is chosen for the feeling it can provide, as evoking any sort of emotion is always our goal. Sometimes, the lyrics play a role too, especially since you only have 30 seconds to tell a story. It’s nice to lean on the song to help do that” (personal communication, November 20, 2017). Lyrics that the audience can understand can be a powerful tool in an advertiser’s arsenal, as research has also suggested (Chou & Lien, 2010). As an example of this strategy, consider a 2011 commercial for the Nokia N8 smartphone, which consisted of a set of vignettes of people “breaking free” from everyday monotony and capturing the experiences on their (Nokia) phone.14 These images are matched directly by the lyrics of the accompanying music, a reimagining of Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In,” recorded by Daniel Johnson and Brie Stoner. Livio Sanchez, one of the editors who worked on this commercial, noted that “by integrating the music and lyrics into the initial concept, a strong emotional connection to the brand was built into the storytelling, making it both familiar and fresh” (cited in Crain, 2013). When it comes to original music, lyrics tend not to be used. Creative Director and Music Producer Doug Rucker estimated that of the original tracks his company produces, 90 percent are instrumental music and only 10 percent include lyrics (personal communication, August 15, 2013).

Cutting Through Clutter “If a TV is on and I’m busy with something else and I hear ‘blah blah blah buy me now blah blah’ I won't bother to look up, but if I hear great music, the commercial will definitely get my attention” (cited in Crain,  2013). This is how one college-age student described the impact of conspicuous music in a TV commercial. Indeed, the ability for music to “cut through the clutter” is a common trope that comes up often in comments about what makes for good music in an ad. Brian Monaco, the president and global chief marketing officer at Sony/ATV, for example, notes that if you’re working on a 30 second commercial, you know 20 seconds of it are probably going to be voiceover, so it’s really a limited time and they have just about 12-15 seconds to get people’s attention. If you can put a song in there that gets people to stop and turn around and look at the television and go, “Oh wait, I know this, what is this?” That works. And that’s the kind of the emotion I think people go after. (Cited in Stutz, 2018)

14  Nokia – “Don't Fence Me In.” (2011, February 14). Youtube.com. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://youtu.be/EvKLcEzDPLA

82   Kupfer Moreover, several informants noted that one good way to cut through the clutter or to be novel was to use music “against type” or to use an unexpected or “incongruous” genre. One creative director, for example, described how his use of classical music was especially powerful in ads because beautiful though the imagery is, I think a large part of the power of the spot comes from this music choice. It makes you pay attention, and given that classical music is used fairly sparingly on TV ads these days it gave the ad breakthrough. (Chris Mitton, personal communication, September 22, 2013)

These intuitions are supported by research, which has shown that such incongruity can, in fact, lead to stronger impact and recall of an audiovisual pairing, in part because of our ability to construct meanings between otherwise unrelated constituent media (Cook,  1998; Hung,  2000; Ireland, 2014, 2015,  2017; Kupfer,  2017,  2019; Oakes,  2007; Willemsen & Kiss, 2014).

Hipness, Coolness, Authenticity A final criterion often described by makers of commercials, especially when it comes to examples of popular music, is a desire for ads to seem hip and cool. As Rabinowitz has remarked, “Indie-inflected music serves as a kind of Trojan horse. Consumers feel they are discovering something that they believe to be cool and gaining admittance to a more refined social clique” (cited in Taylor,  2016, p. 59). The use of new music thus helps brands build a kind of cultural capital, though the lower costs of using music by new or obscure artists are, of course, beneficial in preserving actual capital too (for extensive discussions of this topic, see Taylor, 2012, 2016). Related to notions of hipness and coolness are expressions of “authenticity.” Bethany Klein has shown how musical decisions for major cola companies have been guided by a desire to be perceived as “real.” For Pepsi, it meant that “in order to convey the brand as authentic, it was important to use music also perceived as authentic” (2009, p. 93). Thus, musicians who were chosen to promote Pepsi over the years were thought to represent something authentic, or even anti-authoritarian. Of course, what counts as authentic or anti-authoritarian shifts over time, and so artists as varied as Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, and Beyoncé have appeared in ads for the beverage (Larson, 2017). Indeed, Pepsi played on this heritage in a 2011 commercial that chronicles the history of the company’s use of famous “groundbreaking” musicians.15 Similarly, the pickup truck industry has long used country music and heartland rock to help underscore images of rough-and-tumble American authenticity and blue-collar 15  See “Pepsi Commercial Who's next 2011.” (2017, February 5). Youtube.com. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://youtu.be/2J2DKqG6fL4. The commercial of course serves Pepsi’s corporate interests.

Fitting Tunes   83 work ethic. Chevrolet, for example, used Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” (1986) for their truck advertisement campaign from 1991 to 2004 (Rodman,  2010, pp. 216–219, 223–224).16 More recently, a Ram Truck commercial from 2017 ties its tagline—“America’s longestlasting pickups”—to long-living (American) values like courage, family, strength, and community (among others) through images of hard-working men and scenes from small-town life.17 This is underscored with an original arrangement of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” by the Low Country Sound recording artist Anderson East. Not only is the sound of the music intended to evoke the sense of authenticity associated with country music, but also we have here an example of lyrics aiding in communicating the ad’s central message (since the values and trucks are long-lasting, they remain forever young). In addition, as a cover of a song by an established artist performed by an up-and-comer, this ad also combines the reputational and financial value of “rediscovering” old music, as discussed earlier, with the advantages of seeming hip by identifying newer talent. The example of country music also raises the subject of musical genre in commercials. Such choices are usually based on cultural stereotypes and brands’ and creatives’ personal beliefs and tastes (though sometimes sociocultural and market research does play a role). This can be a problem, for it means that advertisers have immense power to reinforce existing or even assign new sociocultural meanings to musical styles and genres.18 For country music, associations with a “real,” “simple,” and “authentic” American lifestyle may have long been a major feature of the genre (Peterson, 1997), but they have also limited its use in advertising. Or at least this was the case until recently when, in November 2017, the Country Music Association offered a “cowboy boot camp” specifically for advertisers with the goal to “to knock down . . . ‘outdated’ notions of country” and convince the industry that “country stars are brand-friendly and they have dedicated fan bases” (Pollack, 2017, n.p.).

Putting It All Together While industry professionals often highlight one or another of these criteria in interviews and articles, selecting music is on the whole a dynamic process that involves many factors, skills, and competencies. Naron, who is also a composer, arranger, and producer, explained: Since 99 percent of the time the music I produced was for a television spot I’d helped create, I was already intimately familiar with the tone being sought—probably had 16  For a compilation of Chevy Truck ads from 1991 to 2003 (as well as a throwback one from 2013) using “Like a Rock,” see “Chevy Silverado Commercial like a rock compilation 1991–2013.” (2017, October 14). Youtube.com. Retrieved May 11, 2019, https://youtu.be/IswbdmpjbnU 17  “Long Live Ram Long form Ram Trucks.” (2017, March 28). Youtube.com. Retrieved May 10, 2019, from https://youtu.be/-xLZEyPOsok 18  For a discussion of the dangers of this, see Taylor (2012, 2016).

84   Kupfer been “hearing” the music in my head from the moment of the commercial’s conception. As this was most often intuitive, it’s difficult to articulate. But knowing something about the demographic target could provide guidance in terms of musical style or level of sophistication; also, the relative “gravity” or “weight” of the product itself could lead you in one direction or another. (For instance, music for an airline feels as if it should be different from music for a dinner roll.) And of course, primary was the concept of the commercial itself: whimsical? dramatic? funny? warm? melancholy? inspiring? The end point wasn’t music, the end point was “what do I want the viewer to feel? What emotion do I want the viewer to attach to the product?” That intention would be baked in to the commercial concept from the very beginning, and the music was but one element in the achievement of that. Along with all of this, I was always looking for a sound that would break through, whatever the concept and tone. Was always well aware of what else was going on in music for commercials at the time, and studiously avoided doing that. If I wanted my commercial to be memorable, I’d need the music in the commercial to be memorable, and dwelling in a world of cliché wouldn’t have achieved that. The fact that I was a musician myself . . . allowed me to find the right and often unexpected models to emulate.  (Personal communication, September 6, 2017)

Naron’s description indicates how considerations of emotional impact, breakthrough, and fit for the concept of an ad all played a part in his decision-making process. Furthermore, because of his extensive musical background, he could more easily conceive of (and help produce) the specific kind of music he wanted for his ads. Naron is somewhat unique in this way, though. More often, as the veteran copywriter Tim Wood describes, musical decisions are the result of compromises: After budget issues are resolved, then the aesthetic decisions start. Do we want something already meaningful/recognizable to the target? Should the music play TO the concept . . . or COUNTER to the concept. Often the music production house will offer 15-20 different options in demo form, many outside the bounds of what the agency creative team asked for so as to provide a range. Then we put the music up against picture and see which works best. Obviously with creatives, other agency folk and clients all weighing in, “what works best” can be a point of major, um, discussion. [As for] how the balance is struck, each spot has its own process and balance, its own story of compromise and inspiration. All this is to say [that] in our very commercial realm, the practical nuts and bolts concerns of budget and timing (“this HAS to air next week”) end up being as important, if not more so, as the strictly aesthetic ones.  (Personal communication, September 17, 2013)

There are any number of ways advertisers can solve such conundrums. Regardless of how they proceed, the ideal musical choice should fit within the budget, add hipness through the “discovery” or promotion of new talent or “rediscovery” of old music, add impact through applicable lyrics, reach a wide demographic swath, and cut through the clutter. Given the enormity of this ask, there are no set rules when it comes to picking music for commercials. Multifarious factors must be taken into consideration: budgets

Fitting Tunes   85 and timelines limit possibilities, and the most appropriate track usually comes down to many people’s subjective impressions of how the music aids the brand in trying to tell an emotional story in its commercial. As Eric Johnson, senior vice president and executive music producer at McCann Erickson, notes: “It’s never an exact answer. It’s different every time and it’s sort of modular and customizable every time” (cited Stutz, 2018). Indeed, the path of a song into a commercial can be highly circuitous given the number of parties and opinions involved (see Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1  The journey of a song in advertising. Created by Jordan Passman/Score a Score (Jordan Passman/Jake Weinreb)/Tangent Agency.

86   Kupfer But once an ad has been made and released into the world, how can its (and its music’s) effectiveness be measured? On what basis is this assessed?

Creativity (and Assessing It) In an industry ostensibly about commerce, the ability for creatives to rely so heavily on their intuition and instinct is a result of a fetishization of creativity. We have already seen how partnerships with independent musicians—suggested by creatives or music supervisors in tune with current trends—build artistic credibility for brands. We have also seen how coolness and hipness can be a criterion for selecting music. Indeed, as Taylor suggests, such knowledge consists of a new kind of cultural capital, one that is less about “knowledge of particular works [of great art] than of whatever is thought to be imbued with the ideology of the hip and the cool” (2016, p. 64). Workers who can harness this knowledge and translate it into advertisements most creatively and innovatively represent a new class of Romantic artists, though rarely do they think of their work as “art.” Instead, by describing their processes as fundamentally “creative” (and calling themselves “creatives”), they can participate in the same laboring process as artists without having to deal with the complex issue of whether their work is perceived as art or commerce. In other words, “what matters in this context is not what one does—make ­advertising—but the creative spirit in which one does it” (Taylor, 2012, p. 244). Hunter, for example, noted that to be successful, you need to be able to speak from a place of authority and experience if a client is going to trust what you have to say. Otherwise, a client may “blow your ideas off.” You need to have them on your side, but they also need to feel as though you’re on their side and are looking out for them. Reputation plays a huge role in this. (Personal communication, September 16, 2013)

Creativity is also heavily fetishized, including when it comes to music, because there are not yet completely reliable and accepted ways to measure the effectiveness of TV commercials. As Jackson et al. put it: There is no globally accepted method for choosing the music for a brand, no globally accepted method for pricing the music for a brand and no globally accepted method for measuring the usefulness of music for a brand. In fact, there is such a complete lack of these things that the conclusion might be that the [business-tobusiness] music market is intentionally irrational, explicitly obtuse and unapologetically illogical.  (2013, p. 7)

Later, the authors add, “The final and most damning of all the characteristics of the industry is that the irrational and inexcusable behaviors are covered up through a lack of

Fitting Tunes   87 measurement, evaluation and benchmarking. In failing to measure the efficacy of their music choices, in choosing not to define value or keep score, brands simply enable the next irrational choice and next ineffective negotiation” (Jackson et al., 2013, p. 10). They suggest that there are two main reasons for this: (1) “measurement of value is actually very hard” (p. 10) and (2) “the droit d’auteur or ‘right of authorship’ that comes from being a senior within a brand organization” makes it “not very realistic to think that anyone can really argue against that senior person’s right to make a choice based upon their musical taste” (p. 11). Despite the stark and chaotic portrait they paint of the industry, their comments generally ring true, especially when it comes to the type of commercials that are not intended to result in immediate sales. The evaluation of these kinds of commercials, Naron said, is most dependent on gut feel and anecdotal evidence. The client feels the commercial speaks for his company in a way that makes him unashamed of telling people what he does for a living. Others in the company congratulate the client and/or reward him handsomely. Viewers who were moved by a commercial write letters of appreciation. . . . Favorable articles appear in the trade and general press. Clio awards are won. Rank-and-file employee morale improves. Clients’ friends’ spouses come up to the client at a cocktail party to rave about the latest spot. And all the while, market leadership (as measured by share of market vs. competitors, over the space of several months or a year) is maintained, or increased. (Personal communication, January 4, 2018)

The metrics for effectiveness that do exist within the industry are mostly qualitative and subjective, like the focus group. But focus grouping requires time and money, which are at a premium, especially at smaller firms. Indeed, several informants observed that if focus grouping is done on an ad, music is rarely a major factor in their feedback. But most informants did not even mention focus grouping as part of the “typical” process or even suggest it as a possibility. Though there have been commercials in which the musical choices were ill-advised and wider feedback before the fact might have helped avert embarrassment (“10 Head-Scratching Music Choices for Ad Campaigns,” 2005; Klein, 2009, pp. 97–120; Pinsker, 2017; Samples, 2018; Vilanova, 2017), they are exceptions to the rule and have not made focus grouping a common practice. The central “focus group” for most commercials thus remains the creative team, other workers at the agency, and client representatives. Another influential measuring stick for the success of commercials is industry awards, such as the Clios mentioned by Naron or the Effies. The former describe themselves as “the esteemed international awards competition for the creative business. Created in 1959 to celebrate high achievement in advertising, the Clios annually recognize the work, the agencies, and the talent that push boundaries and establish new precedent” (“Clio Awards | Clios,” n.d.). As the description indicates, their criteria are fundamentally about creativity and originality. Jurors, who are picked from within the

88   Kupfer industry, are asked to consider entries according to questions like: “Is this work creative? Original? Inspiring? Is this work brave? Bold? Innovative? Am I jealous of this work? Do I wish I had done it? What does it say about our industry? What message does it send?” (“Judging Process,” n.d.). The Effies, which date back to 1968, ostensibly focus more directly on rewarding an ad’s effectiveness (as their name implies): “Effie Worldwide stands for effectiveness in marketing communications, spotlighting marketing ideas that work and encouraging thoughtful dialogue about the drivers of marketing effectiveness” (“Effie Worldwide | About,” n.d.). The judging criteria for the Effies are broken down rather specifically: 70 percent of the score is equally weighted between Strategic Communications Challenge and Objectives, Idea, and Bringing the Idea to Life; the remaining 30 percent is for Results (2018 North American Effie Awards Effective Entry Guide, n.d.; “Effie Awards Judging,” n.d.). Like the Clios, Effies juries consist of insiders (“senior industry executives”) and the criteria are heavily weighted toward the creative side of an entry rather than its measurable effects on actual sales. Within the industry there is, in other words, a premium on advertisers as a class of artists and innovators. This is slowly changing, however, as more rigorous quantitative tools are being developed to help creatives pick the “right” music. For example, building on the emerging field of consumer neuroscience (see, e.g., Lindström,  2008; “NMSBA— History,” n.d.), the Consumer Neuroscience Division of Nielsen (“Consumer Neuroscience | Nielsen,” n.d.) has employed EEG technology, combined with other empirical methods, to study the effectiveness of music in advertising (“I Second That Emotion,” 2015; Vines,  2017; Westoby,  2017a,  2017b). Another type of quantitative metric is the Billboard and Clio Music’s Top Commercials of the Year Chart, which ranks the most tagged, sold, and streamed tracks used in commercials for a given year (Rutherford, 2017; White, 2014, 2015). Appearing first in conjunction with the Clio Awards Ceremony in 2014, this yearly chart is based on data from Shazam, sales and streams data from Nielsen Music, and subjective evaluations of creativity of the integration of music into ads. The chart has become so popular it now appears monthly too. Thus, it seems that quantitative methods are beginning to make inroads into the industry. But the power of creativity and intuition is strong, and quantitative tools do not always go over well with creatives. As Taylor suggests, “the constant dynamic between the business side and the creative side of the industry, the world of numbers and the world of ideas . . . , gives an almost mystical power and authority to the idea of creativity for those on the creative side of the advertising business, for this is what they believe separates them from the business side” (2012, p. 245). Much of the resistance to research also has to do with the speed with which so many projects must be completed, the late stage at which music is usually added, and budgets—a Nielsen analysis of an ad is not free. And, as mentioned, the power of artistic intuition is seductive. Troy Carter, the manager of Lady Gaga, warns about the “dangers” of placing too much trust in quantitative analysis: “writing songs, being creative—those are downloaded from God. You can’t do analytics on art” (cited in Crain, 2013, p. 28).

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Conclusions As the preceding discussion has shown, the process of selecting music for commercials is far from standardized or simple. There are many factors that affect the decision-making process, not least of which is the power of creativity within the industry. In the words of one music supervisor: “the music selection process is curiously subjective. Every step of this journey is met with a new team of people, many of whom will determine if they like or dislike a song within the first few seconds of listening. Music runs deep in our emotions and can evoke visceral reactions” (Passman, 2017, n.p.). Jackson et al. suggest that a large part of the problem is that the way in which music has traditionally been handled makes it (currently) singularly unsuitable for a separation of the creative from the commercial. Eighty percent of brand music briefs start from a position of “What is the perfect music?” before moving on to “Can we afford it?” and, inevitably, “No, we can’t.” The job of the music buyer for advertising invariably becomes characterized by this stream of consciousness and much of the work therefore involves a constant juggling of creativity and cost to find something that sounds like the perfect track but costs about the same as a small family car instead of a Ferrari.  (2013, pp. 9–10)

Though these descriptions might overstate the case—the authors are all in the music supervising industry and stand to profit from alleviating the kinds of problems they raise—they do nevertheless encapsulate well the general issues discussed previously. Budget and time pressures, the tastes and preferences of those involved, market research, the vast amount of music available, and the pressures of creativity and hipness must all be taken into consideration for the “right” music to be found. Given the high percentage of commercials that include music, clearly such balances are struck regularly. And whether these decisions ultimately should be attributed to the creative talents of those making the ads or to music’s malleability when it comes to its use in audiovisual settings, it is clear that in trying to sell us on a brand or product, advertisers themselves are sold on the power of music to engage the viewer-consumer.

Recommended Readings Jackson, D. M., Jankovich, R., & Sheinkop, E. (2013). Hit brands: How music builds value for the world’s smartest brands. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Klein, B. (2009). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Kurpiers, J. (2009). Reality by design: Advertising image, music and sound design in the production of culture (Doctoral dissertation, Duke University). Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zager, M. (2015). Writing music for commercials: Television, radio, and new media (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

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References 10 Head-scratching music choices for ad campaigns. (2005). Advertising Age, 76(51), 24. 2018 North American Effie Awards effective entry guide. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://current .effie.org.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/2018%20NA%20Effective%20Entry%20Guide.pdf Allan, D. (2008). A content analysis of music placement in prime-time television advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 48(3), 404–417. Berger, A. A. (2011). Ads, fads, and consumer culture: Advertising’s impact on American character and society (4th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Bullerjahn, C. (2006). The effectiveness of music in television commercials: A comparison of theoretical approaches. In S. Brown & U. Volgsten (Eds.), Music and manipulation: On the social uses and social control of music (pp. 207–235). New York, NY: Berghahn Books. Chou, H.-Y., & Lien, N-H. (2010). Advertising effects of songs’ nostalgia and lyrics’ relevance. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 22(3), 314–329. Clio Awards | Clios. (n.d.). Retrieved January 13, 2018, from http://clios.com/awards Consumer Neuroscience | Nielsen. (n.d.). Retrieved January 13, 2018, from http://www. nielsen.com/us/en/solutions/capabilities/consumer-neuroscience Cook, N. (1998). Analysing musical multimedia. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Crain, R. (2013). Music might be the most crucial element in your commercial mix. Advertising Age, 84(5), 28. Craton, L. G., & Lantos, G. P. (2012). A model of consumer response to advertising music. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 29(1), 22–42. Effie Awards Judging. (n.d.). Retrieved January 13, 2018, from https://www.effie.org/judging/ overview Effie Worldwide | About. (n.d.). Retrieved January 13, 2018, from Effie Worldwide website: https://www.effie.org/worldwide/about Finkle, J. (2016, December 6). Music and ads: An interview with Domino Recording Co. and Droga5. Retrieved January 13, 2018, from https://www.adforum.com/interviews/ music-ads-an-interview-with-domino-recording-co-droga5 Fletcher, W. (2010). Advertising: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Graakjær, N. (Ed.). (2009). Music in TV commercials: Formats, frequencies, and tendencies. In Music in advertising: Commercial sounds in media communication and other settings (pp. 53–73). Aalborg, Denmark: Aalborg University Press. Graakjær, N. (2015). Analyzing music in advertising: Television commercials and consumer choice. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Haynes, G. (2013, March 11). Moby’s Play becomes the thriller of licensing. Noisey. Retrieved from https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/rzv7dx/moby Hung, K. (2000). Narrative music in congruent and incongruent TV advertising. Journal of Advertising, 29(1), 25–34. I second that emotion: The emotive power of music in advertising. (2015, July 7). Retrieved January 12, 2018, from https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/i-second-thatemotion-the-emotive-power-of-music-in-advertising.html Ireland, D. (2014). Singin’ over rainbows: The incongruent film song and extra-filmic reception. Soundtrack, 7(2), 119–132. Ireland, D. (2015). Deconstructing incongruence: A psycho-semiotic approach toward difference in the film-music relationship. Music and the Moving Image, 8(2), 48–57.

Fitting Tunes   91 Ireland, D. (2017). Great expectations?: The changing role of audiovisual incongruence in contemporary multimedia. Music and the Moving Image, 10(3), 21–35. Jackson, D. M., Jankovich, R., & Sheinkop, E. (2013). Hit brands: How music builds value for the world’s smartest brands. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Judging Process. (n.d.). Retrieved January 13, 2018, from Clios website: http://clios.com/howto-enter/judging-process Kawashima, D. (2014, September 7). Special interview with Josh Rabinowitz, senior vice president of music at Grey Advertising. Retrieved from http://www.songwriteruniverse.com/ joshrabinowitz123.htm Klein, B. (2009). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Kupfer, P. (2017). Classical music in television commercials: A social-psychological perspective. Music and the Moving Image, 10(1), 23–53. Kupfer, P. (2019). “Good Hands”: The music of J. S. Bach in television commercials. BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 50(2), 275–302. Larson, J.  D. (2017, February 3). How Pepsi used pop music to build an empire. Pitchfork. Retrieved from https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1431-how-pepsi-used-pop-music-to-buildan-empire/ Lindström, M. (2008). Buyology: Truth and lies about why we buy. New York, NY: Doubleday. Marshall, S. W., & Roberts, M. S. (2008). Television advertising that works: An analysis of commercials from effective campaigns. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. NMSBA—History. (n.d.). Retrieved January 13, 2018, from http://www.nmsba.com/History North, A.  C., & Hargreaves, D.  J. (2007a). Lifestyle correlates of musical preference: 1. Relationships, living arrangements, beliefs, and crime. Psychology of Music, 35(1), 58–87. North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (2007b). Lifestyle correlates of musical preference: 2. Media, leisure time and music. Psychology of Music, 35(2), 179–200. North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (2007c). Lifestyle correlates of musical preference: 3. Travel, money, education, employment and health. Psychology of Music, 35(3), 473–497. North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (2008). The social and applied psychology of music. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Oakes, S. (2007). Evaluating empirical research into music in advertising: A congruity perspective. Journal of Advertising Research, 47(1), 38–50. Passman, J. (2017, March 9). The gatekeepers that control the placement of music in commercials. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanpassman/2017/03/09/ the-gatekeepers-that-control-the-placement-of-music-in-commercials/ Peterson, R. A. (1997). Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Pinsker, J. (2017, April 8). How on earth does an ad like Pepsi’s get approved? The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/pepsi-kendalljenner-ad-how/522423/ Pollack, J. (2017, November 13). When country wasn’t cool. Advertising Age. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/country-cool/311272/ Powers, D. (2010). Strange powers: The branded sensorium and the intrigue of musical sound. In M. Aronczyk & D. Powers (Eds.), Blowing up the brand: Critical perspectives on promotional culture (pp. 285–306). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Ries, A. (2015, November 24). Your ads should be alive with the sound of music. Advertising Age. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/al-ries/ads-alive-sound-music/301470/ Roberts, K. (2005). Lovemarks: The future beyond brands. New York, NY: powerHouse Books.

92   Kupfer Roberts, K. (2014). Lovemarks in the age of now. In K. Kompella (Ed.), The definitive book of branding (pp. 369–393). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Rodman, R. (2010). Tuning in: American narrative television music. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Rutherford, K. (2017, September 29). Billboard and Clio Music’s top commercials of the year, powered by Shazam. Billboard. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/7981746/billboard-clio-music-top-commercials-2017 Samples, M.  C. (2018). Timbre and legal likeness: The case of Tom Waits. In R.  Fink, Z. Wallmark, & M. LaTour (Eds.), The relentless pursuit of tone: Timbre and popular music (pp. 119–140). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Sanburn, J. (2012, February 3). Advertising killed the radio star: How pop music and TV ads became inseparable. Time.com. Retrieved from http://business.time.com/2012/02/03/ advertising-killed-the-radio-star-how-pop-music-and-tv-ads-became-inseparable/ Shevy, M., & Hung, K. (2013). Music in television advertising and other persuasive media. In S.-L. Tan, A. J. Cohen, S. D. Lipscomb, & R. A. Kendall (Eds.), The psychology of music in multimedia (pp. 315–338). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Stutz, C. (2018, January 10). Hit songs in commercials might be making you shop more. Billboard. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8054930/popularsongs-commercials-influence-shoping-consumers Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Taylor, T. D. (2016). Music and capitalism: A history of the present. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Trakin, R. (2017, November 8). The story of “Similau,” the Peggy Lee song sexing up Samsung’s Galaxy Note8 ad. Variety. Retrieved January 13, 2018, from http://variety.com/2017/music/ news/the-story-of-similau-the-peggy-lee-song-sexing-up-samsungs-galaxy-note8advertisement-1,202,608,486/ Vilanova, J. (2017, April 5). Pepsi’s idiotic Kendall Jenner ad highlights pop music’s protest problem. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ pepsis-idiotic-kendall-jenner-ad-highlights-pop-musics-protest-problem-w475174 Vines, B. (2017, November 29). The celebrity power of music in advertisements. Nielsen Insights. Retrieved January 13, 2018, from http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/ 2017/perspectives-the-celebrity-power-of-music-in-advertisements Westoby, N. (2017a, April). Measuring “trust” in an ad: A small change makes a big difference. INsights, (19), 12–14. Westoby, N. (2017b, May 18). Perspectives: A small change makes a big difference. Nielsen Insights. Retrieved January 13, 2018, from http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/ news/2017/perspectives-a-small-change-makes-a-big-difference White, E. (2014, October 2). Billboard and CLIO Music’s top commercials, powered by Shazam. Billboard. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/6266717/clioawards-charts-commercial-songs White, E. (2015, October 1). Billboard and CLIO Music’s top commercials of the year, powered by Shazam. Billboard. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chartbeat/6715275/billboard-clio-musics-top-commercials-shazam-salt-n-pepa Willemsen, S., & Kiss, M. (2014). Unsettling melodies: A cognitive approach to incongruent film music. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 7(1), 169–183. Zager, M. (2015). Writing music for commercials: Television, radio, and new media (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

chapter 4

Bl a n k M usic Marketing Virtual Instruments James Buhler

Equipment and software for music production offer special marketing challenges. The marketing must play on the desire to make music and to make music effortlessly, or, if not effortlessly, at least with less effort than currently; yet the music used in the marketing (“the demo”) must be such that the target audience of musicians, producers, and composers can hear themselves—the possibility of their own (improved) music-making in the demo. This chapter will focus on the typical marketing of music production software, especially virtual instruments. Virtual instruments are software instruments that emulate other (real, whether acoustic or electronic) instruments, but increasingly the term virtual instrument is used to refer to any software instrument, whether or not it has an acoustic or hardware analog. The demos used to market virtual instruments are also self-reflective of music in advertising in a special way inasmuch as trailers for film, television, and games as well as regular television and radio ads rely heavily on music made with these products. Indeed, the vast majority of trailer music and library music today is produced with virtual instruments, not simply for reasons of cost but also for efficiencies that virtual instruments bring to stem production.1 Although companies making virtual instruments sometimes place traditional (static) ads in trade magazines and websites aimed at musicians, it is common for larger firms to deploy video-based web ads that resemble teaser trailers for games and films to introduce new products, and the primary place these products are sold is through company websites. In this study, I will not examine the formal display ads and trailers at length because their task is generally to drive traffic to the website, where customers then explore the product in a kind of virtual showroom. The focus of my analysis will instead be on these virtual showrooms for virtual instruments. My overall aim is to explain the peculiar character of the music demos made to highlight 1  Stems are the individual audio files that are brought together for the final mix. Access to the stems allows the producers of ads and trailers to alter levels, add digital processing, and even remove elements as they make the final mix.

94   Buhler the capabilities of the software. In addition, I explore why the advertising discourse describing the instruments so often frames an appeal toward the production of epic or atmospheric music and what the use of these two terms reveals about the compositional imaginary of those working within, or hoping to work within, the industry.

The Virtual Showroom The layout of company websites follows a relatively standard format, or at least exhibits a set of common features: a list of products, sometimes sorted into categories; an “about us” page that talks about the history and philosophy of the company and occasionally lists personnel, especially if the firm is small; a support page including frequently asked questions (FAQs), a knowledgebase, a way to contact support, and often a users’ forum; a user account page, where customers can keep track of their purchases, get updates of software, and so forth; a shopping cart where customers complete purchases; and frequently a blog, newsletter, or some other regularly updated content that helps attract traffic to the site. These websites, in other words, have the format of typical commercial sites, differing only in the somewhat greater emphasis they place on constructing themselves as part of a community of musicians. For all but the very largest firms (e.g., Native Instruments, Avid, Presonus, Apple, etc.), most of whose primary business is in selling hardware of some sort, the companies’ primary appeal is from musician to musician: Heavyocity, for instance, notes that the company “is a collective of pro composers and sound designers with a mission to create world class virtual instruments for today’s modern composer and sound designer. The philosophy is simple: Provide cutting edge, inspiring instruments and sounds that supercharge creativity, formatting them in ways that enhances [sic] productivity” (Heavyocity, “About Heavyocity”). Audio Imperia similarly states that the firm “is a joint venture of composers, sound designers and developers with years of experience in the trailer music industry. We focus on creating boutique trailer and video game music specific instruments that instantly inspire” (Audio Imperia, “About Us”).2 And Impact Soundworks offers “instruments built for composers, by composers: easy-to-use with lots of depth and control” (Impact Soundworks, “Company”). Aside from Apple, which makes Logic Pro X, a major digital audio workstation (DAW), but whose primary business is not in music, even the larger firms like Native Instruments actively encourage community involvement (and even Apple includes a forum for Logic in its support page). The product webpage (hereafter “product page”), though highly variable in detail, nevertheless also has a common set of items: images, which usually include the virtual product box and often a picture of the graphic user interface (GUI); promotional text, including both ad copy and a list of features; instructional videos (“tutorials” and “walkthroughs”) that show the instrument in action; and music demos that highlight the potential of the software. 2  The text on Audio Imperia’s “About Us” page has changed since I wrote this.

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Music Demos: The Nature of the Appeal The first thing to recognize about the demos is that they serve a range of purposes. That is, they are in all cases advertising, but they advertise not just the product but also the company and the composer, and the interests of the company and the composer do not always align. (In most cases, the demos carry composer credits.) The company is seeking a demo not just to illustrate what the product can do but also to situate the product in line with their other offerings, both by drawing out a commonality that distinguishes their products from competitors’ (affirming their brand) but also by distinguishing this product from others that they sell. The company, in other words, is primarily interested in a demo that helps it persuade customers to buy the instrument and secondarily one that reinforces its brand. Depending on the particular situation of the composer, the interest lies not so much in selling the product or affirming the brand of the firm as in displaying the composer’s skill at pulling something remarkable—an effective piece of music—out of the instrument. That is, most composers write demos to advertise their talents as much as to demonstrate the potential of the instrument. This is especially the case at small firms, where the demos tend to be produced either by composers within the company (many of the firms were started by and are owned by composers working in the industry) or by composers who are given advance copies of the software in exchange for writing a demo (and in some cases feature the software on their Twitch or YouTube channel). In both cases, however, the composers are often most interested in writing an effective piece of music because this is what will help them get more paying work composing music. Larger firms, by contrast, will often commission demos or have been around long enough that their in-house composers understand their task differently. In any case, these demos illustrate the potential of the software by de-individualizing the music; that is, these demos are constructed to show the potential of the instrument but are sufficiently blank and characterless to allow the target audience to hear themselves in this music. In this respect they resemble in some ways the anonymous quality that Nicholas Reyland (2015) identifies as an important attribute of “corporate classicism.” Here, that style is reworked and distilled to an essence of advertising. I will return to this point in my conclusion.

The Image of Success: Playing the Composer’s Imaginary Because virtual instruments are nominally marketed to professional composers (nominally, because avocational composers and those who aspire to make composition into a career are two significant markets that affect the marketing to a large degree), the appeal

96   Buhler of this marketing is necessarily complicated. The underlying appeal is to success, to the life of being a successful composer. It is therefore not surprising that descriptive copy for the virtual instruments repeatedly emphasizes the quality of the sound (often invoking the proxy of the size and number of the samples), the sophistication of the engine, and the ease of use of the GUI. The basic message is inevitably that this instrument is an essential tool for a composer but also that this instrument will give composers the edge, the new sound that will distinguish their music from the vast majority of other composers writing today. At the same time, most sites will list product endorsements from established composers, especially if the product was used in a major production, such as a blockbuster film or AAA game, as if to suggest to composers that this instrument is the tool that will allow them to sound just like successful composers, the “edge” evidently lying in having access to just the same sounds and tools as top composers. Indeed, Spitfire Audio, a company specializing in high-end sampling, has turned to celebrity endorsements for its so-called Signature Range, which promises sample sets conceived, curated, or inspired by “legendary composers, producers and sound-smiths” such as Leo Abrahams, Olafur Arnalds, Bernard Herrmann, Joey Santiago, and Hans Zimmer (Spitfire Audio, “Signature Range”). These endorsements align with the historical trajectory of the company, which began as a private firm supplying samples to top film and television composers, and much of its luster derives from marketing this proximity to these composers, that these are the very samples that “the pros” use. In any event, the advertising must carefully present the product as opening new avenues of creativity and originality while also allowing them to sound just like leading composers. The promotional copy for Dark Zebra (2012), a custom version of Zebra 2 (2007), a software synthesizer by u-he that Hans Zimmer used in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), reads: A bank of over 400 presets, a collaboration between Hans Zimmer and Howard Scarr. Practically all Zebra sounds in The Dark Knight as well as The Dark Knight Rises soundtracks are included, plus several more that didn’t quite fit into the scores. The pack also includes Hans’ custom built update.  (u-he, Dark Zebra)

Besides this appeal to becoming a successful composer, the product pages usually work on other aspects of the composer’s imaginary—the imaged fantasy of the self—and often the name and “cover” photo of the software contain the seed of this fantasy, which is then picked up and developed in the promotional copy. An example is the sample-based software synthesizer Orbit (2015) by Wide Blue Sound, a company founded by music producer Nathan Rightnour and composer Jeff Rona. Figure  4.1 shows the cover image, which is itself divided between a cube, with heavy shading to indicate its threedimensionality, and an image of the GUI evidently floating completely free of a computer screen. The cube recalls the idea of boxed software—and a surprising number of virtual instruments retain the image of the “box,” though software is mostly distributed through download—giving the product the semblance of physical substantiality. Andrew Averso, head of Impact Soundworks, describes it as “3D boxes that give a certain

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Figure 4.1  Promotional image for Orbit (Wide Blue Sound).

i­mpression of physicality and quality to our offerings” (Averso, personal communication, April 2, 2018). Perhaps the image of the box remains instead of being dissolved back into a logo because it is a kind of synecdoche of the basic fantasy, a virtual instrument that can assume the place of real instruments and make music that passes for having been performed by real musicians. Drawing a parallel with the skeuomorphic design of software synth GUIs, Averso continues: “Something about portraying a physical good seems to connect people to software. You can see this in the design of many ‘analog emulation’ plugins which often feature skeuomorphic interfaces illustrating the software as if it were an actual hardware synthesizer” (Averso, personal communication, April 2, 2018).3 The free-floating GUI in Figure 4.1 is similar inasmuch as it makes the computer monitor—the surface of the machine—disappear, transforming from an element of mediation into pure interface. Software displaces hardware, and we enter in the realm of pure virtuality, where the computer, monitor, and speakers—the physical body of these instruments—have utterly disappeared. The graphic design of both interface and cube, moreover, conjures the image of outer space, and it probably means to evoke Gravity (2013), a film that makes extensive use of the kinds of morphing synthesizer patches that Orbit specializes in. The name in any case serves to characterize the “method” of synthesis—“orbital”— and the promotional text below the image clarifies: “Welcome to a new kind of musical instrument . . . designed for easily creating stunning synths, pulses and atmospheric textures. With our critically-acclaimed intuitive interface, you can create rich, deep results 3  On this point, see also Théberge (2016): “Even the look of DAW software is designed to resemble the hardware devices and controls familiar to multitrack recording: consoles and racks of processing devices, faders and knobs” (p. 332).

98   Buhler in the blink of an eye” (Wide Blue Sound, Eclipse, emphasis added).4 Later, the promotional copy clarifies that “orbital synthesis” involves “morphing” through up to four different sound sources, which allows the instrument to produce “amazing tonal pulses, edgy hybrid rhythms, and dreamy atmospheric beds, all evolving infinitely over time.” Moreover, the image suggests that the “orbit” will be revealing as the light of the sun changes character, becoming better defined, with varied colors, and making the moon (or planet) appear three-dimensional as it eclipses the sun. Beyond the vague but evocative description of “orbital” synthesis, the page has a set of videos (tutorials and reviews) and then a set of 15 demos. Although Wide Blue Sound is a small company, the demos for the synthesizers are more typical of larger firms in being sketch-like and designed to illustrate the capabilities of the instruments more than the prowess of the composer. “Sunset Reckoning” by Will VDC and Nathan Rightnour, for instance, falls into two large sections: the first establishes a pulsing pad and the second shifts to something that hints at an electronic dance music (EDM) anthem with a short drop separating the two parts. But neither section has particularly distinguished material. The result is a short piece with “a nod to poolside dance and electro” (Wide Blue Sound, Eclipse). The point of this composition was not to produce a strong exemplar of the genre, but rather to give an indication of how Orbit might be used in a genre like this one. And it is effective as a demo precisely because it leaves room for whoever is auditioning it to hear themselves remaking the sound as they would use it. Most of the demos for Orbit are of this type, and even “Orbital Drift” by Przemyslaw Kopczyk, which is a quite striking work, is primarily textural in construction, with only wispy bits of melody set against the kaleidoscopic morphing of pad layers. The strong textural basis to these demos is certainly a product of Orbit being designed for at­mos­ pherics, that is, to make evolving pads, textures, and pulses, but the sounds of the instrument are generally deployed in a way that suggests how they might be used rather than being developed into effective pieces in their own right like “Orbital Drift.”

A Powerful Hit: The Epic Self Wide Blue Sound makes a companion synthesizer to Orbit: Eclipse (2015). This instrument uses the same engine but is geared toward producing darker, more “epic” sounds, which the promotional copy defines as “massive sound that is heavy, forceful and aggressive.” The invocation of “epic” here is characteristic of contemporary marketing of virtual instruments, especially for film and media, as is the contrast of epic with something less intense: “Orbit is a bit more versatile but is generally a ‘nicer’ sound. Eclipse is more 4  Unless otherwise noted, quotations about libraries come from their respective product page, which are listed in the references. Please note that such pages are updated and rebuilt regularly, and finding archival copies can be difficult.

Blank Music   99 aggressive and badass” (Wide Blue Sound, Eclipse). Epic is a style of music often featured especially in trailers, action and fantasy films, and the related genres of video games (van Elferen, 2013). But from the standpoint of marketing virtual instruments, the epic is a tempting conceptual target, not just because it is a style that is in demand, but also because it promises to grant the user power and control and so delivers a flattering selfimage. Although the market for epic virtual instruments is already saturated and has been for several years, new instruments aimed at the market continue to appear regularly. The way it feeds the fantasy of the composer, which is of course insatiable, is one reason to explain this proliferation, as is the way that an epic library serves to mark the company that makes it in a certain kind of way, establishing its brand. But then too, the epic conception encapsulates the story of the aspiring composer and so it plays to a large market of nonprofessional composers—students and avocationalists, an increasingly important market for these companies. More typical than the opposition of “aggressive” and “nice” that Wide Blue Sound offers is the opposition of the epic to the atmospheric, a kind of cinematic instantiation of the sublime and the beautiful. I will postpone a discussion of the atmospheric until later in the chapter in order to concentrate first on the epic. For Stephen Meyer, epic music “indicates grandeur, importance, or perhaps pretentiousness” (2017, p. xi). Frank Lehman adds that it is “significant, portentous, heroic, incredible” (2017, p. 31). Let me therefore refine the definition of epic offered earlier for Eclipse and suggest that epic music aims primarily at a display of power: if it is often aggressive, it is also loud and bombastic, typically deploying not just orchestra but also electric guitars, a battery of percussion, synthesizers reinforcing the orchestra especially the bass, and a choir loudly chanting percussive pseudo-Latin syllables in imitation of Carl Orff ’s music for Carmina Burana (van Elferen, 2013, p. 6). But the defining feature of epic music is a rich ensemble sound accompanied by layers of cinematic drums. The sublime is reflected in the epic insistence not so much on aggression but rather on uncontainable weight, power, and force; on the mass of the ensemble sound; and on the elimination of the marks of individual playing for the absorption into the mass effect. This accords with Lehman’s observation that epic cinematic music is leveraged by extensive “digital augmentation” that “can yield a distinctly overproduced sound, where every detail is manipulated somehow and the individuality of component parts is sacrificed for a holistic impression of busy loudness” (2017, p. 32). The result is a kind of “vivacious belligerence” (p. 37) that produces the effect of “sonic domination” (p. 46). Lehman here points to ways in which the epic often blurs, under the pressure of production, into the synthetic, although an organic if bombastic sound usually dominates the orchestra and choir. Where the resulting sound is powerful and assaultive, punctuated with explosive brass and loud percussion “hits” made larger than life through reverb, the sound is often made punchier and edgier through digital processing that “punishes” the sound through the addition of distortion, saturation, and heavy compression. This is especially the case with “cinematic” or “epic” percussion libraries such as Heavyocity’s Damage (2011), Soundiron’s Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble (2012), and older libraries

100   Buhler such as Cinesample’s Drums of War (2008) and East West Quantum Leap Storm Drum (2004). The ethos of these percussion libraries is well captured by a review of Storm Drum 2 (2008), the successor to Storm Drum. “The brutal metallic graphics alone are enough to scare anyone half to death, so it was with trembling fingers that I tore open the box and installed the library” (Stewart, 2008). The product graphic for the library, shown in Figure 4.2a, is actually restrained by contemporary standards that often bind epic to the image of an apocalyptic future. The graphic for Storm Drum 2 conjures a futuristic industrial world to be sure, but if there is a steely, cold indifference in this image, it lacks the bleakness of other libraries. Compare, for instance, the representations of the other libraries shown in Figures 4.2b through 4.2d. Whatever the differences in emphasis, the libraries all play to the fantasy of power and danger, temporally displaced into a mythical future (Storm Drum 2, Damage) or past (Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble, Drums of War). This implicit danger of the epic is an overt selling point of Damage, which is presented with the tagline “epic redefined” (Heavyocity, Damage). The promotional copy on the product page calls the library a “devastating electro-acoustic barrage” and draws attention to “the signature ‘Damage Hits,’ providing devastating cinematic hits with unnerving tonal pads controlled with the mod wheel.” The focus of these libraries is on the percussion ensemble, which involves layering multiple drum sounds to deliver a detailed and powerful ensemble sound “and a wide range of impact.” The detail in the samples comes not from the individual drums playing, but from the number of dynamic layers recorded (since drums produce a wide variety of timbres depending on how hard they are struck). Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble is similarly presented as literally “earth-shaking” (Soundiron, 2011, p. 2). The description of the library in the manual claims that the company “set out to build a monster that punched harder, rumbled deeper, cut through the mix cleaner and got the job done like no other could. We wanted a massive sound and responsive playability, without compromising user flexibility and choice. APE [Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble] has a sound that just works right out of the box, with all of the beef and none of the noise. This beast gets it done” (Soundiron, 2011, p. 2). The product page for Drums of War emphasizes size, “a go-to library for achieving big massive percussion in your tracks” (Cinesamples, Drums of War). The promotional copy is also overtly mythologizing. “Drums of War captures the magnitude and essence of a forgotten battle fought in a forgotten place. The trepidation that proceeds battle can be found in the depth of ‘Hell’s Deep’ ” (“Hell’s Deep” is one of the patches in the library). Given the titles and product descriptions of these libraries, it is not surprising that many of the demos explicitly evoke the epic, or, if not the epic, then the aggressive. The emphasis on the epic ironically has the effect of making the drums on most of the tracks sound very similar, where the libraries compete to be loudest and most impactful. However deeply sampled the drums might be, the high dynamics of the epic track means that much of the available range and depth of the sampled articulations will go mostly unused, and this is especially the case for Cinesamples’ Drums of War, which has a very reduced repertory of drums. Even a demo such as Michael Barry’s “Call of the Clans,”

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Figure 4.2  Promotional images for (a) Quantum Leap Storm Drum 2 (East West); (b) Damage (Heavyocity); (c) Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble (Soundiron); and (d) Drums of War (Cinesamples).

which attempts something more on the order of pageantry and local color, does not manage to make the drums sound especially varied. If the library is “very specific in focus,” the demos make clear that the sound is limited and even somewhat ­claustrophobic, however loud and powerful it might be. The other libraries offer considerably more variation than Drums of War, but the more epically conceived the cue is, the less distinguished the drums become. This may be one reason the product pages of later

102   Buhler epic percussion libraries made sure to feature several demos that used only the percussion library: it forced composers to draw out the varied possibilities of the drums rather than play an accompaniment to an epic track where the drumming patterns are often quite conventional and so minimally differentiated. The demos Cinesamples chose to feature for Drums of War 2 (2010), for instance, are both more varied and more distinguished as compositions than those of the original Drums of War, and the percussiononly pieces by Daniel James and Blake Robinson are extremely effective at displaying the subtle possibilities in the library. But in the case of the orchestral demos—one a knockoff of the music to the Bourne films, the other a tense atmospheric setup leading to a big confrontation—the drums also lose distinctiveness as they are absorbed into the larger ensemble. The demos for Heavyocity’s Damage, by contrast, are extremely varied in style and frequently explore the lower dynamic levels. They are generally short and focused on displaying the library more than producing striking pieces of music. None of them is explicitly epic. All of them, however, also succumb to the temptation to focus on aggressive hits—“Air Blades,” also the best crafted of the demos, comes the closest to resisting this temptation—which means the demos project above all a sense of power. The demos are very good at convincing customers that the library grants the power to deliver overwhelming hits on cue, but because these hits all dominate the music they are in, the demos also suggest that these are percussive hits that are likely to control the music, in the sense that the sound of the library will be hard to tame and assimilate into the composer’s own music. (Percussion hits from Damage in fact can often be easily recognized when they are used in films, games, or trailers.) Surprisingly, the demos for Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble also do not generally overtly evoke the epic. Several, such as “Birdman Jam” by Deane Odgen and the Nairobi Handdrum Ensemble, stick to a very low dynamic level and hardly seem “apocalyptic” at all. But when the demos do go full epic, as in Ian Dorsch’s “The Secret of Steel,” Johnny Knittle’s “The Fallout Clears,” or Dick Ehlert’s “Buckle of Swashes,” the loud tattoos of the drums again characteristically erode the distinctiveness of the drum sound. These demos were done primarily by composers outside the company, and several of them, such as Marie-Anne Fischer’s drum-only “Final Strike,” are effective both as musical pieces and as illustrations of the subtle range of the library. The percussion forms only one layer of the epic, and although the drums lose distinctiveness as the hits grow louder and more aggressive, the percussion layer itself generally remains apart from the mass of the rest of the ensemble. This is one reason perhaps that epic percussion libraries are marketed so overtly with violent images such as war, apocalypse, and ruins. If the epic is concerned fundamentally with the sublime, with the representation of an awesome power that obliterates difference for the mass effect, then the percussion hits serve to demark the inherent violence of this representation. And the fantasy appeal of the libraries, which plays to the ease of wreaking musical devastation, lies as much in the masochism of sacrificing compositional individuality to attain this power of the hit as in the sadism of punishing the music and assaulting the listener.

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The Epic Ensemble It is never a bad idea when analyzing discourse that seeks to sell a product to ask: who is the subject that the text constructs to address and persuade? That is, who does the text construct as its ideal subject? This ideal subject is not necessarily the same as its target audience or customer, both of which are abstractions from actual empirical subjects; indeed, it most probably is not, as the whole point of an ad for a virtual instrument is to make any member of the target audience believe that the product will facilitate their transformation into the ideal subject of the successful composer. Many introductory orchestral sample libraries aim at an epic sound and emphasize this fact in their advertising. They are nominally marketed as either trailer libraries or hybrid scoring libraries,5 but their function within the company’s line of products is to offer a reasonably complete library suitable for scoring trailers and action scenes for games or films at an attractive price and capable of working on a computer with limited RAM like a laptop. In terms of advertising, they play to the twined compositional fantasy of power and control. They are optimized to produce a powerful sound, usually involving a very large ensemble rarely recorded playing less than mp and usually extending to ff or fff. Often, as in the case of Spitfire Audio’s Albion One (2007; second edition 2015) or 8dio’s Majestica (2015), the patches are for prescored ensembles (e.g., high woodwinds, low strings, etc.), which ensures a well-balanced ensemble sound while also reducing the need for a high-performance computer (the more patches a computer needs to play at the same time, the more RAM and CPU it will require). Even in the case of Orchestral Tools’ Metropolis Ark 1: The Monumental Orchestra (2015) or Audio Imperia’s Jaeger (2017), which are organized around individual instrument patches (violins, celli, trumpets, horns), the emphasis still falls on ensemble rather than individual playing, despite a certain fetishization by users of the legato sound, especially of the strings. Epic music is more likely to feature a battalion of horns (a4, a6, a9) on a tune, even at a modest dynamic, than the gentle sound of a solo horn calling out. And these libraries succeed by selling the fantasy of power. But the emphasis on epic style is also a benefit because it can mask significant weaknesses of the library (and sampling technology), since the heavy layering required of epic style covers a multitude of sins. Today it is easier to make big ensemble patches sound good—whether that is because they are technically easier to obtain or this epic sound is what the market has demanded is hard to say. Then too, Metropolis Ark 1 and Jaeger do not even contain patches for upper woodwinds, a common omission in orchestrating the epic sound for media applications. The fantasy of power and control is central to the marketing of Jaeger, which, as the product page reminds us, means “hunter” in German. The company, the perhaps too 5  “Hybrid” in this case means a scoring practice that combines real (sampled) instruments with electronic ones, especially synths, and also usually involves a large amount of overt (rather than transparent) digital processing.

104   Buhler aptly named Audio Imperia, specializes in products for making trailers, with lots of percussion and sound effects libraries to its credit. Just as the epic percussion libraries wed the epic conception with dystopian imagery, so too the “box” image of Jaeger (Figure 4.3) evokes the dystopian future of Pacific Rim (2013), both through the library’s title— Jaegers are giant robotic vehicles that the protagonists in the film use—and through its division of instrumental groups into “hangars.” The text on the product page presents compositional work in the epic scenario, with the composer struggling desperately against short deadlines. The primary ad pitch on this point is worth quoting in full: Jaeger is the first release in a series of orchestral instruments that will usher you into a new era of modern cinematic music. As composers, we constantly find ourselves chasing that next creative spark, but our short deadlines don’t always allow us the time to let inspiration hit. You have to simply apply fingers to keys and pour the music into your sequencer.  (Audio Imperia, Jaeger)

This pitch opens by positioning the library within a grand scenario—“a new era of modern cinematic music”—that is only hinted at. It then turns to the problem of media composers, first establishing a point of solidarity (“As composers, we constantly find

Figure 4.3  Promotional image for Jaeger (Audio Imperia).

Blank Music   105 ourselves chasing that next creative spark . . .”) The text is surprisingly vague about what “chasing that creative spark” means—finding new sounds, new ideas, new libraries? But the next sentence changes gear completely to point to the practical issue of the very tight deadlines media composers face and the need to have things just work. The text then recapitulates this opening gesture, marked with a hyperexplicit presentation in bullet points: To overcome this, Jaeger was created by a team of industry veterans who set out on this endeavor with two, seemingly, simple goals: •  An incredible sound straight out of the box. •  An incredibly user-friendly engine and interface.

This ease of deployment is Jaeger’s direct appeal to the professional media composer’s fantasy of efficiency, though this fantasy remains at a secondary level (the primary one, which I will return to, is carried by the name and the image on the box). The remainder of the text continues to outline the library’s design to aid the frantic pace of a working composer, promising “easy load times and maximum flexibility for a quick workflow.” The primary level of fantasy is broached in an acknowledgment of the library’s emphasis. “Though the library is primarily focused on punchy, epic music, it is not just designed to be loud; it is cinematic.” This concept of the “cinematic” is one that evidently inflects the epic, transforms it from simply being loud, and indeed places that epic loudness into a context where it acquires a new dimension. This library helps set that quality apart and allows it to emerge, while placing the composer at the center of an epic struggle. After a litany of features, neatly laid out in bullet points, the text concludes by returning explicitly to the central fantasy: “Be the Hunter, Not the Hunted!” Jaeger promises to relieve all the pressures of the job that make the composer feel anxious and uncertain (and evidently places the composer in the prey position) and allows the composer instead to assume the predator position through the control of epic sound. The power granted by the epic sound of the library is the sound of this fantasy, of turning the tables. The demos for the library were produced by composers unaffiliated with Audio Imperia, and all of them are epic in conception, with perhaps the exception of “Cleopatra’s Prayer” by Adam Hochstatter. All of the demos make use of the solo female voice since an excellent sampled instrument of Merethe Soltvedt is included with the library, and the use of the voice means that each of the demos also has a moment of contrast from the overall epic tone where the female voice is given prominence and the orchestra is treated in subdued fashion. Daniel James’s “The Frank Hunter,” for instance, opens with soft rolling action strings supporting an initial statement by the female voice. The second section arrives with a tutti led by the legato strings (0:28). A softer contrasting section similar to the opening but more exotic (0:45) prepares a return of the voice at a soft dynamic level. A rise and hit marks off a new section, as the lower strings begin a new action pattern (1:16) that eventually coalesces into an orchestral tutti rhythmic accompaniment pattern. The female voice returns (1:31) with a new gesture doubled by the violins, and the trumpets take over the next strain (1:42), which then leads to a brief

106   Buhler codetta. All of the demos for Jaeger have stronger compositional voices and better motivic definition than are typical for demos (and indeed for the genre as frequently encountered in media composition today), in part because they were written to show the skill of each of composer’s use of the library as much to illustrate the library’s potential and range. While James’s composition shows that Jaeger can serve as the base library for effective epic music, it is less certain whether potential customers can hear themselves in his demo, which is heavily imprinted with James’s own very distinctive style.

The Epic and the Atmospheric To be sure, epic music often has softer sections and can, of course, even deploy solos, such as the use of the female voice in the demos for Jaeger; these sections, however, serve as evocative contrasts, and, though softer, they still tend to emphasize a basic ensemble sound. Tim Summers notes that epic stories in media such as film and video games often feature “narrative vertigo between an intimate personal level of narrative (a love story, a hero, a group of friends) and a very broad ‘backdrop’ (an historical event, a disaster, interaction with a notable historical figure, macro plot structures), which acts as a motivation or plot device for the manipulation of the personal story” (2012, p. 134). The contrasting solos in this sense help to recall, perhaps, that personal story and de-individuate it, bending it toward heroic action in the epic. Insofar as epic music features solos, these tend to be instruments like electric guitar and high trumpet that can heroically pierce through the prevailing ensemble texture. Even an exception to this general ­de-­individualization of the epic sound such as a female voice often rides above epically conceived cinematic textures and sings vocalese rather than articulate words. Here too the sound is usually enriched and depersonalized through extensive reverb—a much bigger reverb than the ensemble itself. Where Jaeger appeals to epic in volume and power of sound, Spitfire Audio’s Hans Zimmer Strings (2018) approaches it from the size of the ensemble, maintaining the intensity while often decreasing the volume to the verge of silence. The result is a set of remarkably evocative sounds that are more atmospheric than epic in effect. Figure 4.4 shows the advertising image for the library. Here, the image is minimalist, classical, somber, and imposing, projecting a quality of inscrutable monumentality befitting an epic rather than atmospheric intention. The monolithic quality is scarred by a dramatic sliver of red, presumably meant to represent a meter or fader, though graphically it also suggests a fiery interior seething beneath the austere exterior. The design is a stylization of the software GUI (or vice versa), and the graphic is abstract and cryptic even by Spitfire’s standard. Hans Zimmer Strings is a virtual library in the ultimate sense of the word. It offers the sound of an impossible ensemble: 344 string players that could be recorded only in a succession of sessions and then mixed together. The product page promises: “From thundering basslines to glass-like high strings, this is symphonic strings maximised.”

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Figure 4.4  Promotional image for Hans Zimmer Strings (Spitfire Audio).

Indeed, “Only technology can allow you to play an ensemble this big” (Spitfire Audio, Hans Zimmer Strings). The general approach follows from a philosophy the product page attributes to Hans Zimmer: “the true magic of sampling, is when you are creating something that’s impossible in reality.” The impossible size of the sampled orchestra allowed the capture of an extremely rich string sound, with an especially varied sound to the softer dynamics, as well as uncommon playing techniques, such as col legno trattos (bowed col legno), that creates a qualitatively different sound when 60 violins are playing as opposed to a normal-sized section. Here, an epic conception (344 players) is used to access a highly atmospheric realization, something that seems to have puzzled many of its customers who expected far more thunder and far less glass. Perhaps Spitfire realized that although Zimmer’s name and the size of the orchestra would conjure an overthe-top epic sound, the strength of this library lay more in the wide variety that could be captured from the ensemble at lower dynamics than in the louder patches. Both the trailer that the company produced to announce the collection and the musical demos on the product page largely play to the impressive atmospheric side of the library. Indeed, the eight demos on the product page available in April 2018 (soon after its release) all emphasize the variety of tone at the softer and occasionally mid-dynamic level, as well as an unexpected flexibility for an ensemble this size. Only three of the demos feature

108   Buhler music that could be construed as action oriented, and interestingly, none of them explore the epic potential of the library. The demos in this case were written exclusively by composers on staff at the company, and they generally take an approach of writing pieces that illustrate the coloristic possibilities of the library. “Futuristic Sleigh Ride” by Christian Henson, one of the company’s founders, was composed specifically to illustrate the responsiveness of the short articulations of the library, which had been questioned soon after the library’s release, and, like many of the demos, it is organized around a series of coloristic effects and without well-articulated thematic material. It gives the impression of being a musical tour of some of the unusual effects that can be obtained from the library. While also emphasizing the special colors of the library, the other demos are designed less as tours than as experiments with a restricted set of sounds from the library to capture a particular feel. That is, they show the strength of the library for atmospheric composition. Homay Schmitz’s “Pulse Adrift,” for instance, offers an exploration of the varied colors of the long articulations. The demo begins with high strings before settling into more midrange strings and a lyrical treatment of the cello. The emphasis is on a play of textures. The entrance of the piano (0:45) marks the second half of the piece, a variant of the first, which now unfolds accompanied by the high, rolling accompaniment of the piano. Andy Blaney’s “Montaigne” illustrates the potential of the library for a relatively straightforward modern composition for string orchestra. It is an effectively rendered piece of music that neatly demonstrates the depth of the sampling—the library has more dynamic layers than most, and Blaney’s piece shows exceptional control over the wide coloristic possibilities enabling a quite remarkable audio image of the string orchestra. All of the demos in fact emphasize atmospherics, the timbral and textural potential of the library, especially its softer dynamic levels. Henson describes the library as containing “an oceanic patina of strings and articulations.” And only two of the demos, Paul Thompson’s “Gigue” and Blake Robinson’s “Traitor’s Motif,” hint at the potential of action music à la Zimmer. The demos give no indication, in fact, that the library will, as the product page suggests, allow users to “take the dynamic of [their] scores to levels [they]’d never imagined” (Spitfire Audio, Hans Zimmer Strings). If the library has an epic quality it is to be found in the indistinctness of that “oceanic patina,” the sea of articulations and very soft performance techniques that only a mass of players can make resound in an effective manner. The library represents a point at which epic power yields to the intensity of atmospheric quality. A duality at the heart of the epic is expressed well by Strezov Sampling’s Storm Choir 1 (2012). The name of the product suggests epic, but the aim of the ensemble nevertheless seeks something other than the mass ensemble. The product page states: “Storm Choir 1 is a twelve-piece chamber choir comprising six men and six women from some of Bulgaria’s finest choirs, members of the Sofia Session Orchestra & Choir. Our goal was to capture the detail and intimacy that can be found in a smaller ensemble, while at the same time delivering a larger-than-life performance.” Storm Choir 2 (2014) uses the same basic ensemble but delivers better legato performance and more power. These

Blank Music   109 libraries take almost the exact opposite approach of Hans Zimmer Strings: they use the detailed sound of a small ensemble to create an epic impression, where those details transform under amplification and processing into an incisive power. Much as with the percussion, the point with the choir in an epic texture is that it cut through the orchestra and not be absorbed fully into the mass ensemble sound. However it is produced, the epic is focused on the massive and powerful. If Hans Zimmer Strings is something of an anomaly on one side, using epic size to achieve at­mos­pheric results, and Storm Choir an anomaly on the other, using an intimate chamber choir to achieve epic results, the epic itself is a measure of potential, an expression of largeness and expanse, and of intensity, a realization of power, more than of absolute dynamics. And this impression of size can be obtained at subdued dynamic levels as well. Orchestral Tools, for instance, advertises Metropolis Ark 2: Orchestra of the Deep (2016) for “epic music at its low dynamic scope” and claims that the library’s “true power arises from the low dynamics” (Orchestral Tools, Metropolis Ark 2). The suggestion here is that the mass ensemble at a low dynamic level can define a potential that is more awesome and powerful than any actual epic fortissimo. Sotto (2015), an orchestral phrase library from Sonokinetic, similarly focuses on lower dynamic levels. The product description for the library emphasizes the importance of contrast for the display of power: “As a composer there are certain musical rules that you have to obey, and one of them is that there always has to be contrast. A loud passage will not sound really loud unless it’s contrasted by a softer counterpart, and a climax cannot arrive without a journey to get you there” (Sonokinetic, Sotto). In fact, low dynamics often expose a fragility to the playing that, like in Hans Zimmer Strings, can be transformative, as a new, qualitatively distinct character arises from the mass ensemble sound. In a regular-sized orchestral ensemble like Sotto, the result is an appearance of intimacy through imperfection, as the sound begins to break down and noises—uncontrolled aspects of tone—appear. The product page for Sotto reads: Anyone who has ever attempted to capture a live orchestra will be able to tell you that very quiet playing is a tricky thing to record. The softer you try to go, the closer you get to the breakpoint between sound and no sound. The starts of phrases in brass and woodwinds become increasingly hard to align for the players, resulting in beautiful imperfection. The balance of sound to mechanical noise tips slightly in favour of the mechanical noise, but to us it all sounds very much alive. (Sonokinetic, Sotto)

According to the product page for Spitfire Audio’s Albion V: Tundra (2016), such sounds “at the edge of silence” yield an image of vulnerability that is “naked, honest, glacial” (Spitfire Audio, Albion V). The product image shown in Figure 4.5 has a strong organic component to it, with warm earth tones opening through a messy thicket of twigs or roots onto a blue and white center. The effect is of two planes and a portal: an icy fractured outer plane, a portal demarcated by the twigs, and an inner plane overlaid with a mottled patina of pink; the focus is on the transition, the demarcation of the portal.

110   Buhler

Figure 4.5  Promotional image for Albion V: Tundra (Spitfire Audio).

The promotional text on the product page argues: “where sampling is concerned it’s the quietest of levels where the real magic happens” (Spitfire Audio, Albion V). Recording a large orchestra at these low dynamic levels reveals not a music reaching for transcendence, the “echoing angelic angels from above,” nor one answering the call of destiny as in the epic, but an embracing of immanence, a commitment to listen for the song of the earth in the fractures of the softest sound. In the recordings for this library, “we sought instead to create a sonic tapestry that was of this Earth. As if it was seeping through the moss on the ground, smelling of Estonian forests, Scottish lochs, Norwegian fjords, and evoking the sense of isolation when stood on the permafrost and tundra of Iceland” (Spitfire Audio, Albion V). If the characteristic string sound of this library is described as “frozen” and “icy,” this description has the effect of drawing out—both slowing down and making more evident—glacial movements that impress through a subtle play that evolves over an immense temporal expanse. The sound does not demand submission as with the epic; its imperfections in fact bring life and characteristic movement but at the risk of exposure and isolation, of falling outside the community of tone and reverting to noise. The “real magic” of sampling these sounds “at the edge of silence” stems from capturing this struggle of maintaining the ensemble under extreme conditions. The result is a mood or affect that slowly evolves and often threatens to dissolve, that which is usually classed under the rubric of atmospherics: textures, pads, and beds.

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Atmospherics: Textures and Sound Design The promotional copy for Tundra draws a connection to the natural world of the Arctic. Hans Zimmer Strings makes a more oblique reference to the sea, which perhaps makes more sense when we recognize that the origins of this library came from Zimmer’s work on Dunkirk (2017). Spitfire Audio released both of these libraries, and several other libraries such as Orchestral Swarm (2017), which carries the tagline “the tidal orchestra,” draw similar metaphorical connection to the natural world. Indeed, the natural world is a common trope in the industry for selling atmospheric libraries. I mentioned Orbit earlier, and Heavyocity offers both Gravity (2015) and Natural Forces (2015). The promotional copy for Gravity is diffuse, suggesting broad usage that spans from the epic to the atmospheric, but with a focus on dynamic movement and integration of sound design elements into compositional contexts. “Gravity covers the gamut of intangible scoring elements; complex Pads; evocative Risers; other-worldly Stings; and earthshattering Hits” (Heavyocity, Gravity). Although promising forms of transgression through sound design (“other-worldly,” “earth-shattering”), the appeal is ambivalent inasmuch as it entails a ceding of signature—and the transgressive element at that—to the library. The product page explains how the library was produced: “Custom-built modular analog units were fed source material from our rich library, and then layered and tweaked until they screamed that signature Heavyocity sound. We shaped each and every sonic millisecond so that your next score is flush with the finest cinematic sound design elements in the industry” (Heavyocity, Gravity). The composer gains control of a sound design team by losing voice and accepting that the library will scream “Heavyocity” instead. The Heavyocity sound design team is presented as akin to a prized performer whose nuance and particularity is framed by the composition rather than being absorbed into it. The sound design is suitably impressive but so distinctive, according to the text, that it will be difficult for composers to make it their own. Some composers might be satisfied with the managerial control the library readily grants. For others, the library amplifies the sadistic outlets Heavyocity offered with Damage: Gravity comes not just with a “punish” knob to add saturation and compression but also a “twist” knob that affects the tone. If the sound “screams” Heavyocity too prominently, composers can “punish,” “twist,” and torture it so that it presumably “screams” something more to their liking.6 If the characteristic gesture of the epic is the devastating percussion hit, that of the atmospheric is the evolving ambient pad, the low, throbbing pulse. According to its product page, Natural Forces, which uses the same engine as Gravity, focuses specifically on generating atmospherics out of “organic source material.” Indeed, “Natural Forces was created for expanse” (Heavyocity, Natural Forces). Figure 4.6 shows the product 6  For an insightful overview of the development of the interface for Gravity, see the case study on the Perception website, http://experienceperception.com/heavyocity.html

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Figure 4.6  Promotional image for Natural Forces (Heavyocity).

“box,” an ambiguous image that suggests a mountaintop poking through the clouds, a rocky outcrop in an ocean being pummeled by waves, or perhaps a volcanic hot spring. (Other images on the product page imply that the latter is the correct interpretation.) In any event, the image suggests a clash of natural forces. The promotional text on the product page suggests that the library evokes “Earth’s visceral sonic landscapes” and promises to “breathe life into your next cinematic composition.” The impression of life comes primarily from the movement and morphing of the sounds. The musical demos for both Gravity and Natural Forces emphasize at­mos­pherics, though those for Gravity also feature a large number of epic hits and risers, as befits that library. Melodic material in these demos is generally pared down, which is in keeping with the “ultra-minimal” ambient style of contemporary atmospherics, where, as the Spitfire Audio product page for Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions explains, music “is able to subtly change over time without variation in melodic content” (Spitfire Audio, Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions). Ari Winter’s “Anomalies” for Gravity begins as an

Blank Music   113 ambient atmospheric track, with a play between sound effects beds and tonal pads interspersed with soft risers and hits. Its second half shifts emphasis and becomes more coherent, introducing an organ-like arpeggiating figure that marks out a passacaglia pattern (1:10). On the third pass through (1:40), a sound similar to a distorted electric guitar enters as though to take up a theme, and the dynamics and textures build through a fourth pass, where the piece abruptly ends with the reverb tail resounding into the sonic void as a kind of coda. Dave Fraser’s “The Unfinished” follows virtually the same form, with somewhat more prominent hits in the first half and a less defined passacaglia figure—really more of a loop—in the second half (0:48) that again builds to a climax in the fourth repetition (1:12). In both cases, the material never coalesces into a proper theme even as the piece arrives at a climax. The effect is striking and makes for convincing music, at least in Winter’s case, even as it serves the needs of a demo by illustrating a number of sounds of the library. The lack of thematic articulation seems both true to the idea of the piece and a way for the music to allow customers to hear themselves in it. Several of the other demos offer more traditional cues, and some like Neil Goldberg’s “Inferno Face” even approach an epic conception, but none of them offer sharply articulated themes. The demos for Natural Forces are even more focused on atmospherics. George Valavanis’s “Isle of Despair (Interlude)” opens with a slow repeating chord reminiscent of low strings with a soft percussion pulse filling the space between like a ticking clock. A choral synth patch enters (0:22) and serves as a transition to the second half, which is announced with a quick horn synth gesture (0:40) that marks out a recurring harmonic pattern that is played twice and then fades into silence. Luis D’Elias’s “The Dark Horse” follows a similar trajectory. It opens by establishing a propulsive rhythm moving underneath evocatively shaped sound effects that create the impression of a morphing effects bed. A big recurring tonal hit initiates a second part (0:53). A third section (1:15) based on a kind of dissolving effects bed serves as a coda. As with Gravity, the demos all focus on using the library to create a distinctive mood, mostly of a brooding or tense character. None of the six demos offers sharply delineated thematic material. The atmospheric is a kind of inversion of the epic; or perhaps it would be better to say that it takes an introverted approach to the representation of power, retaining the intensity of the epic but turning it inward. The result is not so much a suggestion of intimacy as of fragility and vulnerability and also mood, which is far more variable in the at­mos­pheric than the epic. As the introversion of power, the atmospheric retains the basic components of epic, but they require a shift in quality that is something other than a lowering of volume. As power becomes introverted, quality must change character if intensity is to be maintained. Consequently, to construct an effective atmospheric, it is not enough to turn down the volume or even to move to a more subdued dynamic layer of samples unless that layer is qualitatively distinct, something sample libraries generally try to minimize to ensure seamless morphing between dynamic layers. If the fantasy appeal of the epic is to the display of power, the ability to command large forces, that of the atmospheric is to conjure up an evocative mood, the ability to breathe life into a passage. Though percussion is usually conceptualized as a device for supporting the epic sound in film—the moniker “cinematic percussion” is encountered nearly as often as

114   Buhler “epic percussion” and the meanings of the two terms seem quite proximate in ordinary usage—a percussion layer has become a ubiquitous element in film and media scoring, as the demos of atmospheric libraries demonstrate (Buhler, 2020, p. 292). Percussion is often added to more sparsely scored scenes to add tension or suspense. While most percussion libraries designed for media scoring have left these softer sounds as an afterthought or as an element that can be isolated from a busier texture as part of a build, some libraries emphasize this function. As Andrew Averso explains in his video tutorial for Impact Soundworks’ Momentum (2017): Basically, the design goal of this [library] was to fill a gap, there’s tons of epic drum libraries out there, big, epic orchestral percussion; there’s a lot of synthetic sound sounds, synthetic pulses, very processed, sound design material. And that’s fine, but Momentum is all about the organic, acoustic material.  (Averso, 2017)

Averso offers the opposition of the organic and the synthetic as a way to understand the effectiveness or at least potential of percussion at a low level. These sounds produce a pulse rather than insisting on a beat or a powerful hit, and the organic irregularities of the pulse lend the recordings a propulsive character. “You want it to be organic. You don’t want it to be perfectly quantized and mechanical, you want it to sort of breathe life in the track and keep it moving forward. Hence the name Momentum” (Averso, 2017). Momentum is a kind of introverted take on Heavyocity’s Damage. But whereas Damage appeals to the user with the fantasy of sadistic power, of being able to “punish” the sound with effects like distortion, saturation, and compression to produce a big sound that can threaten with the violence of its hits, Momentum seeks by contrast to preserve the momentum, an approach to percussion outside the ontology of the hit and the psychopathological dialectic of sadism and masochism from which it receives its charge. As the text on the product page reads: “We are always looking for rhythmic elements to add to our music. Whether it’s a pop EDM track, an epic trailer cue, or a tense action underscore, these elements can set the tone for the mood and feel of the piece. It’s that pulse, the driving force that hooks the listener immediately” (Impact Soundworks, Momentum). The striking image on the product “box” (Figure 4.7) leaves the impression of sleekness, and an abstract application of chiaroscuro suggests a blurring due to speed. The image of motion is retained while the individual details become indistinct. Where Damage seems to conjure an apocalyptic vision of a rusted-out postindustrial landscape—it damages because the world it comes from is damaged—Momentum presents a kind of abstract minimalism, a stylized recall of modernism, that suggests something very moving can be created from few elements. If the promotional text for Momentum promises something other than the epic, several of the demos—“Pedal to the Metal” by Brad Jenkins and “Bending Light” by David Levy—show a predilection toward epic style, suggesting how easily production can transform pulse into beat and draw such mighty hits from the samples that they knock the air out of the music rather than breathing life into it. If the other demos show a wide

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Figure 4.7  Promotional image for Momentum (Impact Soundworks).

variety of pulses more in line with the aim of atmospherics, these demos show that the appeal of the big hit remains strong.

Conclusions The epic plays to the fantasy of power, the command of devastating, hard-hitting sound; the atmospheric plays to the fantasy of creation, the command of vibrant timbral richness. Both, then, reflect a basic fantasy of control, of making the machine into an expression of compositional will. And both reflect at a deep level the heroic narrative of the composer struggling against an industry that would consume them: the epic through aggression and confrontation, the atmospheric through seduction, persuasion, and acceptance of difference. It is true that there are other avenues of marketing appeal that I have not had the space to explore, avenues such as wonder and intimacy, which form a second complementary pair that determines the pensive face as opposed to the intensive face of the epic and the atmospheric, or indeed another system that might map more fully the coordinates of the organic and the synthetic on the one hand, and of performance and production on the other. But the epic and the atmospheric best

116   Buhler reflect the realities and capabilities of the machine and the current tastes of the industry and the market, especially with respect to framing advertising appeals. Indeed, this axis of epic and atmospheric is akin to the distinction between corporate classicism and the metaphysical style that Nicholas Reyland (2015) argues structures film composition today. For Reyland, corporate classicism is distinguished by “robustly physical, less melodic and . . . overwhelmingly masculine climates of action,” whereas the metaphysical style entails “more melodic, feminine or childlike realms evoking shimmers of spirituality and an engagement with ‘deeper’ issues relating to this life or the next” (Reyland, 2015, pp. 120–221). The masculine and feminine connotations seem less pronounced in the marketing of the virtual instruments except as secondary characteristics of the sublime and the beautiful that serve as a kind of master trope, and the atmospheric generally shows no more concern for cogent melodic construction in demos than do the instances of the epic. But Reyland’s description of the metaphysical style in relation to Zbigniew Preisner’s music for Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors Trilogy is entirely apt in this respect and gets at the heart of the atmospheric’s appeal and connection to creativity and transcendence through the subversion of “stereotypical musical . . . signifiers to assert a universality of concern with ‘othered’ realms of experience . . . in the service of non-mainstream visions” (Reyland, 2012, pp. 56–57). The makers of epic libraries may market them on the promise to make the composer the master of the industry, but the cost of the epic style is a singular pursuit of compositional marks of power and control. It may well be, as Reyland claims, that “a body in pain craves visions of transcendence” (Reyland, 2015, p. 125). If the atmospheric offers an alternative, a breath of life, a naked honesty, even a glimpse of transcendence, it remains a more difficult sell to aspiring composers, for the industry appears to them as an economic monster virtually unassailable by those outside and with an insatiable appetite for efficiencies and productivity. The epic sells itself as the power to subdue this beast, to gain recognition by striking a mighty blow. In this respect, epic musical style serves as the mise-en-abyme of the aspiring composer’s fantasy, framing the composer who can master epic style as the hero of the story.

Recommended Readings Buhler, J. (2021). Music, digital audio, labor: Notes on audio and music production for the contemporary action film. In J. Buhler & M. Durrand (Eds.), Music in action film: Sounds like action! (pp. 273–291). Routledge. Buhler, J. (2019). Theories of the soundtrack. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Casanelles, S. (2016). Mixing as a hyperorchestration tool. In L. Greene & D. Kulezic-Wilson (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of sound and music in screen media: Integrated soundtracks (pp. 57–72). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Donnelly, K.  J. (2013). Extending film aesthetics: Audio beyond visuals. In J.  Richardson, C.  Gorbman, & C.  Vernallis (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of new audiovisual aesthetics (pp. 357–371). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Théberge, P. (2012). The end of the world as we know it: The changing role of the studio in the age of the internet. In S. Frith & S. Zagorski-Thomas (Eds.), The art of record production: An introductory reader for a new academic field (pp. 77–90). Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

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References Averso, A. (2017, October 4). Momentum: Percussive sound design—Library walkthrough. YouTube. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/eyHaxblNSZs Buhler, J. (2020). The end(s) of vococentrism. In J. Buhler & H. Lewis (Eds.), Voicing the cinema (pp. 278–296). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Heavyocity: Gravity. (n.d.). Perception: Technology work. Retrieved February 20, 2020, from http://experienceperception.com/heavyocity.html Lehman, F. (2017). Manufacturing the epic score: Hans Zimmer and the sounds of significance. In S. Meyer (Ed.), Music in epic film: Listening to spectacle (pp. 27–55). New York, NY: Routledge. Meyer, S. (2017). Preface: Epic genre, epic style. In S. Meyer (Ed.), Music in epic film: Listening to spectacle (pp. x–xii). New York, NY: Routledge. Reyland, N. (2012). Zbigniew Preisner’s Three Colors Trilogy: Blue, White, Red: A film score guide. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Reyland, N. (2015). Corporate classicism and the metaphysical style: Affects, effects, and contexts of two recent trends in screen scoring. Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 9(2), 115–130. Soundiron. (2011). Apocalypse percussion ensemble user manual. Retrieved from http:// s3.amazonaws.com/soundiron_docs/Soundiron_Apocalypse_Percussion_Ensemble_2_ user_manual.pdf Stewart, D. (April 2008). Review of EWQL Gypsy, Voices of Passion & Stormdrum 2. Retrieved from https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/ewql-gypsy-voices-passion-stormdrum-2 Summers, T. (2012). Epic texturing in the first-person shooter: The aesthetics of video game music.” The Soundtrack, 5(2), 131–151. Théberge, P. (2016). Digitalization. In J. Shepherd & K. Devine (Eds.), The Routledge reader on the sociology of music (pp. 329–38). New York, NY: Routledge. Van Elferen, I. (2013). Fantasy music: Epic soundtracks, magical instruments, musical metaphysics. Journal of the Fantastical in the Arts, 24(1), 4–24.

Websites Cited (all pages consulted on April 8, 2018) Apple (apple.com) Logic Pro X. (2002). (Version X 2013). www.apple.com/logic-pro 8dio (8dio.com) Majestica. (2015). 8dio.com/instrument/majestica Audio Imperia (audioimperia.com) About us. www.audioimperia.com/pages/about-us Jaeger: Essential Modern Orchestra. (2017). www.audioimperia.com/collections/all/products/ jaeger-essential-modern-orchestra-for-kontakt Cinesample (cinesample.com) Drums of War. (2008). cinesamples.com/product/drums-of-war Drums of War 2 (2010). cinesamples.com/product/drums-of-war-2 East-West (soundsonline.com) Quantum Leap Storm Drum. (2004). Retired

118   Buhler Quantum Leap Storm Drum 2. (2008). www.soundsonline.com/sd2 Quantum Leap Storm Drum 3. www.soundsonline.com/sd3 Heavyocity (heavyocity.com) About Heavyocity. www.heavyocity.com/about Damage. (2011). www.heavyocity.com/product/damage Gravity. (2015). www.heavyocity.com/product/gravity Natural Forces. (2015). www.heavyocity.com/product/natural-forces Impact Soundworks (impactsoundworks.com/company) Company. www.impactsoundworks.com/company Momentum. (2017). www.impactsoundworks.com/product/momentum Orchestral Tools (orchestraltools.com) Metropolis Ark 1: The Monumental Orchestra. (2015). http://orchestraltools.com/libraries/ metropolis_ark_1.php Metropolis Ark 2: Orchestra of the Deep. (2016). http://orchestraltools.com/libraries/metropolis_ark_2.php Sonokinetic (sonokinetic.com) Sotto. (2015). www.sonokinetic.net/products/classical/sotto Soundiron (soundiron.com) Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble. (2012). (Version 2 2013). www.soundiron.com/collections/ drums-percussion/products/apocalypse-percussion) Spitfire Audio (spitfireaudio.com) Albion One (2007). (2nd ed. 2015). www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/albion-one Albion V: Tundra. (2016). www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/instruments/orchestra/albion-v-tundra Evo Grid 1: Scary Strings. (2015). www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/pp017-evo-grid-1 Hans Zimmer Strings (2018). www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/hans-zimmer-strings Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions. (2018). www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/olafur-arnaldschamber-evolutions Orchestral Swarm. (2017). www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/orchestral-swarm Signature Range. www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/ranges/signature-range Strezov Sampling (strezov-sampling.com) Storm Choir 1. (2012). www.strezov-sampling.com/products/view/STORM-CHOIR-1.html Storm Choir 2. (2014). www.strezov-sampling.com/products/view/STORM-CHOIR-2-Core. html u-he (u-he.com) Zebra 2. (2007). www.u-he.com/products/zebra2 Dark Zebra. (2012). www.u-he.com/cms/zebra2-patch-banks#darkzebra Wide Blue Sound (widebluesound.com) Eclipse. (2015). www.widebluesound.com Orbit. (2015). www.widebluesound.com

chapter 5

Con textua l M a r k eti ng Analyzing Networks of Musical Context in the Digital Age1 Willem Strank

There are basically two ways to analyze a piece of music: a close-reading analysis focusing on the piece itself or a context-sensitive analysis adhering to the idea that every piece of music should be viewed in its historical, perceptive, discursive, socioeconomic, and sociocultural context. In the former case, we can use certain analytical tools to describe, analyze, and interpret a musical piece without knowing anything about its composer’s life or the context in which it was composed. In the latter case, other kinds of analytic tools are needed to unravel the structures of digital networks that often serve as frameworks for the organization of styles and genres in the early 21st century. Music in the digital age is constantly assigned to different contexts created by institutions concerned with marketing (music industry), historical accuracy (musicology), or fan-based canonization (audience).1 These approaches to analysis seem to be grounded in one basic principle: that music does not have an inherent meaning. Besides its phenomenological nature, there is no indisputable translation of its sound into a general vocabulary; no stable relationship between signifier and signified can be established.2 However, the sociocultural context can correlate music with meaning; it can create a second-level musical vocabulary or a system of references in the process. Meaning is negotiated between the music and its 1  A similar but shorter version of this chapter was already published as a chapter in Strank (2014). The new version has been updated and altered in some aspects of its argumentation. My thanks to Enrique Encabo for being supportive in allowing the reworking of this chapter. 2  “Signifiant” (signifier) and “signifié” (signified) were introduced by semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure to explain that every linguistic sign can be divided binarily into its expression (signifiant) and its meaning (signifié), respectively.

120   Strank context, which can be called contextualization. A set of compositional rules, a written program, the lyrics and texts of vocal music, a specific sociocultural function, established musical categories like genres, styles, and forms: they all provide meaning to configurations of sounds, adding a layer of context to the otherwise meaningless sounds. Established contexts may or may not be carried over to different historical, textual, or sociocultural situations: a piece of music can be subject to recontextualization when its original context is altered, challenged, or expanded by a new context. In a nutshell, this is what happens when pieces of music are put into the open, participatory environment of the internet: they are subject to a renegotiation of their meaning, potentially leading to processes of affirmation or of recontextualization, respectively. It is vital to acknowledge that this digital reorganization of musical contexts is part of a process of negotiation between institutionalized authorities—such as encyclopedias (e.g., the All Music Guide) and streaming platforms (e.g., Spotify and others)—and the prosumers who participate in establishing new contexts.3 These new contexts may challenge the traditional links between musical styles and traditions and lead to the possibility of prosumerinduced contextual marketing. Prosumers create tags for their preferred music and create contexts that are not necessarily based on historical development, but rather on subjective preferences. The labels then go on to challenge or replace common descriptions established by historians, reviewers, or the industry—markers of genre, style, or time period. As a result, the new contexts can be valuable for the industry as a voluntary feedback by their audience, and for the scholar as a marker of listening practices in the digital age. The digital mode of representation is one of many multimodal networks of imbricated overlapping semiotic systems that are presented simultaneously to the user (Decker, 2013, p. 390). Websites and app interfaces both work in this way, establishing a coinstantaneous context through their multimodality. Music is framed by this context, which consists of text, images, and nonmusical sound. Moreover, the hyperlink structure of the internet constitutes another, transtextual layer of context.4 The structure of web interfaces thus creates different types of linkage and recontextualizes every digital file containing music. Music also creates context for other music, notably in online audio streaming platforms that collect all kinds of music, label and categorize it, and then distribute it through sales. Databases like Spotify and Apple Music establish a new context via online communication and recontextualization by its users, effectively changing the shape and structure of the music’s intertextual surrounding. Prosumers can create public playlists and recommend songs to one another, with an effect of either narrowing a musician’s or a band’s 3  “Prosumer” is a portmanteau of “producer” and “consumer,” describing the Web 2.0 generation of consumers who not only take in the digital content presented to them by the original producer but also are enabled to alter the product by creating a new paratext (amateur reviews), creating a new context, or changing the product through a creative process. The syllable “pro-” underlines the interactive portion of new media in general (see also Decker, 2013, p. 399). I will not distinguish between prosumers and creative consumers in this chapter. 4  The underlying notion of transtextuality closely follows Gerard Genette’s 1982 book Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, especially in this chapter’s definitions of inter-, hyper-, and paratextuality (Genette, 1997).

Contextual Marketing   121 “essential” output or opening up new, sometimes often historically inaccurate connections. Umberto Eco’s (1962) idea of the “open work,” which stresses the consumer’s role in the forming of an artwork by adding layers of meaning with every new reading, is a suitable metaphor here, as there are potentially many new layers of meaning added to any given piece of music on the internet every second due to its sheer availability. This chapter will deal with some current examples of audio streaming platforms and analyze their means of recontextualization. Some of them—like Spotify or YouTube—are obvious mainstream choices. Others are specific examples that represent niches. All of the platforms represent either interfaces or autonomous digital media. Some of the functions that are touted by a particular platform are actually not exclusive: many alternative platforms contain the same functions. However, for the sake of transparency, the emphasis will be on the more typical functions of each interface—for example, some of them are used mostly for following and subscribing, others for “favoriting” and “liking,” and still others for their comments section. All of these alternatives contain different interactive features and thus produce different kinds of prosumers. Radio and video networks (such as 8tracks or YouTube) will be regarded in their relation to musical media and their respective distribution of music, not in their status as an online alternative to radio or television.

The (Illegal) Roots of Online Music Distribution: Napster and Beyond At this point, it has to be said that many of the current streaming platforms for the distribution and reception of music online can be described as reactions to the rise of illegal filesharing in the early 2000s. The most popular model was Napster, founded by John Fanning, Shawn Fanning, and Sean Parker in 1999. Napster was immensely influential due to its use of a peer-to-peer-protocol (p2p) that enabled millions of users to share music in the container of the Fraunhofer mp3 format. Because of Napster’s success, there has been a continuing discussion about the effects of filesharing on the music industry, which has turned into a protracted argument about copyright in general (see Röttgers, 2003). Napster’s legal troubles led to its shutdown in 2001 and its subsequent relaunch as a—now legal—music portal in 2003. It continues to exist to this day but is not nearly as successful as many of its counterparts. Other illegal filesharing tools—like Kazaa, eDonkey 2000, and LimeWire—went on to carry Napster’s torch while Napster relaunched legally under the name Rhapsody.5 It was not until the rise of Spotify that audio streaming platforms enjoyed mainstream success though. While Napster was a very effective and successful illegal filesharing tool in the past, it always had major problems because anonymous contributors would misattribute songs 5  Rhapsody rebranded its service as Napster in 2016, hoping to be able to compete with the likes of Spotify and Apple Music. This goes to show that the Napster name still appears to be more recognizable than the Rhapsody brand; see also Catalano, 2018 (retrieved on March 15, 2019).

122   Strank on the platform. I shall address this as the “Napster problem”: some songs were filed under wrong names or attributed to the wrong artist. One of the most famous examples is when an anonymous contributor catalogued the Stealers Wheel song “Stuck in the Middle with You” as attributed to Bob Dylan, which led to confusion by a whole demographic group wondering why the song was missing from Dylan’s greatest-hits compilations. Legal sites have avoided this problem by using an extensive and official database that makes it easy to tell the difference between Bob Dylan’s song “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” and the Stealers Wheel hit. Today, legal alternatives exist, and global players like Amazon (Prime Music, 2016) and Apple (Apple Music, 2015) have entered the market. Their Swedish predecessor Spotify (2008) is the undisputed number one interface for the legal distribution of music online in its native Europe, while coming in a close second in North America to the internet radio service Pandora.6 More importantly, streaming has netted the music industry the most revenues in 2018, accounting for 75 percent or $3.4 billion of overall revenue for the record industry according to some sources.7 The initial discussions about whether streaming can actually make any money seem like old news when held against these numbers; however, just like video-on-demand hosts like Netflix, music streaming services apparently generate substantial revenues for the content-delivering industries but are still waiting to become profitable themselves.8

The Encyclopedia of Context: Similarity Marketing The whole idea of marketing music by taste took root in two principles of organization: the authoritative canon and differentiation into genres. While the canon is renegotiated by professional (e.g., Rolling Stone, Billboard, and others) and amateur (My favorite alltime . . .) lists, genres have evolved from guiding niches into thinly veiled descriptions of target audiences: adult alternative, independent, teen pop, etc. However, online distribution has established new ways of labeling, away from the static spatial arrangement of the record store. The streaming platforms themselves became part of the “recommendation machine,” following keywords to unearth internet playlists that may lead the listener to previously unheard segments of the market. In the meantime, the authoritative canon has been hardly abandoned. “Listicles” have continued the tradition of yearly magazine top lists, while encyclopedic websites have organized the artists’ back catalog. But the canon did not stop at that. The most extensive music database All Music Guide (http://www.allmusic.com) started out as an online version of a physical encyclopedia that was updated regularly. Operating from Ann Arbor, Michigan, the “allrovi” network 6  According to Global Web Index, see Beer 2018. 7  See Hernandez 2018. 8  See Sanchez 2017.

Contextual Marketing   123 also encompasses the websites All Movie Guide, Sidereel, and Celebified. It also operated All Game Guide, but that service went out of business (or “ran out of quarters,” as they put it back then; now it is “game over”) in 2014. The All Music Guide is interesting as it already makes use of many marketing strategies dependent on the musical context, historical or contemporary, while being largely noncommercial itself. Its ties to the industry are at least not blatantly visible and the site takes its job as a trustworthy online music encyclopedia very seriously. The six strategies of All Music Guide (and most marketing-oriented online music resources) reflect six staples of the prosumeroriented Web 2.0. I will use the example of Ariana Grande’s latest album thank u, next (2019) to exemplify them. First, All Music uses keywords to describe the “album moods” as well as the “album themes.” A few examples: the mood of thank u, next can be described as “carefree,” “gleeful,” “romantic,” and “sophisticated.” By comparison, Leonard Cohen’s final album You Want It Darker (2016) would be “enigmatic,” “poignant,” “earnest,” and “unsettling.” While Ariana’s themes are “empowerment,” “girls night out,” “yearning,” and “TGIF,” Cohen’s were described as “wisdom,” “reflection,” and “introspection.” Both are tied together by their focus on “heartache” though. Interestingly, these are marketing ­attributes. For an encyclopedia, labeling the moods and the themes of an album is ­particularly important if only to build bridges to other songs and to establish a stylistic context. If listeners are looking for a follow-up to a “gleeful” Ariana Grande song, they can try to find a personalized match for the same cloud tags—or quite the opposite if they happen to stumble upon Leonard Cohen’s swan song. Second, All Music Guide offers a more direct link to similar musical experiences: the “similar albums” tab poses an equivalent to Amazon’s “if you enjoyed x, you might try y” suggestions. In the case of thank u, next, the listener might want to continue with Selena Gomez’s Revival, Demi Lovato’s Tell Me You Love Me, or Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. The connection is more age oriented than stylistic, however, as the attempted radical message of empowerment that Ariana Grande tried to convey with her album and the surrounding social media campaign can hardly be found in those suggestions. This is a marketing decision. The platform assumes that listeners of Ariana Grande are probably in the t(w)eens target audience; thus, they might be inclined to listen to Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and Katy Perry, all of whose music they have probably been exposed to. Whether the distinction is based on musical style or another discursive connection does not matter as much. Similarly, You Want It Darker marks you as an old listener, one that has not abandoned his or her vintage pop music heroes and still buys their records. Recommendations of similarity include such vastly different albums as Van Morrison’s Keep Me Singing, David Crosby’s Lighthouse, and Paul Simon’s Stranger to Stranger. These are similarities of generation—of the artists and of the listeners, having arisen in a similar musical context, belonging to the same age group. The connection is only vaguely musical.9 9  Even more absurd is the inclusion of Van Morrison’s 1978 album Wavelength, an upbeat pop effort that is a far cry from Cohen’s final album in almost every respect.

124   Strank Third, All Music provides biographical context—you can consult short write-ups about the artists, fulfilling a more traditional function of an encyclopedia. There is also a discography that contextualizes the artists’ work. While the biographies are based on the factual, authoritative idea that no prosumer input would be valid (or necessary) for stating the “facts,” the work’s context is expanded by professional (All Music staff) reviews as well as user reviews. The rating is also divided into an All Music rating and a user rating, and these can differ considerably. In some cases, the ratings can be useful indicators of the difference between favorites of the critics and albums that were popular despite critical reviews. Finally, All Music employs a blog that highlights current trends or popular releases as well as historical developments. Prosumers can find an entry about the concerto grosso, for example, again stressing the self-positioning between encyclopedia and streaming platform. The aforementioned listicles can also be found here in the form of All Music Loves. These particular pages always reference one (apparently random) year and establish the editors’ picks of the best songs and best albums, adding yet another possibility of context, catering to the nostalgic target audiences as well as the contemporary ones. The online All Music Guide is an interesting example, for it serves as an encyclopedia but also employs functions hinting at online marketing. It is not a marketing- or ­business-oriented web service per se, but the contextual structures established here are frequently used in more economically oriented surroundings like streaming libraries. In the information age, attention (clicks) is often more important than the actual purchase (physical record or digital file), as the links of vertical integration lead not only into advertising but also into an intermedial industry, meaning one that is concerned with several media simultaneously, that will deploy established (or “favorited”) contexts for their purposes. The marketing campaigns are always conceived as cross-media events, and sometimes the effects are counterintuitive, with a previously forgotten B-side turning up as the title song of a popular pay-TV series, in turn sparking the streaming numbers of the performing artists, whose idiosyncratic performing style leads to the creation and distribution of a new internet meme, leading to a whole new branch of unexpected merchandise possibilities. The important operation for all this is the establishing of context, the connection of previously unconnected dots.

Marketing the Clouds: How Online Streaming Services Create Context Spotify Janko Röttgers posed the question of legalizing music piracy in his 2003 book Mix, Burn and R.I.P.—The End of the Music Industry.10 In the 17 years since the book’s publication, it seems that music borrowing and sharing has become widespread. Of course, it is not 10  Original title: Mix, Burn & RIP—Das Ende der Musikindustrie (translated by present author).

Contextual Marketing   125 that piracy has been legalized, but rather the ideas of p2p filesharing are now ­institutionalized—by successful interfaces like Spotify. Spotify is a Swedish interface that was launched in 2008 by a small start-up company and became so successful that by 2011 it had attracted many new investors.11 At present, it is difficult not to find any given music on Spotify, as it is now the host of over 30 million songs.12 Spotify is using a modified peer-to-peer technology and can be regarded as a legal alternative to file-sharing. Its success may be due to its immense library, but another factor is the easy-to-use interface that owes a lot to stationary music libraries like iTunes. Spotify is only one of many similar interfaces: alternatives like Pandora, Apple Music, or Prime Music have since entered the streaming market. Legal music streaming interfaces have solved the “Napster problem” and have created an authoritative database of music. Artists’ albums remain intact in their original structure on Spotify, and it is possible to browse the service by historic parameters. One of the major problems of Spotify’s organization is its affinity with pop, rock, and jazz genres. For classical music, works are organized into the same album structure as pop/jazz, so if listeners search for music by Joseph Haydn, for example, they will not be able to browse his works but rather compilations of his works that may or may not include the composition they are looking for. Thus, Spotify is not deliberately true to a historical categorization of its music but is set up as a pragmatic business system. This is not surprising, as online streaming services understandably have a preference for industrial parameters of organization. The little commercial appeal of the classical market is largely linked more to the star performers whose names and images are often featured more prominently on record jackets and CD covers than the works of the composers themselves. Three aspects of Spotify’s interactivity are notable. First, Spotify is a “dynamic encyclopedia”:13 music is sorted by albums, and additional information about musicians and musical genres is available that explains the branches of the historical tree. Spotify is not primarily a database like the All Music Guide, but it does provide some context on an artist’s albums. On Spotify, the interactive interface is gamified; that is, typical elements of game playing are applied to it: listeners can browse freely through a whole database of music and find other music that is similar to that previously heard. These recommendations can be used as new musical experiences as Spotify contains enough data for further research so that the listener can playfully discover new kinds of music and thus become an active prosumer. A second aspect of interactivity is what I refer to as “playlist communication.” Not only can Spotify prosumers create playlists to their own liking and share them with others, but also they can create shared playlists that other users can access and modify. Thus, it is possible for friends and web acquaintances to communicate through music only. 11  See, for example, Watson, 2019. 12  See Symons, 2018. Some rumors indicate it could be over 40 million songs, but unlike some years ago (see Sydneyschelvis, 2017), Spotify does not seem to give out a number of its own. 13  The term encyclopedia is used in a meaning that is similar to Umberto Eco’s use of the word as a “complex system of shared knowledge that governs the production and interpretation of signs inside communicative contexts” (Desogus, 2012, p. 501), rather than a static edition of collected knowledge.

126   Strank

Figure 5.1  Prosumer recontextualization: Filtr Sweden’s “Old School Hip Hop” playlist on Spotify.

For example, if friend #1 adds something to friend #2’s playlist, friend #1 will know when friend #2 has listened to the contribution and if he or she has favorited it (or listened to it multiple times). Friend #2 will also most likely create a reaction and thus exchange information about the music. Figure 5.1 presents an example of a playlist that is a team effort to tag and collect “Old School Hip Hop” tracks on Spotify. Prosumers can participate in this encyclopedic game activity and share their choices of the genre, thus communicating about a part of popmusic history. The label of the musical genre is constituted by indirect communicative acts, by amateur prosumers adding or redacting tracks to/from the playlist. Music is put into the same lineup as potentially previously unrelated music, which is another kind of recontextualization through sequence. The interface permits but does not enforce this type of recontextualization—it is, however, executed by prosumers who are able to participate in the process.14 This creates data about prosumer preferences that can be evaluated for marketing, as a prosumer’s perceptions of what is “Old School Hip Hop” (in this example), and how it can inform industry associates about their conception of the genre, and their favorite albums and songs. The result can be reissues of tracks in the form of compilations, albums, and anniversary editions—or even possibly laying the groundwork for the creation of new retro trends, picking up on popular sounds from the past. To my knowledge, there are no examples of this having happened so far, but prosumer data could be used and evaluated accordingly. Also, recontextualization leads to the circulation and reaffirmation of genre and canon conventions, effectively creating retro brands in the process. These brands can inform any kind of intermedial marketing, as it can serve as a forum for gratuitous audience feedback regarding which songs are best for inclusion in the next biographical picture or period series. 14  Of course, the playlist in the picture still awaits participation as the only user who has yet contributed to the playlist appears to be its creator.

Contextual Marketing   127 Finally, although Spotify tries to effectively replace an analog music library by making much more music instantly available, protecting the original musical context while allowing users to communicate through and about the music, it is subject to demedialization. Music is no longer tied to a certain medium: it is not collected in the shape of vinyl records, music cassettes, compact discs, or even hard disks. Ownership has become symbolic as the medial representation is digital and temporary. One can download whole albums from Spotify, but Spotify will delete the paratextual aspects of those albums just like its illegal predecessors. The album covers are preserved, but only as icons, not as a (haptic) part of the artwork. Liner notes, lyrics, credits, the font type of the track listing, and many other paratextual aspects of a physical album are no longer part of the virtual albums on Spotify. This may seem like a minor issue at first, but it requires more fan labor on the part of the listener, and it neglects aspects that are very important for some musical subcultures, especially those whose listeners’ identity is partly de­pend­ ent on the renaissance of the musical artifact, whether vinyl record or cassette.

YouTube YouTube is primarily a video portal that hosts a multitude of legally and illegally uploaded audiovisual files that viewers can comment on and organize into channels or playlists. It is also a very successful network for the preservation and distribution of music online, arguably the most ubiquitous because of cost (it is free) and ease of sharing. YouTube can be regarded as a video network with an unofficial subcategory of “music.” This subnetwork is also, like the rest of YouTube, a social network. YouTube added the streaming service YouTube Music in 2015, reflecting the omnipresent rise of the distribution of music through streaming, and added a new commercial service called YouTube Premium around the same time (as YouTube Red). My analysis, however, is concerned only with the “free” and largely prosumer-organized main level of YouTube. While YouTube is mostly a network of links between video files, the “related” function of YouTube allows for browsing along hypertextual structures as is customary throughout the internet. The integrity of musical works is often preserved and contextualized by information about the date of the composition or the circumstances of the performance, making YouTube yet another music encyclopedia despite its focus on the audiovisual. This data is not organized by the makers of YouTube, however, but rather by the users who upload the content and link it to content that they deem related. YouTube does use an algorithm to establish its own keyword-based “related” system, but users can reply to videos and create their own channels, effectively controlling the hypertextual structure of the platform. In general, music is interactively recontextualized and intermedially complemented by videos either showing appropriate pictures—of the composer, the performance, paintings from around the same time—or documenting the performance itself. Often there are different versions of the compositions, where live versions, studio recordings,

128   Strank unplugged demos, or alternative versions of pieces and songs can be compared. The participatory nature of YouTube encourages mash-ups, musical experiments, music by amateurs, and cover versions of famous songs. Finally, YouTube can serve as a valuable educational resource. For example, a young violin student can find recitals of performers at important music schools and compare his or her skills to the ones needed to graduate as a musician. YouTube also incorporates tutorials where beginners can learn to play certain tunes on their instrument. In the first example (Figure  5.2), the musical intertext of the third movement of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia is revealed by the related links on the right part of the screen: a movement from Gustav Mahler’s second symphony. There are also links to other works by Berio—thus vertically integrating the composition into his catalog, and to contemporary composers who share the same aesthetic values, in this example Olivier Messiaen. The second example (Figure 5.3) enables the prosumer to find paratextual information in an interview with the performer Miles Davis, as well as alternative interpretations of Rodrigo’s composition Concierto de Aranjuez. The last example (Figure 5.4) enables the prosumer to find many different versions of the Counting Crows’ song “Anna Begins.” The prosumer can research different performances and aspects of a work through the “related” function as well as paratextual and intertextual relations. The historical musical contexts are represented in the hypertextual structure, creating a network of traditional and nonconventional recontextualizations of the original query. The complexity of the work is heightened by the inclusion of its history both of production and of reception. The multimodality of the website produces a multimodal work that is not limited to one representation but is represented by the multitude of its aspects.

Figure 5.2  Hypertextuality and vertical integration of intertexts: Luciano Berio and Olivier Messiaen on YouTube.

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Figure 5.3  Paratextual information and alternate interpretations: Miles Davis and Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez on YouTube.

Figure 5.4  Paratextual and intertextual relations via segment tagging: Counting Crows’ “Anna Begins” on YouTube.

130   Strank This particular structure of YouTube enables a new kind of listener. Musical relations can be explored directly because they are immediately accessible. Similar to the “suggestions for similar music” on the All Music Guide website, YouTube provides the possibility to educate listeners and to make connections they would not have thought possible. Hip-hop tracks are reunited with their original samples, and the classical roots of pop songs are unearthed. This cultivation of context-sensitive listeners is valuable for the music industry as listeners are more likely to expand their musical taste beyond what they already know and ultimately purchase that music. The newly found connections may spark musical preferences hitherto unknown and open up new cross-marketing possibilities. Just as the intermedial use of music can (re)popularize songs used in the movies, on television, or in video games and thus create new links, the “relational” system of online distribution can serve the same purpose for music only. The intermedial comparison already suggests that this is not an isolated phenomenon and it also holds true for larger frameworks in which music is only a small part: film franchises will often refer to related series to establish a connection. Online structures that open up new contexts build new bridges between musical genres, not unlike the interlinks between successful media franchises. Customers who bought A might also like B, indeed. The context-sensitive structure of YouTube also gives rise to the wave of online selfmarketing. YouTube works like other social media, and the channel structure makes it possible for many participants to present their own artistic visions. A few of these performers broke into the mainstream music industry—most famously Justin Bieber— while others draw a steady crowd of followers by presenting different brands of musical novelty,15 musical acrobatics,16 and stylistic transformations of existing music.17 Many of these concepts were picked up and reflected by professional productions, most notably sections of late-night shows that were recycled and redistributed on YouTube.18

SoundCloud SoundCloud—as its name describes—is an intangible structure that sorts music by association through tags entered by its users. It can be regarded as one of the heirs of Myspace, which once was the most important of all social networks for musicians

15  For example, Insane Cherry’s Animal Covers (here: “Enter Sandman”), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=_mt12B7s3b8 (retrieved on March 3, 2019). 16  The self-proclaimed “world’s fastest guitar player” belongs to this category (https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=-DMyM7ARJUI) as well as the viral “Bohemian Rhapsody” cover by the Porkka Playboys (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irLsjBDPe5c, retrieved on March 3, 2019). 17  The vast YouTube cover scene, of course, but also channels devoted to a specific musical vision, such as Jone Ruiz’s channel featuring Legend of Zelda music arranged for and performed on classical guitar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-lulv7ad6g, retrieved on March 3, 2019). 18  Jimmy Fallon’s “Wheel of Musical Impressions,” “Musical Genre Challenge,” “Carpool Karaoke,” and “Classroom Instruments” are similar to former amateur reworkings on YouTube but feature the major stars themselves.

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Figure 5.5  Reviews, expressive markers, and micro-paratexts: Mahler’s Third Symphony on SoundCloud.

worldwide.19 SoundCloud allows users to generate profiles, and it is possible to tag music, to “like” music, and to follow bands. An important feature is that it allows music by both professional and amateur musicians to be sorted under the same tags. For example, if the new Miley Cyrus song is tagged as “melancholic” and “drug related” and an amateur band’s song is tagged similarly, Miley Cyrus fans may possibly stumble upon the amateur band’s music through these tags. One of the major comment functions of SoundCloud is the “segment tagging”: it is possible to pick a part of a composition or a song, tag it, and comment on it so that the comment will show appreciation of a guitar solo or an interesting segment of a song that stands out. Segment tagging reduces the music to certain highlights—not unlike Adorno’s scorning of listeners who only wait for the beautiful parts (see Adorno, 2003)— while it also establishes a system of fast reception that allows listeners to pick what may be interesting for them regardless of the surrounding musical structure. Segment ­tagging thus reflects the practice of “sampling” as a listening possibility and reduces the music to its highlights or its sound. In the example (Figure 5.5), a user has tagged a specific moment in the first movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony as “spectacular,” which can be regarded as a miniature review but also as an expressive marker for one particular harmonic progression. The movement is momentarily reduced to its “greatest hit,” and hence it is easy to communicate about certain moments in the music without having a musicological education or 19  At the time of writing, SoundCloud has become the number one music streaming service in India; see also note 3.

132   Strank being in the same room. This is a specific form of online communication about music that emulates the typical practice of listening to music together, pointing out the best parts. For the analysis it provides micro-paratexts that can also be used to measure the attractiveness of certain passages of music—through questions like: how many people mark a certain part, how do they comment on it, etc. The function is not used enough to allow for representative empirical studies, but the textual possibility remains an online novelty.20 The opportunity to mingle professional and amateur recordings on SoundCloud makes it interesting as a base for musical exchange—it creates context predominantly through the use of hashtags, allowing for musical exploration and discovery. Unsurprisingly, SoundCloud is more attractive to a do-it-yourself crowd, and the absence of visual material lets it remain more obscure than YouTube as a platform for self-marketing.

StumbleAudio StumbleAudio21 is an audio-based variation of the search engine StumbleUpon. Its main principle is randomization: one can navigate the page via tags, but the idea is to virtually stumble upon new kinds of music. The context does not matter at all and can only be retained as a “research game”: the analysis of the actual context is always subject to a random algorithm and thus can never be representative. The randomization leads to a total de-medialization and a total deconstruction of musical work categories. The spontaneous compilation does not allow for programming or adjustments. Because the premise is transparent, StumbleAudio would be a very bad DJ in a nightclub context, and due to the randomness of the program, it is up to the prosumer to synchronize the different styles of songs (see Figure 5.6). This synchronization is similar to the “commutation test” used to measure the emotional responses in a film scene, where the original music has been replaced by very different kinds of music. Often, viewers tend to accept the new music because the semantic potentials of music are usually very open to vast differences of interpretations. In the world of StumbleAudio, context is not necessary and is open to immense changes. It occupies a radical position in the field of online music that has apparently proven not to be commercially viable.

20  Of course, it is possible to communicate about certain parts of the video on YouTube in a similar fashion, but the physicality of the musical envelope on Sound Cloud may be more suitable to show a “map of communications” about music. 21  Unfortunately, at the time of writing, StumbleAudio is down for maintenance, and it is not entirely certain that it will even go online again. It will serve as an example regardless, because its structure is reflected in several other interfaces—such as Mufin or 8tracks—and because of its radical deconstruction of traditional musical contexts.

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Figure 5.6 Randomization, de-medialization, and deconstruction of categories: The StumbleAudio interface.

8tracks The aforementioned communication through music on the Spotify portal is reminiscent of the practice of mixtape compilation. Mixtapes used to be a biographical medium to compile a person’s emotions in the form of music and share them with others, often as a romantic utterance. The mixtape idea is adopted by the radio portal 8tracks. It uses a game-like structure that reduces the number of tracks to eight (originally, but now there are usually more), and the listener would not know which songs are in the eight-track compilation until they begin playing—this surprise effect has also been sacrificed, probably due to economic reasons. A feature of 8tracks is that it provides the possibility of creating new work structures through recompilation and recontextualization. Compilations are meant to be utterances in this context. Pop-ups add information about the artist or about the piece of music, thus adding to the “semantification” of a subjective choice of music titles. The new contexts are usually naïve (such as “love songs”) or utilitarian (“cooking songs”), and sometimes more expert categories, such as “Best B-sides of 1971.” The playlist “A Clear Midnight” (Figure 5.7) can be regarded as a contextual substitute for album structures that are no longer as relevant as they used to be. The user has included not only a cover picture and a description but also a motto, using a poem by Walt Whitman, thus creating an intermedial intertext. The intertext refers to the common use of the attribute “romantic” that can also be derived from the title of the playlist

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Figure 5.7  Contextual substitutes and intermedial intertexts: User carmenboutot’s 8tracks playlist “A Clear Midnight.”

and found among the descriptive “genre” tags. Similarly, the term “classical” does not refer to European concert music composed in the late 18th century—and not even, as in many instances, to European concert music in general—but to “dark, instrumental pieces” including film music, as well as other instrumental compositions that are structurally closer to 20th-century pop music. Like Spotify, this playlist exemplifies an individualized, personal, and mostly amateur use of music history and its genres, which typifies music distributed and recontextualized online. In digital culture, traditional authorities (e.g., music historians) are still valid but no longer necessary for the prosumers’ needs. Academic categories are often reduced to commercial labels to make communication about music more viable.

Distribution and Availability: Economic Premises, Marketing Strategies The internet allows for multidimensional contextualization of music, which in turn allows for a diversity of hypertextual relationships, thus requiring a multitude of new marketing strategies. Tagging and sorting music may have been a common practice long before the advent of digital music, but the network of similarities has become far more complex in recent decades. The typical Amazon equation “people who have bought product x also bought product y” has been made economically productive by many other vendors so that the equation “if you like x, you may like y” can be regarded as a

Contextual Marketing   135 universal metaphor for internet contextualization in general. It positions prosumers as individuals choosing through their knowledge and preferences. Of course, these preferences do not have to be historically consistent. The digital contextualization and historization of music are predominantly prosumer oriented, which is why traditional musical style categories cannot be representative for the current hypertextual structures. Historical contexts are thus ignored for economic reasons. Digital sorting by keywords has launched a new culture of reception—and consequently production—of older musical concepts. For example, in the wake of the American folk revival of the 1960s, traditional American folk music was rediscovered. This is a growing trend in which there has been a revival of traditional singer/songwriters, in turn popularizing new artists who have a similar aesthetic outlook. It has put a new spotlight both on the original artists from the 1960s and on those on which they had modeled their own approaches. Mainstream film productions—like the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis—have contributed to this trend and popularized touchstone artists like Dave Van Ronk or Peter, Paul and Mary, many of whose albums are out of print but have become bestsellers in digital music. Historical marketing thus enables a younger audience to get to know out-of-print and almost forgotten music. The hypertextual and associative digital network links current “revivals” to their predecessors and paradigms. Another example of historical recontextualization is the marketing of so-called classical music as film music, and vice versa. “If you like John Williams, you may like Antonin Dvořak,” for example. At first glance, the hypertextual structure deconstructs the historical implications, but the greater availability also makes it possible for the interested prosumer to participate in a very basic form of musicology: the discovery of the context may lead to the discovery of musical and historical connections. Some of the consequences of the digitalization of music have already been mentioned earlier: de-medialization, recontextualization, disintegration of the musical “work,” and the subsequent loss of paratexts are some of the results. Those are not technical issues at all, of course, since the paratexts and contexts can easily be reproduced online. Front and back covers, booklets, lyrics, credits, and hand-picked additional information can possibly provide a more comprehensible database for the listener. Although most interfaces care more about the possibility of communication about music, a more information-oriented structure could produce for music researchers new possibilities of all kinds. Historical, analytical, biographical, and intertextual results could be part of an expert discourse about the music, while the basic facts would be checked for reliability and accuracy. Tagging could be used to create new contexts away from naïve categories like “sad music” or “food music”—an example would be the use of certain motives in lyrics throughout the centuries or intertextual connections between different musical traditions. This regrouping of heterogeneous music and its subsequent recontextualization usually follow the prosumer rules: if Chopin is labeled “sad” and Tom Waits is labeled “sad” as well, a new context of “sad” is established that completely ignores any structural or historical relations between the two. In other instances, this practice is effectively

136   Strank ­ pening contexts that would not be evident at first glance: for example, the connection o between harmonies in Rachmaninoff ’s piano sonatas and the songs by the British rock band Muse. Although the practice is largely prosumer driven, it produces a lot of instructive data for the protagonists of the music industry (or their vertically integrated cousins). The borders of analog media made sure that only single works or groups of works were put together. Intertextuality had to be described in different media (usually texts), while in digital media the tendency to produce compilations instead of works, work groupings, cycles, concept albums, or concert recordings undermines the artists’ intentions while creating new types of work structures based on hypertextuality. This has an influence on selective marketing, as well as on campaigns that have to take new musical contexts into consideration when pairing performers for a record or a tour, licensing songs for a movie soundtrack, or participating in a network of allusions themselves. The latter strategy has been employed to establish new traditions of musicianship—and henceforth of market sharing. Madonna’s famously “scandalous” performance with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera also served to brand the two younger singers as worthy successors—and thus enable crossover effects among fans of all three camps. The same is achieved by new contexts established online, sometimes orchestrated like Ariana Grande’s thank u, next campaign, sometimes without marketing even having to interfere—prosumers are prosumers because they can create new products too.

Sociocultural Implications: New Listeners, Old Industry? The recontextualization of digital music has created (or maintained) a complementary sociocultural practice. As in the reception of music before the digital age, this practice can still be differentiated as either “expert” or “naïve.” The expert practice is not restricted to musicologists or music historians whose contribution would be the construction of an online encyclopedia of information about music and musical contexts. Analog and digital contexts alike are integrated in this expert discourse. The other aspect would concern the professional assemblage of music, which would traditionally be done best by specialists or—considering contemporary music—by DJs. The expert discourse would elevate the naïve discourse as well: the possibilities of musical exploration have become enormous, and the availability of music could be used as a way of education in analog as well as digital contexts. Compared to the extreme limitation of contemporary commercial top 10 radio stations that are literally only playing the top 30 (or so) songs on repeat, digital music resources offer the possibility to redefine musical preferences as well as explore new and related music. All of the aforementioned concepts—the randomly organized StumbleAudio, the handpicked playlists of Spotify and 8tracks, the relational structure of YouTube and Sound Cloud—are geared to the idea of exploration. This invitation is fueled by interactivity, economic interests, and the encyclopedic nature of the internet alike.

Contextual Marketing   137 Musical analysis in the online age can thus be described by its relation to digital music in general. Noncontextual analysis is not afflicted by the digital recontextualization of its subject matter, although the greater availability of music can be regarded as a useful archival improvement. The contextual analysis of contemporary music would, however, necessarily have to reflect the implications of digital music distribution and contextualization. Another approach in line with this would be to analyze and identify their new digital contexts and use them to better understand phenomena like the reception of music, listener-created contexts, and intertextuality.

Conclusions Some final remarks will sum up some aspects of such a digital-savvy and intermedial musical analysis and present one analog analogy to the digital phenomenon at hand.





1. Mash-ups. Music is combined with other music and sometimes reinterpreted in the process. The playful juxtaposition of different musical styles can establish new semantic potentials of music and thus create a new intertextual program. Some composers of so-called postmodern works such as Luciano Berio, Helmut Lachenmann, Mauricio Kagel, or Dieter Schnebel (to draw from the German canon of the avant-garde) have used similar techniques. There are also a few bands—namely Mike Patton’s art-rock project, Mr. Bungle—that have used a similar aesthetic approach. 2. The compilation as a “digital work structure.” A new paratextual structure is created and the technique of compiling, rather than making music, is regarded as a recontextualizing art form. An analogy would be author-attributed compilations like musical recommendations by composers or samplers compiled by authoritative musicians, for example, the famous Late Night Tales series. 3. The postmodern prosumer. The idea that the postmodern recipient mixes musical traditions seamlessly and does not see contradictions between Bach and Slayer is not very new. John Zorn, who is a composer and performer of classical music, film music, jazz, and pop alike, has described this kind of reception as the new kind in several interviews.22 Musicians and listeners do not want to be limited to one tradition anymore and nothing reflects this contemporary practice better than the hypertextual structure of digital music interfaces. Historical

22  In John Zorn’s own words: “If Mozart were alive today, believe me, he’d be incorporating all those instruments and writing for them. And he would also be listening to all this different music that is around. It’s not an unusual thing for a creative person to be interested in creativity. People who grew up at the time that I did, in the ’60s, we loved all different musics. We loved rock, we loved jazz, we loved classical, we loved world music. We had a hunger for anything new. We’d make little mix tapes on cassette that had all these different styles of music. That was like a very special thing. We’d play them at parties. Now, that’s normal, that’s the iPod shuffle. Everybody listens that way now. So in that sense, we have really succeeded. It’s like our generation, our kind of impetus of loving all these different things, that is kind of the new way to listen to music” (Milkowski, 2009).

138   Strank



changes in the perception of musical pieces are not exclusive to experimental or postmodern methods of recontextualization though. A good example is Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, whose recipients are mostly from the 20th and 21st centuries. Conceived as an educational work, it was originally meant to be used by a very small audience of musicians before it was elevated to the status of one of the most important compositions in the history of music. Its second life of reception turned it into a different kind of work and rarely do any contemporary readings of it regard it as an educational piece of music. 4. Availability. The traditional canon of Western music may still exist, but it is slowly transforming due to greater availability of music in general. While the most famous pieces are still recorded, most of the competition between musical cultures in Europe as well as globally is becoming more significant for the writing of a global history of music. A former specialty of music experts—the collection and reception of music that was hard to find—is now undermined by a new dig­ital library that is designed to encompass all music, professional or amateur, functional or nonfunctional, commercial or noncommercial, Western or nonWestern. Traditional assessments of musical quality have to be revised due to the comparison with forgotten or previously unknown music. Happenings like the Mahler renaissance in the 1960s are bound to break out every few months.

Some of these effects can be shown in one last example (Figure 5.8). It is impossible to find a page that encompasses all of the aforementioned results, but the following playlist “jazz & books” on 8tracks seems to contain many of the addressed specifics. It uses a new cover design and the creator of the playlist responds to the positive reactions: “I know it’s kind of cheesy to give an acceptance speech here, but this is my first platinum mix! Thanks for all of your nice comments! To be honest, jazz music + your guys’ positive vibes really helped me make it through a recent break-up. Keep the jazz spirit alive, y’all. You can do anything!”23 The cover photography engages traditional paratextual elements, while the structure of the compilation contextualizes the chosen songs with each other. A pop-up section offers additional information about the artist, and the compiler regards herself as a creative person (as can be derived from the previous quote). It is a personal recontextualization using a nonprofessional understanding of the category “jazz” and choosing the songs by nonprofessional preferences (mood and subjective compatibility). The multimodal structure of the surrounding website enables the prosumer to find additional paratextual, intertextual, and hypertextual information, thus recontextualizing the music in another way. The main question for an evaluation of the economic influence on the recontextualization of music in the digital age is one of contextual authorship. Prosumers participate in the creation of new contexts, but authoritative websites (All Music Guide), music databases (Spotify et al.), and musicians-as-brands (Ariana Grande et al.) appear to be 23  See http://8tracks.com/ellejolene/jazz-books (retrieved on March 3, 2019).

Contextual Marketing   139

Figure 5.8  Prosumer multimodal recontextualization: User ellejolene’s 8tracks playlist “Jazz & Books.”

making the rules for this participatory game. Context can be created for marketing purposes, or marketing can be built around newly established context, or both. The digital distribution of music always puts it in a multimodal environment, making it necessary to (sometimes) trade in its conventional historical context for its new digital surroundings. More than in other sectors, a production-sensitive analysis can go a long way to reflect the prerequisites for contextual transformations.

Recommended Readings Kretschmer, T., & Peukert, C. (2014). Video killed the radio star? Online music videos and dig­ ital music sales. CEP Discussion Paper No. 1265, SSRN–ID2425386. Nowak, R., & Whelan, A. (Eds.). (2016). Networked music cultures. Contemporary approaches, emerging issues. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Sheinkop, E. (2016). Return of the hustle: The art of marketing with music. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

References Adorno, T. W. (2003). Musikalische Schriften V (= Gesammelte Schriften in 20 Bänden, Bd. 18). Berlin: Suhrkamp. Beer, C. (2018, April 16). An overview of music streaming in 2018. Global Web Index. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://blog.globalwebindex.com/chart-of-the-day/music-streaming2018/

140   Strank Catalano, F. (2018, April 14). From Rhapsody to Napster: How this pioneering music service could have been Spotify—and why it isn’t. GeekWire. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https:// www.geekwire.com/2018/rhapsody-napster-pioneering-music-service-couldaspotify-isnt/ Decker, J.-O. (2013). Das Internet. Dimensionen mediensemiotischer Analyse. In H. Krah & M.  Titzmann (Eds.), Medien und Kommunikation. Eine interdisziplinäre Einführung (pp. 381–410). Wädenswil, CH: Stutz. Desogus, P. (2012). The encyclopedia in Umberto Eco’s semiotics. Semiotica, 192, 501–521. Eco, U. (1962). Opera Aperta. Milan, Italy: Bompiani. Ellejolene. (2013, November 18). Jazz & books. 8tracks. Retrieved March 3, 2019, from https://8tracks.com/ellejolene/jazz-books Genette, G. (1997). Palimpsests: Literature in the second degree. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Hernandez, P. (2018, September 20). Streaming now accounts for 75 percent of music industry revenue. The Verge. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.theverge.com/2018/ 9/20/17883584/streaming-record-sales-music-industry-revenue Milkowski, B. (2019, April 25). John Zorn: The working man. Jazztimes. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://jazztimes.com/archives/john-zorn-the-working-man/ Morrison, Van. (1978). Wavelength [Album]. Warner Bros. Röttgers, J. (2003). Mix, burn & RIP. Das Ende der Musikindustrie. Hanover, DE: Heinz Heise. Sanchez, D. (2017, May 19). A leaked financial report shows Spotify’s losses more than doubling. Digital Music News. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.digitalmusicnews .com/2017/05/19/spotify-ipo-devastating-losses/ Strank, W. (2014). Nuevos medios, nuevos contextos: perspectivas analíticas de la música en la era de internet. In E. Encabo (Ed.), Música y Cultura Audiovisual: Horizontes (pp. 21–41). Murcia, ES: Editum. Sydneyschelvis. (2017, November 11). How many songs are there in total on Spotify? Spotify Community. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://community.spotify.com/t5/ContentQuestions/How-many-songs-are-there-in-total-on-Spotify/td-p/3226160 Symons, M. (2018, May 25). Spotify: Everything you need to know! Imore. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.imore.com/spotify Watson, A. (2019, September 24). Spotify’s revenue and net income/loss from 2009 to 2018. Statista. Retrieved March 3, 2019, from http://www.statista.com/statistics/244990/spotifysrevenue-and-net-income

Filmography Insane Cherry. (2017, July 7). Metallica—Enter Sandman (Animal cover) [Video]. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mt12B7s3b8 Jone Ruiz. (2018, December 2). The Legend of Zelda: Main theme—classical guitar [Video]. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-lulv7ad6g Porkkaplayboys. (2011, June 8). Bohemian Rhapsody by Porkka Playboys [Video]. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irLsjBDPe5c Sterling, T. (2012, March 4). World’s fastest guitar player [Video]. Retrieved March 15, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DMyM7ARJUI

Music for Advertising and Labor

chapter 6

Orga n ized L a bor a n d Com m erci a l A dv ertisi ng Music Unions and J. Walter Thompson Jessica Getman

The J. Walter Thompson Company collection at Duke University’s Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing documents the changes that technological advancements and a tumultuous organized labor culture made to the advertising industry’s hiring of musical talent in the 1950s. This was a key period for groups like the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (AFTRA), who negotiated aggressively for guidelines that would protect artists’ working conditions and paychecks. The papers of John F. Devine, one of J. Walter Thompson’s (JWT’s) executives, are especially illuminating regarding these negotiations, since he served as a representative for the advertising industry with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA, or the “4As”). He was further responsible (alongside contracts officer Marion Preston) for enacting JWT’s operational responses to the new rules. Papers in his personal collection in the JWT archive, and in the company’s Radio and Television Department collection, illustrate the relationship between advertising agencies, radio and television networks, and talent unions as union codes—and especially those surrounding radio and television jingles and spot announcements (commercials)—were adjusted in the last half of the 1950s (“John  F.  Devine Papers,” 1952–1974 and undated; “Radio and Television Department records,” 1932–1978 and undated). This chapter traces union negotiations from the perspective of the advertising agencies, highlighting the issues that most concerned JWT, its sister agencies, and its clients between 1954 and 1960—the years in which John Devine served as Vice President of the agency’s Radio and Television Department. In doing so, it provides a first overview of the institutions and personnel central to this story about music and advertising, d ­ rawing

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   143 connections between union history and culture, technological advancement in audiovisual media, and industry responses to union demands, illuminating both the process of negotiating union codes and the primary union issues of the time. Music union rules not only affected the livelihood of artists (for better or worse) but also swayed industry policy and practice, encouraging producers, advertisers, and agencies to decrease or increase talent usage in response to union stances and the realities of the business. Tensions surrounding the influence of electronic transcription (audio recording, which superseded live performance) and the advent of videotape (which joined film stock as an alternate medium for recording visuals during this period, and was especially prominent in the television industry) emerge from JWT’s sources, demonstrating the constant push and pull between technology, creative choice, performers’ needs, and the pragmatic business of advertising.

JWT, John Devine, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies Founded in 1878, when James Walter Thompson purchased the small firm Carlton & Smith in New York, JWT was the first U.S. advertising agency to expand overseas (to London in 1899) and the first to promote women to executive positions (Helen Lansdowne Resor in 1911). It was the first to create a commercial television program (for Libby, McNeill & Libby, airing in Chicago in 1930) and the first to record $100 million in billings. The agency has had a long legacy of promoting some of the world’s most wellknown companies, including Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor, Kellogg, Shell Oil, and Kraft Foods. In the late 1950s, JWT led its competitors in TV billings, and its executives were highly regarded among their peers on Madison Avenue (Applegate,  2012, p. 137; Brierley, 2005, p. 73; “J. Walter Thompson Co. (part 1),” n.d.; “J. Walter Thompson Co. (part 2),” n.d.). JWT distinguished itself as a highly diversified agency, providing market research, promotion, design work, and video communications (Brierley, 2005, p. 74). The company’s innovations in television advertising—in live variety shows, corporate sponsorships, and commercial spots—were particularly notable. The histories of advertising and audiovisual technology are closely intertwined, particularly in terms of the mainstreaming of commercial radio, which became advertisersupported in the early 1920s, and then the rise of television, which became available to consumers in the 1940s. The television was an established household item by the mid1950s, when it quickly transitioned into color (Ferguson, 2008; “J. Walter Thompson Co. (part 1),” n.d.; Mackay, 2008; Sterling & Kittross, 2001). By the 1950s, JWT’s Radio and Television Department oversaw the company’s audio-video advertising, forming a powerhouse that produced some of the best-known television campaigns of the period, including The Ford Television Theatre (1952–1957) and Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall (1948–1967) (“Guide to the J. Walter Thompson Company, John F. Devine Papers,” n.d.).

144   Getman JWT introduced its Television Workshop in the 1950s, an in-house television studio that not only tested ideas and scripts for JWT’s clients but also auditioned talent, recorded vocal and music tracks, and demonstrated visuals and effects ahead of production (Nixon, 2016, p. 104; Whited, 1958; Zane, 1961). JWT excelled musically as well. Carroll Carroll, editorial supervisor of radio programs at JWT from 1934 to 1968, kept several lead sheets by himself and by Dick Manning, including songs for Chase & Sanborn Coffee, Kodak, Red Cross, 7-Up, Shell, and the Ford Fairlane ’62 (Carroll, n.d.-b; “Guide to the J. Walter Thompson Company, Carroll Carroll Papers,” n.d.). A leader in advertising, Carroll extolled the virtues of the “good jingle,” noting that these little songs could be quite effective when written correctly: They’re Naturally bright, they’re gay and the good ones are ingenious lyrically and musically. . . . Naturally people don’t enjoy all jingles any more than they enjoy every song they hear. A bad jingle, like any other bad work, isn’t worth discussing. But a good jingle will hold people’s interest much longer than straight copy will. Much, much longer than comedy copy.  (Carroll, n.d.-a, p. 8)

One of the company’s legacy jingles came from a songwriting contest it ran in 1962, from which emerged “I Wish I Were an Oscar Meyer Wiener.” The song ran in commercials from 1963 onward and has resurfaced in Oscar Meyer advertisements over the ensuing decades as one of America’s most recognizable jingles (“J.  Walter Thompson Co. (part 2),” n.d.). Over the course of the 1950s, the number of television commercials and the musicians required to record their soundtracks and jingles swelled. In 1957, a survey of eleven advertising agencies reported that the number of filmed commercials made in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles doubled between 1954 and 1957, and the number of musicians involved increased by 144 percent (Copeland,  1957; “Report on Filmed Commercials,” 1957). John F. Devine, who had previously worked in JWT’s legal department, served as Vice President of the Radio and Television Department from 1954 to 1961, a period that saw a rapid “transition from radio to television as the dominant medium for product­sponsored advertising and programming” (“Devine Elected General Counsel,”  1960; Dougherty, 1976; “Guide to the J. Walter Thompson Company, John F. Devine Papers,” n.d.). In this role, Devine not only directed the television programming of several of JWT’s biggest clients but also provided oversight in matters of market research, finances, and talent contracts. This last responsibility dealt with unionized employees, including actors and singers who were governed by the AFTRA when working on live and transcribed (recorded) radio and on live television. When these employees worked on transcribed film and television, on the other hand, they did so under the auspices of the SAG. Talent contracts also included musicians: instrumentalists, conductors, arrangers, and copyists who organized, for the most part, under the AFM. Devine’s position at JWT made his expertise valuable on a wider level, and in 1953 he was appointed the chair of the Committee on Television and Radio Administration (CTRA) for the AAAA

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   145 (“Guide to the J. Walter Thompson Company, John F. Devine Papers,” n.d.; “People,” 1955). His position with this group meant that he was intimately involved in talent union negotiations during the mid- and late 1950s. The AAAA was founded in 1917 by JWT president Stanley Resor (Helen Lansdowne Resor’s husband). The group was originally formed to encourage sound research and professional ethics among America’s advertisers but grew over the following decades to provide a number of important services for its members—and for the clients, networks, and talent for whom they worked. These services included researching talent costs and market trends and advising on legal matters (Applegate,  2012, p. 140). In 1956, for instance, John Dales at the SAG asked the CTRA to set up a survey of the nation’s top advertising agencies to determine, “for propaganda purposes,” how much the agencies had been paying talent under the SAG codes between January and June of that year (Copeland, 1956b; Devine, 1956). In 1958, Devine’s CTRA considered a request by music licensing agent Harry Fox to monitor advertisers’ use of copyrighted music and to report this usage back to Fox, thereby better facilitating the lawful payment of licensing fees; the committee denied this request, however, as it fell outside the AAAA’s legal authority (Copeland, 1958b, 1958c; Devine, 1958a; Fox, 1958; “Special Meeting, 1958b). Much of the CTRA’s activity, as a standing committee of the AAAA, however, centered on facilitating network-union relationships and talent contracts (American Association of Advertising Agencies [AAAA], 1956). Agencies approached the employing of talent in various ways, with some ad companies hiring actors, singers, and musicians outright and then furnishing that talent for their advertisers (clients); others simply facilitated the paperwork for this employment on their clients’ behalf. JWT took the latter route, first assigning the responsibility of employment to their commercials’ producers (the “transcription companies”), so that the agency and its clients did not have to police union rules during production. They then facilitated the transfer of employment from the producers to the clients once production was completed so that the clients (and not the producers) were responsible for ensuring labor codes were honored while the product was on the air (Devine, 1958b; Preston, 1954c). Agencies did not negotiate directly with labor organizations on union codes in official network-union arbitrations, despite the occasional (but erroneous) statement otherwise in the press (Copeland, 1956d; “Regular Meeting,” 1958). Agencies were important advisers to the process, however; the AAAA sent agency observers to union negotiations as “impartial referees” from 1938 onward. [The agency observers’] functions are to inform the network and station negotiators of the views, needs and problems of agencies and their clients, and to inform agencies and advertisers of the progress of the negotiations, proposals, etc. The observers have no authority to commit agencies to advertisers, or to negotiate on their behalf. However, their presence, and the informational function they perform, helps to assure both the broadcasters and the union that the terms of any agreement finally reached are likely to be acceptable to most agencies and advertisers. (“Agency Observers,” 1958)

146   Getman In the late 1950s, observers from agencies like Cunningham & Walsh, McCannErickson, and Compton Advertising attended negotiations on national agreements between the unions and the radio and television networks—primarily CBS, NBC, ABC, and Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS). Dorothy Copeland, secretary to the AAAA’s Committee on Television and Radio Administration, attended as well (“Meeting with AFTRA,” 1956b). When unions proposed changes to their codes ahead of negotiations, the CTRA identified items of concern to advertisers, such as “exorbitant” rate hikes and unrealistic procedural changes. They then met with network representatives and with union officials ahead of official arbitration to discuss problems and to present counterproposals, providing key research and perspectives regarding the effect each proposed contract change would have on the business of advertising (“Amending the SAG Filmed Commercials Code,” 1958; Preston, 1959a). Early in SAG’s 1958 negotiation cycle, for instance, Devine was part of two prenegotiation meetings with SAG representatives in which he explained to the SAG why their members could not be paid for spot announcements on a per-use basis; the SAG agreed with him and removed the demand (“Special Meeting,” 1958a). The AAAA and its agencies also engaged in research regarding the probable effects of union proposals, and then on the real effects of new union codes once negotiations had been settled. Devine had his employees at JWT apply the early 1958 proposed SAG rates for filmed commercials to commercials that were produced through JWT in 1957, demonstrating the significant ballooning of production costs that would occur under the proposed rates, in the amount of a 177 percent to 301 percent increase, depending on the length to which a commercial was edited and how often it was aired (Sayre,  1958). Whether or not the AAAA and the agencies were given any power once negotiating officially began, the expertise and advice of the AAAA and its agencies proved valuable to all involved. Recognizing the key role of advertising agencies in the hiring of talent and the production of material for radio, television, and film, networks and unions sometimes pushed for agencies to take more responsibility. In 1956, for instance, advertising agencies were asked to negotiate directly with the AFTRA in the local Cleveland negotiations due to concerns about members working with a nonunion radio station; the agencies refused. When consulted in his role as chairman to the CTRA, Devine noted that “for 17 years AFTRA has never insisted on direct negotiations with the agencies,” standing firm that “under no circumstances should the agencies negotiate directly with the Union” (Copeland, 1956c, 1956d). Again, this kept the business of contracting unionized labor legally in the hands of the producers and the advertisers. Agencies did, however, sign “letters of adherence” in which they agreed to abide by national and local union codes as they facilitated the production of radio and television shows and spot commercials for their clients. Devine signed one such letter in 1961, which stated that JWT agreed “to abide by and conform to all of the terms and conditions” in the AFM’s National Television Jingles and Spot Announcements Agreement of 1959 (Devine, 1961). AFTRA’s television commercial codes also required agencies to sign these letters (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists,  1958b, p. 21). Despite the agencies’ firm

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   147 stance regarding their legal role, however, Devine was of the opinion that agency involvement in labor relations could “only help improve the lot of the agency observer” and therefore the situation of the agencies and their clients (Devine, 1960). The materials in John Devine’s collection at Duke University paint a picture of an executive in the thick of union-network negotiations in the late 1950s, and one who deftly mobilized his company’s resources in the interest of directing unions and networks toward agreements that would benefit the advertising industry as a whole. He excelled in this role, meeting directly with union representatives to discuss proposals ahead of negotiations, as he did with the AFM’s Clair Meeder in early 1956 (AAAA, 1956). He was especially successful as an agency observer in the 1958 SAG negotiations; the Association of National Advertisers’ Lowell McElroy expressed special thanks in light of the extra professional burden this work required: This load has been doubly great in connection with the SAG negotiations, and we therefore appreciate correspondingly the willingness of your organization to have an individual of Jack’s stature devote so much time and energy to this mutual project, undoubtedly at some sacrifice to his valued internal activities there at J. Walter Thompson. We have the highest respect for Jack and for the manner in which he has handled himself in these and earlier negotiations.  (McElroy, 1958)

Many of the difficulties encountered in the talent union negotiations of the late 1950s stemmed from rapid technological progress across media and from interunion tensions, and the executives who acted as members of the AAAA’s Committee on Television and Radio Administration traversed this terrain with care. The proposals submitted by the AFM, SAG, and AFTRA to networks and agencies between 1954 and 1960 highlight the pressures they faced.

The American Federation of Musicians The AFM was founded in 1896 and for over a century has served as the primary labor union for instrumentalists, conductors, arrangers, and copyists in the United States and Canada. Its most storied period is the Petrillo era, between 1940 and 1958, when under the leadership of James Caesar Petrillo the union demanded (among other things) that employers pay significant sums into its Music Performance Trust Fund (MPTF) for underemployed musicians (American Federation of Musicians [AFM], n.d.; Burlingame,  1997, pp. 1, 20; Seltzer,  1989, p. 53). This fund was a direct response by Petrillo to the threat of electronic transcription. Seeking to preserve live performance, and therefore to protect his constituents’ livelihood, Petrillo declared a ban for union members on all recording activities in both 1942 and 1948. His concern was not unfounded, since the advent of synchronized sound in film had resulted in mass unemployment in the late 1920s, and phonograph, radio, and television markets were growing

148   Getman (Seltzer, 1989, pp. 23–24). The MPTF provided payments to all musicians working less than full time and funded concerts to promote live performance. Media producers found Petrillo’s fund incredibly burdensome; in 1951, the AFM negotiated an agreement with television and film producers in which the producers would need to pay 5 percent of a show’s gross revenue into the MPTF, an agreement still in effect in the AFM’s 1959 television and film codes (Radio and Television Services, 1951, p. 5; “Re: Television Film Labor Agreement,” 1959). The subsequent high costs of hiring AFM labor drove producers and networks to build track libraries from which they reused pre-existing music— some went so far as to evade union costs by recording new music outside North America. This ruined the prospects of Local 47 (the Los Angeles chapter); professional musicians were not getting enough jobs and, furthermore, were seeing very little of the trust fund money, as it was being spread thinly across memberships throughout the United States and Canada (Burlingame, 1997, pp. 4–11; Seltzer, 1989, p. 57). These tensions meant that during the years Devine was Vice President of the Radio and Television Department at JWT, and through the years he was chairman of the AAAA’s Committee on Television and Radio Administration, the AFM was poised for change. On top of pushing through the significant trust fund surcharges in the union codes, Petrillo and the AFM Executive Board directed a $25 fee due to musicians whose performances had been recorded for film but then sold to television toward the MPTF as well. The AFM then channeled a pay increase for phonograph recording directly into the fund; the musicians did not see a penny of their raise. When the AFM went on strike in 1958 while negotiating the 1959 agreements, and studio musicians in Los Angeles were left without a paycheck for the duration, musicians from the area under the leadership of Cecil Read defected and formed a second union: the Musicians Guild of America (MGA). While this divided Los Angeles musicians between the MGA and the AFM’s Local 47, it put enough pressure on Petrillo that he announced his retirement in May 1958. The MGA won the right to negotiate with the major Hollywood studios on behalf of Los Angeles musicians for the 1959 agreement, allowing them to both to end the trust fund payments that had been sabotaging their employment in Hollywood and negotiate a minimum hire policy for television shows (Burlingame, 1997, pp. 5–29; Seltzer, 1989, pp. 54–72). While the MGA’s control was short-lived—the AFM won back the right to negotiate with the studios in 1960—their influence turned the tide for professional musicians who worked primarily with radio, television, and film, leading the AFM to adapt to the MGA’s positions. The MGA was eventually folded back into the AFM at the end of 1961 (Seltzer, 1989, pp. 77–82). Surprisingly, few papers in the JWT collection reference the MGA or Petrillo’s retirement directly, though minutes from a 1958 meeting between members of the CTRA do mention the “Local 47 turmoil” on the West Coast (Copeland, 1958a; “Regular Meeting,” 1960). Still, the company’s records highlight topics from the AFM’s proposals between 1954 and 1959 that were of great concern to agencies and that reflect the ripples caused by the Local 47 conflict. When the AFM negotiated with media companies on a national and local level, it produced several types of agreements, ranging from commercial television and film

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   149 ­ rograms to independent motion pictures and documentaries, phonograph recordings, p and jingles and spot announcements. Though JWT and the AAAA were most concerned with the last category, they kept abreast of developments across the field, especially when rates and clauses in these other agreements impacted the work they did for their clients. Between 1954 and 1959, JWT kept agreement books from several rounds of AFM negotiations on file, including trust and labor agreements for television and film, phonograph, electrical transcription, documentary and industrial film, independent motion pictures, and jingles and spot announcements (AFM, 1954a, 1954b, 1956, 1959). While negotiations over this period brought a number of code changes, memos, meeting minutes, and correspondence from both the AAAA and JWT indicate that a few issues merited repeat discussion; these included the AFM’s MPTF, talent pay increases, and several changes in language and regulation that impacted the process of both hiring and using musicians. Unsurprisingly, the issue most amplified through AAAA and JWT sources was the AFM’s MPTF, the source of the union’s strife in Los Angeles. The MPTF, which stipulated not only that television and radio producers had to pay 5 percent of gross revenue to the fund on each project that employed AFM musicians but also that advertisers must pay the fund $100 per spot (a requirement added to the agreements in 1954, almost $1,000 in today’s money), encouraged producers to go outside the United States to record soundtracks and advertisers to forego instrumental music in their commercials. In 1956, AFM negotiations did allow that advertisers were “permitted changes in announcing copy appearing ‘before or after the musical portion of the jingle . . . as long as no change is made in the musical portion, or jingle, as originally recorded.’ ” This was a welcome change for agencies and their clients, who until then had to pay extra to the AFM any time a spot was edited in any way (Preston, 1956). Negotiations for the Local Television Jingles and Spot Announcements Trust Agreement in 1957 also resulted in a decision that advertisements made for local television would now owe the fund only $10 per spot, as opposed to the full $100 required for commercials made for national television (AFM, 1957, p. 15). This agreement did not extend to radio producers, however, who unfortunately continued to pay $100 per local jingle or spot until the codes were renegotiated for 1959. In 1958, agencies inquired with Devine about the possibility of reducing this radio charge to match the television rate, to no immediate avail (Scott,  1958). Though they had to wait until 1959 for the change, it was worth it—JWT’s summary of the 1959 agreement indicated that “payments to the Musicians Trust Fund ($100.00 per spot) have been eliminated” (Preston, 1959b). In a move by the AFM’s new president Herman Kenin to address the complaints that had led to the MGA fiasco and to wrest back control of the Hollywood codes, the fund requirement was replaced by a rate increase and a 5 percent contribution to musician pensions (AAAA, 1959; Seltzer, 1989, p. 79). The MPTF did remain funded in 1959 through the AFM Television Film Trust Agreement (AFM, 1959, p. 8). Pay hikes during this period were a concern. In early 1954, for instance, requests for significant rate increases in the AFM’s proposals for New York and Los Angeles on the local level—15 percent in Los Angeles and 25 percent in New York—prompted JWT’s

150   Getman contracts director Marion Preston to inform JWT employees to expect a rate increase of at least 10 percent that year; in the end, Local 802 saw no increases for either national or local radio and television broadcasting (Preston, 1954a, 1954b). And though minimum compensation was not updated in the 1956 national agreements, the code’s language was strengthened for the benefit of the Federation, demanding, for instance, that “no person covered by the musician’s agreement shall be required to join any other labor organization” (Copeland, 1956a). The agreements of 1959 were financially significant beyond the AFM’s relaxation of the MPTF: national rates for session fees grew by 10 percent, and local rates were adjusted upward as well (AAAA, 1959; “NBC/AF of M Summary,” 1959; Preston, 1959b). A significant moment for television advertisers came in 1955, when the AFM cleared the way for the use of electronic transcription in television commercials. According to the previous 1954 Jingles and Spot Announcements Labor Agreement, no spot announcement or jingle recorded by AFM musicians could be screened in conjunction with a television program if that program’s soundtrack included “canned” music—or music recorded outside AFM agreements (AFM, 1954b). This was a severe restriction, since, as noted, television producers were recording scores outside of the United States and Canada to get around MPTF fees. On March 21, 1955, Devine wrote: The AFM today announced that the provision of its contract covering television filmed commercials which prohibited the use of commercials employing their members’ services on a program with “canned” music had been deleted. This means that we are now free to use musicians in the making of television filmed commercials. . . . We can be sure that the AFM will keep a very close eye on income derived from the making of television filmed commercials. For that reason and to insure [sic] that the restriction is not reinstated at some later date, it is, of course, in our own interest to use musicians wherever their use will contribute to the value of a commercial. (Devine, 1955)

The liberal use of musicians for television commercials at this point was necessary to prove to the Federation that this change would benefit them by producing a significant number of jobs. This may have been the reason for a large jump both in “the use of musicians and in the money they received for work in television filmed commercials” at this time; between 1954 and 1955, agencies went from employing 57 to 860 musicians, and from paying them a total of $2,904 to $55,919, over a three-month period between July and September of each year (Copeland, 1956a). Documents from JWT, the AAAA, and Devine indicate that a number of other notable updates to and interpretations of the AFM contracts took place in the late 1950s. One such interpretational issue dealt with the classification of advertiser opening and closing spots in sponsored shows as either commercials (under the jurisdiction of the jingle and spot announcement codes) or program themes (subject to the television programs codes). In 1955, the AFM declared that extratextual sponsored spots were commercials; a 1958 letter from Preston to Carol Farwell in the JWT Chicago office stated, however,

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   151 that “AFM has now, in effect, withdrawn this interpretation and, therefore, all musical themes used in program openings and closings to be recorded in the future can no ­longer be recorded under the TV Jingle Labor and Trust agreements” (Preston, 1958a). Another notable update was the AFM’s assertion that commercial spots and jingles recorded on the new medium of video tape (as opposed to film) fell under the jurisdiction of the Television Jingles and Spot Announcements agreements; this is significant because claims for videotape jurisdiction caused much tension between the SAG and the AFTRA during these years (see next section; AAAA,  1959; “NBC/AF of M Summary,” 1959). The AFM’s membership issues in the late 1950s resonate through many discussions documented in the JWT archive, through the issues described previously and more. References to tensions in the highly professionalized areas of Los Angeles and New York, and the ripples caused by the MGA, slip into the language used in these sources. Devine warned his employees about a looming AFM Local 802 strike in 1954 (later averted; AAAA, 1956), and minutes from December 1958 noted the “possibility of a jurisdictional dispute between the MGA and the AFM, both seeking to represent musicians in their employ” (“Regular Meeting,” 1960). In late 1958 and early 1959, when the AFM was scheduled to negotiate its Jingles and Spot Announcement codes ahead of the January 31, 1959, expiration date, these tensions led to a delay in the AFM presenting demands to the networks and producers; though the AFM had not shared its proposals by January of 1959, an agreement was nonetheless reached that November (Preston, 1959a, 1959b).

The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists The SAG and the AFTRA merged in 2012, but until that point they were separate entities with jurisdiction divided across media lines. The SAG was incorporated in 1933 to protect the rights of performers in theatrical motion picture films, and the AFTRA was founded in 1937 as the American Federation of Radio Artists to negotiate for talent over the airwaves, adding television performers to its ranks in 1952 (SAGAFTRA,  2018a,  2018b). The AFTRA originally covered live media while the SAG covered film, but the rise of recorded sound and music meant that by 1941 the contracts drawn by the AFTRA also addressed electronic transcription. In the early 1950s, the two unions entered a “prolonged dispute over representation of performers in film—entertainment and commercial—made for television,” and the SAG won (Devine,  1960). By 1958, the AFTRA represented “actors, singers, dancers, and announcers in live radio, live television, and transcribed radio,” and the SAG represented “performers in films for television” (“Draft, Urgent,”  1958; Devine,  1958c).

152   Getman Because improvements in videotape technology made the replay of live performances possible on television, however, the AFTRA began negotiating agreements for televised replay in 1956, setting the groundwork for syndication policies in the following decades (SAG-AFTRA, 2018b). Clearly, significant overlap existed between the two unions’ responsibilities in the mid-20th century, at least in terms of the representation of members who worked in television. Sources in the JWT collections illuminate the tensions between the SAG and the AFTRA, as well as the agencies’ interest in the issues they faced, particularly in the late 1950s surrounding the question of which group would negotiate union codes for videotaped material. The issue eventually made its way in front of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB; Copeland, 1958d). Though the two unions represented similar memberships, media, and products, at times vying against each other for authority, they were also willing to work in tandem when it served the needs of their constituents. In a 1960 letter to his AFTRA counterparts about the contentious question of taped commercials, for instance, John Dales of the SAG acknowledged that “the welfare of the members of both of our unions would be best served by obtaining substantial equality of rates and conditions” (Dales,  1958). This understanding informed the organizations’ decisions over these years; a 1960 memo from Preston to JWT employees across the United States, for instance, indicated that the two unions were expected to use the AFTRA’s higher base rate as well as its 5 percent Pension and Welfare Fund as an initial platform for negotiations in their commercial codes (McCue, 1958; Preston, 1960b). In fact, the AFTRA and the SAG negotiated jointly for the first time on televised commercials and taped entertainment in 1960 (Preston, 1960c; SAG-AFTRA, 2018b). Despite this, the videotape issue was contentious, resulting in not only an NLRB petition but also a delayed AFTRA code renewal. The AFTRA argued that only one union should represent talent engaged in taped commercials (as opposed to film commercials), and that it should be them. As Devine reported to the CTRA in July 1958: Early in 1956 the networks and AFTRA negotiated a “Clarification Agreement” ceding to AFTRA jurisdiction over network television programs produced or recorded by any electronic or video equipment, and setting forth a basis for the re-use of programs recorded by kinescope and electronic tape. The Screen Actors Guild took similar action, including in each contract as it was renegotiated a statement that the term motion pictures meant recording on tape as well as film. (“Special Joint Meeting,” 1958)

The AFTRA then proposed rates on videotaped television commercials as part of their 1958 negotiations, and the SAG responded by asking for confirmation about whether the “filmed commercials” under the SAG’s jurisdiction already included commercials produced on videotape. This prompted the AFTRA to concede, unofficially, “SAG’s jurisdiction over commercials taped in film studios, but [they hoped] to gain the ‘grey’ areas—transcription companies which may in the future do taped commercials, and

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   153 companies not yet in existence” (“Regular Meeting,” 1958). The SAG then included language in its Agency Letters of Adherence to the 1958 Commercials Code, clarifying that the SAG did not have jurisdiction when commercials were taped by television n ­ etworks or stations using broadcasting studio facilities (AFTRA, 1958a; “Special Meeting,” 1958b). This agreement must have fallen through, however, because following the conclusion of the producer-SAG negotiations, in June 1958, AFTRA filed a petition with the NLRB asking for certification as bargaining agent for all talent engaged in the production of taped commercials, regardless of employment or place of employment. They urged the board “not to be bound by historical patterns [of jurisdiction between the SAG and the AFTRA] since video tape promises to revolutionize the television industry” (AFTRA, 1958a; “Special Meeting,” 1958b). Because an agreement on the issue of “the making of tape commercials and . . . the reuse of such tape commercials” was not met by the expiration of the AFTRA’s previous codes (November 15, 1958), the AFTRA directed its members not to enter into any contracts after that date unless given permission by their local office (AAAA, 1958; Conaway, 1958; “Draft, Urgent,” 1958). The NLRB must have eventually decided that the AFTRA would have all rights in videotape commercials for television, as the AFTRA’s 1958 national code for recorded commercials for television broadcasting used far-reaching language that emphasized its authority over “recorded commercials in television . . . produced and recorded by means of any electronic video equipment . . . used either in connection with television broadcasting or in connection with electronic video recording.” This agreement excluded spot announcements “recorded solely by motion picture camera not in connection with a television or radio broadcast”; the SAG remained the bargaining agent for “commercials made as motion pictures” (even when those commercials were then exhibited via television; AFTRA, 1958b; S.R.M., 1959). In 1960, even though the SAG and the AFTRA negotiated jointly on the issue of commercials for television, the scope of the AFTRA code on recorded television commercials remained the same (AFTRA, 1960; Preston, 1960c; SAG-AFTRA, 2018a). While this jurisdictional battle was the central SAG/AFTRA issue discussed in JWT’s late-1950s sources, the AAAA did keep track of other topics of note, including a December 1956 rates dispute between the AFTRA national, the networks, and the AFTRA local in Chicago. The Chicago local office had negotiated alarmingly low rates with networks on transcribed jingles and commercial spots, much lower than other local offices in cities like New York. The AFTRA national attempted to refuse the Chicago agreement, as members in New York would likely have their engagements canceled when jobs understandably migrated to Chicago. The networks refused to allow the AFTRA’s veto, however, since the union had already agreed to the legality of regional rates and had stated that local offices had autonomy in negotiating them (Copeland, 1956e, 1956f; “Meeting with AFTRA,” 1956a). In the end, the AFTRA and the networks compromised through an addendum that updated the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago local codes to regulate and clarify fees across markets (AFTRA, 1956).

154   Getman

Back at JWT In addition to keeping an eye on these sorts of union issues through the AAAA, advertising agencies responded to changing codes within their own walls. At JWT, Marion Preston directed the Radio and Television Department’s Contract Section, leading in 1957 a group of six employees who handled talent contracts and music licensing. Preston joined JWT in 1948 and was by 1952 leading the contract department; her longevity in music and broadcast talent contracts provided her with essential knowledge of the historical logic behind each provision in the union codes. Her position at JWT, coupled with Devine’s leadership of the CTRA, meant that she worked not only on contracts for union members hired for JWT clients but also directly with the AFTRA, the SAG, and the AFM through Devine. She was an agency observer at union negotiations and her mentorship with Devine eventually led her to fill many of the same roles he had held with the AAAA. Over time, she also held prominent positions as Vice President of JWT-Music and as a trustee of AFTRA’s Pension and Welfare Funds (“Contract for Talent,” 1957; Copeland, 1960; “Women in the Thompson World,” 1969; “The Thompson Women,” 1977). Memos and letters in Preston’s name demonstrate that she not only kept track of contracts and contract requirements for her New York office but also passed union news and code changes along to the rest of JWT’s offices in the United States. Her memos during the late 1950s, for instance, updated her coworkers on the establishment of the AFM’s trust fund fee for radio commercials in 1954 (“a single royalty payment in the amount of $100.00 to AFM for each spot which is recorded”), the additional $100 charged as of 1956 when changes were made to a commercial’s music or lyrics after the original version had been recorded, and the removal of the fee in 1959 when the MPTF was weakened (Preston, 1954c, 1956, 1959b). Preston’s letters to her colleague Carol Farwell in JWT’s Chicago office demonstrate that she was called upon to explain union matters (in 1958, she explained the AFM’s reversal regarding whether sponsor spots at the beginning and end of a television show counted as a theme or a commercial) and to explain JWT’s administrative forms and procedures across the firm (Preston, 1958a, 1958b). Preston and her office also provided research support to the AAAA and other agencies in union matters outside JWT, completing surveys, for instance, about JWT’s use of SAG members (Copeland, 1960). JWT’s contracts office also created forms to help with union code compliance; they did this for internal use, but also for other AAAA members. The CTRA collected these forms yearly because agencies found it helpful to review each other’s production forms (“Regular Meeting,” 1956). In 1960, Preston met with AFM representatives to consider and renew contract forms affected by the changes in the radio and television jingles codes regarding residuals and the use of dubbed music. This resulted in JWT’s new music information procedure, involving two new intra-agency forms (the “Music Information Sheet” and the

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   155 “Music Information Sheet for Commercials Using Music Dubbed from Previous Recordings”) that kept track of “the number of musicians present at each session, the commercials produced at the session and any commercials later produced with dubbed music” (Preston, 1960a, 1960b). The legalities presented by the union codes were central to agency process, directing and constraining creative decisions and inhouse workflow.

Conclusions Though advertising agencies did not directly negotiate mid-20th-century labor codes, these companies, and the AAAA as their representative, were essential to the negotiating process. Their agency observers, and especially John Devine, were important advisers to both the unions and the networks, identifying problematic proposals, suggesting solutions, advising networks on when to hold firm, and reporting back to their colleagues and clients on significant changes in each code. Updates in union requirements affected their work, prompting not only updates of in-house procedure (and procedures across agencies) but also changes in attitude regarding the hiring of musical talent. The late 1950s were years of significant change in television and radio production, as unions responded to technological developments that affected their members’ hireability in television and radio and worked out disputes within their own ranks. Sources from JWT’s archive illuminate some of the issues of import to advertisers during this time, marking the fall of Petrillo, the weakening of the MPTF, the rise of videotape, the tumult of competing unions, and the negotiation of fair local and national talent rates. They also highlight how important agencies believed music to be in spot announcements, as a jingle could make or break a campaign. The relationships between everyone who created radio and television commercials in the late 1950s—the advertising agencies, their clients, the networks and producers, the unions, and the musicians—were carefully cultivated and maneuvered to maintain adequate earnings and work environments for both advertisers and talent during these critical years.

Recommended Readings Applegate, E. (2012). The rise of advertising in the United States: A history of innovation to 1960. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Burlingame, J. (1997). For the record: The struggle and ultimate political rise of American recording musicians within their labor movement. Hollywood, CA: RMA Recording Musicians Association. Seltzer, G. (1989). Music matters: The performer and the American Federation of Musicians. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

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Archival Collections Biographical Information 1916–1998. RL.00668. J.  Walter Thompson Company. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC. Carroll Carroll papers, 1934–1979 and undated. RL.00671. J.  Walter Thompson Company. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC. John  F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. RL.00683. J.  Walter Thompson Company. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC. J. Walter Thompson Company Newsletter Collection. J. Walter Thompson Company. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC. Retrieved from http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/jwtnewsletters/ Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. RL.11008. J.  Walter Thompson Company. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University, Durham, NC.

References Agency observers in talent union negotiations. (1958, November). Memo. Box 20. RadioTelevision Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 3 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Amending the SAG Filmed Commercials Code. (1958, January 10). Memo. Box 21. RadioTelevision Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Negotiation of 1958 Contract, 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. American Association of Advertising Agencies. (1956, March 29). Regular Meeting of Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 10:30 a.m., Thursday, March 29. Minutes. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1958–1960 and undated (folder 1 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. American Association of Advertising Agencies. (1958, July 15). Bulletin Number 2481B. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists video tape negotiations adjourned. Bulletin. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), 1958–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 3). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. American Association of Advertising Agencies. (1959, February 6). Bulletin Number 2521B, American Federation of Musicians. Bulletin. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. American Federation of Musicians. (1954a). Folder. Box 19. Unions-AFM, Union Codes Vol. I 1954–1958. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. American Federation of Musicians. (1954b, February 1). Jingles and spot announcements labor agreement. Contract. Box 19. Unions-AFM, Union Codes Vol. I 1954–1958. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. American Federation of Musicians. (1956). Folder. Box 19. Unions-AFM, Union Codes Vol. I 1954–1958. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated.

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   157 American Federation of Musicians. (1957, September 1). Local television jingles and spot announcements trust agreement. Contract. Box 19. Unions-AFM, Union Codes Vol. II 1959–1964. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. American Federation of Musicians. (1959, June 5). RE: Television film labor agreement. Contract. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Film Labor Agreement 2/1/59–2/29/64. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. American Federation of Musicians. (n.d.). History. Retrieved from http://www.afm.org/ about/history-2/ American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. (1956). New York, Chicago and Los Angeles Addendum to the 1956–58 Transcription Code. Addendum. Box 27. Unions-SAGAFTRA, AFTRA Codes 1956–1958. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. (1958a, June 12). To all signatories, producers and signatories of letters for adherence to the 1956–58 AFTRA Code of Fair Practice for network television broadcasting. Letter. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent Negotiations, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), 1958–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 3). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. (1958b, November 16). 1958–1960 national code of fair practice for recorded commercials for television broadcasting purposes. Contract. Box 27. Unions-SAG-AFTRA. AFTRA Codes 1958–1960. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. (1960, November 16). 1960–1963 national code of fair practice for recorded commercials for television broadcasting purposes. Contract. Box 27. Unions-SAG-AFTRA. AFTRA Codes 1960–1963. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Applegate, E. (2012). The rise of advertising in the United States: A history of innovation to 1960. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Brierley, S. (2005). The advertising handbook. New York: Routledge. Burlingame, J. (1997). For the record: The struggle and ultimate political rise of American recording musicians within their labor movement. Hollywood, CA: RMA Recording Musicians Association. Carroll, C. (n.d.-a). Creative Guideposts. Speech. Box 1. Speeches, “Creative Guideposts,” undated. Carroll Carroll papers, 1934–1979 and undated. Carroll, C. (n.d.-b). Box 2. Sheet Music. Carroll Carroll papers, 1934–1979 and undated. Conaway, D.  F. (1958, November 7). By resolution of the national board . . . . Letter. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent Negotiations. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), 1958–1960 and undated (folder 3 of 3). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Contract for Talent: Marion Preston. (1957, November 18). Article. Box Perls–Ray. Marion Preston (1/2). Biographical Information 1916–1998. Copeland, D. (1956a, April 18). Talent union agreements, Minutes of the March 29 Meeting, Committee on Television and Radio Administration. Minutes. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 1 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1956b, July 30). Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent Negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television

158   Getman and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1956c, December 6). AFTRA Negotiations in Cleveland. Memo. Box 20. RadioTelevision Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1956d, December 7). AFTRA Negotiations in Cleveland: Phone conversation with Bob Gibbons, McCann-Erickson. Memo. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1956e, December 12). Local AFTRA Negotiations in Los Angeles. Memo. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1956f, December 12). Local Negotiations in Chicago. Memo. Box 20. RadioTelevision Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1957, December 2). Forthcoming SAG negotiations: Request for Data. Memo. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) General, 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1958a, February 26). Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 1958 and undated. John  F.  Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1958b, May 22). Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1958c, June 3). Subject: Licensing of music recorded for audition purposes, Mr. A. J. Kendrick’s proposal (Harry Fox Organization). Memo. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 3 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1958d, December 15). Memo. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations. American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960, 1956–1960, and undated (folder 3 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Copeland, D. (1960, October 11). Subject: Data for AFTRA-SAG TV commercials negotiations. Memo. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 4 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Dales, J. L. (1958, April 9). Letter. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) General, 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Devine Elected General Counsel, White and Albright Appointed to Finance Committee. (1960). J. Walter Thompson Company News, 15(52), 1.

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   159 Devine, J. (1955, March 21). Way cleared for use of musicians on television filmed commercials. Memo. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Devine, J. (1956, July 13). Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Devine, J. (1958a, May 23). Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations. American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Devine, J. (1958b, May 26). Re: Employer-employee relationship under Screen Actors Guild Commercial Agreement. Memo. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) General, 1958 and undated. John  F.  Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Devine, J. (1958c, June 10). Letter. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) General, 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Devine, J. (1960, April). [Speech by John  F.  Devine on AAAA and SAG]. Speech. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960, 1956–1960, and undated (folder 4 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Devine, J. (1961, April 5). Advertising agency letter of adherence to the National Radio Jingles and Spot Announcements Labor Agreement (November 16, 1959–January 31, 1963). Contract. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Letter of Adherence TV & Radio Jingles & Spot Announcements agreement. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Dougherty, P. H. (1976, August 4). Advertising: Lawyers widen agency role. New York Times, p. 65. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1976/08/04/archives/advertising-lawyerswiden-agency-role.html Draft, Urgent [Re: AFTRA]. (1958). Memo. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), 1958–1960 and undated (folder 3 of 3). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Ferguson, D. (2008). Radio. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), International encyclopedia of communication. Blackwell Reference Online. Retrieved from http://www.communicationencyclopedia. com/subscriber/tocnode.html?id=g9781405131995_yr2013_chunk_g978140513199525_ ss42-1 Fox, H. (1958, May 15). Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 1958 and undated. John  F.  Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Guide to the J. Walter Thompson Company, Carroll Carroll Papers, 1934–1979 and undated. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/jwtcarrollcarroll/ Guide to the J. Walter Thompson Company, John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated, bulk 1956–1970. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/ jwtdevinejohnf/ J.  Walter Thompson Company (part 1). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://library.duke.edu/­ rubenstein/collections/creators/corporations/jwt1 J.  Walter Thompson Company (part 2). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://library.duke.edu/­ rubenstein/collections/creators/corporations/jwt2

160   Getman Mackay, H. (2008). Television technology. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), International encyclopedia of communication. Blackwell Reference Online. Retrieved from http://­ www. communicationencyclopedia.com/subscriber/tocnode.html?id=g9781405131995_yr2013_ chunk_g978140513199525_ss42-1 McCue, C.  L. (1958, April 4). Letter. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) General, 1958 and undated. John  F.  Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. McElroy, L. (1958, April 18). Letter. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) General, 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Meeting with AFTRA, 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, December 12. (1956a, December 12). Minutes. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Meeting with AFTRA, 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, December 12. (1956b, December 12). Memo. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. NBC/AF of M Summary of Agreement, February 1, 1959–February 29, 1964. (1959, February). Memo. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Nixon, S. (2016). Hard sell: Advertising, affluence and transatlantic relations, c. 1951–69. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. People. (1955). J.  Walter Thompson Company News, 10(22), 4. Walter Thompson Company Newsletter Collection. Preston, M. (1954a, January 21). Memo. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Preston, M. (1954b, June 28). American Federation of Musicians (AFM), Radio and Television Agreement. Memo. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Preston, M. (1954c, September 21). American Federation of Musicians, Radio Transcriptions. Memo. Box 20. Unions-AFM. Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Preston, M. (1956, November 14). Re: American Federation of Musicians Trust Fund Payments for Use of Jingles on Radio Transcriptions and on TV Film Commercials. Memo. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Preston, M. (1958a, September 15). RE: AFM. Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Preston, M. (1958b, October 24). Letter. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Client Talent Issues, 1953–1960 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Preston, M. (1959a, February 22). Re: American Federation of Musicians. Memo. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Preston, M. (1959b, November 13). Re: New American Federation of Musicians (AFM) Radio and Television Jingle and Spot Announcement Agreement effective November 16, 1959.

Organized Labor and Commercial Advertising   161 Memo. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Memos Distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Preston, M. (1960a, March 16). Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 4 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Preston, M. (1960b, June 23). Re: Music Information Procedure. Memo. Box 21. RadioTelevision Department: Talent negotiations, Client Talent Issues, 1953–1960 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Preston, M. (1960c, September 23). Re: Expiration of Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) contracts. Memo. Box 20. UnionsAFM, Memos distributed Re: AFM 1952–1971. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Radio and Television Services. (1951, June 13). Re: AFM agreements. Memo. Box 20. UnionsAFM, Radio, TV & film agreements 2/1/51–1/31/54. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Re: Television Film Labor Agreement. (1959, June 5). Contract. Box 20. Unions-AFM, Film Labor Agreement 2/1/59–2/29/64. Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Regular Meeting, Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, September 11. (1956, September 11). Minutes. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Regular Meeting, Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 10:00 a.m., Thursday, April 10. (1958, April 10). Minutes. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 3 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Regular Meeting, Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 10 a.m., Thursday, September 15. (1960, September 15). Minutes. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 4 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Report on filmed commercials, comparison of 9-month period, January 1 through September 30, in 1954 and 1957. (1957). Report. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 3 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. SAG-AFTRA. (2018a). AFTRA history. Retrieved from https://www.sagaftra.org/history/ aftra-history/aftra-history SAG-AFTRA. (2018b). SAG timeline. Retrieved from https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-timeline Sayre, J. (1958, January 10). Memo. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Negotiation of 1958 Contract, 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Scott, R. J. (1958, June 6). Letter. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 1958 and undated. John  F.  Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated.

162   Getman Seltzer, G. (1989). Music matters: The performer and the American Federation of Musicians. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Special Joint Meeting, Subcommittee on Television and Radio Administration, and A.N.A.  Subcommittee on Union Relations (of the Radio-TV Service Committee), 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, July 1. (1958, July 1). Minutes. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), 1958–1960 and undated (folder 2 of 3). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Special Meeting of Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 2:30 p.m., Monday, January 13. (1958a, January 13). Minutes. Box 21. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Negotiation of 1958, contract 1958 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Special Meeting, Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 2:30 p.m., Thursday, June 26. (1958b, June 26). Minutes. Box 20. Radio-Television Department: Talent negotiations, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) Standing Committee on Television and Radio Administration, 1956–1960 and undated (folder 3 of 4). John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. S.R.M. (1959, August 3). The television production primer: The Screen Actors’ Guild. Memo. Box 27. Unions-SAG-AFTRA, SAG Miscellaneous 3/1958–5/1965 (2/2). Radio and Television Department records, 1932–1978 and undated. Sterling, C.  H., & Kittross, J.  M. (2001). Stay tuned: A history of American broadcasting. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. The Thompson Women yesterday and today. (1977, March). The JWT News. Box MN19. J. Walter Thompson Company Newsletter Collection. Whited, W. E. (1958, June 25). Memo. Box 19. New York Office, TV workshop, 1955–1960 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated. Women in the Thompson world. (1969, June 27). J. Walter Thompson Company News. 24(25). Box MN15. J. Walter Thompson Company Newsletter Collection. Zane, J. (1961, September 25). Subject: Experimental workshop. Memo. Box 19. New York Office, TV workshop, 1955–1960 and undated. John F. Devine Papers, 1952–1974 and undated.

chapter 7

Ja zz Wor ks Music, Advertising, and Labor in Toronto, 1955–1980 Mark Laver

In the summer of 1974, Phil Nimmons—fondly known as Canada’s “Dean of Jazz” and one the pre-eminent jazz clarinetists, composers, and educators in North America— proposed to take his 16-piece band, Nimmons ‘N’ Nine Plus Six, on a tour through Canada’s Atlantic provinces, including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. While the Toronto, Ontario-based band had done short outof-province performances before, the East Coast tour was the longest and most ambitious that Nimmons had booked, and it was met with a tepid response from most of the senior members of the group. One by one, the members of the band requested to sub out of the gigs, proposing to find younger musicians to take their places for, most imagined, the duration of the tour. Nimmons, however, saw this as part of a trend—one with which he had grown increasingly frustrated—where finding substitute players had become increasingly casual, and increasingly routine. So, instead of subbing out the older musicians, he decided (with occasionally grudging consensus from the older musicians) to hire the younger, would-be subs on a permanent basis to take the regular chairs in the group. Ultimately, this younger version of the ensemble went on to record The Atlantic Suite in 1975, Nimmons’s best-known album. Today, there are no hard feelings about Nimmons’s decision among the musicians who constituted the first generation of Nimmons ‘N’ Nine Plus Six, nor are there any regrets about skipping the tour. Simply put, these musicians were all too busy—and making far too much money—at home in Toronto to be able to justify taking the time off to embark on a lengthy tour. From the late 1950s until the early 1980s, Toronto was home to one of the hottest music industry pockets in North America. The industry was driven largely by an abundant supply of lucrative work recording advertising music for the city’s jingle houses (along with abundant work in film and television music), and jazz players were among the most sought-after musicians. As celebrated Toronto trumpeter,

164   Laver flugelhornist, and Nimmons alumnus Guido Basso told me, “I got too busy to go to rehearsals and a lot of gigs were conflicting with my schedule. Those were my golden years of television and radio, because I was a band leader for some TV shows for CBC [the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]. . . . There were [also] other [younger] players ready to jump in; send me in, coach, you know?” (G. Basso, personal communication, January 3, 2018). This story complicates broadly accepted jazz discourses in a number of ways. Since it is based in Toronto as opposed to more canonical jazz centers like New York, New Orleans, or Chicago, it asks us to re-examine common assumptions about North American jazz geography. Insofar as these Canadian musicians ostensibly chose jingles over jazz in 1974, it forces us to rethink the presumed antagonism between jazz and commerce. Relatedly, it requires us to reconsider the status of music as “work,” to re-evaluate the relationship between labor and play in a musical context, and to reconsider the interaction between musical, social, and contractual relationships in the music ­industry—especially as articulated through the musicians’ union. Finally, as the story moves into the 1980s, it offers a vivid glimpse into the profoundly deleterious impact of neoliberal business practices and government regulations on social networks among musicians, and the musical work that sustains them.

“The Streets Were Paved With Gold”: Toronto’s Music Business On a global scale, Toronto does not often enter the conversation as a major hub of jazz activity. Located on Lake Ontario, a short drive up Queen Elizabeth Way from the U.S.  border, the jazz scene in Canada’s largest city is largely ignored in favor of its American counterparts—especially New York, but also Chicago, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. Even on an international scale, cities like Paris, Tokyo, Amsterdam, London, and Shanghai figure much more prominently in jazz history and discourse than Toronto. While there are certainly Canadian musicians whose names have registered in the global popular consciousness—Oscar Peterson, Gil Evans, Maynard Ferguson, and more recently Seamus Blake, Reenee Rosnes, Ingrid Jensen, and Larnell Lewis (of Snarky Puppy)—the community of musicians who have mostly stayed north of the border has not achieved nearly the same degree of international acclaim. In recent years especially, the unquestioned presumption in Canada has been, if you want to make it in the jazz world at large, you have to move south. That has not always been true, however. Prior to 1980, Toronto was a magnet for jazz musicians from across North America who wanted to work in the burgeoning jingle business in the city. Jingle houses like Trudel Productions, Pursuit Communications, Quartet Productions, and Acrobat offered virtually nine-to-five employment for the city’s many excellent jazz musicians. Peter Cardinali is a case in point. Today, he is the

Jazz Works   165 president of Alma Records, one of the leading Canadian jazz record labels. In the 1970s, though, he was a top call bassist in the city. In a recent conversation, he described how busy the scene was: Well, in Toronto, it was just full gamut. Sometimes I did seven, eight sessions a day. I mean the studio scene . . . isn’t anywhere close to what it was now or isn’t close to what it was then, now. . . . Oh man. When I’d really start my day, if my book was empty at say, 9 am, so the next day, I would make plans around it being booked and sure enough, at some point during the day, it would get booked. (P. Cardinali, personal communication, January 6, 2018)

In a 1972 profile of saxophonist and flutist Moe Koffman (best known internationally for his 1958 composition “Swingin’ Shepherd Blues”), Globe and Mail jazz critic Jack Batten described Koffman’s schedule: It has been one of those ordinary run-of-the-mill weeks for Moe Koffman, flutist and saxophone man. Taped some Bank of Commerce jingles at 8 a.m. Tuesday. Wednesday morning, he organized and played in the band for CBC-TV’s Bandwagon show. Wednesday evening, he attended a launching party for his new record album. And Wednesday night, he played in the band for a George Kirby special taped at the CFTO studios. Back out to CFTO this morning for a Mike Douglas Christmas show, and tonight, as with every night of the week, he fronts his own quintet for three sets of jazz at George’s Spaghetti House.  (Batten, n.d.)

Although Koffman and Cardinali were both key figures in the scene and were therefore especially “in demand,” their cases were hardly unique. The robust Toronto music industry comfortably sustained several generations of musicians. Koffman’s story is an especially notable, if not uncommon, one. Between 1950 and 1955, Koffman toured with leading bands in the United States, including Sonny Dunham, Ralph Flanagan, Buddy Morrow, Jimmy Dorsey, and Tex Beneke. By 1956, however, he had had enough of life on the road in the United States and made the choice to settle down in Toronto with his young family, secure in the knowledge that he could find a happy balance between musical fulfillment and stable work (McNamara, 1957). More than 20 years later, Cardinali made a similar choice, leaving a high-profile job touring with legendary U.S. artist Rick James to work in Toronto. Koffman and Cardinali were only two of many Canadians who, having found some measure of success in the United States, nevertheless chose to return home. Before working with Phil Nimmons and in the studios in Toronto, Guido Basso toured with celebrated singer and actress Pearl Bailey and her husband, the acclaimed drummer Louie Bellson, from 1958 to 1960. Saxophonist, composer, and arranger Rick Wilkins also had considerable success south of the border but also chose to return home: Back in the ’70s I worked out in California for a while doing television with some rock bands, Jackson Five, and stuff like that. But I had just re-met Carolyn back then

166   Laver (it was my second marriage), and my kids were teenagers. I didn’t want to pull up stakes and move to Los Angeles. So it was more of a personal decision than a musical one. And also the work was here and there was plenty of it. And we were able to make a living doing what we knew how to do, and what we enjoyed. (R. Wilkins, personal communication, October 17, 2016)

The northern migration was not only composed of Canadian expats, either. Tom Szczesniak, the pianist/accordionist who was hired for Nimmons’s 1974 East Coast tour, was a Chicago native who had moved north in 1973. Both he and Vancouver, Washington-born trombonist Jerry Johnson left the Airmen of Note military band to begin careers in Canada. According to Szczesniak, in Toronto, “the streets were paved with gold.” He elaborates, “I was a jingle writer in the ’70s, and I was getting checks of about 10 grand a month. So that’s what, about $120,000, when most people were making $20,000 or $30,000. I can’t remember what salaries were like, but I know that I was making a good living” (T. Szczesniak, personal communication, October 18, 2016). Adjusted for inflation, Szczesniak and many of his contemporaries were making upward of half a million dollars per year (2018). It is little wonder, then, that Szczesniak himself left Nimmons ‘N’ Nine Plus Six within a year and a half of the East Coast tour after he too became too busy with session work to continue in the band. While the music these musicians were recording in studios was not jazz per se—­ insofar as jingles, television, and film music seldom make space for spontaneity and im­prov­i­sa­tion—jazz musicians were especially well suited for the work. So, in a city replete with musical opportunities, studio contractors were especially keen to hire players with a background in jazz. As Szczesniak explains, “It’s because jazz players have a craft level that’s very high, and they can do a lot of other things because they have the craft level. They can read music and they can interpret quickly” (T. Szczesniak, personal communication, January 5, 2018). Cardinali points out that the mix that jazz musicians typically brought of technical craftsmanship and improvisatory flexibility was desirable in large part because it was economical: “A jingle house gets hired by the agency and everything needs to go as fast as it can, otherwise the budget is totally blown. When you pay $450 an hour for studio time, you really don’t want to spend another hour or two because a musician can’t get a part” (P. Cardinali, personal communication, January 6, 2018). Because Nimmons’s band included so many of the top players in Toronto, many of them were—or would become—lynchpins in the studio scene as well. Rick Wilkins (a charter member since the early 1960s) and Guido Basso were both key contractors in the scene, while alto saxophonist Jerry Toth (a member of Nimmons’s group from the first rehearsal in 1953 up until the East Coast tour) and brother Rudy ran the highly successful jingle house Quartet Productions.1 With that in mind, for younger musicians who 1  Most of the music that came out of the jingle houses is unavailable, with the exception of two pieces associated with Quartet Productions: “A Place to Stand, a Place to Grow (Ontari-ari-ari-o!),” written for the Ontario pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montréal, and—most famously—the “Hockey Night in Canada” theme. Both pieces were composed by house composer and manager Dolores Claman, with original orchestrations by Jerry Toth.

Jazz Works   167 were hired to substitute or play in Nimmons ‘N’ Nine Plus Six, the opportunity did not just mean playing in Canada’s most celebrated large jazz ensemble; it also meant networking with the top contractors in one of the most profitable music scenes in North America. As Andy Krehm—the guitarist who took over for the legendary Ed Bickert a year or so before the East Coast tour—recalls, “[It] changed my life, because that band was full of contractors and heavyweight guys, next day I got a call for a jingle from one of the heavy guys, like Rick Wilkins or something” (A. Krehm, personal communication, January 16, 2017). With their intensely busy work schedules, the musicians in the Toronto scene became very familiar with one another—both musically and socially. Whereas Andy Krehm’s entrée into the studio scene came via Phil Nimmons’s band, Guido Basso’s path into Nimmons ‘N’ Nine Plus Six came via the studios: Usually I’d be doing a gig with Erich [Traugott, trumpeter in Nimmons’s groups from 1953 to 1973], like a studio gig. We lived in the studios in those days, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. It was ridiculous. I think we saw each other, the guys, we spent more time with the guys than we did at home with our wives. It was that busy. . . . Sometimes with Erich, we’d be on the same studio gig and then we’d take off because he had to do a Nimmons ‘N’ Nine. I’d say, “Well, what the hell? I don’t have anything better to do. Why don’t I just go with you and catch you guys again?” That would happen frequently.  (G. Basso, personal communication, January 3, 2018)

The extensive collaboration among these musicians in the studios was enormously enriching for their performances together outside of the jingle houses in bands like Nimmons’s or Rob McConnell’s Boss Brass—another celebrated Toronto ensemble. Basso, one of many musicians to play with both Nimmons and McConnell, describes the effect constant studio work had on the bandstand with the Boss Brass: I had a pretty hip band whenever I was in charge [in the studios], and of course, it just so happens by coincidence that most of the players were guys who were part of the Boss Brass. That’s what I mean. We played so much together [recording jingles] for so long that playing Boss Brass material was a piece of cake and a natural way for us to do it. It just happened because we were so tight. We were so tight together all the time, playing tightly together and phrasing together. That was it. (G. Basso, personal communication, January 3, 2018)

Just as Tom Szczesniak and Peter Cardinali point to technical craftsmanship and improvisatory flexibility as qualities that made jazz musicians attractive to studio contractors, Guido Basso suggests that extensive time in the studio helped the musicians refine these skills even further, individually and collectively. For all of these musicians, there was a clear reciprocity between parts of their musical selves that are so often framed as oppositional: music as a constellation of ideas related to commercial enterprise (craft, work, commerce, for instance) and music as it relates to play, pleasure, and art.

168   Laver With this in mind, it is perhaps less surprising that—despite the long-standing discursive opposition—the Toronto session musicians do not recall their studio work as mere drudgery for pay; it was enjoyable in and of itself. Szczesniak reflects, “I loved my work. . . . And I really didn’t feel like I was making a compromise. Sometimes I thought, ‘Well, gee, maybe I should have done that or maybe I should have done that.’ But then I thought, ‘No, this is too good.’ You know?” (T. Szczesniak, personal communication, January 5, 2018). Studio work itself also afforded considerable latitude for creativity. Szczesniak remembers, “You could experiment [in the sessions]. And you could say, ‘yeah, I think we should use oboe and English horn on this. Maybe string quartet, oboe, and English horn.’ And if it required something large, you could use a 40-piece orchestra. . . . You could do what you liked. . . . It had to be appropriate, but you could be creatively appropriate” (T. Szczesniak, personal communication, January 5, 2018). Guitarist Ed Bickert recalls his work playing advertising music as a transformative, educational experience: “I didn’t get into studio stuff until the middle to late ’50s. And that was quite an eye-opener for me because I had very poor skills as far as reading is concerned, so a lot of it I had to fake until I figured out what was going on on the printed page. . . .  I learned so much from various sources” (E. Bickert, personal communication, January 18, 2017). Meanwhile, Krehm, who succeeded Bickert in Nimmons’s group, remembers his session career as a rewarding time where he was able to learn from older, more experienced musicians: “So one of the first jobs I got was with Rick Wilkins, and I got it because of the Phil Nimmons show [subbing in for a Jazz Radio Canada broadcast in Winnipeg in 1971]. And there I was on the lead guitar, and there was my rhythm guitar player, Ed Bickert. So that was quite a thrill” (A.  Krehm, personal communication, January 16, 2017). Without exception, the musicians with whom I have spoken recall their work for jingle houses fondly.2 The studio work did not take away from other avenues for creative, expressive performance. In fact, the glut of well-paying work in Toronto meant that musicians from all across North America were moving to work in the Toronto studio scene, making for a vibrant community of potential musical collaborators for club dates and other engagements that focused on original music. Although he ultimately lost most of the members of his group to the studios, Nimmons initially benefited from the surplus of work in Toronto: originally from Kamloops, British Columbia, Nimmons himself moved from New York after completing his studies at Juilliard, while Rick Wilkins had moved from Hamilton, Ontario; Ed Bickert from the Okanagan region on the West Coast; and other musicians from all parts of the continent. The overlap between the studio and club scenes was such that, in many cases, the key gatekeepers to the session contracts played a similar role in the performance venues. In addition to his work as a musician and session contractor, Moe Koffman booked the bands at George’s Spaghetti House, one of the top venues in the city. (He featured his own groups frequently, occasionally to the 2  It is worth noting, of course, that these musicians were all recalling work from over 30 years earlier, and from the prime of their careers. No doubt their happy reminiscences about the 1960s and 1970s reflect those factors as well.

Jazz Works   169 c­ hagrin of other musicians who were overlooked to accommodate yet another Moe Koffman engagement.) The club regularly hosted Nimmons’s bands, along with groups featuring Basso, Wilkins, Bickert, and many of the other session players in the city. For Koffman, the appeal of steady studio work together with regular gigs at George’s Spaghetti House, playing with Toronto’s finest musicians, was more appealing than the life he had led in New York. As he explained to Toronto Telegram jazz columnist Helen McNamara in a 1957 profile: “I worked in the States from 1950–1955,” he said. “For two years I was on the road, constantly traveling with name bands—Sonny Dunham, Ralph Flanagan, Buddy Morrow, Jimmy Dorsey. It was a great experience. I used to get a kick at the people standing around the bandstand watching the musicians . . . that was something new to me . . . but the glamor wears off after a while. The only glamorous part of the job is the four hours on the bandstand. The rest of the time? All-night rides on busses . . . bad food. . . . I had enough of that life, although I wouldn’t mind now taking my group out on the road, but just for two or three months. No more. Instead of working out of New York or Los Angeles as most musicians do I’d like to work out of Toronto. Help make it known as a jazz centre.” (Koffman, quoted in McNamara, 1957)

The thriving Toronto studio scene ensured that there were numerous excellent musicians, playing excellent music, in an ever-growing number of venues across the city. Commerce and creativity were hardly at odds with one another at all; on the contrary, the complementarity between the commercial and the creative aspects of musical work was precisely what kept the work so good.

Good Work and the Gig Triangle In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx described one of the formative principles upon which much of his subsequent writings were premised: the ways in which workers are alienated from their labor through their dialectical relationships with capitalism. First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.  (Marx, 2009)

170   Laver Marx proceeds to describe those workers whose labor is unalienated—who work “as a silkworm produces silk, as the activation of his own nature” (as cited in Taylor, 2016, p. 21)—as “unproductive workers.” Marx’s words here foreshadow French jazz historian Hugues Panassié’s, written nearly 100 years later in The Real Jazz (1942), in his insistence that labor and capital are diametrically opposed, and that the application of one’s skills for the benefit of someone else necessarily alienates the laborer from those skills, even as they may be integral to the laborer’s very humanity. For Pannasié, participation in the commercial music industry represented alienated, “productive” labor, while it was in the “jam session” where musicians were at liberty to pursue the “activation of [their] own nature” (Marx, as cited in Taylor, 2016, p. 21). Far from being alienated from their labor by its commodification, however, the Toronto musicians remember finding pleasure and profit in equal measure from their musical work and from the nonstudio creative opportunities—like the Nimmons band—that grew out of it. Marina Peterson reminds us of the slippery relationship between productive and unproductive musical labor in her article “Sound Work: Music as Labor and the 1940s Recording Bans of the American Federation of Musicians”: “As something only in the moment of production, music is not productive labor, or labor which ‘produces capital.’ Yet, as it inheres in various mediums, music moves between productive and unproductive labor, allowing claims to be made on the basis of one or the other of these statuses that might then be challenged on the grounds of the other” (2013, p. 804). Clearly the Marxist distinctions between the productive and unproductive and between the alienated and unalienated character of labor break down in view of the unfailingly positive reminiscences of these Toronto musicians. A more operative distinction, then, is the one between “good work and bad work” that Sarah Baker and David Hesmondhalgh outline in their 2011 ethnographic study of arts workers, Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries. They emphasize the “seemingly genuine proclamations of enthusiasm for their work on the part of those we interviewed” (Baker & Hesmondhalgh, 2011, p. 19), even as that enthusiasm is often mitigated by precarious employment circumstances and other challenges.3 For Baker and Hesmondhalgh, good and bad work are contingent on a variety of intersecting factors that generally encompass successful personhood and general well-being, not merely the location or act of labor itself. In sum, good work involves some combination of “autonomy, interest and involvement, sociality, self-esteem, selfrealization, work-life balance and security. Conversely, . . . bad work [involves] control by or dependence on others; boredom; isolation; low self-esteem or shame; frustrated self-realization, overwork and risk” (Baker & Hesmondhalgh, 2011, p. 36). The Baker and Hesmondhalgh good work–bad work equation overlaps with what musicians in Toronto (and presumably elsewhere) frequently refer to as the “gig triangle.” The triangle is composed of three characteristics of work: “good music,” “good money,” and “a good

3  I return to some of these issues as they pertain to the Toronto context in the next section.

Jazz Works   171 hang” (i.e., a good social experience). For a job to qualify as “good,” it needs to have a minimum of two, and ideally all three, of those characteristics. As we have seen, all three corners of the triangle were consistently in evidence in the studio scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Many musicians were making exceedingly good money, most found artistic satisfaction both inside and outside of the studio, and the musical scene was socially tight knit.4 We have also witnessed the security, stability, and balance that the Toronto industry afforded working musicians: recall the choices Moe Koffman, Rick Wilkins, Guido Basso, and others made to leave higher-profile opportunities in Los Angeles, in New York, or on tour to build a family and musical community in Canada. Finally, we have seen how these musicians were typically granted considerable autonomy, both in the studio and in the broader field of cultural production. While studio composers necessarily had to work within the constraints of the given project, they were granted enormous creative latitude within those constraints, as we have heard from Tom Szczesniak—“It had to be appropriate, but you could be creatively appropriate” (T. Szczesniak, personal communication, January 5, 2018). Significantly, the principle of autonomy is one that moves in two trajectories in the advertising music industry. Baker and Hesmondhalgh identify these as “workplace autonomy,” which they describe as “the degree of self-determination that individual workers or groups of workers have within a certain work situation,” and “creative autonomy, the degree to which ‘art,’ knowledge, symbol-making and so on can and/or should operate independently of the influence of other determinants” (Baker & Hesmondhalgh, 2011, p. 40). Whereas Baker and Hesmondhalgh present these modes of autonomy as “quite different” (p. 40), even potentially “contradictory and ambivalent” (p. 65), in the world of advertising music—where labor and musical creativity are close to coterminous—the distinction does not seem to hold. Creative autonomy constitutes autonomy in the workplace, as Szczesniak described earlier. It also flows from the workplace: the network of session musicians was also a community of creative collaborators, contributing after hours to one another’s noncommercial ventures, whether locally at George’s Spaghetti House or one of the other clubs or nationally as part of bands like Nimmons ‘N’ Nine Plus Six. In sum, the commercial music industry in Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s hit all of Baker and Hesmondhalgh’s touch points for “good work.” As guitarist Ed Bickert remembers, “Those were wonderful times” (E. Bickert, personal communication, January 18, 2017).

4  Not every musician in Toronto at this time had such a positive experience. The historian Mark Miller has profiled drummer Claude Ranger, for instance, who—in spite of being revered as a tremendous artist and technician—never fit into the social mix (M. Miller, 2017). In a recent interview with me, saxophonist Phil Dwyer also pointed to trumpeter Fred Stone as an example of an artist who stood on the fringes of the Toronto music scene, even though he was renowned as the only Canadian musician to tour and record with the Duke Ellington orchestra. It is also worth noting that these musicians struggled with mental health issues, which likely contributed to their respective reputations for being brilliant but unreliable.

172   Laver

Labor Solidarity and Toronto’s “Golden Age” With the considerable overlap between studio work and creative/noncommercial musicmaking, and between the network of session musicians and the community of collaborators, it is perhaps unsurprising that there was considerable solidarity among the musicians in the local scene.5 In this climate, the musicians’ union thrived. Local 149 of the Canadian chapter of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) was a powerful institution that had consistent buy-in from every professional musician, ensuring that it had the authority to protect the shared interests of musicians in the city. While other cities had strong union representation—Leta Miller (2007) has written about the power of the Los Angeles and Bay Area unions in California, and Marina Peterson’s work (2013) demonstrates the impact of the New York union, especially during the musicians’ strikes of the 1940s, for instance—the Toronto local was exceptional, nevertheless. Tom Szczesniak describes the scene he found in Toronto after moving north in 1973: Everything was union. Everything I did for many, many years was. . . . Another thing I loved about Toronto. When I lived in Washington, D.C. and I lived in Chicago, I did minimal work through the union. Nothing. In Chicago, maybe over the years, like I left Chicago when I was 19 or 20. 20 I guess. Over the years, I played maybe ten gigs that were booked with the union. In Toronto, the first ten gigs I played were booked with the union. In Toronto, the musicians’ union was very strong, so every jingle that I ever played—maybe three or four buyouts that I did—every jingle was booked through the union. (T. Szczesniak, personal communication, January 5, 2018)

Indeed, it was not simply a pure abundance of work that kept musicians in Toronto busy; that abundance was fostered and structured by rules and regulations that were enforced by a combination of union and government. Thanks to union lobbying of Parliament, large U.S. filmmakers received major Canadian tax deductions on the distribution of U.S. films in the Canadian market if some portion of the film had been produced in Canada, ensuring abundant work for Canadian musicians. For this reason, while the bulk of the soundtracks for major Hollywood blockbusters were recorded in Los Angeles, some music was always recorded in Toronto to qualify for Canadian tax incentives. The same was true of other media. According to Tom Szczesniak, many Canadian 5  This is not to say that there were no musicians who were excluded from the scene, most notably women and musicians of color. Leta Miller (2007) has thoroughly documented this phenomenon in the United States context, especially in San Francisco, where two racially segregated locals co-existed uncomfortably. In Canada, meanwhile, the great Toronto-born drummer Archie Alleyne remembers, “Blacks didn’t have no businesses of our own because it was difficult for us to even walk in somewhere, far less own it. That was back in the beginning when they were just implementing anti-discriminatory laws in Canada” (Weekes, 2015).

Jazz Works   173 musicians made a very good living rerecording the soundtracks to children’s shows like Care Bears, Sesame Street, and Fraggle Rock. Peter Cardinali, meanwhile, recalled rerecording backing tracks for U.S.-produced pop albums: “They’d come up and rerecord in Canada. Rerecord it exactly, so they qualified for Canadian content because it would be a production . . . especially if the artist was Canadian. That was the one that tipped the scales” (P. Cardinali, personal communication, January 6, 2018). Cardinali worked specifically with Nashville-produced country singers, Nova Scotian Anne Murray, and Ontario-born Michelle Wright, among others. Guido Basso relates a similar situation with advertising music: Sometimes they’d bring up producers from New York and they just did a Canadian version of the jingle that they used in the United States. They just had to do a Canadian version of it, which meant just rerecording it the way it was recorded in New York, but it was mandatory for the track to be Canadian, as opposed to bringing the whole package from New York and playing it here, because that would be an invasion and it would be a lose/lose situation for the musicians. The union was backing us up on that one.  (G. Basso, personal communication, January 3, 2018)

Despite being the most diminutive and disposable genre, jingles represented some of the most lucrative work. Jingles tended to require the least amount of studio time but to offer the greatest income potential with respect to residuals—income earned after the fact of recording as the jingle was distributed, redistributed, and repurposed. Cardinali describes a jingle for the Sears department store: I think I was in there for 20 minutes, max, [and] I think everybody made about $20,000. Every musician, because they took that one track and they cut it up into a million pieces and you got paid for that every time. Then they’d dub it in French. That’s another payment. They dub in another language, they use it for another product. It was really detailed, and [the union] looked after [it]. Now it’s not the same. You don’t have those residuals. (P. Cardinali, personal communication, January 6, 2018)

In every case—advertising, TV, and film music—it was the strength of the union that ensured reliable, profitable work for member musicians.

Neoliberalism and the Demise of the Music Industry: 1980 and Beyond Today, 50 years later, the Toronto jazz community continues to thrive creatively. These days, though, the money is mostly gone. Visiting musicians in their homes— something I have been doing frequently in this research—is an illuminating

174   Laver e­ xperience. Where musicians who were active between 1950 and 1980 tend to own well-appointed homes in desirable neighborhoods, musicians of my generation seldom own a car, let alone a house. Rick Wilkins compares his musical heyday to what he sees now: “It’s all gone by the boards these days. I mean, music has changed so much that it’s hard to recognize what we did anymore” (R. Wilkins, personal communication, October 17, 2016). Beginning in the early 1980s, studio musicians were incrementally replaced by increasingly effective synthesizers. Composer Ann Bryant summarized the gradual decline of work for live musicians between 1980 and 1985 in an interview with Timothy Taylor: But MIDI changed things irrevocably, albeit slowly. The first noticeable indication that these things were changing was that people were slowly put out of work. Bryant described this process vividly. “MIDI first put strings out of business. And then it put the horns out of business, and the sounds got better and better. I think early on you could make pretty good string sounds, not great, but you could work it out, and then the horns got much better. And then when Wham! [‘Wake Me Up before You Go-Go’] came out in 1984, I went ‘Uh-oh. The horns sound great now.’ You know, it was all electronic but it sounded really good. It started to sound really good. And then the [live] horns disappeared, and then [recording] sessions became just rhythm, you know, and then a sax solo, guitar overdubs, and everything else was tweaking the synthesizers. And we still brought in synthesizer players; it took a while to have your own studio all set up and wired, which cost a fortune. Eventually drum programs came in and the drummers started to disappear. I mean, those possibilities came into programming. It started to sound better too; it left the kind of metronomic, artificial feel and got more humanized. So MIDI, I think in a period of eight years, just developed like lightning, you know, and more and more got digitized.” (Taylor, 2016, p. 138)

The same was true in Canada, as Guido Basso remembers: “With the advent of synthesizers and all this stuff, it changed the jingle business quite a bit and then the guys started having studios in their basements, and the clients loved that because it kept the budget small, as opposed to renting a studio with an engineer, and guys started working with synthesizers and we all got ousted from what was happening” (G. Basso, personal communication, January 3, 2018). While this mechanical change did gradually put musicians out of work, it did not impact the budgets ad agencies set aside for jingle writing and recording. Rather, according to Szczesniak, while ad agencies kept their music budgets consistent, many jingle houses started to increase their profit margins by eliminating studio musicians and replacing their names on the contract with the names of company principals. “It became a situation where music houses started to make more money so that they could be equal to their counterparts in all business,” Szczesniak explains. “And in order to make more money, they would put themselves on the musicians’ contracts like 10 times. So consequently they couldn’t use as many musicians. That’s what they started to do when they started doing synth tracks. They started to load up the contract with their own people.

Jazz Works   175 So they could make more money. And, unfortunately they did it at the expense of ­musicians. It was not pretty. And it’s still going on now” (T. Szczesniak, personal communication, January 5, 2018). These issues evidently were not unique to Canada. Steve “The King of the Jingle” Karmen, one of the most prolific and successful advertising music composers in recent history, observed the same phenomenon in the latter days of his career in the 1980s: Jingle producers, on the other hand, had found a new source of revenue with which to torment their agency employers. Instead of listing the names of the live string players and live horn players and live WHATEVER players on the AF of M jingle contract, now they began listing their own names as synthesizer players, as many times as traffic would allow. . . . Jingle producers began submitting AF of M contracts listing Joe Smith—drums; Joe Smith—bass; Joe Smith—violins; Joe Smith—keyboards; Joe Smith—French horns; Joe Smith—trombones; Joe Smith—trumpets. . . . For a while, Joe Smith was doing really well, especially in residuals, which were earned for each separate listing on the contract. One jingle house listed Joe Smith twenty-seven times, and got away with it.  (Karmen, 2005, p. 141)

With quality synthesizers becoming increasingly accessible and portable, composers of advertising music have been impacted as well. While some composers—like Karmen’s fictional “Joe Smith”—initially profited by filling the musicians’ contract with their own names, the advertising agencies that booked the composers eventually changed the industry model to their benefit, ultimately requiring composers to work far longer hours for considerably less pay, with little or no contractual security or stability. In Tom Szczesniak’s 1970s heyday, he did not need to worry about a retainer or any other kind of long-term contractual or salaried relationship with any one of the music houses he worked for because the work was so reliable and abundant. He would simply receive a call from a music house with the terms of the contract and expectations of the job, get to work composing, record the project, and get paid. Today, on the other hand, composers are expected to submit demo recordings in advance to compete for an ad agency contract. Agencies, Szczesniak explains, will solicit recordings from various music houses, occasionally paying composers $250 or so to offset labor and recording costs, but just as often offering no such support. The winning recording gets a fairly lucrative contract, but the other composers end up with nothing at all and a lot of lost time. The upshot is, everybody makes less money and has less stability—except for the music house and ad agency. Szczesniak explains, “And now I know people that are doing just as many jingles as I did, and they’re making maybe a quarter of what I made. So it’s crazy. It’s crazy. And when you consider the value of the dollar, it’s insane” (T. Szczesniak, personal communication, January 5, 2018). These wholesale changes in the music industry are, ironically, reflective of the neoliberal “creative economy”: an economic model, as described by theorist Richard Florida (2002) and others, characterized by flexible labor models and “creative” (read: postindustrial, nonmanufacturing) jobs that invite workers to use their imaginations more boldly and lead richer, more fulfilling lives. Management theorist and “creativity expert”

176   Laver Daniel Pink summarizes this rosy view at the beginning of his bestselling 2005 book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future: The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind—computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.  (Pink, 2005, p. 1)

The truth of neoliberalization of the industry is far from “creative.” The negative counterparts to what Pink, Florida, and many others characterize as creativity and innovation—both within particular jobs and with respect to navigating the labor market more broadly—are, too often, long hours, disrupted work-life balance, and radical precarity. Moreover, because competition for advertising music contracts has become so heated, composers are often less willing to take risks. As composer David Shapiro told Timothy Taylor, “Creativity is missing, it’s not there anymore. Not always, but to a large extent, I won’t say all the time” (Taylor, 2016, pp. 142–143). So, ironically, the creative economy has left most musicians less happy, less fulfilled, less financially comfortable, and, ultimately, less creative. The lived experience of neoliberalism was created and sustained by dramatic changes to socioeconomic institutions around the world. Building on the Nobel Prize–winning theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and the advocacy of the International Monetary Fund, many governments began to focus increasingly on implementing social austerity measures—cutting social welfare programs and raising interests rates to make borrowing more costly, for example—to reduce government debts and trade deficits and to address the economic crisis of “stagflation” that had become a growing concern through the 1970s.6 Governments also worked to deregulate the labor market, ostensibly liberating workers to behave as free agents, rather than being constrained by union membership. As David Harvey notes in his A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2007), parallel to the austerity measures enacted by the Thatcher (U.K.), Reagan (U.S.), and Pinochet (Chile) governments, among others, was a concerted effort to undercut union strength and solidarity by characterizing union regulation and bureaucracy as restrictive of individual labor flexibility and capital accumulation and by weathering lengthy, toxic strikes. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), the union of air traffic controllers in the United States, walked out in 1981 but ultimately settled for terms that were perceived to be less than favorable to its membership (Harvey, 2007, p. 52). In the 6  “Stagflation” is most simply understood as a combination of high inflation and high unemployment. Together, these factors suppress consumer spending, rendering the economy “stagnant.”

Jazz Works   177 United Kingdom, Thatcher, having been elected in 1979 with a strong mandate to “tame public sector trade union power” (Harvey,  2007, p. 58), maintained a hard line with unions representing everyone from miners to gravediggers to hospital workers to truck drivers, ultimately driving down wages while also opening the domestic market for dramatically increased foreign investment. In Canada, the Pierre Trudeau administration introduced the Anti-Inflation Act in 1975, a bill that aimed to crack down on wage increases for public employees and workers in larger companies. At the same time, the government specifically targeted union work action and labor leadership, implementing back-to-work legislation and jailing labor leaders with radically increased frequency through the later 1970s (Thompson, 2017). As a result, while labor productivity has increased dramatically since the mid-1970s—as much as 42 percent—compensation for workers has only risen by approximately 3 percent over the same span, according to Jordan Brennan, economist for Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union (Brennan, 2014). In other words, wages have stagnated in direct correlation to decreased union membership during a time when unions themselves—and their hard-won financial, social, and cultural gains for working people—have been increasingly demonized. Policies to facilitate global trade constituted another key thread in the web of neoliberal ideology. Many commentators point to “Nixon shock”—the abrupt withdrawal on August 15, 1971, from Bretton Woods, an international treaty that fixed global exchange rates, using the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency against which all other global currencies were indexed—as a transformative moment in global trading relationships. Nixon’s August executive order was intended to liberate the flow of global capital, creating greater domestic and international potential for trade and profit. Following in this mode, by the 1980s, the economic policy vogue had increasingly moved toward dramatic reductions in domestic protectionism to facilitate unfettered cross-border traffic in commodities, capital, and often labor. These policies, however, have had mostly profoundly deleterious consequences for musicians. Free trade meant fewer protections for working musicians—especially in the much smaller Canadian market. Through the early 1980s (and especially prior to the ratification of the formalized Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States in 1988), Canadian musicians ceased to benefit from the tax treaties that had previously encouraged U.S. media producers to create some of their content north of the border. Nimmons alumnus, bass trombonist and tubist John Capon (whose inimitable sound can be heard on parts of the iconic Star Wars soundtrack), describes the drastic change in his circumstances—virtually overnight—between the late 1970s and early 1980s: The Toronto scene in the 1970s was just nuts. There was so much work. I was very fortunate to be there then, making a really good living. But the whole thing as far as the studios were concerned vanished over a period of a year or so in the early 1980s. . . . I had already two kids and a mortgage or two and everything, and at the time during the 1970s I was averaging—just one component was 25 big films a year.

178   Laver And that’s not a lot. I mean, there were 150 big films going on in Toronto. But just me as a bass trombone player, I was doing about 25. My counterpart in Hollywood, Bill Reichenbach, was doing 38 a year. So I was doing pretty good. If you get booked on a film, you usually expect 3 full days of work or four—6 or 8 sessions of 3 hours. And I was doubling on tuba for all of that, so I was making roughly $1000 a film, so when you take that out of the picture—just bam, it’s gone—my income in the early ’80s dropped $25,000 on average. (J. Capon, personal communication, September 18, 2018)

Like Guido Basso, Steve Karmen, and others, Capon does attribute some of the drastic economic shifting to the arrival of digital instruments at the time—he acknowledges a complicated web of changes and challenges to the life of the working Canadian musician’s life in the late 1970s—but he focuses in particular on free trade: The bubble burst in the early ’80s and there was a huge, worldwide recession. There was a couple of other factors there. The digital instruments came into being about then, like synthesizers and samplers, so producers started to do—instead of a 50-piece film orchestra, they maybe could use 10 players and three or four keyboard players. And they got kind of bored of that after a while. And also, as far as films were concerned, during the ’70s film producers got huge tax breaks on the retail sale of films in Canada if they used any Canadian artists or people on their production, so that encouraged them to hire Canadian orchestras. . . . The original soundtracks were done in Canada. We did parts of Star Wars when they needed retakes. But a lot of things, we did the whole thing. But then the U.S.-Canada free trade thing came down the pipe, and that was not good for musicians in Canada, because they could use the American versions of things, especially jingles. (J. Capon, personal communication, September 18, 2018)

Meanwhile, although the AFM was not a specific target of government’s explicit, policydriven, union-busting practices in the 1970s, it did not survive unscathed. As labor practices were increasingly squeezed by external factors like the emergence of synthesizers in the industry, and the emerging anti-union climate more generally, it became harder to sustain union-enforced policies that used to constitute the baseline of a musician’s income. While Cardinali was reluctant to “name names,” he blames the gradual dissipation of residuals and other key benefits on specific jingle houses and studios that began to hire musicians on “off-contract buy outs,” paying musicians only for their time in the studio and nothing else. He offered the example of a jingle writer and contractor who parlayed anti-union practices in the 1970s and 1980s into an extremely successful and profitable career: “[He] started off doing buyouts, off-contract buyouts. [He was one of the guys] that we . . . [m]usicians go, ‘No, no, no. We’re not going to work with him.’ Now, he’s one of the most successful jingle writers in the country. At that time, it was a really bad smell working for those kinds of guys” (P. Cardinali, personal communication, January 6, 2018). Today, young musicians routinely question the utility and value of union membership, mirroring the steep decline in labor organizing in other sectors of the economy. In a 2007 article for local arts and culture magazine Exclaim, Toronto writer Allison Outhit

Jazz Works   179 spoke with several prominent, local musicians who have come to question the continued relevance of the union. Despite being a member of the AFM for over 20 years and an active organizer in connection with numerous leftist political causes in the city—political involvement that even saw him run for mayor in 2014—saxophonist Richard Underhill (best known as the founder of the iconic Toronto band The Shuffle Demons) expressed his skepticism to Outhit: “I think the union is trying to be more relevant and valuable. Some people are talking about unionizing Lee’s Palace [popular Toronto venue], but I think it’s a bad idea. There should be a place where kids can play and cut their teeth, a training ground where people who are not quite professional musicians can go for it. I guess with the way the industry is going [the union] doesn’t feel so relevant” (Outhit, 2007). Singer-songwriter Kevin Fox echoes Underhill’s observations in Outhit’s piece, suggesting that the union’s value for young musicians has become primarily bureaucratic: “Today, there’s no one out trying to nail you [for mixing union and nonunion activities], but the fact is, no one is playing by the rules. The only reason we join the union is to get P-2s [American work visas] and get union rates with the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]” (Outhit,  2007). In my interview with him, Cardinali also pointed to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation work—as well as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Ballet, and other top-tier, salaried orchestras— as points where the union continues to be of benefit to musicians. Even Cardinali, though, suggests that the union may no longer represent a meaningful support structure for the majority of musicians, especially as it relates to the non-union freelance work that constitutes the majority of musical labor: “[But] it’s like, ‘Hey, I got to work.’ They’re starting to understand that a little more. . . . You got to eat” (P. Cardinali, personal communication, January 6, 2018). Sarah Baker and David Hesmondhalgh have argued that, even though younger workers in the culture industries—whether music, television, or other sectors—would potentially be the demographic to benefit most from the robust union support and ­solidarity that previous generations experienced, “the uncertain nature of freelance work and worries about where the next short-term contract will come from means unions are not on the radar of many creative workers” (Baker & Hesmondhalgh, 2011, p. 119). In other words, neoliberal precarity has rendered young workers too anxious about the future to advocate for themselves, either as individuals or—perhaps more importantly—as a collective. With the creeping distrust of unions on a social and individual scale, these desiccated structures—once so successful at fostering support and solidarity among workers— have left in their wake an atomized workforce, defined increasingly by the shared experience of precarity and alienation. In summation, then, over the span of about five years between roughly the late 1970s and the early 1980s—albeit situated in the broader, tectonic context of socioeconomic policy that shifted seismically from the Nixon and Trudeau administrations in the early 1970s right up to the present day—a category of labor that once squarely qualified as “good” under the Baker-Hesmondhalgh heuristic became decidedly “bad.” Those qualities that constitute “good work” for Baker and Hesmondhalgh—“autonomy, interest and involvement, sociality, self-esteem,

180   Laver self-realization, work-life balance, and security” (2011, p. 36)—become universally, grotesquely inverted. Musicians’ creative autonomy, interest, involvement, and self-realization have been systematically undermined by overreaching music houses and advertising agencies, together with the transformative influence of synthesizers and sampling technologies. The possibility of work-life balance and security has been undercut by dwindling work opportunities, heightened competition, frozen or diminished wages, and inequitable contracts. And sociality, once a key linkage between the structural and emotional registers of musical work, has been steadily weakened by emerging modalities of labor that require solitary studio work with digital technologies, and by the politicized destabilization of—and concomitant growing distrust in—trade unions.

Conclusions In 1981, Phil Nimmons folded his band, Nimmons ‘N’ Nine Plus Six. With dwindling federal funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the band’s primary source for performance opportunities was no longer able to provide on a regular basis. Moreover, as commercial music work in Toronto disappeared, the majority of the band’s key members either changed careers (several following Nimmons into music education) or left Toronto entirely (like trombonist John Capon, who returned to British Columbia). In stark contrast to the situation a mere seven years earlier, commercial ­venture—or rather, the lack thereof—was suddenly the enemy of creative opportunity. With shrinking evidence that musical labor can constitute good work, over the intervening years since the 1970s heyday of the studio scene, musicians and employers alike have increasingly returned to the notion that music might not constitute work at all—at least in the “productive” versus “unproductive” sense that Marx describes. We see this in the assumption—related by Toronto musicians Richard Underhill and Kevin Fox—that the musicians’ union may no longer serve musicians’ best interests. Concomitantly, we see it in the increasingly atomized arts workforce. Above all, we see it in the pervasive assumption—articulated by Tom Szczesniak and in Baker and Hesmondhalgh’s ethnography—that musicians and other arts workers have come to expect comparatively poor compensation and comparatively extreme precarity in exchange for the privilege of working in their field. It is almost as if musicians and other arts workers have forgotten how much money they were making, and how much they enjoyed making it, only 40 years ago. Of course, 40 years does represent at least a couple generations of artists in a city, but in a city like Toronto, the older musicians like Tom Szczesniak, Peter Cardinali, Andy Krehm, and others are still present, are often still active in the community, and do at least occasionally work with younger musicians. The strange amnesia that seems to surround the enormous profitability of the music industry in Toronto in the 1970s might be attributable to the way in which—according to Frederic Jameson’s analytical model—“each ‘more advanced’ mode of production includes the earlier ones, which it has had to suppress in its own emergence. . . . These are

Jazz Works   181 therefore sedimented within a mode of production like capitalism, in which the earlier forms, along with their own specific forms of alienation and productivity, persist in a layered, ‘canceled’ fashion” (Jameson, 1979, p. 68). In other words, those qualities that Marx ascribed to “unproductive labor”—namely, the kind of autonomy experienced after the fashion of “a silkworm produc[ing] silk, as the activation of his own nature” (as cited in Taylor,  2016, p. 21)—has endured, even as the expectation of the other qualities that Barker and Hesmondhalgh ascribe to “good work” have been systematically stripped away. What this has meant in practical terms, therefore, is that musicians have become increasingly willing to accept precarity as if it were a necessity—and to trade off security and solidarity in exchange for the ostensible pleasures of operating in a field that affords them this degree of creative autonomy. As Bernard Miège elaborates, “For the majority of artists, autonomy is a pure façade: it [merely] allows them to be paid at a rate markedly lower than the value of their labor power” (Miège, 1989, p. 29). Hence, even as musicians and other kinds of artists look for work that would qualify as “unproductive” in the most aspirational, Marxist sense, they increasingly end up with work that is simply “bad.” On the other hand, an examination of the period of greatest financial success for music workers in Toronto demonstrates that musical labor need not be “bad” in the way that it has apparently become—indeed, in the way that many people in and outside of the field presume it has always been. As we have seen, in Toronto and elsewhere, the advertising industry remains as profitable as ever. If anything, there is more money now than there was in the 1970s. What has changed enormously, however, is the way capital is distributed, and the labor patterns that channel that distribution. It would be unreasonable to imagine that things could return to exactly the way they were in the 1970s in Toronto. As we have seen, many factors contributed to the extent to which musicians were able to profit from their labor during that period, and many factors contributed to the steep decline of the labor market. However, given that the money is still effectively there, greater attentiveness on the part of all musicians to these aspects of distribution and organization could potentially improve things for the current generation. In the first place, musicians need to combat the strange, paradoxical alignment between neoliberal and classical Marxist myth-making that renders their labor somehow “unproductive” or otherwise “less than.” This entails two important cognitive moves. First, it is critical that the current generation of musicians learn their history and collectively remember that musical work was not always precarious and largely unprofitable. This could be as simple as having meaningful conversations with mentors or other senior musicians in the field, but it does appear as though there is a crucial and widespread knowledge gap that needs to be addressed. It should not be surprising to anyone that Toronto stood alongside New York and Los Angeles as a major hub for session musicians, least of all to the current generation of musicians in Toronto. Second, and more abstractly, musicians need to push back against the notion that commerce and creativity are necessarily at odds with one another. As we have seen, this is an old story, but one that finds a powerful counternarrative in the interwoven creative and commercial worlds of the 1970s, whether via the overlap between the daytime music industry work in the studios and evening creative ventures at George’s Spaghetti House and other venues or even

182   Laver s­ imply in the studios themselves. Simply put, a thriving musical labor force breeds an abundance of creative opportunities, both commercial and noncommercial. Secondly, the lynchpin of the prosperity for Toronto’s jazz labor force in the 1970s was unquestionably its sense of working solidarity, crystalized in a shared commitment to a strong labor union. While musicians certainly benefited from a generally healthy economy, from a music industry that had yet to see the advent of synthesized instruments, and from favorable government policies, it was a strong, effective union that worked to ensure that conditions remained prosperous. As Baker and Hesmondhalgh conclude, union commitment is likely the only way to initiate a return to a more equitable distribution of capital: “One fundamental component of efforts to make good creative work more available must be trade unions. The collective action and bargaining that unions provide is crucial for countering the insecurity and intensity of a great deal of creative work” (Baker & Hesmondhalgh, 2011, p. 222). Of course, union solidarity in the 21st century must look considerably more inclusive than it did in the 1960s and 1970s, when the jazz corner of the union in Toronto was almost exclusively white and male. After all, an organization that is monolithic in terms of race and gender is hardly likely to promote alliances across an atomized labor force, nor is it likely to promote a meaningful kind of diversity of creative perspective that promises to enrich entire musical communities. No doubt, all of this requires considerable work, and more than a little risk. Moreover—and this is critical—the work must be collective and reciprocal within musical communities. The initial work of remembering, through conversation or quasiethnography, must by necessity be a collective enterprise, throughout the community, within and across generations. By the same token, a revitalized union needs to develop through conversation and consensus. With union memberships dwindling around the world (remember, the AFM’s struggle for continued relevance is hardly unique in the labor movement), clearly the musicians’ union needs to reconsider how it, as an organization, serves the needs of its constituent members. Meanwhile, musicians need to reconsider what the union means (and has meant) for them. It is critical to remember that a union is not merely the unwieldy, obstructionist entity it has been caricatured as during 40 years of neoliberal anti-labor rhetoric. At their most impactful, unions emerge through—are reflections of—a joint commitment to solidarity and community, expressed through a combination of autonomous self-regulation and collective bargaining. If musicians are to find ways to profit from their labor—not merely as fragmented individuals, but as a working class, so to speak—they must commit to one another. Fortunately, musicians are typically very good at just this sort of thing; they do it in the studio and on the bandstand all the time. The spirit of collectivism required of a thriving labor movement is vividly analogous to the joyous sense of artistic collaboration described by all of the musicians whose perspectives are represented in this chapter. While a return to the enormous prosperity of the 1970s may be out of the question, a renewed, refocused commitment to one another’s humanity, in conjunction with the ready-made commitment to one another’s artistry, may go some distance toward restoring security in a precarious age and toward finding pleasure in work without sacrificing either autonomy or profit.

Jazz Works   183

Recommended Readings Baker, S., & Hesmondhalgh, D. (2011). Creative labour: Media work in three cultural industries. New York, NY: Routledge. Miller, L. E. (2007). Racial segregation and the San Francisco Musicians’ Union, 1923–1960. Journal of the Society for American Music, 1(2), 161–206. Miller, M. (1987). Boogie, Pete, & the senator: Canadian musicians in jazz: The eighties. Toronto, ON: Nightwood Editions. Ross, A. (2009). Nice work if you can get it: Life and labor in precarious times. New York, NY: New York University Press. Stahl, M. (2012). Unfree masters: Recording artists and the politics of work. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

References Baker, S., & Hesmondhalgh, D. (2011). Creative labour: Media work in three cultural industries. New York, NY: Routledge. Batten, J. (n.d.). “Vivaldi a new test for jazzman Koffman.” Globe and Mail. Brennan, J. (2014, June 27). Who built the middle class? Unions did. Retrieved from http:// iPolitics.ca Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class: And how it’s transforming work, leisure, community, & everyday life. New York, NY: Basic Books. Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Karmen, S. (2005). Who killed the jingle? How a unique American art form disappeared. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard. Jameson, F. (1979). Marxism and historicism. New Literary History, 2(1), 41–73. Marx, K. (2000; 2009). Economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844. Retrieved from http:// marxists.org McNamara, H. (1957, April 14). Koffman’s the talk of Toronto jazz. The Telegram. Miège, B. (1989). The capitalization of cultural production. New York, NY: International General. Miller, L. E. (2007). Racial segregation and the San Francisco Musicians’ Union, 1923–1960. Journal of the Society for American Music, 1(2), 161–206. Miller, M. (1987). Boogie, Pete, & the senator: Canadian musicians in jazz: The eighties. Toronto, ON: Nightwood Editions. Miller, M. (2017). Claude Ranger: Canadian jazz legend. Victoria, BC: Tellwell Talent. Outhit, A. (2007, March 5). The musicians’ union. Exclaim [Toronto]. Retrieved from https:// exclaim.ca/music/article/musicians Panassié, H. (1942). The real jazz. New York, NY: Smith & Durrell. Peterson, M. (2013). Sound work: Music as labor and the 1940s recording bans of the American Federation of Musicians. Anthropological Quarterly, 86(3), 791–823. Pink, D. (2005). A whole new mind: Why right brainers will rule the future. New York, NY: Riverhead Books. Ross, A. (2009). Nice work if you can get it: Life and labor in precarious times. New York, NY: New York University Press. Taylor, T. (2016). Music and capitalism. A history of the present. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

184   Laver Thompson, M. (2017, February 10). A brief history of Canadian labour woes. Canadian Dimension. Retrieved from http://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/a-brief-historyof-canadian-labour-woes Weekes, Jabbari. (2015, March 8). The Life and Times of Archive Alleyne, Toronto’s Greatest Drummer. Noisey. Retreived from https://noisey.vice.com/en_au/article/6wq5ex/the-lifeand-times-of-archie-alleyne-torontos-greatest-jazz-drummer

Branding Through Music

chapter 8

Design i ng Iden tities Sound and Music in Automotive and Appliance Branding 1 Ken M c Leod

Motor vehicles and popular music have developed as symbiotic commodities that both characterize life in contemporary society and are designed to literally and figuratively “move” us. Since its inception, the car has been inherently connected to musical and sonic culture. The very sounds of the car itself—its crankshaft, engine noises, and warning signals—have projected a distinct and inescapable mechanistic sound onto the urban landscape and into our day-to-day activities. While cars provide perhaps the most overt instance of such an incursion, the sounds and chimes of various smaller mechanized household appliances have become no less ingrained sonic markers in our lives. Focusing on the sound branding of automobiles, this chapter looks at the increasing attention given to sound design in automobiles and products that surround us in everyday life, such as appliances. In particular, I discuss how the designed sounds of cars and appliances, as well as the various strategies developed to mitigate aspects of the consequential noises resulting from their operation, are important though often overlooked influences in shaping and reflecting both product and consumer identities. Sound is an immersive medium that often transcends physical boundaries and encourages a continuous process of listening that mimics and contributes to a polymorphous subjectivity. The steady flow of sound, experienced either consciously or subconsciously as we go about our daily lives, constantly informs and transforms how we experience the world and, by extension, ourselves. Frances Dyson (2009), influenced by Michel Chion, thinks of sound as an event rather than an object, and in doing so [incorporating] a sense of organic process, of a multiple, mutating form found in a figure closely tied to sound—the figure of vibration. Vibration, figuratively and literally, fluctuates between particle 1  Parts of this chapter appear in Ken McLeod, Driving Identities: At the Intersection of Popular Music and Automotive Culture (Routledge, 2020).

Designing Identities   187 and wave, object and event, being and becoming. Defying representation, it also gestures towards the immersive, undifferentiated, multiplicious associations that aurality provokes, without committing to the (massive) representational and ontological ambiguities that aurality raises.  (pp. 10–11)

Vibration, experienced as sound, is seen “as a unifying force, one that dissolves the distinction between body and technology, nature, and culture and resolves the problem of representation and mediation” (p. 11). Noise, a perceived form of vibration, is particularly immersive because it is produced in passing and found in everything. As noise scholar Greg Hainge argues, “Noise . . . is the trace of the virtual out of which all expressive forms come to be” (Hainge, 2013, pp. 13–14). Noise itself arises only out of a relational process with various expressive objects, forms, and assemblages. As is often the case, what one person experiences as music, another will perceive as noise. For example, what we experience as a din of chaotic background noise in a crowded restaurant can, with sufficient focus, become the recognizable sound of conversations and/or background music. Fundamentally, noise only exists in relation to what it is not—typically something that is sonically meaningful—and thus it transcends and deconstructs the binary oppositions between the natural and unnatural, the human and nonhuman, the intentional and nonintentional. As such, noise is, in and of itself, an expressive medium of identity. Noise, and more generally sound, actively shapes who and what we are. The sonic experience while riding in a car is varied and complex, ranging from random uncontrollable noise to intentionally controlled music. There are a variety of reasons we might want to listen to music in our cars. We may want to break up and relieve the monotony of a long road trip or a boring and/or overly repetitive commute, or simply entertain ourselves while going from A to B. The advent of sound systems in automobiles in the 1930s allowed the freedom to personalize one’s sonic experience, replicating and expanding the freedom afforded by automobile travel itself. To some extent, the sound of the engine—its mechanical noises, rattles, and external road noises—provide a chaotic and hence, for many, somewhat annoying or even alienating sonic experience. There is a certain subhuman monotony created by the sound of an engine, creating a sense of a largely uncontrollable mechanical drone. Though designed and created by humans, engines still produce, in the minds of many, a lifeless, artificial, and disquieting industrial noise (albeit one understood by car enthusiasts to be a beautifully “tuned” sound, often described in musical terms). Many drivers, however, focus only on the sounds produced by a car when fearing something might be malfunctioning. Ambient wind and road noise from tires can also be a distracting irritant to drivers. Often, we turn to an alternative sound source, typically in the form of a car radio or sound system, to mitigate these unwanted, potentially disquieting or uncontrollable sounds. In activating music or other forms of audible entertainment, we are able to exercise some form of control over the otherwise uncontrolled sounds of the driving experience. Furthermore, the designed musical sounds and chimes that emanate from newer cars are meant, at least in part, to provide a recognizably “human” communicative tone that can attenuate the sense of alienation from the lifeless machinery to which we are entrusting our lives. Ironically, whether it is

188   McLeod through designed sounds emanating from the vehicle or in-car sound systems, we are simply using the sounds of one technology to subdue the sounds of another. In so doing we reposition ourselves as subjects controlling the sound, rather than objects at the mercy of “noise.” The noise produced by automobiles has been the subject of countless complaints and negative commentary since their inception. It is important, however, to understand how noise, and more particularly sound, has been refined, conditioned, and, in many cases, artificially enhanced in the contemporary automotive experience. In the past, the noises a car made were simply a byproduct of its mechanical function, the “consequential” sounds of thousands of parts working together. That era, however, is rapidly waning. The familiar mechanical tick tick sound of the turn-signal indicator has typically been replaced by a specifically designed synthesized sound (often mimicking the familiar mechanical clicking of the past). As with every other part of a contemporary car, the aural experience is carefully crafted and tweaked by sound engineers and designers. It is not enough for the car to run well; it also needs to sound like it is running well, both to allay concerns that something may be wrong and, for some, to enhance the sensory pleasure of driving. The sound experience of the car has become increasingly controlled and composed, but it is important here to distinguish between sounds that are generated by the operation of the product or car itself (the rattle and hum of the parts working together) and sounds intentionally added to a product (e.g., various chimes and warning indicators). In the field of product sound design, the former category is typically termed “consequential sounds” and the latter “intentional sounds” (Langeveld, van Egmond, Jansen, & Özcan,  2013). Moreover, while each and every car has its unique soundscape, most individual automobile brands attempt to provide an experiential sonic consistency—an aural soundprint, so to speak—that buyers can associate with particular models. Sound is part of the increasing emphasis on a sensory user experience and a critical part of the user interface. In these ways, sound increasingly defines particular brands and identities of automobiles and appliances and, by extension, helps define and construct our individual aesthetic preferences and identities. Our identities, in this sense, are thus the combined product of subjective consumption of available sounds and music and the imposed influence of sound designers and marketers. Past scholarship has looked at the relationships and growing points of convergence between popular music, commerce, and advertising (Klein, 2009; Taylor, 2012). Several recent studies have sought to redress the lack of scholarly work that takes branding and product promotion seriously as a form of social, cultural, political, and economic exchange (Aronczyk & Powers, 2010; Arvidsson, 2006; Lury, 2004). The increasing intimacy between popular music and advertising has been discussed in scholarly literature in terms of whether it augments or depletes the value of music as art or culture (Allan, 2005; Carah, 2010; Frank, 1998; Klein, 2008, 2009). Similarly, the study of the use of music in branding in the creation of a new media object in its own right has been the subject of study by Meier (2011). The relationship between car culture and sound has also been studied, largely from the perspective of immersive sonic experiences experienced while driving (Bull, 2003; LaBelle, 2010) and the search for auditory privacy in

Designing Identities   189 and from cars (Bijsterveld, Cleophas, Krebs, & Mom, 2014). With the exception of a few studies that have looked at related issues such as the prominence of techno music in automobile television commercials (Taylor, 2007) and the influence of car audio systems on hip-hop production practices (Williams, 2010), the issue of the relationship between music and sound design in automotive branding has received relatively little attention. The study of music and sound design in appliance branding has received even less. In what follows, I explore how sonic branding plays with, constructs, and reflects identity—both of the product and of the consumer who buys and operates it. The growing complexity of built-in or “intentional” sound sources and of the sonic experience when operating cars and appliances also calls into question the relationship between our machines and ourselves. Marketers and sound designers attempt to inculcate the “emotional values” they want consumers to associate with a product (Lim, 2012, p. 217). As such, we inhabit a world of commodities that are increasingly marketed to us as anthropomorphic sentient entities that give the impression of sharing our values and enabling our lifestyle choices. To a large extent, consumption has become more than the simple acquisition and use of various products. As we will see, it has extended into how we relate to appliances treated as anthropomorphized social allies in the construction and projection of our own identities.

Automotive Sound Branding Concepts Beyond the automotive world, sound has earned an important role in product branding in general, becoming more central to customers’ experiences with devices. More than a simple jingle or sound logo, audio branding entails the creation of an entire sonic language for a brand. Based on that brand’s essence, values, and “personality,” and often casting the brand in an anthropomorphic light, this language is expressed across all points of contact between the company/product and the consumer. The wide range of these so-called touchpoints include the product’s online and app presence, trade shows, television and other media, the retail environment, and, as we shall see, even the aesthetic of the sounds generated by the product itself. While many companies have used sound logos and musical jingles to market themselves, and have done so since the establishment of commercial radio in the mid-1920s, automobile manufacturers are often particularly determined in their attempts to project a coherent sonic brand. German manufacturer Audi, for example, currently attempts to project a consistent sonic message across all aspects of the company, including the consequential sounds of engines, door handles and other parts, advertising music and voiceovers, and even the ideal tone and timbre of voices perceived as fitting the brand in commercials and in automated phone menus. To achieve this sonic saturation and identification, in 2010 the company developed a system that it termed its “Corporate Sound concept,” which uses a holistic approach to complement the brand’s visual identity and is understood to embody “the sound of Audi” (Audi Sound Studio, 2011). The objective of the Corporate Sound concept is to ensure that the Audi brand values of “sportiness,

190   McLeod progressiveness and sophistication” can be recognized and experienced at all acoustic touchpoints, from the sounds made by operating the actual car to the music used in its marketing, and down to the customer experience when contacting the company by phone (Audi Corporate Strategy, n.d.). To produce its distinctive corporate sound, the company devised what it refers to as the Audi Sound Studio. This strategy created a limited catalog of musical motifs, socalled Audi sounds. Based on eight central sonic themes, its goal was to create a flexible sound brand with a high recognition value. That is, each sound must be distinct enough that consumers will be able to recognize and associate it with Audi whenever they hear it. Audi then built and continues to build the music for its promotional materials, using sounds that spokespersons refer to as, for example, “Audi strings,” “Audi synthesizer,” “Audi pizzicato,” and the “Audi heartbeat.” Essentially, the company created a series of modular sounds to be adapted to various touchpoints by its musicians, sound engineers, and designers. Since 1996, Audi’s most prominent sound trademark has been its “Audi heartbeat.” According to Alexander Urban, head of Brand and Customer Strategy at Audi AG, “The heartbeat has become an acoustic icon for the Company. . . . The sound signature has become just as closely connected with the brand as the claim ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ [advancement through technology]. We have now refined the acoustic quality to make two aspects stand out—great technical expertise and the brand’s emotional appeal” (Sound File: New Audi Heartbeat, 2010). The “Audi Heartbeat” logo, composed of two synthesized dynamic bass pulses, seeks to make the car sound alive, as if possessing an actual human heart. “This heartbeat really gets under your skin,” Urban claims. “And it stays in your head. We’ve backed the pulsating heart with synthetic sounds that fit with our ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ philosophy. They boost the sound logo’s impact and make it memorable” (Sound File: New Audi Heartbeat, 2010). In addition to being heard at the end of all the company’s television and radio advertising, the heartbeat logo sounds as an engine start-up chime in several Audi models, actively reinforcing not only the corporate sound branding within the product but also its synthesized human characteristics as the car figuratively and sonically pulses into life. This sonic anthropomorphization underlines the increasing premium placed by car companies on intelligent driving technologies that promote an ever-evolving man-machine hybrid. Indeed, the act of driving itself can be understood as representing a cyborgian bonding between human and machine. We enter and inhabit our car, we are protected by it, and we become at one with it such that it becomes an extension of ourselves. Perhaps Queen’s iconic 1975 anthropomorphic love song to the car, “I’m in Love with My Car,” expressed this idea best: “I’m in love with my car, gotta feel for my automobile.” As Mimi Sheller notes, the car is essentially grafted onto human systems of cognition such that “we not only feel the car, but we feel through the car and with the car” (2007, p. 181). Moreover, we listen to the car to feel reassured that it is functioning properly. Ideas of automobile “intelligence” have now expanded to include not just data processing and automated responses to the driving environments (e.g., keyless entry and

Designing Identities   191 s­ tart-ups, parking assistance, automatized navigation, and accident sensing), but also more “human” elements of intelligence, such as feeling, intuition, and emotion. Presaging their heartbeat sonic branding, the 2004 Audi A8 L advertised its “Multi Media Interface,” a navigation and infotainment unit, as a “central nervous system” that is not only innovative but also “the most intuitive,” “straightforward,” and “effortless” system to use (Sheller, 2007, p. 183). As such, the integrated sonic branding that promotes and reflects Audi’s corporate identity can be likened to a form of digitized audio DNA code that permeates all aspects of the company and its products, imparting a consistent emotional form of life to its brand. The beating-heart sonic logo is thus found not only in the soundtrack of commercials but also throughout Audi’s branding: for instance, it imparts the reassurance of car “health” when it is heard in engine start-up sounds and in the various warning indicators and sonic touchpoints of many models. One of the most successful incarnations of the process of creating a comprehensive corporate sound has been the French national railway SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français), which began a comprehensive audio-branding initiative in 2005. Attempting to capture a greater market share and impart to the public “leadership” in its sector, sound designer Michaël Boumendil created a distinctive two-minute musical soundtrack.2 The core logo consists of a four-note, breathily propulsive and futuristic techno-sounding track highlighted by a hummed female vocal melody (SNCF Musique Officielle, 2007). It also features classical strings and steam-train noises in homage to its historical roots. The music has been reinterpreted to fit different uses and situations, from on-board announcements to voicemail. For example, station announcements take into account possible passenger anxiety by employing the theme in a calmer, reassuring tone. SNCF television commercials, in contrast, employ a more rhythmically authoritative version and incorporate acoustic instruments to emphasize the company’s ecomobility initiative that emphasizes sustainable and integrated transportation options. The music has also been variously altered and adapted throughout all aspects of the company to the demands of meetings, corporate messages, customer service lines, brand advertising, and communication needs. Much like the anthropomorphic audio branding used by Audi, SNCF regards its sound brand as humanizing its product. The website for Sixième Son, the audio marketing company responsible for designing the SNCF sound mark, proclaims: The audio identity allows SNCF to convey its leadership position and “mobility with a human face.” While the ideas of mobility and innovation are heard in the powerful

2  German airline company Lufthansa has also employed a company called MetaDesign, which created a motif of four ascending notes in F major that reflected the association with “takeoff ” of the company’s visual logo. This became the foundation for the different applications of sound in the Lufthansa brand, from corporate music to background sonic atmosphere in airport lounges. The motif was also crucial in the development of the corporate song, “Symphony of Angels,” which evinced a contemporary indie vibe that became popular enough in its own right to make the playlists of several radio stations and found a sizeable YouTube audience (Lufthansa—Symphony of Angels, 2009).

192   McLeod rhythm, the voice expresses . . . the softer feeling of being close to and serving passengers. The signature sound heard in train stations and when aboard the train is iconic. (Sixième Son, 2015)

The sound branding thus helps to humanize both the technology and the corporation, providing a form of recognizable audio DNA and emotional human-like copresence. Moreover, through its ubiquitous presence—SNCF’s sound logo is now reproduced and transmitted through films and other media created in France—Sixième Son proudly claims that SNCF’s “audio identity has become the sound of France itself.” The strategy of creating a comprehensive audio brand seems to have been a success. Subsequent research indicates that SNCF is aurally identified in testing by 88 percent of listeners upon hearing just two notes. Perhaps more significantly for the corporate bottom line, SNCF experienced an 18 percent increase in the perception of leadership following the launch of its audio-branding initiative (Sixième Son, 2015). French automaker Peugeot also employed Sixième Son to implement the concept of DNA-like sound branding. But whereas many automotive brands develop audio identities rooted in the sounds of cars and engines, Peugeot has broken from the timeworn sounds and instead has built a musical identity that will reaffirm the brand’s upmarket move and bring depth to its corporate tagline, “Motion & Emotion.” Like Audi and SNCF, Peugeot aimed to humanize its product by reaffirming and reinforcing the idea that its cars project and embody some form of emotion. As described by Sixième Son, the sound logo (and variants used across different touchpoints) nonetheless fall back on some familiar clichés, such as the association of classical music instrumentation with timeless elegance, quality, and wealth: The musical composition creates a very surprising musical alchemy: at once simple and mysterious, both deep and light. Piano guides the main melody and is accompanied by noble instruments like the cello. The melody’s crystalline clarity illustrates the uncompromising standards of the brand. The futuristic sound design and the rhythm section convey the concepts of movement and modernity. The airy female voice, [sic] reinforces the emotion and reflects sensuality and driving pleasure. (Sixième Son, 2015)

Yet, in addition to the “noble” instrumental accompaniment, the logo employs a “futuristic sound design and rhythm section”—largely consisting of an up-tempo techno 4/4 drum machine beat and various sampled and synthesized squelches and blips—to convey “movement and modernity.” This, however, hardly seems groundbreaking in the auto industry. Indeed, Timothy Taylor persuasively links the initial rise of techno to the use of licensed, previously recorded music in automobile advertising. The overtly futuristic sounds associated with techno are commonly employed by advertisers to reinforce the perception of similar technological forwardness in automobiles. As outlined by Taylor, “The special place long occupied by the automobile in the American imagination has resulted in advertising that for decades has frequently emphasized its technological advances” (2007, p. 241).

Designing Identities   193 Audi and Peugeot are by no means the only automobile manufacturers concerned with building a comprehensive corporate sound image. BMW is also actively involved in creating a unique sonic-brand identity. For some 14 years, the BMW sound logo was a synthesized “double gong” sound that was heard at the end of every commercial and official video created by the company. However, all BMW products and brand films created after 2013 have ended with a new sound logo that reflects the brand-specific sounds and, according to the accompanying press release, its “innovative power and dynamism” (BMW Group, 2013). The new logo, played at the end of radio and TV ads, features brand-specific dynamic sound elements to represent the company’s reimagined identity. The corporate model of “flexible mobility”—a company initiative begun in 2013 that emphasizes a mix of electric, hybrid, and conventional gas-engine powered cars—was sonically symbolized by playing the same sound elements simultaneously backward and forward. The BMW press release accompanying the announcement of the new logo described the melody and its intention: Reverse technology is used to play sound elements forward and backwards in a way that symbolizes flexible mobility. The melody is introduced by a rising, resonant sound and underscored by two distinctive bass tones that form the sound logo’s melodic and rhythmic basis. The sounds build toward a shimmering, sophisticated finish. This combination of different elements represents the joy of progress, of dynamism, and Sheer Driving Pleasure.  (BMW Group, 2013)

While it is perhaps debatable how two sounds simultaneously played forward and backward portray “the joy of progress,” the distinctive sonic identity of various makes of cars is something on which sound designers are increasingly focused. Not only do the consequential sounds of the power windows, seat belt warning, indicators, and so on define and project the brand and model identity of the car, but also they serve to define and project the associated identity of the buyer and driver. BMW employs some 14 sound designers, which it calls “acoustic artists,” specifically for the purpose of creating the perfect sonic experience to match its various products. The company, which also owns the Mini Cooper and Rolls Royce brands, is careful to separate the sound designs created for each of its brands. BMW acoustic artist Emar Vegt describes the process of engineering sounds to match a car’s “character”: Most important the sound must suit the car’s character and fit the brand’s image. BMW is almost quite classic in its orientation—its sounds have a longer finish, the mini has more of a crunch to it—a playfulness almost. The next step is Rolls Royce which currently has this check control sound. . . . A harp. With BMWi . . . you can’t really associate the sound with an instrument but that’s what we wanted because this is something quite new, it’s not immediately recognizable. (BMW Sound Designers, 2013)

Although the sounds are digitally synthesized, the more resonant “longer finish” sounds associated with the BMW series or the “harp” sounds associated with Rolls Royce

194   McLeod reinforce a socioeconomic stereotype that associates classical music with leisure, luxury, and wealth (also see Rodman, 1997). The more affordable Mini, however, is characterized by shorter, more techno-sounding blips, evincing a “playfulness” that associates it with younger, possibly less wealthy consumers. There are, perhaps, other, more subtle stereotypes of gender and race projected by these sounds. The “playful” techno dance music sounds of the Mini may be calculated to appeal to female buyers. According to one study from 2010–2011, Mini had the highest percentage of retail sales to women, while the more upmarket Rolls, with its soothing and classically inspired “harp” sounds, was more likely to be valued by older white men (Woodyard, 2012). In essence, these sounds fall into a stereotypical Cartesian binary that sees “simple” dance music associated with the nonrational body and therefore the feminine, while supposedly more complex and cerebral classical music is coded as masculine. The same study found that five brands in 2010—Ferrari, Lotus, Lamborghini, Maybach, and Rolls Royce—had retail sales to women that did not exceed 10 percent (Woodyard, 2012). It is also the case that, despite the long and involved history of interrelationship between African American culture and the automobile (Gilroy,  2001; Smith, 1999), such in-car sounds appear not to include influences from stereotypically African American–derived stylistic idioms, such as jazz, rhythm and blues (R&B), or hip-hop. These reinforcements of identity stereotyping notwithstanding, car sound design has recently even crossed into the artificial manipulation of the sound of the engine itself. Unlike the controversy surrounding Milli Vanilli’s lip-syncing in the 1990s, car companies are increasingly turning to artificial enhancement of engine sounds. BMW’s engineers, for example, discovered that their new 2012 M5 chassis was so effective at insulating the cabin from road and engine noise that the car lost one of the distinctive characteristics that made previous iterations so popular—the roar of its engine. To compensate for this sensory loss and to give the driver a better feel for the engine, a sample from a previous exterior recording of the M5’s motor was engineered to play through the car’s sound system (Goodwin, 2011). Ford Motor Company has recently adopted a similar strategy to enhance its engine sounds. Ford’s 2015 Mustang and F-150 trucks play a sample through the stereo of a V8 engine while actually using only a V6 engine to provide a more robust and powerful sonic experience under hard acceleration (Gluckman, 2014). Such artificially enhanced or even simulated engine sounds are well known in the industry and are becoming even more prevalent with the increased popularity of electric cars, whose engines produce very little noise. The official forum of the electric car manufacturer Tesla has even broached the possibility of including software updates that would allow for personalized engine sounds, functioning in the manner of a ringtone (Tesla Forum Suskis, 2010).3 3  Indeed, all car sounds could likely be customizable and downloadable. As outlined in Sound and Safe, “Future Ford customers would be able to download a series of car sounds (for turn signals, seat-belt warning, windshield wiper, et cetera) of their choice, just as they would upload a ringtone for a cell phone” (Bijsterveld et al., 2014, p. 161).

Designing Identities   195 The synthesized electronic operating sounds produced by our domestic machines were and are often initial selling points, attracting consumers with the sounds associated with the possibilities of a technologized future. Arguably, however, the sonic beeps and chimes repeatedly and unalterably emanating from our cars may, in fact, serve to alienate us from the machine. The cold repetitiveness of the sounds reminds us that these machines evince very little ability to adapt or respond to the tastes of individual users and, over time, become constant reminders of the subhuman rigidity of our technologized culture.4 Until recently car alert sounds and music were static and unalterably built into the product. The familiar “chirp” of remotely locking and unlocking one’s car doors through a keyless entry system has become a ubiquitous, and sometimes annoying, source of sonic performance. The dynamic level of many keyless entry systems can be altered or even disabled, and there is a wide variety of beeping and chirping tones and timbres that are often unique to various brands and models. As such, keyless entry tones enact another form of branding identification, albeit one that occurs in much more public fora. However, manufacturers such as Tesla are working on ways for consumers to customize the music and sound tags that are played, effectively facilitating personalized sonic interactions and social performances by and with our machines. Essentially, sonic branding in automobiles and other products has the potential to take on a function of personal sonic identification similar to a ringtone (de Vries & van Elferen,  2010; Gopinath,  2013). And, indeed, BMW’s and Audi’s start-up and seatbelt chimes and engine sounds are already commonly marketed as downloadable ringtones. While current automobile and product sounds are not as customizable as a ringtone, when activated they nonetheless instigate a performative process (possibly an unwanted one) that takes place between users and their surroundings. Car owners, moreover, carry with them while driving the connotations of the music and designed sounds. By adding this cultural marker to their physical appearance and presence, drivers brand the product as much as it brands them—in effect becoming corporeal representatives of the machine. The increasing propensity of car advertising to employ anthropomorphic language and sounds appears to reflect the notion that it is through interacting with human-like machines that we, as individuals, will essentially be brought to life. Such thinking is underscored by many recent views of the growing human immersion in technology. Sociologist John Urry (2007), for example, evokes an almost posthuman scenario when he claims that the 21st century will be marked by the presence of “inhabited machines” that will be “desired for their style . . . and [that] demonstrate a physical form often in­ter­ woven with the corporeal. It is through inhabiting machines that humans will come to ‘life’ ” (pp. 179–180). In considering what might count as a live performance in the age of 4  Our evolving relationship to the sound of technology in cars is a curious matter. It suggests both that we are sometimes drawn to the exotic sounds of the future and that we are often more comfortable with treating machines as human-like peers, anthropomorphic entities over which we can exert our subjective control. Thus, these sounds can act to both invigorate us with the promise of technology and comfort us with a semblance of human.

196   McLeod digital mediation, Philip Auslander has reached something of a similar conclusion, claiming: Liveness is neither a characteristic of the object nor an effect caused by some aspect of the object such as its medium, ability to respond in real time, or anthropomorphism. Rather, liveness is an interaction produced through our engagement with the object and our willingness to accept its claim.  (2012, p. 9)

Inasmuch as automakers attempt to imbue cars with anthropomorphic qualities, it is ostensibly up to the consumer to accept or reject that claim. Nonetheless, whether consciously accepted as a “live” entity or not, it seems that we are more likely to identify with a car that reminds us of ourselves in some way. The sonic branding found in Audi’s beating heart or BMW’s carefully crafted musical chimes that project various aesthetic proclivities and lifestyles are part of that human desire for self-reflection.

Sound Branding and Appliances Automobile manufacturers are not alone in their preoccupation with sound design. Most new appliances involve some type of sonic branding and aural component meant to interact with the consumer in one way or another. Whether it is the tones used in entering cooking times on a microwave or the sound of a television turning on, a mindboggling array of sounds (some musical in their conception) are produced by almost every form of electrical appliance made today. The sound of an Apple computer booting up is instantaneously recognizable around the world. Apple has, of course, patented the chime, which consists of a slightly flat (by approximately 30 cents) G flat/F sharp major chord. Stars Zorishi rice cookers play a monophonic version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to reinforce the brand every time it gets turned on. In 1995, motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson Inc. even tried, unsuccessfully, to “sound mark” (the U.S. patent office term for a sonic trademark) the distinctive syncopated chugging sound of its V-twin motorcycle engines (O’Dell, 2000).5 While seldom reflected upon, such sonic tags, sound marks, or product chimes are meaningful methods of interacting with the inanimate machines around us and are a significant source of projecting both information and identity not only of the product but also, in their aesthetic and sensory appeal, of the consumer who purchases them.6 Nonmusical product chimes often rely on common melodic conventions to impart their messages but distinguish themselves by relatively subtle changes in timbre. 5  The application was dropped in June 2000. 6  At the time of writing, the United States Patent and Trademark Office lists some 94 active sound marks (trademarked sounds), including the NBC chimes, the MGM roaring lion, Lucas Film’s THX “Deep Note” logo theme, and Homer Simpson’s “D’oh,” among others (United States Patent and Trademark Office, n.d.).

Designing Identities   197 Powering on a GE Monogram stove, for example, triggers two quick, ascending pianobased notes (“GE Develops New Sounds for Appliances,” 2012). Doing the same on a Hot Point machine generates the same notes, but strummed on a guitar. Ascending notes make sense for an “on” function and descending for “off,” a standard practice regardless of appliance type or brand. Depending on how those notes are played and the instrument or sound employed, a different sonic impression will result. Determining how we respond to certain sound signals and how to design the semantic associations of those sounds is a complex and sometimes imprecise calculation that lies outside the purview of the current study. Typically, companies employ test groups and psychoacousticians to aid in refining the communicative qualities of product sound cues and chimes (Langeveld et al., 2013). Transcending the generic beeps and buzzers of most appliances that tend to fall short of most people’s definitions of music, many companies, such as Stars Zorishi, have begun to incorporate more sounds that are, in fact, “musically” recognizable. General Electric, for example, recently produced a series of two-minute musical soundtracks for each of its four appliance lines. According to Lou Lenzi, director of design for GE Appliance, “We contracted a sound designer who . . . translated the visual cues and qualities associated with each brand into a soundtrack” (Winter, 2013). The first soundtrack unveiled was for the Monogram line. According to Lenzi, the classically inspired piano melody resembles “almost an Aaron Copland ballad” (Winter, 2013). In addition to projecting the sound of wealth and luxury typically associated with classical music, GE even attempts to project a sense of national identity, both for their corporate brand and for their customers. The theme for the GE line, according to Lenzi, has a “proud American feel,” featuring “a full orchestral sound, but modernized.” Moreover, the product brochure associated with the Monogram line directly compares the sophistication of the “classic sounds of piano and stringed instrumentation” with a “sense of refinement and distinction singular to the Monogram brand” (Winter, 2013). Monogram is the most sophisticated of the GE appliance brands. The architecture of Monogram devices is refined and timeless. In the Monogram sound track, the classic sounds of piano and stringed instrumentation provide the feelings of timelessness and richness. A determined piano melody, further developed by plucked strings and harp, conveys a sense of refinement and distinction singular to the Monogram brand. Finally, the 6/8 time signature weaves a feeling of structure throughout the piece so as to mimic the refined architecture of the Monogram devices. (GE Industrial Design, n.d.)

Somewhat concerning is how the company seems to be reinforcing socioeconomic stereotypes in the sounds and music associated with their various product lines. In contrast to the classical sounds associated with their Monogram series, GE’s value line, called Artistry, has a garage-band feel. The Café brand, which Lenzi called “our pro line,” employs a techno soundtrack “because it’s kind of a technology-oriented line” (Winter,  2013). Much like the brand-specific start-up chimes associated with Rolls Royce or Mini Cooper, these musical associations appear to categorize, brand, and

198   McLeod ­ therwise reinforce identity stereotypes of their potential buyers based on income and o presumed lifestyle choices. To some degree both BMW’s and GE’s sonic branding reinforce a form of aspirational consumption and an accompanying planned obsolescence rooted in class or status consciousness: the sounds associated with these products, while markers of current fashion, will doubtless become dated signifiers. It may be obvious that a product’s look and feel goes far in telling its story—conveying what it is meant to do and who it is meant to do it for—but sound can also be an important component in conveying that information. Companies like GE are clearly putting as much thought into designing the acoustic identities of their products as the visual ones. David Bingham, who heads the sound initiative at GE, explains their approach: “We had a lot of back and forth coming up with different expressions and images that collectively gave us a feeling for that brand. In brainstorming sessions, designers would ask each other questions like, ‘If this brand was a band, what band would it be?’ ” (Vanhemert, 2015). In this statement, GE can be seen as not only anthropomorphizing its appliances but also even viewing them as representing and potentially fulfilling the same popular cultural space as an actual band. Like automotive companies creating anthropomorphic identities for their cars, GE attempts to imbue its appliances with human feelings and identity. In addition to GE, a number of other appliance manufacturers have recently upgraded their sonic identities. Whirlpool’s latest high-end washers and dryers feature notification tones that are modeled on piano timbres in contrast to previous soulless and generic electronic beeps. LG’s washers and dryers commonly play a brief, unique tune, and many of Samsung’s washing machines present a monophonic digital rendition of Franz Schubert’s song, “Die Forelle.”7 In these and other appliances, classical music and/or timbres associated with classical music are the preferred associative sonic choices. Like the Monogram soundtrack described previously, this is intended to invoke ideas of wealth, luxury, and quality that have been stereotypically afforded the identity of classical and/or high art music. As such, the use of classical music in the sound branding of these appliances equates with a connection to social status, no matter how outdated or misconceived this association might be. Moreover, just like automobiles’ start-up tones and warnings, these musically derived product chimes impart specific melodies and sounds that help brand the appliance and impart a more recognizably human experience for operators that connects them more closely with the product. 7  One notable departure from the seemingly ubiquitous sonification of products and appliances is Microsoft Windows, which opted to remove any start-up chime from its Windows 10 operating system. The company claimed that “using a device should be about you, not announcing the device’s existence.” In a statement to Mashable.com, a Windows spokesperson explained the decision to remove what had previously been one of the most iconic and patented product chimes: When we modernized the soundscape of Windows, we intentionally quieted the system. Using Windows 10, you will only hear sounds for things that matter to you. We removed the startup sound because startup is not an interesting event on a modern device. Picking up and using a device should be about you, not announcing the device’s existence. (“The evolution of Windows startup sounds,” 2015)

Designing Identities   199

Conclusions As computer chips and digital technologies become ever more powerful and less costly to produce, we can only assume that sound branding in our cars and other appliances will become ever more sophisticated and omnipresent. In many ways, the practice of sound branding appears to overtly reinforce Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum that the medium is the message: in the case of car or appliance sound marks or alert chimes, the sonic “message,” so to speak, is inherently fused with the attempt to brand and sell the product (the medium) that conveys that message. It seems clear that, be it in automobiles, stoves, washing machines, or almost any other appliance with which we interact, more and more attention is being paid to the sonic relationship between humans and our tools. I use the term “relationship” intentionally as it seems evident that, at least in part, what is occurring is an emphasis on creating increasingly intimate anthropomorphic relationships between ourselves and the inanimate (albeit “smart” or “intelligent”) technologies that surround us. The sounds and music emanating from our appliances and cars, whether consequential or intentional, all serve both to further brand identification and to promote and advertise our own identities: it is we, as consumers, who have chosen, albeit often subject to budgetary restrictions, to identify ourselves with whatever product and its related branding we buy. Just like a pop song, sound tags and sonic logos, whether musically inspired or not, are ultimately designed to produce an “I like it and would like to associate myself with it” response from consumers. Both composed music and specifically designed product sounds and soundtracks remove the perceived threat of the chaotic, consequential noise of the machine. In essence, they give the user of the appliance some sense of control and security. Referencing the work of Tia DeNora, Brandon LaBelle recognizes this sense of auditory bonding as “music affords a kind of auditory device on to which one can latch in some way or other,” underscoring music as “a resource for the constitution of embodied security” (LaBelle, 2010, pp. 143–144). As such the increasing sonification of our technology helps to humanize it. It provides the user with the assurance of a human presence—a vibratory sonic interface between machine, the machine’s creators, and the machine’s operators. LaBelle further opines that “auditory latching can be appreciated as existing below the audible field, and within the vibratory sensing . . . granting us a deep vocabulary of how to feel” (2010, p. 138). Indeed, the sound of our computer booting up, or of the engine of our car starting, often precisely provides us with a feeling of reassurance that everything is working properly. Furthermore, both the “intentional” sounds and the more subconscious “consequential” sounds (the vibrations of which are more likely to be felt than consciously heard) are important in establishing how we feel about and relate to our machines. Product sound designers thus supply a sonic vibratory language with which we communicate and bond with our cars and appliances. The growing ubiquity of sonic branding in automobiles and elsewhere also testifies to the increasing proclivity to commodity fetishism and the penetration and assimilation

200   McLeod of corporate culture into our individual daily consciousness. Bombarded by, and immersed in, myriad advertising touchpoints, many of which we may not even be aware of, we are increasingly becoming, and encouraged to become, branded individuals. Branding, sonic or otherwise, is part of a culture industry that creates fantasies that structure our social reality. The notion of consumption has become more than the simple acquisition and use of goods; it has been expanded to encompass how we relate to our goods as almost social entities. In this manner, sonic branding and its concomitant desire to create an anthropomorphic relationship with a product fit well with the legal definition of a corporation. Derived from the Latin word corpus (or body), the corporation is itself an anthropomorphic entity referring to a company or group of persons authorized to act as a single entity with many of the same legal rights and responsibilities as an actual living person. Thus, the corporation creates products that are extensions of itself and that, in turn, help construct our own sense of corporality through advertising and branding strategies. In the end the sonic chimes, beeps, warnings, and other forms of audio branding all combine to create aurally haptic connections to the products we are using and, by extension, the corporate body that produces them. As such, sound branding through intentionally designed product sounds serves both to mitigate and reinterpret the consequential (and potentially alienating) sounds of the car or appliance while simultaneously creating anthropomorphic brand “identities” for that same machine, its manufacturers, and its users.

Recommended Readings Aronczyk, M., & Powers, D. (2010). Blowing up the brand. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Bijsterveld, K., Cleophas, E., Krebs, S., & Mom, G. (2014). Sound and safe: A history of listening behind the wheel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lury, C. (2004). Brands: The logos of the global economy. New York, NY: Routledge. Meier, L. M. (2011). Promotional ubiquitous musics: Recording artists, brands, and “rendering authenticity.” Popular Music and Society, 34(4), 399–415.

References Allan, D. (2005). An essay on popular music in advertising: The bankruptcy of culture or the marriage of art and commerce? Advertising and Society Review, 6(1). Retrieved September 17, 2105, from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr/v006/6.1allan.html Aronczyk, M., & Powers, D. (2010). Blowing up the brand. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Arvidsson, A. (2006). Brands: Meaning and value in media culture. New York, NY: Routledge. Audi Corporate Strategy. (n.d.). Retrieved May 21, 2016, from http://www.audi.com/­corporate/ en/company/corporate-strategy.html Audi Sound Studio. (2011). Retrieved June 8, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HNQam68x2l8 Auslander, P. (2012). Digital liveness: A historico-philosophical perspective. Journal of Performance and Art, 34(3), 3–11.

Designing Identities   201 Bijsterveld, K., Cleophas, E., Krebs, S., & Mom, G. (2014). Sound and safe: A history of listening behind the wheel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. BMW Group. (2013, March 18). New sound logo for BMW brand [Press Release]. Retrieved September 17, 2015, from https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/canada/pressDetail. html?title=new-sound-logo-for-bmw-brand&outputChannelId=21&id=T0138168EN& left_menu_item=node__809 BMW Sound Designers. (2013). BMW Quality. Retrieved March 24, 2013, from http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=tqZcSPXPhcc Bull, M. (2003). Soundscapes of the car: A critical study of automobile habitation. In M. Bull & L. Back (Eds.), The auditory culture reader (pp. 357–374). Oxford, UK: Berg. Carah, N. (2010). Pop brands: Branding popular music and young people. New York, NY: Peter Lang. de Vries, I., & van Elferen, I. (2010). The musical Madeleine: Communication, performance, and identity in musical ringtones. Popular Music and Society, 33(1), 61–74. Dyson, F. (2009). Sounding new media: Immersion and embodiment in the arts and culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Frank, T. (1998). The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. GE develops new sounds for appliances. (2012). Retrieved January 6, 2016, from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1JWSWvSeo GE Industrial Design. (n.d.). Monogram sound design for Monogram appliance line [Brochure]. Gilroy, P. (2001). Driving while black. In D. Miller (Ed.), Car cultures (pp. 133–152). Oxford, UK: Berg. Gluckman, D. (2014, October 3). 2015 Ford F-150 pumps V8 engine into V6 trucks. Road and Track. Retrieved June 9, 2016, from http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/videos/a8788/ the-2015-ford-f-150-pumps-v8-engine-noise-into-v6-trucks Goodwin, A. (2011, September 23). BMW M5 generates fake engine noise using stereo. cnet. Retrieved May 12, 2016, from http://www.cnet.com/news/bmw-m5-generates-fake-enginenoise-using-stereo Gopinath, S. (2013). The ringtone dialectic: Economy and cultural form. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Hainge, G. (2013). Noise matters: Towards an ontology of noise. London, UK: Bloomsbury. Klein, B. (2008). In perfect harmony: Popular music and cola advertising. Popular Music and Society, 31(1), 1–20. Klein, B. (2009). As heard on TV: Popular music and advertising. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. LaBelle, B. (2010). Acoustic territories: Sound culture and everyday life. New York, NY: Continuum. Langeveld, L., van Egmond, R., Jansen, R., & Özcan, E. (2013). Product sound design: Intentional and consequential sounds. In D.  Coelho (Ed.), Advances in industrial design engineering. Intech. Retrieved January 9, 2016, from http://www.intechopen.com/books/ advances-in-industrial-design-engineering/product-sound-design-intentional-andconsequential-sounds Lim, W. M. (2012). Understanding consumer values and socialization: A case of luxury products. Management & Marketing Challenges for the Knowledge Society, 7(2), 209–220. Lufthansa—Symphony of angels. (2009, April 21). Retrieved September 12, 2015, from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8wSyKjgoLk

202   McLeod Lury, C. (2004). Brands: The logos of the global economy. New York, NY: Routledge. Meier, L. M. (2011). Promotional ubiquitous musics: Recording artists, brands, and “rendering authenticity.” Popular Music and Society, 34(4), 399–415. O’Dell, J. (2000, June 21). Harley-Davidson quits trying to hog sound. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 5, 2015, from http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jun/21/business/ fi-43,145 Rodman, R. (1997). Now an ideology from our sponsor: Musical style and semiosis in American television commercials. College Music Symposium, 37, 21–48. Sheller, M. (2007). Bodies, cybercars and the mundane incorporation of automated mobilities. Social & Cultural Geography, 8(2), 175–197. Sixième Son. (2015). Retrieved September 5, 2015, from http://www.sixiemeson.com/en/ audio-identity-sncf.html Smith, S. E. (1999). Dancing in the street: Motown and the cultural politics of Detroit. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. SNCF musique officielle. (2007, November 15). Retrieved May 14, 2016, from https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=8OSfOTsXYNY Sound file: The new Audi heartbeat. (2010, July 9). Fortitude: Audi News. Retrieved January 9, 2016, from http://www.fourtitude.com/news/publish/Audi_News/article_6102.shtml Taylor, T. D. (2007). The changing shape of the culture industry; or, how did electronica music get into television commercials? Television & New Media, 8(3), 235–258. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising music and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tesla Forum Suskis. (2010, October 19). Give us Roadster’s engine sound for download! Retrieved November 9, 2015, from http://my.teslamotors.com/it_IT/forum/forums/ give-us-roadsters-engine-sound-download The evolution of Windows startup sounds from Windows 3.1 to 10. (2015, July 31). Mashable. com. Retrieved December 10, 2015, from http://mashable.com/2015/07/31/windows-evolutionstartup-sounds/#H4VUdx0vKsqj United States Patent and Trademark Office. (n.d.). Trademark “sound mark” examples. Retrieved June 6, 2015, from http://www.uspto.gov/trademark/soundmarks/trademarksound-mark-examples Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Vanhemert, K. (2015, August 28). GE’s new emphasis in appliances: Sound design. Retrieved June 21, 2019, from http://web.archive.org/web/20160516215754/http://www.fastcodesign .com/1671333/ges-new-emphasis-in-appliances-sound-design Williams, J. A. (2010). “You never been on a ride like this befo”: Los Angeles, automotive listening, and Dr. Dre’s “G-Funk.” Popular Music History, 4(2), 160–176. Winter, C. (2013, December 2). The dishwasher sonata: GE appliances get their own tunes. Businessweek.com. Retrieved March 12, 2016, from http://www.businessweek.com/ articles/2013-12-02/the-dishwasher-sonata-ge-appliances-get-their-own-tunes Woodyard, C. (2012, April 24). Top ten car brands for women are long on style. USAToday. Retrieved July 30, 2016, from http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/ post/2012/04/top-10-car-brands-for-women-are-small-and-stylish/1#.VjTdJKSzBFU

chapter 9

M usic Su perv ision a n d Br a n di ng i n a n Er a of “Con v ergen t A dv ertisi ng” Tim J. Anderson

This chapter details the rise of two contemporaneous and intertwining movements in popular music in the 21st century: the importance of branding in music and the rise of a practice in music supervision—that is, the placement of precomposed and recorded music in audiovisual media. While the two practices of branding and music supervision have long existed, the idea that both are somehow connected is relatively new. This connection between the two is the result of a crisis wherein the entire popular music ecosystem moved from economies based on the sales of objects to one based on the licensing of intellectual properties. This is not to say that musicians, producers, and labels are no longer concerned with the sale of records. Rather, the sale of records is no longer the industry’s primary concern. Instead, artists, their management, and intermediaries are now all attuned to the importance of reputation. This focus on reputation for both musicians and other media properties have demanded a convergence of two once-distinct practices around a new set of alliances. Brand management and the placement of music in films and television came together to mutually benefit both in a new millennium of already-cluttered media of channels, nodes for distribution, and formats. As with any paradigm shift, the crises that make old practices obsolete demand a set of experiments to see what works next; the combination of these two different aims and practices was neither smooth nor inevitable. Still, by the mid-2000s, one of the missions that has become clear for every player in the new music industry ecosystem is to develop a “brand strategy.” This chapter details this new strategic focus while underscoring both how and why it stems from a new economic paradigm that is devoted to the creation and analysis of networked data. Throughout, I draw from trade literature to underscore the concerns and practices that have emerged with regard to music and branding as a means

204   Anderson of publicity. Furthermore, these concerns are addressed with film, television, and the social media platforms that all 21st-century music acts must negotiate. By the end of the 1990s, the music industry would soon wax nostalgic for immature networks of bad actors easily identified and sued and their dangers quarantined. The internet of the 1990s would soon sprawl out into a content-riddled mess of 21st-century platforms, networks, and apps that would demand a new set of commitments and practices from both the music industry and digital entrepreneurs (Anderson, 2014, 2015; Baym, 2011; Burkhart & McCourt, 2006; Wikström, 2009). The paradigmatic upheaval caused by the growth of ubiquitous peer-to-peer information networks, the seemingly infinite growth of both storage capacity and the speed of computer processing, and the entry of new formats and platforms shook up a music industry that was arguably at the peak of its economic prowess. As these actors effectively eliminated whatever residual monoculture that had survived the rise of cable and satellite distribution systems, the explosion of data, devices, and performers ushered in new concepts such as “wikis,” “user generated,” and “tweets” that quickly became part of a lingua franca. As everyday users connected to platforms in Silicon Valley and policymakers in Washington, DC fretted about issues of value and fairness, musicians and entrepreneurs alike came to the conclusion that they needed to reckon with the fact that, simply put, everything that most everyone once thought they knew had not simply changed, but had become a new ecosystem, replete with new rules and strategies that very few constituents understood and had no choice but to discover.

Branding Sound Perhaps no better example of this exists than the long-standing symbiotic relationship between two significant media actors, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and the Who. As one of the most iconic media franchises of the 2000s, CSI’s association with one of the most iconic rock acts of the 1960s and 1970s is more complex than a simple licensing deal. Indeed, the motives behind each party entail numerous aspects pertinent to convergence and branding that explains why the Who’s repertoire is so closely aligned with the franchise. For example, the debut of CSI in 2000 was immediately noted by a distinctly flashy style that made it immediately recognizable. Unlike many procedural crime shows before it, CSI was anything but stylistically restrained. While computer-generated close-up shots of forensic evidence and the graphic depiction of violence garnered the most significant amount of critical attention, less noted was the significant use of hit records by the Who for the original program and the subsequent television programs of the franchise: CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, and CSI: Cyber. The choice of using iconic recordings from the Who such as “Who Are You?” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the show’s most famous executive producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, fulfilled a need to reinforce his brand. Just like Bruckheimer’s many blockbuster films such as Flashdance, Top Gun, Armageddon, and The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise,

Music Supervision and Branding   205 his television program would “rely heavily on music and have a pricey, stylized look that help create and reinforce his brand” (Keveney,  2003, p. 1E). Furthermore, television audiences now seemed to demand that popular songs and records find their way into their favorite programs. As Billy Gottlieb, the music supervisor for the crime drama Bones, puts it, “[Popular music] used to be the bastard stepchild—the last thing a studio wanted to do was put extra money into the music. But now there’s an expectation that audiences want to hear new music and not some standard needle drop” (Whitmire, 2005, p. 33). Furthermore, in an environment where cable had multiplied the number of channels and programs from relatively few to a seemingly never-ending supply, the utility of combining a signature visual style and legacy recordings would make the program stand out, as Carol Mendelsohn, another executive producer for CSI, noted in 2003. For Mendelsohn, the goal of this style in the first season of CSI was to envision viewers channel surfing and these sounds and images would make people quickly recognize that program “and say that’s a Bruckheimer show” (Keveney, 2003, p. 1E). Echoing this point, W. G. Snuffy Walden, the television composer of themes for The West Wing and thirtysomething, noted that one of the reasons that programs like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation licensed “Who Are You” as its theme is that “everything in the industry moves so fast now, [and] people are looking for every advantage to make a quick impression” (Callaghan, 2004, as cited in Anderson, 2014, p. 147). Branding as a kind of synthesis of every aesthetic factor that communicates a quick impression is nothing new. The idea that every feature including font, color, texture, shape, and sound should be “on brand” is a standard operating principle for any successful franchise, whether they be organized toward the sale of goods or services. However, what is important is that ability of a product or program to achieve instant recognizability as the first step to generating “brand loyalty,” a quality that is now viewed as a key to success in an economy that trades on affection. As Henry Jenkins explains: Marketers seek to shape brand reputations, not through an individual transaction but through the sum total of interactions with the consumer—an ongoing process that increasingly occurs across a range of different media “touch points.” They don’t simply want to get a consumer to make a single purchase, but rather to build a longterm relationship with a brand. New models of marketing seek to expand consumer’s [sic] emotional, social, and intellectual investments with the goal of shaping consumption patterns.  (Jenkins, 2006, p. 63)

Jenkins’ notes here are particularly relevant to what he and others would label as “transmedia storytelling.” Utilizing the Matrix franchise for his example, Jenkins explains that this storytelling technique is designed to develop a “new aesthetic” that places “new demands on consumers and depends on the active participation of knowledge communities. Transmedia storytelling is the art of world making” (Jenkins, 2006, pp. 20–21). For many 21st-century television producers, franchising and “world making” are one in the same, which was also true of CSI. Enveloping your audience within a particular world has become both the explicit narrative and

206   Anderson e­ conomic aim of series like CSI. As Mercedes Gamero, head of acquisitions and sales for the Spain-based channel Antena 3, explained to Variety, the appeal of series like CSI for the channel is that “series tie audiences down, [they] create brands. If you pick up a franchise series, you have a years-long brand” (De Pablos, 2006, p. B16). CSI’s brand was indeed substantial: Not only would it achieve a decade-and-a-half run of production that would include four distinct series, but also it would spawn novels, comics, games, toys, and a traveling museum exhibit entitled CSI: The Experience. CSI’s initial 15 years of longevity is notable not only for television but also for any media franchise. Indeed, there is no reason to think that the franchise will not make a comeback in some form of a reboot, like many rock acts that have once retired and found a way on stage in search of ticket and T-shirt sales.

Sound Placements By no means do I wish to imply that the Who, which effectively retired in 1983, returned in 1989 only to do so for merch money and the gate. What is interesting is that the Who franchise could weather a retirement and no new commercial recordings for over two decades and continue to have a global brand, which testifies to the act’s persistent purchase on public ears. Of course, no one can claim that using popular Who records was the reason that the CSI franchise gained a global foothold. However, making these records declarative entries into each episode was not simply a branding strategy for CSI—the Who found the placement of their recordings as mutually beneficial. In fact, even as the Who was licensing their records to the program, the issue of branding quickly became the concern of the entire music industry. As the across-the-board sales of physical records dried up, recording artists and their investors had to find new income streams. For some that meant performing more often, and for others that meant discovering more ways to exploit their catalog. Though at the time the Who was an aging legacy act whose then–three main members of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwhistle claimed the mean age of just over 55 years and had not released a new studio record for 18 years at the time of CSI’s debut, the show’s title-sequence use of the act’s 1978 record “Who Are You” placed the group back into the public eye (and ear). Attaching these records to a blockbuster television franchise would offer the group greater weekly exposure to more listeners than any set of world tours ever could. Indeed, the CSI franchise’s use of four distinct Who recordings would provide a decade’s worth of publicity that would propel the venerable set of musicians deep into a decade in a manner that would minimize the demands of the road. Despite the fact that John Entwhistle, one of the founding members of the band, passed away in 2002 while on tour with the act, the Who would eventually release a new studio album in 2006 and continue to perform onstage. The act’s performances would culminate in 2010 with a set at the Superbowl halftime, which was being broadcast on CSI’s U.S. network, CBS. As the Who’s lead vocalist, Roger Daltrey, told the New York Times in

Music Supervision and Branding   207 2008, “if you really want to be an ongoing band, you have to keep putting yourself out there” (Salkin,  2008). Daltrey’s comment was more of a complaint, however, for he asserted that “he wanted the band to tour for three to four months every year and to regularly record albums” (Salkin, 2008). One could not blame Daltrey for wanting the band to remain active. For the first two decades of the band’s existence, the Who regularly released records and toured to promote and sell them. However, as the 21st century eliminated this as a model that labels invested in, the primary incentive structure behind touring changed radically. Touring was no longer about generating residual income through the sale of records—to tour now would be more about making money directly from the sales of tickets and merchandise. As is the case of any paradigm shift, some practitioners adapt and some do not. Daltrey’s desire to continue touring and release records placed him in a distinctly different position than his bandmate Pete Townshend. As the band’s primary songwriter, Townshend’s economic investment in the band is significantly different than the other performers, for he receives residuals not only when the Who’s records are sold but also when they are played in public. Furthermore, Townshend receives residuals when his songs are covered, sampled, and licensed. Indeed, in the case of a hit Who record with a song penned by Townshend, any licensing of that record could possibly pay him twice: once as a performer and the other as the writer. The need to license recorded and written catalogs of records and songs has grown precipitously as record sales have quickly diminished from their late 1990s peak. As I will discuss later, the collapse of this income stream sent labels looking for a new investment strategy. This collapse also sent singer-songwriters scrambling for new sources of residual income, for they saw their mechanical rate checks plummet as record sales diminished. For many this meant finding a way to exploit their already existing assets by licensing them to an already expanding ecosystem of film and television producers who needed music so that their products could find a competitive purchase on a rapidly multiplying set of internet video platforms. Pete Townshend has long been aware of the power of licensing. Townshend’s compositions were licensed to CSI five years before the launch of YouTube in 2005. Indeed, Who songs had already found their use as soundtracks in advertisements for cars and allergy medicines. However, as one Rolling Stone reporter put it in 2012, this licensing “was just the beginning”: In 2012, Townshend announced he was selling the publishing rights to “his vast catalog of songs to the Spirit Music Group.” A so-called boutique firm, the Spirit Music Group already controlled the rights to a number of songs by classic rock acts such as Lou Reed and the Grateful Dead. However, Spirit, which had spent three years negotiating with Townshend, planned to use the entirety of his catalog to “place the Who’s music even more aggressively in movies, TV and other media.” The firm’s president, Mark Fried, explained that the firm would be “looking at [Townshend’s] entire body of work.” Their reason was simple: to find unmined gems and highlight them: Of the roughly 400 songs that Town­shend has written, a mere seven tracks—hits like 1971’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and 1978’s “Who Are You”—currently attract

208   Anderson about 96 percent of the Who’s TV and film licensing. “It’s criminal,” says Fried, who hopes to place more obscure cuts like the 1968 B side “Call Me Lightning” soon. (Greene, 2012)

While neither party would disclose the amount of the deal, some industry insiders claimed that it could top $100 million (Greene, 2012). The importance of these deals with CSI or Spirit Music Group do not reside simply in the largesse provided to Townshend. Neither deal provided funds necessary for him to invest in any “new work.” Indeed, like a typical blockbuster production, CSI used the Who to leverage the act’s status as what the industry labels as a “presold property,” that is, an act or asset that is already well known to the general public as it has been promoted for a significant period of time. As such, CSI’s use of the Who trades on the band’s sound and its hits for their instant recognizability. Commissioning new compositions and records were not part of CSI’s aim, and the same was true of Spirit. While Townshend would be retained by the company, it would not be as a composer but as a “consultant,” and he would retain no formal veto power of how to guide Spirit on how they should use his catalog (Greene, 2012). Nevertheless, as part of a band that had always walked a fine line between commerce and art—one of the Who’s most inspired albums was their 1967 release entitled The Who Sell Out—one can assume that Townshend would do all he could to ensure the balance between the exposure his catalog would receive and the potential effect it had on both those works and the Who’s reputation. In this sense Townshend was effectively establishing the balance that every brand manager tries to establish: a balance that attempts to optimize cash flow while protecting and enhancing a brand’s reputation.

Branding Bands The Who is only one example of an act that is directly involved with a set of intermediaries to make certain that their brand is associated with specific franchises and products. Interesting for this chapter is not which other acts are involved in this context nor with whom they are affiliating; rather, it is the fact that branding has become such a concern for acts of all sizes. It might feel logical to argue that part of the reason musicians have become concerned with branding is due to the rise of social media in the early years of the 21st century as part of everyday life. Undoubtedly, the ascendance of social media has allowed artists of all stripes to avoid traditional gatekeepers such as the print press, radio, and television to connect with and build loyal audiences, an aspect that will be addressed later. However, the most important factor that has pushed musicians toward the concept of branding has been the rise of “all rights” contracts in the 2000s. By the middle of the decade major labels had given up on financing artists simply to produce and profit from records and had begun to sign musicians with the expectation and demand that the label

Music Supervision and Branding   209 would profit from every possible income stream. Also known as “360 deals,” this new contract quickly became the norm for major labels, whereby they would both recoup their investments and profit from every aspect of an artist’s career (Anderson, 2014). To put it simply, bands were now positioned to become brands that not only sell records and concert tickets but also license images, appearances in films, publishing, merchandise, and anything else that a record company typically considered ancillary. In fact, the entire ecosystem of investors, lawyers, producers, and management spent the last decade-and-a-half restructuring themselves to undertake far more than sell records. Furthermore, because branding is not a concern solely limited to any one industry, entities once considered outside the province of the record industry have also decided to invest in musical acts (Anderson, 2014, p. 164). While the most prominent example of this has been the live music venue management firm Live Nation, which made significant “360 deals” with artists Jay-Z, U2, Shakira, Madonna, Nickelback, and others in the mid-2000s (Waddell, 2007, 2008), an investor such as the global spirits brand Bacardi decided to sign Groove Armada, a dance act, to a one-year multiplerights deal in 2008, whereby the act would produce and promote new music at Bacardi events and for the company’s advertising campaigns (Brandle, 2008). During that year Billboard reported that Groove Armada would tour with support from the spirits company (Smith,  2008) and release free of charge a new set of recordings online (Sutherland, 2009). By 2009, Dan O’Neill, founder and owner of Angle Management—a U.K.-based company devoted to managing the creative industries—would claim that the issue of branding for artists writ large was ripe for change and they were willing to lead the way: There haven’t been many branding deals beyond artist endorsement of a product in return for [a] chunk of change. What we have tried to do is create a viable business value chain between artist and fan. In that sense, it is trying to do something ­different.  (Sutherland, 2009, p. 31)

This “something different” was not simply being explored by O’Neill. A number of artists began to pursue a more direct relationship with their fans, and one such aim was to accrue “1,000 True Fans” (Anderson, 2014). Coined by the techno evangelist and ­former publisher and editor of The Whole Earth Catalog, Kevin Kelly, the idea was that musical acts could use the internet to explore niches and find 1,000 fans who would spend around $100 a year combined on performances and goods (i.e., merchandise and recordings), thereby grossing artists $100,000 a year in baseline income. As Kelly explains: A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you

210   Anderson sign their copies. They buy the T-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.  (Kelly, 2008)

While Kelly felt like planning to grow one’s stable of “True Fans” was a plan that could engage any artistic entrepreneur, in the world of music this strategy found its greatest purchase as a source of debate and inspiration throughout the late 2000s and into the 2010s (Anderson, 2014). While it is clear that the “1,000 True Fans” strategy has not been fully adopted by the popular music industry, musicians nevertheless understand they must learn how to use the internet as a new forum for publicity. What has appeared in numerous forums is a mass of online literature dedicated to discussing how bands and musicians could grow their brand. Blog posts entitled “8 Ways to Build and Strengthen Your Band’s Brand” (Usenza, 2014), “10 Musician Mistakes: You Don’t Have a Brand Strategy“ (Kusek, 2014), and “A Musician’s Ultimate Guide to Branding” (2016) are simply three examples of the abundant advice columns that offer tips and strategic examples of how musicians can brand themselves. This literature advises musicians to work with social media as a means to establish a narrative. For example, one post explains to artists that “ ‘Branding’ is essentially telling your story in a way that sets you apart from other musicians and connects you with your fans.” Furthermore, “Your brand should be at the heart of your marketing strategy—everything that you share, publish, and promote should be in line with the values and brand identity that you’ve defined” (Hackett, 2016). As the post noted, musicians should “think of your brand/band as a character,” and just like any character in a play, the band needs to be defined and have something consistent to say. Suggestions about how bands can define their brand strategy begin with reminders that because “your brand is your story” you should “define it by focusing on what drives you, inspires you, and sets you apart” (Hackett, 2016). The author poses questions such as “What are the themes of your work? What values are most important to you as an artist? What inspires you? How would you describe your personal style? How do you want your audience to describe your live show?” Such questions demand that artists make these elements and attitudes both more focused and more publicized. As such, an artist must think about the language and tone that best represent your brand, and the artwork and imagery that fits your aesthetic. Be specific, be unique, and incorporate the parts of your personality that you feel comfortable sharing. The more you can flesh out the character of your brand, the easier it will be to establish consistent marketing habits and build a recognizable presence.  (Hackett, 2016)

That presence needs to be shared; the blog’s advice challenged artists to push yourself to come up with a list of ideas that your brand “character” would share, interests that you want to explore with your followers, and images or photos that fit the look you want to project. Don’t forget to research the best social media platforms to post your content.  (Hackett, 2016)

Music Supervision and Branding   211 And, of course, this content has to come out regularly with the artists creating and abiding by a schedule of branding projects focused on using these tools to build brand/artist/ band public identity (Hackett, 2016). The distinction between brand and artist/band identity is thin, perhaps meaningless. To be sure, successful bands and artists have long created logos, signature sounds, looks, images, and narratives.1 For the remainder of this chapter, I would like to highlight this slippage between brand and band to explain how these worlds have found a connection through the intermediary route of music supervision.

Branding Musical Identities I have written elsewhere about the example of Bon Jovi, particularly the band’s lead singer, Jon Bon Jovi, as an act that has successfully negotiated the shift from an industry concerned with the sale of records to one dedicated to the growth of brand recognition through an active solicitation of television placements (Anderson, 2013, 2014). It is fair to say that Jon Bon Jovi’s efforts to place him and his band’s music on Major League Baseball and NBC programming helped him garner not only more record and ticket sales but also enough of a foothold to extend his brands into the realm of groceries. In February of 2012 Bon Jovi launched Bongiovi Pasta Sauces with the claim that the recipe for the marinara sauce had been “passed down through three generations of family members, originating in Sciacca, Sicily, in the late 1800s” (Beveridge, 2014). The success of the sauce would not be his only entry into food branding. In early 2018 Bon Jovi announced that he was producing a wine in collaboration with the notable French winemaker Gérard Bertrand that would be available in the United States by spring of the same year. Like the pasta sauce, the rosé would have a family connection. Reportedly inspired by Bon Jovi’s son, Jesse Bongiovi, “the idea was to create a wine emblematic of a bon vivant lifestyle as experience [sic] in the Hamptons where the Bon Jovis summer.” Jesse Bongiovi came up with the name “Diving Into Hampton Water,” and as Bertrand, who hosts an annual jazz festival in France, explained, “for me the connection between wine and music is organic. I want to create a link between the emotions that spark off a great song and good wine. They elevate each other” (Jordan, 2018). By March 2018, Food & Wine would report that the entire 2017 production of the wine allocated had been purchased by suppliers and was out of the Bertrand warehouses. As the report noted, the product’s popularity was predictable. Combining rosé with the Hamptons was one thing. Adding Bon Jovi to the equation was another, and, as Bertrand 1  Indeed, this distinction of brand and band identities may be negligible because the two concepts evolved in a parallel fashion. If and how this happened is the province of a yet-to-be-written but important set of essays. My concern here is that we recognize that the two share more than a nearhomophonic resemblance.

212   Anderson noted about his first wine partnership, the process was “like collaborating on a song” (Pomranz, 2018). This combination of identity and product is no surprise to many. In fact, combining a musician’s brand identity with alcohol is relatively common. Eric Sheinkop, president and CEO of Music Dealers, a music licensing platform, and coauthor of a book on how music can help brands grow their value, explains this linkage: “Music brings value to a brand in three ways: identity, engagement, currency”: Using music to establish an emotional connection with a brand, increases brand recognition, creates excitement and buzz beyond the brand’s core products or services, and can empower consumers, giving them valuable content to discover and share. Music creates the value that brands need to win the war for attention and develop a genuine connection with their consumers. When used correctly, music not only creates loyalty, but true advocacy.  (Olenski, 2014)

This issue of “true advocacy” is as substantial for some artists as association with a product, whether it be liquor or a film. The prominent inclusion of an album or song in a commercial campaign or in a scene can be heard as an endorsement, a factor that bands and brands do not take lightly. These kinds of endorsements have placed a number of musicians into a rather difficult position vis-à-vis placing a record in a commercial or film. This is especially true of legacy music acts that are ideologically connected to movements that have stressed countercultural values and commitments. For example, in a feature entitled “Selling Records or Selling Out?,” Sean Alfano of CBS This Morning humorously compared the question of whether “it is ethical for a rock musician to let his songs be used in TV commercials” with other dilemmas such as capital punishment and abortion. He noted that, at that time, while the Beatles did not control their publishing, the remaining members of the band had sued some advertisers to stop them from using their songs. Indeed, many boomer musicians felt the same way, with Tom Petty, John Fogerty, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello refusing numerous offers to license their songs to commercials. While Neil Young wrote a song “This Note’s for You”2 in order to mock “musicians who sold out,” Tom Waits has “successfully sued to stop ad agencies from hiring Tom Waits sound-alikes” (Alfano, 2006). Still, a number of other boomer rock stars’ attitudes had begun to change. Most notable was Led Zeppelin, who had refused to license their songs and records for commercials and films for years. Following Sting’s example in 2000 of licensing a song to Jaguar after radio had initially refused to play the song, the act licensed their song “Rock and Roll” in 2002 to Cadillac to use in their commercials. Like Sting, Led Zeppelin’s explanation at the time was 2  Neil Young’s contempt for rock’s effective assimilation into 1980s corporate culture was best expressed by his 1988 album This Note’s for You, which includes the eponymously titled song. Both the title song and the album refer to Budweiser’s “This Bud’s for You” marketing campaign of the same period. Young’s promotional video for the song directly parodies a late-1980s Michelob beer campaign that included rock stars Genesis, Eric Clapton, and Steve Winwood, artists of the late 1960s and 1970s whose countercultural aspirations and stylings once resisted such corporate overtures.

Music Supervision and Branding   213 one of access: Their music was no longer played on mainstream radio outlets the way it had been and “they wanted to keep their music in front of a big audience.” Conveniently, “TV commercials offered a way to do that and get paid for it” (Alfano, 2006). So substantial was Led Zeppelin’s presence in the Cadillac commercial that the electronic musician and composer RJD2 noted that “it’s arguable which has the stronger brand identity” (Pizzo, 2015). Indeed, Led Zeppelin’s famously firm grip on its catalog positioned it in once-restricted territories. In 2007, four years after the opening of the iTunes store, the band finally allowed its songs to be sold online. Still, the act has continued to be judicious to whom they license their material. As the famed music supervisor Randall Poster, who licensed “Immigrant Song” for a scene in School of Rock, explained, “It’s a very special thing to have one in your movie. It’s the holy sound of the temple of rock” (Leeds, 2007). To retain this sense of uniqueness, Led Zeppelin has remained “notoriously picky about allowing its music to be used in films” and “their asking price remains high, often in the neighborhood of a sevenfigure fee” (Whipp, 2012). As Josh Rabinowitz, an executive in charge of music at Grey Advertising, summarized, for a big act like Led Zeppelin, “it has got to be a big money deal. Otherwise they don’t do it” (McMains, 2014). Of course, Led Zeppelin is not the only significant act to connect themselves to commercials. In the 21st century, the Swedish pop artist Robyn starred in a two-and-a-halfminute commercial for Volvo; Jack White penned an ad jingle; and U2, Cat Power, and the Pixies have all had their music sell iPods and iPhones. As record sales plummeted, the searching for new revenue streams had normalized the process. Sara Quin of the act Tegan & Sara described why they decided to write a song for Oreo: A tiny sliver of bands are doing well. The rest of us are just middle class, looking for a way to break through that glass ceiling. The second [we] got Top 40 radio play, we were involved in meetings with radio and marketing people who said, “The next step is getting a commercial.” I can see why some bands might find that grotesque, but it’s part of the business now.  (Parkinson, 2014)

Indeed, when it comes to the issue of “selling out,” as Gandhar Sarvur noted in 2011, “People have definitely softened their opinions a lot over the last few years on what exactly constitutes selling out.” Sarvur, who worked at the postpunk independent label Matador Records and later at the film, television, and commercial licensing company Bank Robber Music, explained: When I was growing up, if a band we worshiped signed to a major label, we were horrified. And that same sort of mentality affected bands taking license for certain brands or ads. These days, not only is everybody accepting of it, but that’s how a lot of people are coming across new music.  (Caldwell, 2011)

In the case of the Austin, Texas, garage-rock act English Teeth, the act and publishing company established a long-standing relationship with the Will Ferrell and Adam McKay production company Gary Sanchez Productions and reoriented its entire mode

214   Anderson of musical operation: “I stopped playing and just wanted to do licensing because I couldn’t make any money touring. I started focusing on just doing movies and some commercial jingle stuff.” Furthermore, to be honest, [the band] is based around music licensing. I don’t plan to tour; I’ll keep putting out records, these little EPs with little overhead where, if we can license one song, we can make the recording pay for itself. It’s like putting the egg before the chicken. (Caldwell, 2011)

Of course, not every musician who has experienced substantial success as a licensor feels this way. Composer of the Mad Men title song “A Beautiful Mine,” Ramble Jon Krohn, better known under his pen name, RJD2, explains that, while this is an aspect of the industry, it is not the sole driver for his composition process. He explained: I’m not going to go into the studio and consider the commercial viability of the song I am making. For me, that line is compromising on the creation of the song. I need to make whatever music I want to make. Once the song is done, then I can look at ways it can be presented.  (Pizzo, 2015)

The Importance of Music Supervision Of course, not every musician is as savvy or discriminating as the aforementioned acts. For the majority of acts and labels, finding a way to present these songs and records in films and movies has long demanded the abilities of a competent third party typically referred to as a music supervisor. The music supervisor has a unique skillset of one part dealmaker, one part lawyer, and one part musical curator to make effective musical placements. Alexandra Patsavas, who has worked on numerous films and television shows such as The O.C., all five films of The Twilight Saga, Mad Men, and Gossip Girl (among many others) and is arguably the most famous supervisor of the last two decades, explained in a 2011 interview the process by which a music supervisor goes about their job: Once a music supervisor gets hired, we sit down with the director and talk about the musical feel and vibe of the songs and the movie. That starts the musical conversation that might include CDs going back and forth or listening to tracks together. Sometimes we start pitching tracks while the movie is being shot. And, of course once the movie is assembled and edited a supervisor pitches songs to picture. (“Twilight” music supervisor, 2011)

What the interviewer leaves out of this brief description are the thornier issues of budget and licensing negotiations. Put briefly, any recording placed in a film or television show must acquire what is known as a “sync license,” one that permits a piece of music to be

Music Supervision and Branding   215 synchronized with a piece of audiovisual material. The music supervisor needs to negotiate this license for the recording as well as the published song, both of which may demand differing prices. Because there is no standard rate for sync licenses, the cost of the license is determined by three factors: the amount of music used for the project, the popularity of the music, and the relative significance that the music will play in the project. As such, successful music supervisors must be voracious listeners and possess a trusted network of contacts of labels, publishers, and music journalists that service them with new music options. These options are necessary: Making the right placement is a negotiation between taste, availability, and cost. As Patsavas explains in a 2017 interview, “Every situation is different. . . . Sometimes I [have] pitched one or 100 songs until the right song emerged” (Neumann, 2017). I have argued elsewhere that the confluence of factors that have arisen in this era of convergence—an oversaturated media landscape where access to audiences is contingent on the development of across-the-board transmedia investments in brand recognition—has moved the music supervisor from a below-the-line technician to an above-the-line position that often has significant aesthetic and narrative impacts (Anderson, 2013). For example, let us consider Patsavas’s impact on The Twilight Saga’s second film, New Moon. Explaining how the soundtrack would substantially differ from the first film, Patsavas noted, “This is a much more somber movie than Twilight. There is a lot of love lost, so the artists that are going to make up the soundtrack reflect that longing—a lot of acoustic instruments, a lot of a cappella singing. This soundtrack definitely feels a bit more indie than the last one” (Sisario, 2009). This “indie feel” also had a business strategy that directly connected to the film’s marketing. Writing for the New York Times, Ben Sisario noted that the soundtrack’s label, Atlantic Records, would work with New Moon’s distribution company, Summit Entertainment, to reach “young people” through MySpace, iTunes and especially Hot Topic, the chain of clothing and pop-culture stores whose most loyal customer might be a teenage girl with a roomful of “Twilight” posters. Among the plans for the movie is a national tour of Hot Topic stores with artists from the soundtrack.  (Sisario, 2009)

As one brand strategist noted, this combination of independent artists and mass distribution results in what marketers often label “massclusive.” It is “distributing a product on a mass scale but using the language of niche subcultures, and including plenty of special, so-called exclusive content.” The idea behind this is to give the product mass exposure while providing “fans an intimate connection no matter how huge the audience gets” (Sisario, 2009). With the soundtrack consisting of entirely new, independent music that was composed specifically for the film, New Moon offered new albums for alternative radio stations and a sense of taste distinction that comes with original compositions and unconventional artists. As opposed to using popular music classics, this investment in independent music and originality is appealing for some programmers. By leveraging an ideological investment in “authenticity,” film and television producers can d ­ ifferentiate

216   Anderson their work. Nicole Dionne of the licensing boutique Primal Scream explained it to Advertising Age this way in 2003: “People are tapped-in enough to demand something genuine. They don’t want leftovers, they want the entree” (Diaz, 2003, p. 26). The attention of Patsavas and other music supervisors to the manner in which a new ecosystem of branding demands a detailed ear has moved what was once a relatively ancillary consideration to one of primary importance.3 This extends not just to the use of new music to mark out a new brand or series. For example, Patsavas worked closely with Matt Weiner to choose a musical soundtrack for his Mad Men series that both was historically accurate to the series’ narrative trajectory from the early to late 1960s and mobilized so-called easy listening and pop records from the period to act as critical “counterpoint to the program’s on-screen imagery” (Anderson, 2011, pp. 73–74). As film and television producers’ need to sonically mark their productions has grown, musicians old and new have accustomed themselves to the circumstances that necessitate adapting to the demands of both transmedia branding and a media universe with continually increasing programming possibilities. In this environment it has become clear that securing the attention of a well-placed music supervisor is not simply a fiscal consideration but important to a musical act’s own publicity. Ian Moreno, a guitarist for the Los Angeles-based indie-pop act the Little Ones, explained in an interview that one of the reasons they had signed to Patsavas’s new Chop Shop record label was her ability to place records in films and television: “Five to eight years ago it definitely would have been frowned upon, but then there were more record sales. Now it’s become the norm. It gives bands credibility” (Karpel, 2009). Bruno Guez of the Quango label echoed a similar sentiment one year earlier when he explained that “I still want to sell records, but the future is in licensing. My goal is to use my curatorial skills to build both my label as a brand and build a reputation as someone who can create a soundtrack for a brand” (Harding, 2008). As competent music supervision has become a staple to branding strategies dedicated to “popping out” of cluttered media landscapes, some companies have emerged with an explicit dedication to “sonic branding.” Such is the case with the Los Angeles-based Man Made Music. A music supervision company that specializes in “sonic logos,” Man Made Music dedicates itself to creating “tiny identity-building mnemonics—short but memorable brand ‘logos’ ”—aimed at putting a “sonic signature” on products and programs that are “instantly memorable” (Harvey, 2006, p. 57). 3  It should be noted that not everyone has found this practice acceptable. For example, in one of Alexandra Patsavas’s most notable episodes of The O.C., she and the show’s producer, Josh Schwartz, debuted five new songs from Beck’s upcoming 2005 album, Guero. The episode entitled “The Mallpisode” that originally aired on March 10, 2005, was dubbed by the producers and critics alike as “The Beckisode.” Clever as the appellation is, at least one critic—Whitney Matheson writing for USA Today—noted, “Last week’s episode was out of control. There were at least 23 pop culture references, not including the Beck insanity and the Star Wars trailer.” Misty Harris, writer of the column, noted that “the one-two advertising punch inspired discussion among fans and critics, much of it negative, including a barb from a New York Post reporter,” who was “surprised Janet Jackson didn’t show up at halftime” (Harris, 2005, p. C3).

Music Supervision and Branding   217 Indeed, this type of music branding firm has begun to proliferate as the need for musical branding has grown. Companies such as Amp.Amsterdam (with locations in Amsterdam and New York) and AMG (located in Toronto, New York, and Hong Kong) promise to match music to brands. For example, Amp.Amsterdam offers brands the ability to “be seen in a new light through the magic of immersive experiences, 360 VR experiences, innovative sound designs, exceptional music supervision capabilities and enhanced audio production proficiencies” (“The Social Street AMPs it up . . . ,” 2017). On the other hand, AMG claims that their company’s holdings in music publishing and its partner music supervision agency, AttackTrax, allow it to provide its clients with “unique music advertising, music brand integration and marketing opportunities across traditional, social media, mobile, film, television and gaming platforms” (“AMG’s Mark S. Berry Announces . . . ,” 2016). In the example of DMI Music & Media Solutions of Pasadena, California, in 2007 the company claimed to have “more than 70 music branding experts on staff, including performers, composers, producers, musicologists, artists and technicians” (Tanaka, 2007). These personnel would work to provide a consistent experience at every “touch point” for stores such as the Build-a-Bear Workshop. According to Tena Clark, DMI’s founder and CEO, many companies may “make random choices with music that do not extend or enhance the brand,” while DMI’s work in the case of Build-a-Bear Workshop ensures that “customers will enjoy the same experience whether they’re walking into a store, visiting online or listening to a commercial” (Tanaka, 2007). These are but three examples of a growing number of music and audio branding firms. That which is important is not the number of these types of companies, for commercial audio and musical services that work with media have an extensive history and music and sound effects departments have long accompanied radio, television, and film productions. Rather, it is the emphasis on the supervision of sound and music for branding purposes, whether it involves a film or a retail space, that should remind us how music in a capitalist society cannot be separated from concerns such as ownership and its mode of production. Musical properties have legal and financial concerns whose aesthetics must attend to the obligations of its many stakeholders. As I have argued elsewhere: Songs and records are knotty propositions: they may seem to be discrete units but when one looks closely at the property it is often an object that is woven together by numerous stakeholders and even other properties, each of which demand legal and financial attention. In a sense, musical properties that are invested in capitalist systems of production and exchange are thick things that are invested in and invest themselves into multiple systems.  (Anderson, 2014, p. 129)

As problematic as this may be for some listeners, the proposition that music may operate in a particular late-capitalist meaning system in a manner that exceeds the initial intentions of a composer is often presented as liberatory and entrepreneurial. As long as music is both inscribed in a system of capital and described as a property, its meanings can never be fully dissociated from issues of exchange and profit. As Pete Townshend

218   Anderson argued in 2006 when he decided to sell his catalog of songs to the Spirit Music Group for licensing projects that had yet to be even envisioned, “These songs are my property. They came out of my head. I have every right to do whatever I want with them. You own your personal reactions to them and whatever memories they evoke for you, but the songs are entirely mine and I will use them any way I like” (Alfano, 2006).

Recommended Readings Anderson, T. (2014). Popular music in a digital music economy: Problems and practices for an emerging service industry. New York, NY: Routledge. Banet-Weiser, S. (2012). AuthenticTM: The politics of ambivalence in a brand culture. New York, NY: New York University Press. Baym, N. (2018). Playing to the crowd: Musicians, audiences, and the intimate work of connection. New York, NY: New York University Press. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York, NY: New York University Press. Lewandowski, N. (2010). Understanding creative roles in entertainment: The music supervisor as case study. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24(6), 865–875.

References A musician’s ultimate guide to branding. (2016). Retrieved from https://60secondmusicmarketing .com/2016/12/20/a-musicians-ultimate-guide-to-branding/ Alfano, S. (2006). Selling records or selling out? CBS Sunday Morning. Retrieved from https:// www.cbsnews.com/news/selling-records-or-selling-out/ AMG’s Mark S. Berry announces creation of formidable ad marketing division “brand relations” syncing music to commercial products & brands. (2016). PR.com. Retrieved from https://www.pr.com/press-release/655960 Anderson, T. (2011). Uneasy listening: Music, sound, and criticizing Camelot in Mad Men. In G. Edgerton (Ed.), Mad Men: Dream come true TV (pp. 72–85). London, UK: I. B. Tauris. Anderson, T. (2013). From background music to above-the-line actor: The rise of the music supervisor in converging televisual environments. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 25(3), 371–388. Anderson, T. (2014). Popular music in a digital music economy: Problems and practices for an emerging service industry. New York, NY: Routledge. Anderson, T. (2015). Modes of production: The value of modal analysis for popular music studies. In S.  Waksman & A.  Bennett (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of popular music (pp. 565–581). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Baym, N. (2011). The Swedish model: Balancing markets and gifts in the music industry. Popular Communication, 9(1), 22–38. Beveridge, M. (2014). Bongiovi brand pasta sauce. Jersey Bites. Retrieved from https://­ jerseybites.com/2014/01/bongiovi-brand-pasta-sauce/ Brandle, L. (2008). Bacardi, Groove Armada toast to 360 deal. Billboard. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1046043/bacardi-groove-armada-toast-to360-deal

Music Supervision and Branding   219 Burkhart, P., & McCourt, T. (2006). Digital music wars: Ownership and control of the celestial jukebox. New York, NY: Rowan & Littlefield. Caldwell, P. (2011, January 11). Songs for others’ use. Austin American-Statesman, p. D01. Callaghan, D. (2004, November 16). From the universally recognizable . . . Hollywood Reporter, p. 16. De Pablos, E. (2006, October 2). Territory reports: Spain. Variety, p. B16. Diaz, A.-C. (2003, July 1). Them changes: Commercials music licensing mania and a horde of bands that can’t wait to do what used to be called selling out have presented ad music houses with a simple Darwinian truth: Adapt and survive. Herein, a survey of music mutations. Advertising Age’s Creativity, p. 26. Greene, A. (2012). The Who sell out: Pete Townshend gets millions for back catalog. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-who-sell-out-petetownshend-gets-millions-for-back-catalog-20120217 Hackett, J. (2016). Branding for musicians: A simplified guide to marketing. Retrieved from https://flypaper.soundfly.com/tips/branding-marketing-guide-musicians/ Harding, C. (2008, May 3). The indies: Driving licenses for quango records. Billboard, p. 17. Harris, M. (2005, March 20). Crossing the line from pop culture to pop fizz: Entire episodes of popular TV shows are being built around advertising paid and unpaid but critics, viewers and even fans aren’t buying. Times Colonist, p. C3. Harvey, S. (2006, September 1). This sonic branding is man made. Pro Sound News, p. 57. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York, NY: New York University Press. Jordan, C. (2018). Bon Jovi introduces his new rosé, Diving Into Hampton Water. Asbury Park Press. Retrieved from https://www.app.com/story/entertainment/music/2018/01/25/ bon-jovi-introduces-his-new-rose-diving-into-hampton-water/1067299001/ Karpel, A. (2009, March 15). Welcome to the net, Mr. “OC.” New York Times, p. 16. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/arts/television/15karp.html?_r=3& Kelly, K. (2008). 1,000 True fans. Retrieved from http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/ 2008/03/1000_true_fans.php Keveney, B. (2003, July 11). The Bruckheimer brand. USA Today, p. 1E. Kusek, D. (2014). 10 Musician mistakes: You don’t have a brand strategy. Retrieved from https://newartistmodel.com/10-musician-mistakes-brand-strategy/ Leeds, J. (2007, October 15). Led Zeppelin to make Its songs available digitally. New York Times. Retrived from https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/arts/15iht-15music.7891842 .html McMains, A. (2014). Why Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel and Dylan now readily sell their songs to brands. Adweek. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/why-ledzeppelin-billy-joel-and-dylan-now-readily-sell-their-songs-brands-160272/ Neumann, S. (2017). How the music supervisor for “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl” changed the game for indie rock. Noisey. Retrieved from https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/ne3w38/ music-supervisor-alexandra-patsavas-interview-2017-the-oc-gossip-girl-tvweek Olenski, S. (2014). Why music plays a big role when it comes to branding. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/why-music-plays-a-big-role-when-itcomes-to-branding-2014–2 Parkinson, H.  J. (2014). Is selling music to advertisers still considered selling out? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/may/22/ licensed-to-ill-selling-music-adverts-commerical-ads-selling-out-bands-corporate

220   Anderson Pizzo, M. (2015). The art of selling out: How much money can you make from licensing your music — and is it really worth it? Retrieved from https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-artof-selling-out-3cb61a4e9bb9 Pomranz, M. (2018). Bon Jovi’s rosé has already sold out to suppliers. Food & Wine. Retrieved from http://www.foodandwine.com/news/bon-jovi-rose Salkin, A. (2008, July 17). Two rock legends, basking in the VH1 spotlight. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/arts/music/17daltrey.htm Sisario, B. (2009, September 17). Record labels develop a taste for vampires. New York Times, p. 1. Smith, G. (2008, November 15). Dutch dance revolution. Billboard, p. 19. Sutherland, M. (2009, January 31). New model army: More acts embrace nontraditional deals. Billboard, p. 10. Sutherland, M. (2010, May 8). The Billboard Q&A: Simon Fox. Billboard, p. 15. Tanaka, R. (2007, April 24). Making a familiar sound. San Gabriel Valley Tribune. The Social Street AMPs it up with new partner. (2017). Ad Gully. Retrieved from https://www. adgully.com/the-social-street-amps-it-up-with-new-partner-71938.html “Twilight” music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas discusses the art of the soundtrack. (2011). IFC. Retrieved from https://www.ifc.com/2011/11/alexandra-patsavas-twilight-music-supervisor Usenza, C. (2014). 8 ways to build and strengthen your band’s brand. Retrieved from http:// blog.sonicbids.com/8-ways-to-build-and-strengthen-your-bands-brand Waddell, R. (2007). Update: Madonna confirms deal with Live Nation. Billboard. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1048045/update-madonna-confirms-dealwith-live-nation Waddell, R. (2008, July 19). Hits don’t lie: Nickelback, Shakira join Live Nation. Billboard, p. 10. Whipp, G. (2012). Led Zeppelin loosens its grip on using its music in films. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/03/entertainment/la-et-mn-led-zeppelinmovies-20121203 Whitmire, M. (2005, October 8). TV tunes: Partners in crime. Billboard. Wikström, P. (2009). The music industry: Music in the cloud. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Advertising Cor por ate St y le Through Music

chapter 10

The Conqu e st of Kool Jazz, Tobacco, and the Rise of Market Segmentation1 Dale Chapman

In 2001, jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis began appearing in a series of print ads for the Movado line of upmarket watches, as part of a $15 million campaign featuring a variety of celebrity endorsements. Dubbed “The Art of Time,” the campaign was crafted with the intention of connecting the Movado brand to a variety of cultural figures, harnessing their cultural capital as a means of signifying themes of design and aesthetic refinement (Dolbow, 2001). One Marsalis ad from the campaign depicts the artist in close-up, sporting a black tie and dark jacket, his face lit from the side to produce an effect of chi­a­ro­ scuro. Marsalis’s thoughtful gaze is trained on an unspecified point over the viewer’s shoulder, giving him an air of preoccupation as he plays his trumpet. The ad meticulously constructs an aura of formal reserve, with the clean, ascetic lines of the watch linked metonymically to the minimalist design of Marsalis’s iconic Monette trumpet (Gabbard, 2008, pp. 132–143). The copy at the bottom of the page uses a Futura-style sans serif font and staccato phrasing to bind Marsalis’s artistry to the aesthetic qualifies of the Movado watch (“Movado,” 2004, p. 26). The branding maneuver employed here by Movado, which links the neoclassicist trumpeter to the luxury minimalism of its Valor timepiece, feels completely intuitive from the vantage point of our own cultural moment, as we look back upon a quarter century of iconography shaped by Marsalis’s own interventions in the public debates surrounding the music. Beginning with Marsalis’s own debut as a Columbia Records recording artist in the early 1980s, jazz artists, record labels, advertising agencies, and other market actors have worked hard to cultivate a powerful iconography that affiliates the music with tropes of respectability, artistic refinement, and tasteful affluence (Ake, 2002, p. 86; DeVeaux, 1991; Gray, 2005, pp. 32–51). Advertising agencies came to 1  My project’s title takes as its point of inspiration Thomas Frank’s book The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (1997).

The Conquest of Kool   223 recognize that what the neoclassicists had produced was the basis for a powerful new kind of “jazz brand,” a nexus of images that could be used to forge new lines of association between musical style and upmarket consumption (Gladstone,  1998, p. 34; Marlow, 1998, pp. 34–39; McDonough, 1991, p. 34). The resonance of jazz as a trope in contemporary advertising is sufficiently visible to have received extended treatment in Mark Laver’s compelling recent monograph, Jazz Sells: Music, Marketing, and Meaning (2015), which supplements a more general scholarly literature on music in advertising (Klein, 2016; Taylor, 2012). The rise to prominence of jazz as a viable marketing trope in luxury contexts can be understood as a significant episode in the development of market segmentation practices. Market segmentation, also known as targeted marketing, approaches the consuming public as a constellation of variegated “niche” markets, each one characterized by distinctive purchasing behaviors and narratives of identity formation and differentiation. If earlier strategies of mass advertising were predicated upon Fordist logics of mass production, market segmentation largely reflects a post-Fordist world, in which just-in-time manufacturing and new information technologies allow agencies and their clients to identify and exploit target markets with pinpoint precision (Amin, 1995; Turow, 1997, p. 32). As Joseph Turow (1997) has argued, one of the principal effects of market segmentation in the United States has been its reinforcement of a cultural context characterized by wealth polarization and social fragmentation (pp. 6–7, 39–43). As a musical genre whose stylistic attributes are frequently mobilized as signifiers of luxury taste, jazz has become a key interlocutor in this increasingly atomized cultural field. However, as the present case study reminds us, the deployment of jazz as a marker of upward mobility is itself historically contingent, a relatively recent development borne out of shifting discursive frames in both the music and marketing industries. This chapter takes up a case study that provides a window onto the shifting cultural significance of jazz during the 1980s, a decade that saw both the emergence of neoclassical jazz in the music industry and the consolidation of new strategies of market segmentation in the advertising industry. The present project examines internal corporate correspondence at the Brown and Williamson (B&W) tobacco firm to trace the evolving understanding of jazz in the company’s formulation of its “Kool Music” campaign for its Kool brand of menthol cigarettes in the early 1980s. As I hope to demonstrate, B&W’s correspondence during this period foregrounds not only the reasoning behind its embrace of jazz as a symbolic property from the outset of the campaign but also why it would eventually come to abandon it. The B&W correspondence, which comprises strategy memos, internal correspondence, and focus group reports, has been made available through the University of California at San Francisco’s Truth Tobacco Industry Documents initiative, which is a public archive of documentation produced over years of litigation between state authorities and the seven major U.S.  tobacco companies (UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management, n.d.).2 2  For a broader overview of B&W’s music-themed initiatives, see Hafez and Ling (2006).

224   Chapman B&W’s “Kool Music” campaign highlights the very different uses to which jazz was put in an earlier moment of targeted marketing. Internal documents demonstrate that B&W tobacco executives, working in concert with the Cunningham and Walsh ad firm, struggled to identify the music’s affective resonances, its appeal to specific race and class demographics, and its potential usage as a marketing tool. The internal debates surrounding jazz at B&W help to make sense of the music’s later enlistment as a signifier of upscale consumerism. In the end, tobacco executives argued that the “jazz brand” they were attempting to cultivate skewed too old, too specifically “Black,” and too intellectual to appeal to their targeted “pan-racial” demographic of youthful, “downscale” consumers. It is clear that advertisers have taken these kinds of insights to heart in recent decades, as they have sought to redeploy jazz as a point of identification for a more upwardly mobile and urbane consumer, in contexts ranging from Grey Goose vodka to Lexus and Infiniti sedans (Gabbard, 1995; Prouty, 2013, p. 31). However, what I would like to highlight here is the ultimate rejection of jazz by the tobacco industry, as it sought to sell menthol cigarettes to young, “downscale,” working-class consumers: the Kool campaign’s failure to establish jazz as a viable point of identification for cigarette smokers during the 1980s indexes the widening class divide of that period and the emerging stigmatization of cigarette smoking as something that fell neatly to one side of that polarization (Stuber, Galea, & Link, 2008).

From Consensus to Fragmentation If market segmentation is usually understood as a contemporary approach, the practice of using advertising to target specific “taste publics” had already made its presence felt in different aspects of postwar culture. Lynn Spigel (2008) has argued that the circulation of modernist art sensibilities in early television programming indicates that networks and advertisers had already begun to map out specialized preferences that anticipate the segmented world of contemporary cable television (pp. 14–15). Moreover, target marketing is in some sense part of the legacy of the “creative revolution” in the culture of ad making documented by Thomas Frank (1997) in The Conquest of Cool. Among the most salient transformations here for advertisers was the emergence of an increasingly polarized and fragmented body politic: alongside the increasing visibility of subject positions that were previously invisible during the postwar consensus (women, African Americans, the LGBTQ community, Latina/o people), the events of the late 1960s brought to the fore a larger set of social antagonisms, centered around a putative “silent majority” of Americans resistant to the proliferation of new, oppositional countercultures (Perlstein, 2008). Moreover, in the late 1970s, in a context of deindustrialization and financial deregulation, Americans witnessed a reversal in the half-century-long trend toward diminished socioeconomic inequality (Harvey, 2007, pp. 15–16). With the recognition that

The Conquest of Kool   225 advertising dollars could more efficiently be directed toward those with purchasing power, networks and advertisers began to develop new ways of isolating and corralling upscale consumers. While carefully pinpointing the sites of upper-middle-class consumption, these same companies also sought to retool the aesthetics of advertising with upmarket consumers in mind. As Turow (1997) has argued, beginning in the 1970s market research companies began harnessing public data to outline trends in consumer behavior. For instance, the Claritas Corporation’s so-called PRIZM system (Potential Rating Index for Zip Markets) was based on the premise that geographically specific zip codes could be used to segment communities by social class, ethnic identity, and market proclivities, and clustered zip codes according to researched behaviors through such evocative titles as “Bohemian Mix,” “Blue-Blood Estates,” and “Shotguns and Pickups” (Turow, 1997, pp. 44–45). Timothy Taylor’s account of market segmentation in the music world provides an engaging account of the 1980s heyday for such new, data-driven “psychographic” methodologies as SRI International’s VALS I typology, which maps out consumers via nine different categories of psychological profile (2012, pp. 180–183). By the early 1990s, marketing executives had begun to use powerful information technologies to tie their signaling practices (their attempts to hail particular groups through advertising) to their individual relationships with specific consumers. By harnessing new feedback mechanisms, companies could locate their rosters of potential consumers and cater to their preferences (Turow, 1997, p. 125). Turow (1997) has argued that the segmented marketplace has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: each additional effort to delineate and target fragmented markets tends to reinscribe the distinctions between them. For him, the end result is a steady, systemic erosion of shared objectives and values, the emergence of “a society so divided that it is impossible to know, or care about” (p. 110). In the context of contemporary neoliberal ideology, the practice of segmentation has the effect of intensifying the subject’s understanding of him- or herself as an autonomous actor, a clearly demarcated self with individualized desires and aspirations (Foucault, 2010, p. 226). In response to Turow, then, what we are asked to “care about” is our own protean relation to the marketplace, a libidinal investment that is reinforced through the deft, improvisatory mechanisms of target marketing.

The “Kool Music” Campaign In what sense did jazz figure in this new, segmented media reality, as its profile changed in the 1980s? During this period, the tobacco firm B&W harnessed jazz as part of a multipronged “Kool Music” campaign in support of its Kool brand of menthol cigarettes. The campaign was initially developed as part of the company’s effort to sell tobacco products to a broad, relatively unsegmented market of consumers with diverse racial identities; as such, the campaign can be seen as a strategic departure from what had been

226   Chapman a long-standing and troubling legacy of targeting African American consumers for sales of menthol cigarettes. Before proceeding further here, it may be useful to situate the Kool campaign in relation to a longer history of the relationship between tobacco, race, jazz, and notions of “cool.” As Nan Enstad (2018) has outlined in her exciting monograph, Cigarettes, Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism, the relationship between jazz, cigarettes, and advertising dates to the earliest decades of jazz music’s circulation as a commodity. Noting that cigarettes had become an indispensable “punctuation to a night of dancing” to jazz in segregated cabarets, dance halls, and other venues in the 1920s, tobacco companies became the principal sponsors of such early radio shows as the Lucky Strike Radio Hour or the Camel Caravan, where jazz music was featured (p. 189). Here, tobacco marketers looked to harness the powerful and intimately embodied entwinement of cigarettes and “syncopated” music, the sense that they were bound together in a set of “modern” dispositions of sex, fashion, and taste that would soon come to be called cool (pp. 187–189). Given this context, it was perhaps inevitable that the Kool brand of cigarettes, named for its menthol taste, would eventually begin to evoke a set of associations with its betterspelled homonym. Joel Dinerstein (2017), tracing the genealogy of cool to its emergence and circulation in the early postwar era, points to a confluence of two primary factors: a performative dimension of African diasporic aesthetics that valorizes easeful grace under pressure, on the one hand, and the promulgation of a set of dispositions of detached alienation in response to the dehumanizing institutional dynamics of Cold War culture, on the other (pp. 56–65). In particular, as Dinerstein argues, these two sensibilities came together (among other contexts) in the person of swing-era jazz saxophonist Lester Young, whose cool demeanor derived both from his immersion in the hip confines of interwar jazz culture and from his experiences with the brutality of the segregated military services in wartime (pp. 58–62). With respect to the cigarette, smoking in midcentury culture continued to sustain its Jazz Age reputation as erotically seductive and alluring. But in the gestural repertories of postwar cool, the cigarette also took on a distancing role, inserting (as Herman Leonard’s jazz photography eloquently demonstrates) a kind of mediating fog between the viewed and the viewer. This function of smoking dovetailed particularly effectively with the ethos of early postwar jazz, where the aesthetic of cool manifested itself in such contexts as the bebop artist’s refusal of the role of ingratiating entertainer: the detached affect and noncommittal silence of performers such as Charlie Parker or Miles Davis enacted cool as a new repudiation of those audience expectations for Black performers forged in the context of vaudeville, minstrelsy, and Jim Crow segregation (Dinerstein, 2017, p. 64). The cultural currency of postwar “cool” must inform our understanding of the midcentury context in which Kool menthol cigarettes circulated as commodities. By the early 1950s, tobacco companies learned to exploit differences in the perception of cigarettes between Black and white consumers, as, for example, when they took advantage of market research suggesting that Black smokers viewed menthol cigarettes to be healthier than regular cigarettes (Gardiner, 2004, p. S60). Such differentials led to

The Conquest of Kool   227 clearly targeted campaigns, with tobacco companies advertising differently in Ebony magazine than they would in Life: they featured Black athletes as endorsers and alluded to signifiers of rebellious cool (Gardiner,  2004, p. S61; Pollay, Lee, & CarterWhitney, 1992, pp. 52–53). Given that much of the research literature suggests that menthol can exacerbate the negative health impact of cigarettes (though the issue remains controversial), those marketing strategies that explicitly target Black consumers for menthol cigarette products have potentially contributed to a legacy of health disparities between whites and African Americans (Robinson & Holliday, 2009, p. 386). Through its established Kool brand of menthol cigarettes, B&W may have been in a position to exploit the emergence of a vibrant, self-conscious African American consumer market in the wake of the civil rights movement; it nevertheless neglected this brand throughout the 1970s and began to see an erosion of its market share. A section devoted to “image management” in an internal B&W planning document from 1981 outlines a variety of concerns about consumer perceptions that potentially contributed to this erosion. Alongside the perception that its product was “strong, harsh, and highly mentholated,” the firm also pointed to a rapidly emerging consensus that its image was increasingly “Black and downscale,” that its appeal within the “Black subsegment” was “deteriorating,” and that the “brand’s personality [had] become tired and unappealing” (B&W, 1981, pp. 5–6). Consequently, B&W called for a dramatic recalibration of its marketing and promotional strategies: KOOL must reestablish its leadership aura and its positive symbolism among its important user groups of White and Black Males. KOOL’s equity of name, product uniqueness and young male symbolism must be brought into the 1980’s [sic] and exploited. . . . KOOL will be set forth as the contemporary leader, the superior product for those smokers who desire both its product benefits and the personality it symbolizes. KOOL will use creative that appeals to smokers of all races. (B&W, 1981, pp. 5–6, emphasis added)3

This latter point was particularly crucial: even as it sought to shore up Kool’s brand status within its established demographic of African American smokers, B&W seemed to feel that the revitalization of Kool’s image would be contingent upon a strategy that reinforced its brand equity among Black and white male consumers. To make good on these insights, B&W began to pursue a marketing campaign in the late 1970s that would seek to solidify its strengths within its core market of young Black menthol cigarette consumers while addressing potential for growth outside of that segment (Hafez & Ling, 2006, p. 360). While they considered a segmented campaign, in which different ads would be used in different print markets to target specifically white or Black consumers, they were concerned that such an approach might create a “split 3  Used as a noun here, “creative” refers to production of ad copy and design by an ad agency’s dedicated “creative” team, which is typically differentiated from its account management division. Page numbers for the Tobacco Truth Industry Documents sources allude to those assigned to the scanned document, not those internal to the documents themselves.

228   Chapman identity” for the brand, and that the segmentation might alienate Black consumers, angered by previous “separate and unequal” campaigns of this kind (“Kool: The Revitalization of an Image,” 1981, p. 3). A further justification for avoiding segmentation lay in the idea that a campaign strictly targeting African Americans may undermine its aspirational cachet within that market: upwardly mobile African Americans may have been less willing to smoke a product that they perceived to be directed at African Americans alone (Hafez & Ling, 2006, p. 360). For B&W, the solution had to be some kind of broader crossover strategy that addressed a young, “pan-racial” audience. It is here that the significance of music as a “property” or brand “equity” for B&W comes into play. As Navid Hafez and Pamela Ling have noted, during the late 1970s, the tobacco firm had begun to lend its Kool imprimatur to a series of music festivals across the country. For B&W, music was seen as a powerful conduit for brand development: music constituted a potent site of nostalgia, emotional connection, and group identification, and live concerts could become particularly effective venues for merchandizing tie-ins and targeted marketing (Hafez & Ling, 2006, pp. 360–361). In 1975, they partnered with Newport Jazz Festival impresario George Wein, who had recently moved the festival to New York, providing financial support for the festival, and eventually renaming it the “Kool Jazz Festival” beginning in 1981 (Hudson, 1979, p. 1; Proctor, 2011, p. 122–123). Given the storied legacy of the Newport Jazz Festival, the Kool sponsorship of the Newport Jazz Festival would become among the more high-profile moments in a long and turbulent history of tobacco jazz festival sponsorship (Laver, 2015, pp. 188–189). As a means of developing this musical focus as a kind of brand “equity,” B&W would also begin to prepare a print media advertising campaign devoted to depictions of jazz musicians, to which we will return shortly. From the outset, the jazz focus of B&W’s highest-profile music sponsorship became a key thematic point of departure for the music campaign. For B&W, the initial motivation for a jazz-centered branding strategy emerges in a 1980 document entitled “Kool Music: Extension of a Property,” which argues on behalf of a creative strategy in which the Kool brand would “use positive, pan-racial symbolism to convince smokers that . . . Kool epitomizes menthol satisfaction and fulfills their need for an attractive, contemporary image” (“Kool Music: Extension of a Property,” 1980, p. 5). For the authors of the report, jazz seemed to offer numerous advantages for Kool as a vehicle for this kind of youthful, pan-racial symbolism. In a section asserting that “Kool owns jazz music henceforth!” the authors outline a bullet point list of attributes supportive of the music’s incorporation in the Kool music campaign: • Jazz is American; • Jazz is universal; • Jazz modifies all music forms; • Jazz is pan-racial; • Jazz is a Kool equity; • Jazz transcends time; • Jazz is mysterious—enigmatic;

The Conquest of Kool   229 • Jazz is free, quality, spiritual; • Jazz is symbolic unsoweiter [sic]. (“Kool Music: Extension of a Property,” n.d., p. 14, emphasis in original) Here, the authors seem to assert that B&W’s investment in the symbolic “equity” of jazz allows them to move laterally across a variety of demographics, appealing to audiences from outside of any specifically delimited social category. Closely tied to its putative “universality” is the idea that jazz, more than just a genre, can be seen almost as a kind of procedure (perhaps through use of improvisation) that “modifies” other forms of music. In this way, a marketing campaign that was specific to jazz could be reasonably sure of encountering overlapping communities of fans. This would have been especially relevant during a period in time in which jazz-rock fusion was ascendant: by virtue of its potential hybridity in relation to rock, jazz could theoretically provide B&W with access to youth markets outside of traditional jazz constituencies (Fellezs, 2011). These factors help to make sense of the ambiguities of Kool’s subsequent “Music” campaign, in which different individual ads were tailored with different degrees of genre specificity. B&W felt sufficiently invested in the strategy of promoting live jazz that its senior brand manager, Brad Broecker, recommended in an internal memo that B&W move beyond financial support for jazz to take on a more preservationist mode of philanthropy: I feel that it is extremely important for KOOL to have complete credibility so far as its contribution to music is concerned. . . . I think it is important to have a posture of being committed to music and this means being involved at all levels of participation, from encouraging the development of new artists to the promotion and preservation of relevant aspects of music history.  (Broeker, 1981, p. 4)

B&W’s participation in new artist development manifested itself in such projects as its KOOL Talent Challenge, a talent competition set up to generate brand awareness in the Kool Jazz Festival markets, and the proposed continuation of a Berklee College scholarship program under the Kool name (“Kool Talent Challenge,” n.d.; Schreiber/Festival Productions, 1981). In the same vein, B&W established a “Kool Jazz Records” unit, which produced a “Best of Jazz” series featuring artists ranging from Count Basie to Dizzy Gillespie (Finley & Sutter, 1982; Proctor, 2011, pp. 122–123). As one might imagine, B&W’s aggressive financial support for live jazz was born less out of altruism than out of a desire to harness jazz fandom in pursuit of a market. In the memo cited earlier, Brad Broecker couches his advocacy of jazz philanthropy within a more pragmatic language of market positioning (Broeker, 1981, p. 4). B&W understands the music scholarships, festival funding, and other magnanimous pro-jazz initiatives as mechanisms for establishing the “authenticity” of its commitment to musical philanthropy, mechanisms that are nevertheless also commensurate with the company’s ­longer-term strategy of market infiltration. The “Best of Jazz” series on Kool Jazz Records, for example, was seen as a means of “leveraging current equity,” in other words,

230   Chapman its investment in live jazz as a B&W “property,” and “setting the stage for the use of the ‘naturalness’ of an album ‘from that Kool Music advertising’ ” (“Kool Music: Extension of a Property,” n.d., p. 18). The “Kool Music advertising” referred to in the “Kool Music” report consisted of B&W’s print campaign centering around individual images of performing musicians, part of this larger process of repositioning the Kool brand around jazz. The ads presented a range of white and African American models, each set against a black backdrop, with instruments ranging from those more readily identifiable with jazz (wind instruments such as sax and trumpet) to more genre-ambiguous ones (guitar, bass, piano). In each case, the copy prominently featured the slogan, “There’s Only One Way to Play It,” a line that alludes to the brand’s musical bona fides in the same moment that it connotes a sense of authenticity.4 In line with this desired construction of authenticity, executives at Cunningham and Walsh (C&W) sought to ensure that the implementation of the print media campaign maintain a degree of “integrity,” by which they meant a consistency bound up in the pan-racial appeal put forth by the ads. As I noted previously, their recommendation was to avoid a neatly segmented (or, in their formulation, “segregated”) approach when it came to placing the ads. C&W executives floated, and ultimately rejected, a conventional plan in which “white ads [were placed] in general [readership] books and black ads in black books” (“Kool: The Revitalization of an Image,” 1981, p. 6). For aesthetic reasons, they also rejected an approach in which white and Black musicians (or any two musicians) would be featured together in the same ad: the initial rollout of the print ads was to feature compositions with a single musician at their center, and in this context, ads featuring duets, trios, or other configurations were thought to detract from “the simplicity of product communication so desperately needed during the introductory phases of the new campaign” (“Kool: The Revitalization of an Image,” 1981, p. 6). Ultimately, the solution that C&W executives arrived at was the implementation of an integrated, if carefully weighted, schedule of placements within any given publication, with the intention of “break[ing] the discrimination and media ‘color barriers’ that to some extent exist in the pre-conditioned, culturally-segmented and demographicallysegmented media environment”: in “general” readership publications, they would place one “black ad” for every two “white ads”; in publications directed at African American markets, they would place one “white ad” for every two “black ads” (“Kool: The Revitalization of an Image,” 1981, p. 6). For C&W executives, this media plan was said to have the advantage of helping to “educate” the consumer about the “pan-racial” nature of the campaign, which they sought to position as a “new concept in consumer packaged goods” (p. 6). Internal documents from various stages within the production process reveal the considerable extent to which executives at B&W (and its ad firm, C&W) deliberated over the specific resonances of jazz signifiers in its advertising. In 1982, after the 4  For different print ads within the campaign, see “There’s Only One Way to Play It” (1983, p. 190) and “There’s Only One Way to Play It” (1984, p. 115).

The Conquest of Kool   231 c­ ampaign was launched, B&W commissioned a study that attempted to determine both the extent to which consumers from various demographics connected their musician im­agery with jazz and the degree to which this jazz imagery was effective in appealing to their targeted demographic. There had been important internal debates as to whether the company’s affiliations with the music, either through its advertisements or through its sponsorship of jazz festivals, was helping them to reposition their brand (Brand & Medicus, 1983). Soliciting responses from a variety of Black and white women and men of various ages, B&W displayed to the participants a variety of past, current, and potential future shots (“exploratory,” in their terminology), showing some of them the imagery alone (with no “Kool” moniker attached) and others with the Kool name and copy appended. The “exploratory” or potential future images had offered up a more diverse range of musical scenarios, with the creative team adding duos, vocalists, and women to situations that were almost exclusively individual, male, and instrumental in the current and past campaigns. Alongside broader questions about musical preferences and imagery associated with particular genres, the study also looked into other subjective responses to music, including questions about whether genres such as jazz, rock, country, classical, or rhythm and blues (R&B) were “for people like me,” for “active, energetic people,” for “hip/with it” consumers, for the young or for the old (Brand & Medicus, 1983). These kinds of questions overlapped with inquiries that B&W had made into the significance of the Kool brand in other, non-music-related studies (“Kool 1984 Strategic Plan,” 1984, p. 122). The ensuing “Kool Music Form Study,” as well as the final executive report (entitled “Kool Music Creative Research”), together presented some intriguing findings. The researchers found, for example, that participants were more likely to interpret the wind instruments in the images (saxophone, trumpet, trombone) as “jazz,” while other instruments (guitar, keyboards, percussion) may have more latitude in terms of genre signifiers (Brand & Medicus, 1983, p. 2). This conclusion would factor into their later decision to present a more ambiguous range of genre signifiers in later versions of the campaign, as they scaled back their affiliation with jazz. The study also determined that the younger smokers in its sample were far less likely than the older smokers to deem rock as an “acceptable” music for Black musicians. Consequently, when presented with contrasting ad images, younger smokers were more likely to affiliate photos of Black musicians with jazz and R&B: these younger participants were, the study argued, “more ‘attuned’ to the trends and divisions in the music world than are the old” (pp. 2, 6). The findings that would prove to be most crucial in later deliberations at B&W were those that pertained to the broader perception of jazz as a musical genre. Overall, participants saw the current and past ads in the Kool campaign as overwhelmingly skewed toward representations of jazz musicians, with jazz constituting 40 percent of the genre “mentions,” more than the next three genres combined (“Kool Music Form Study,” 1983, p. 8; Lewis, 1983, p. 3). While Black participants had positive identifications with jazz, seeing it as a genre of racially “universal” appeal that “is played mostly by successful performers” and is listened to by “someone like me,” white participants were far less likely to

232   Chapman identify directly with the genre, seeing it as largely “for blacks,” and ranking it fourth out of five genres in terms of its relevance to both “people like me” and “people I know.” Crucially, neither white nor Black respondents were particularly likely to see jazz as music “for younger people” (Brand & Medicus, 1983; “Kool Music Form Study,” 1983, pp. 14–19). The strategic recommendations proposed and eventually adopted by B&W in response to these findings underwent a transformation as the report filtered through the corporate hierarchy. In their initial recommendations, L. R. Lewis of the firm’s Brand Group advised B&W management to maintain its jazz-related brand positioning, arguing that the firm could introduce new ads that were more ambiguous or “self-interpretive” as to genre, with rock as an acceptable secondary reference point (Lewis, 1983, pp. 9–10). However, a subsequent memo from another executive at B&W, presenting Lewis’s findings to N. V. Domantay at the firm’s Brand Group, qualified these recommendations still further, pushing the company “not [to] explicitly pursue cues of Jazz,” and to begin to seek alternative, more generic names for the Kool Jazz Festival, anticipating a shift to less jazz­specific programming in many of the Kool-related events (Reid, 1983, p. 2). Finally, one iteration of the “Kool 1984 Strategic Plan,” which built these lower-level recommendations into a specific plan of action, distanced itself from the music behind which B&W executives had thrown their earlier support. With respect to the Kool Jazz Festival initiative, the plan’s authors argued that the program “has several executional difficulties. Its name and talent content impair, if not contradict, registration of an attractive, contemporary image to young adults, particularly Whites” (“Kool  1984 Strategic Plan,” 1984, p. 32). The strategic plan went on to question the usefulness of jazz as a component of its print media campaign, significantly amplifying the skepticism about jazz that it discerned in the original Kool Music Form Study: The music form study, discussed earlier, and judgment suggest our ad campaign is perceived as a Jazz depiction. Our music sponsorship program is clearly a Jazz concept both in name and talent. The image of Jazz is inappropriate for the bulk of KOOL’s target audience. Among White smokers, Jazz is perceived as relatively not for young, not for Whites, and not for someone like me. Black smokers also perceive Jazz as not for Whites and not for younger people. (“Kool 1984 Strategic Plan,” 1984, p. 32, emphasis in original)

These conclusions would prove toxic for the jazz campaign. On the one hand, they indicated that B&W had failed to leverage jazz as a way into an expanded demographic of both African American and white consumers. On the other, the African American perception of “Jazz as not for Whites” undermined what Hafez and Ling identify as the crucial goal of tapping into an aspirational sensibility within B&W’s existing core Black constituency, a perception that the product might appeal to upscale white consumers as well as African Americans (Hafez & Ling, 2006, p. 340). For B&W, which was intent on delivering Kool product to a predominantly young, urban, “pan-racial” market of cigarette consumers, the Kool Music Form Study seemed to provide a context for the failure of the Kool Festivals to precipitate any significant

The Conquest of Kool   233 shifts in brand awareness or market share for Kool. In contrast to the “attractive, contemporary image” that Kool was hoping to generate for its campaign, the brand’s affiliation with jazz seemed to link them more closely to an aging, predominantly African American consumer base. It was with these considerations in mind that B&W sought to distance itself from jazz associations, beginning in 1984. The shoot proposals for print ads produced later in the “Music” campaign highlight the company’s sensitivity to these associations. By proposing changes in background texture, and the addition of singers, duos, and instrumental depictions less easily identified as “jazz,” the company hoped to redirect its “Music property” in what it hoped was a more youthful, carefree direction: Research . . . suggests that as portrayed by the current property, Kool is perceived as a brand for older people and for blacks. Depiction of jazz music is taken to be a major contributing factor to that perception. Kool needs to enhance its image of being for sociable, energetic, contemporary smokers. Use of duos and vocalists will add sociability to the shots as they are seen reacting to each other as well as the inferred audience. More opened up and textured backgrounds will lessen the inference that the scene is taking place in a small, dark club. Thus, the “black background”—“Small Dark Club”—“Jazz Music”—“Older and Black Consumers” chain of perception will be modified.  (Cunningham & Walsh, 1984, pp. 4–5)

Here, B&W was responding to perceptions of the campaign that were also evident in market research pursued by competing firms. In focus group testing requested by the Salem brand managers at R. J. Reynolds, respondents described the jazz-centered Kool campaign as “being depressing, somber, somewhat male, ‘heavy,’ and ‘for musicians’ ” (Neher, 1983, p. 2). In the end, this chain of associations led B&W to abandon the “Music” campaign altogether, in search of a better frame through which to position their brand. In 1985, B&W replaced the “Music” campaign with a more outdoorsy “Biker” campaign, through which B&W hoped to “re-establish the relevance of Kool” to young, male, “downscale” smokers (Doyle Dane Bernbach [DDB], 1985; Hafez & Ling, 2006, p. 326). The campaign was calibrated to reinforce the Kool property’s established strength in the market segment (as the “most masculine menthol” on the market), in the same moment that its altered setting hailed a very different masculine subject, one for which “solitude and sufficiency,” “freedom and escape,” “manliness,” and “danger” were the touchstones of identification (DDB, 1985, pp. 2, 5–6). Alongside changes to its advertising strategy, B&W also began to scale back its jazz sponsorship efforts in 1985, changing the name of its nationwide series of live music concerts from the “Kool Jazz Festivals” to the “Kool Music Festivals” in every region but New York City. The mode of support shifted as well, with B&W moving from a more generously philanthropic mode (in which free concerts were allowed to take a financial loss) to a more profit-centered approach (Ahearn, 1985). Finally, in 1986, B&W severed its ties with George Wein’s Kool New York Jazz Festival, with electronics manufacturer JVC taking over as the event’s primary sponsor (Keepnews, 1986, p. 39).

234   Chapman Publicly, the company’s spokespeople emphasized their pride in having been affiliated with jazz promotion and their regret in having to abandon it. However, the internal correspondence at B&W tells a different story, with one memo stressing what it felt was the disastrous course the company took in pursuing jazz as a “property”: One of the more relevant and viable tools in our arsenal can be a forced evolution of KOOL’S already substantial investment and involvement in the area of music. And no, I don’t mean Jazz. In that case it appears as though we looked at all musical forms available and, with the possible exception of classical, couldn’t have made a worse choice.  (MacAlevey, 1985, p. 1)

Here, the memo notes that the Kool brand’s close affiliation with music can still be redirected to center on their other ongoing concert sponsorship projects. In particular, the events known as the so-called Kool City Jams, which featured a touring lineup consisting of local and nationally known “urban” and R&B artists such as Sister Sledge, Zapp, and Rebbie Jackson (of the Jackson family), seemed to offer B&W a means of avoiding what it saw as the pitfalls of the “jazz strategy”: I think all would agree that the City Jam and Super Nights programs were and are very good for the brand. The basic reason for this is that they were designed with a specific audience segments [sic] musical preferences in mind. This is unlike the jazz festival umbrella which was more akin to “here’s a musical form that represents KOOL whether you, the consumer, like it or not.” Unfortunately the vast majority of our target members didn’t and don’t.  (MacAlevey, 1985, p. 2)

If B&W initially pursued jazz as a means of pinpointing its target market, their management eventually came to interpret the jazz concert events as a more pointlessly philanthropic effort, imposing its own elitist tastes on an indifferent public. By contrast, B&W argued that Kool events in the future should be looking to “ ‘giv[e]’ [the audience] what they want and like,” providing content that specifically caters to their “audience segments’ ” musical tastes (MacAlevey, 1985, p. 2). The priority for B&W here, as always, was to secure a receptive clientele of young, male, downscale smokers, whether white or Black, and for that reason, precisely targeted events featuring R&B (for young Black fans) or rock and country (for white fans) would enable them to more efficiently reach their clientele, giving them “the stuff of which relevant, contemporary images are made” (p. 2).

Locating a New Market Segment for Jazz The internal deliberations about jazz at B&W provide us with a striking window onto the often opaque dynamics of corporate strategy. They highlight the intense scrutiny to which every nuance of the Kool symbolic property of jazz is subjected, and foreground

The Conquest of Kool   235 the means through which broad strokes of corporate strategy (the desire to give Kool consumers access to an “attractive, contemporary image”) shape the particulars of brand aesthetics in all their specificity, from the background textures of the “Music” ads to the precise choice of musical instrument type. The jazz-centered “Music” campaign was a pointed (if unsuccessful) market strategy aimed at a target “audience segment” consisting in large part of young, male, workingclass consumers, both white and African American. The notion that jazz held “universal,” or at least “pan-racial,” appeal led B&W to use the music as a means of avoiding any accusations of racial segmentation. Ultimately, though, the music failed in this regard: both white and Black consumers perceived that the campaign was designed to appeal to older Black smokers. Consequently, the campaign would not provide B&W with an avenue into a “pan-racial” consumer base of white and Black smokers, and it would not reinforce an aspirational impulse in its existing market of African American consumers. However, there was another way in which the “Music” campaign proved to be more segmented in its appeal than B&W had initially suspected. B&W also seemed to come to the conclusion that the jazz-centered campaign was problematic for the reason that it fell on the wrong side of a class-centered division. Recounting the reasons for the failure of the “Music” campaign, the 1984 Kool report noted the following: Judgment . . . that current visuals [in the print campaign] are too old, Black, intellectual, and not cool. . . . No evidence exists that the cerebral process of understanding, respect, and admiration for the serious, mature Jazz musician happens among our target audience.  (“Kool 1984 Strategic Plan,” 1984, p. 38)

In other words, the target audience that the Kool report identifies on the following page as “skew[ing] male, young, and downscale in relation to total smokers” is deemed to be incapable of appreciating this “mature,” “intellectual” musical genre. If jazz contributed to “pan-racial” unity here, it was in its highlighting of a relative indifference to the music among young, working-class men, both white and Black. The irony is that B&W’s sponsorship of jazz happened to coincide with a period in which jazz had begun to sever itself from its one-time association with the transgressive, bohemian trappings of smoking, and this separation tracks closely with the changing relationship between cigarettes and social class. One year after the Kool New York Jazz Festival first went under the Kool moniker, the 1982 festival promoters produced a concert of up-and-coming jazz musicians that gave the “young lions” movement its name (Gennari,  2006, p. 247). In giving marquee prominence to artists such as Wynton Marsalis and Bobby McFerrin, the 1982 Kool Festival featured a young generation of musicians whose immaculate, clean-cut image served as a tacit repudiation of the kind of risk-prone behavior exploited by the tobacco companies. Changing attitudes about drugs lie at the center of this transformation: the once-easy linkage of jazz “cool” with substance abuse in popular culture had, by the mid-1980s, been at least partially eclipsed by a new conception of jazz culture, steeped in the symbolism of middle-class respectability. As Michael Zwerin (1989) has noted, the romance of drugs could not survive an

236   Chapman environment in which “young, ‘post-bop’ jazzmen [had come to] wear three-piece suits, are on time for meetings, drink mineral water and negotiate six-figure contracts” (p. 92). For the same reasons, the comparatively mild stigma of smoking would also become anathema to many jazz musicians: both the musicians and institutions of jazz have increasingly come to embrace the health-conscious anti-smoking ethos of contemporary culture. In jazz clubs ranging from Ronnie Scott’s in London to Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., musicians, promoters, and club owners hail the arrival of the smokefree night club, with one manager at Blues Alley citing the upscale nature of contemporary venues as a key reason for embracing anti-smoking policies (Coughlan,  2007; Hahn, 2003). In the 1980s and 1990s, the iconography of the newly gentrified jazz club could no longer be seen as inseparable from the evocatively smoky interiors realized in the classic jazz photography of Herman Leonard (Cawthra, 2011, pp. 119–120; Laver, 2015, p. 126). As it turned out, the likes of Kool were underwriting key events in the jazz world during precisely the same period in which their conception of “cool” had lost resonance with that world.

Conclusions The internal deliberations of tobacco executives regarding the “Kool Music” campaign of the early 1980s provide us with an intriguing window into a transitional phase in the ongoing relationship between jazz, consumerism, and cultural politics. From our position in the early 21st century, as we look back upon what appears to be the seamless deployment of jazz by advertisers as a signifier of luxury and upward mobility, the “Kool Music” campaign demonstrates the degree to which this project unfolded in fits and starts, subject to creative guesswork. In the ways that they juxtapose the aesthetic imaginary of the print campaigns against the hard-nosed statistical assessment of their efficacy, the B&W correspondence about the Kool jazz initiatives highlights the almost dialectical tension at work between the “art” and “science” polarities of the advertising industry, the ongoing efforts to reconcile the risky nonlinearity of creative work with the imperatives of quantitative justifications and strategic precision (Frank, 1997, pp. 92–93). In the same moment that it foregrounds the trial-and-error dynamic of the advertising industry itself, though, the B&W “Kool Music” correspondence from the early 1980s highlights a deeper set of social fissures, a tentative rearrangement of subtle yet crucial cultural coordinates. In the failure of the Kool jazz campaign, which constituted itself as a failure of the music to appeal to a universal, youthful, and “pan-racial” contemporaneity, we can see something of the empty space in which a new idea of jazz could germinate, one more closely in line with neoliberal market logics. In such contexts as television spots for luxury sedans or top-shelf whiskey, the new “jazz brand” would be closely wedded to strategies of market segmentation, a music whose sounds and iconography would be metonymically linked to the material trappings of urban affluence, and narrowcasted for a selective audience.

The Conquest of Kool   237

Recommended Readings Laver, M. (2015). Jazz sells: Music, marketing, and meaning. New York, NY: Routledge. Proctor, R. N. (2011). Golden holocaust: Origins of the cigarette catastrophe and the case for abolition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Turow, J. (1997). Breaking up America: Advertisers and the new media world. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

References Ahearn, J. M. (1985, January 28). 85,000 KOOL (Jazz) Festivals. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/mhlp0099 Ake, D. (2002). Jazz cultures. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Amin, A. (Ed.). (1995). Post-Fordism: A reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. B&W. (1981). Kool strategic brand plan. Ness Motley Law Firm documents. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/nspy0042 Brand, I. B., & Medicus, R. P. (1983, February 7). Kool Music Creative Research—Final Report 1982–141K. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/sxyf0134 Broeker, B. L. (1981, July 16). Umbrella music strategy. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/jskf0138 Cawthra, B. (2011). Blue notes in black and white: Photography and jazz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Coughlan, S. (2007, May 15). Smoke doesn’t get in your eyes. BBC News. Retrieved from http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6656965.stm Cunningham & Walsh. (1984, July 31). Kool music shoot proposal. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/ mpkg0142 Cunningham & Walsh. (n.d.). Kool music shoot proposal. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/kpkg0142 DeVeaux, S. (1991). Constructing the jazz tradition: Jazz historiography. Black American Literature Forum, 25(3), 525–560. Dinerstein, J. (2017). The origins of cool in postwar America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dolbow, S. (2001, April 2). Movado lines up lifestyle effort, expanded line, with $15 million in print. Brandweek, 42(14), 4. Retrieved from Business Insights: Essentials database. Doyle Dane Bernbach. (1985, July 7). Kool biker property development. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/ msjp0143 Enstad, N. (2018). Cigarettes, Inc.: An intimate history of corporate imperialism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fellezs, K. (2011). Birds of fire: Jazz, rock, funk, and the creation of fusion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Finley, D. N., & Sutter, R. H. (1982, March). Kool Jazz Records “The Best of Jazz.” Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/ tobacco/docs/shxv0100

238   Chapman Foucault, M. (2010). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. (M. Senellart, Ed.; G. Burchell, Trans.) Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Frank, T. (1997). The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gabbard, K. (1995). Introduction. In K. Gabbard (Ed.), Jazz among the discourses (pp. 1–30). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Gabbard, K. (2008). Hotter than that: The trumpet, jazz, and American culture. New York, NY: Faber & Faber. Gardiner, P. (2004). The African Americanization of menthol cigarette use in the United States. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 6(Suppl 1), S55–S65. Gennari, J. (2006). Blowin’ hot and cool: Jazz and its critics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gladstone, V. (1998, December 6). Advertisers play a new tune: Jazz. New York Times, p. 34. Gray, H. (2005). Cultural moves: African Americans and the politics of representation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hafez, N., & Ling, P. (2006). Finding the Kool Mixx: How Brown & Williamson used music to market cigarettes. Tobacco Control, 15(5), 359–366. Hahn, F. (2003, September 12). Clearing the air. Washington Post, p. T32. Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hudson, R.  C. (1979, December 21). Name change—Newport Jazz Festival. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/ tobacco/docs/sxhv0084 Keepnews, P. (1986, April 12). Jazz: Blue notes. Billboard, 98(15), 39. Klein, B. (2016). As heard on TV: Popular music and advertising. New York, NY: Routledge. Kool 1984 strategic plan. (1984). Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www .industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/mtkv0133 Kool music: Extension of a property. (n.d.). Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/nhdn0143 Kool music form study. (1983, September 8). Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/kfbp0143 Kool Talent Challenge. (n.d.) Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www .industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/fsfg0142 Kool: The revitalization of an image. (1981, July 10). Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/hjbn0128 Laver, M. (2015). Jazz sells: Music, marketing, and meaning. New York, NY: Routledge. Lewis, L. R. (1983, March 10). Kool music form study. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/mnbw0134 MacAlevey, T. (1985, July 15). Special events menu. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/hzfw0146 Marlow, E. (1998, September). Jazz in the commercial mainstream. Jazz Educators Journal, 31(2), 34–39. McDonough, J. (1991, October). Jazz sells. Down Beat, 58(10), 34. Movado: The art of time. (2004, December). Vibe, 12(12), 26. Neher, W. K. (1983, November 9). Kool focus groups. RJ Reynolds Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/rmmx0096 Perlstein, R. (2008). Nixonland: The rise of a president and the fracturing of America. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

The Conquest of Kool   239 Pollay, R. W., Lee, J. S., & Carter-Whitney, D. (1992). Separate but not equal: Racial segmentation in cigarette advertising. Journal of Advertising, 21(1), 45–57. Proctor, R. (2011). Golden holocaust: Origins of the cigarette catastrophe and the case for abolition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Prouty, K. (2013). Finding jazz in the jazz-as-business metaphor. Jazz Perspectives, 7(1), 31–55. Reid, G. T. (1983, March 18). Kool music form study. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/lhgn0143 Robinson, R., & Holliday, R. (2009). Tobacco use and the Black community in the United States: A community-focused public health model for eliminating population disparities. In R. L. Braithwaite, S. E. Taylor, & H. M. Treadwell (Eds.), Health issues in the Black community (pp. 379–416). San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Schreiber, J./Festival Productions. (1981, December 8). Berklee College of Music Scholarship Program. Brown & Williamson Records. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/pyjv0100 Spigel, L. (2008). TV by design: Modern art and the rise of network television. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Stuber, J., Galea, S., & Link, B. (2008). Smoking and the emergence of a stigmatized social status. Social Science & Medicine, 67(3), 420–430. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. There’s only one way to play it. (1983, April). Popular Science, 222(2), 3. There’s only one way to play it. (1984, October). Ebony, 39(12), 115. Turow, J. (1997). Breaking up America: Advertisers and the new media world. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management. (n.d.). Truth Tobacco Industry Documents. Retrieved from https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/ Zwerin, M. (1989, November). Straight, no chaser. Spin, 5(8), 91–93.

chapter 11

L oathsom e Deu tschtum? Wagner and Advertising as Propaganda in American Industrial Films of the 1930s and 1940s Julie Hubbert

Film scores have had a long history of appropriating pre-existing music, and a long ­history of using Wagner’s music in particular. From the earliest days of silent film, Wagner’s music was tasked to support a variety of imagery. Hardly a thought of marriage could pass without a reference to Lohengrin, no train could be spotted without The Flying Dutchman being heard, no rescue complete without the accompaniment of the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhauser, or the famous “Ride of the Valkyries” from Die Walküre.1 Even into the early sound period, bits of Wagner’s opera were heard everywhere, quietly supporting a range of themes and characters from Vikings (Vikings, 1928) to opera singers (Oh, for a Man, 1930), opera houses (Fire in the Opera House, 1929), and even vampires (Dracula, 1931).2 In the silent period, and especially after the Great War, however, Wagner’s music was also more narrowly consolidated to the category of all things “German.” In war pictures, like The Lone Wolf (1917), The Lost Battalion (1919), and The Enemy (1927), as scholar 1 In Motion Pictures Moods for Pianists and Organists, Erno Rapee suggests, for instance, that in scenes involving railroads and/or locomotives, accompanists would do well to play the spinning song from The Flying Dutchman (Rapee, 1924/1974). The appropriation of “Ride of the Valkyries” in Griffith’s silent epic Birth of a Nation has been dealt with extensively by Martin M. Marks in Music and the Silent Film: Contexts and Case Studies, 1985–1924 (Marks, 1997, pp. 126–147). 2  Wagner’s music was also used to accompany silent film versions of his operas (Parsifal [1904], dir. by Edwin Porter), at least one biopic of the composer (The Life and Works of Richard Wagner [1913], dir. by Carl Froelich), and even film treatments of Teutonic and Icelandic myths. Although his music was notably absent from Berlin premieres of Fritz Lang’s Siegfried (1924) and Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924) when the film was shown in the New York movie palaces, the premiere featured compilation scores full of Ring excerpts (see Mueller, 2010, pp. 85–110).

Loathsome Deutschtum?   241 Scott Paulin observes, Wagner became the sonic signifier for the German enemy and the actions of German soldiers. Compilation resources, playing manuals, and advice columns that film accompanists and music directors routinely consulted through the silent and early sound period all worked to cement the connection between Wagner and Germanness.3 By the mid-1930s, the consolidation was so complete, as Carolyn Abbate has observed, that Wagner’s music had become the assumed soundtrack not just for all things German, but also for Nazism, for “fascism, racism, menace and simple, loathsome Deutschtum” (Abbate, 2006, p. 598). The association was so well worn, in fact, that it was ripe for parody. In The Great Dictator (1940), Chaplin’s spoof of Hitler, an artful ballet choreographed to the Prelude to Lohengrin, succeeded to some degree because the connection between Wagner and Nazism had become absolutely clichéd. The present chapter complicates this coding of Wagner’s music by considering an important but neglected film in which it figures prominently: a beautiful industrial film made by General Motors (GM) in 1936 called Master Hands. In this promotional film made to advertise the virtues of the GM car to both the GM sales force and the general public, there are no bad Germans; instead, Wagner’s music is used quite earnestly in this advertising text to valorize good Americans and promote good American industry. The application is atypical, antithetical even, but not insignificant, especially in the way that it requires both a complex discussion of the construction of national identity in the prewar period and a stark reassessment of the priority given Hollywood filmmaking in the construction of musical meaning in the industrial marketing film.

The Context for Master Hands Master Hands is a 32-minute, black-and-white, 35-mm film that displays the technical complexity involved in the mass production of automobiles. Often called a “sponsored” film, this film is one of a special category of industrial and institutional films that, as scholar Rick Prelinger defines it, “were sponsored by American businesses, charities, educational institutions, and advocacy groups” (Prelinger, 2006, pp. vi–xi). Sponsored films share many stylistic characteristics with documentary film, yet they performed more functional purposes—to advertise, educate, or instruct employees or viewers, for instance—so they have recently been given categorical distinction. Many American companies, private charities, public utilities, and civic organizations, large and small, made films in the 1930s and 1940s to promote their products, train their employees, and inform the public, or promote various political or educational causes. On the surface, Master Hands easily participates in this category of filmmaking. Made in 1936 and shot 3  Leitmotivs from the Ring cycle (arranged by composer Gottfried Sonntag), Paulin points out, could be heard accompanying scenes of enemy German soldiers in many films. Rapee similarly quotes Sontag’s arrangements of various Ring motives in the “German” category in his Encyclopedia of Music for Pictures (Rapee, 1925; see also Paulin, 2010, pp. 227–229).

242   Hubbert at a Chevrolet plant in Flint, Michigan, the film documents the spectrum of events involved in this industrial process of making an automobile, from foundry work to the large and complex mechanical machinery needed for assembly-line production in an automobile factory. As much as it describes the mechanization of car manufacturing in the 1930s, however, the film also documents the structural and organization changes happening at GM in the wake of the Great Depression. GM was one of several large corporations that played a prominent role in the reconstruction of the American economy in the early 1930s. Because of its profile as an important national industry, President Roosevelt appealed to the auto industry for their help in putting the country on a path toward economic recovery. The National Industrial Relations Act (NIRA), which Congress enacted in 1933, required close cooperation between private industry and the government and gave Roosevelt new powers to regulate aspects of production and pricing. Some industrialists, like Henry Ford, were less than cooperative with the government.4 Others, however, including the GM president at the time, Alfred P. Sloan, initially responded favorably to Roosevelt’s request for help. Economic recovery was a shared problem between government and industry, Sloan initially reasoned. He wanted GM to play “a major role in the nation’s economic crisis” and his corporation “to be perceived by the public, as well as its elected representatives, as a productive citizen of the nation—one with an active role to play in the democracy’s conversation about the economic crisis and its remedies” (Faber, 2002, p. 156). As Roosevelt and his New Deal policies began to exert greater regulatory control over industry and manufacturing, however, especially in how industry treated its workforce, Sloan became less enthusiastic about cooperating with the government. In fact, in just a few years he became one of the Roosevelt administration’s most outspoken critics. He saw the government as the enemy of industry and free enterprise, not its partner. “It (i)s time to face up to the ultimate battle that is coming,” he told an audience of fellow executives at the National Association of Manufacturers in 1935, “[a battle] between political management and private enterprise,” “to protect the very foundation of the American System” (Faber, 2002, p. 179). The U.S. government was using its power not to aid economic recovery, but to limit, even cripple the power of American industry. In closed circles, Sloan adopted even more openly antagonistic rhetoric toward the government, exhorting fellow industrial leaders to unite and stop what he and others saw as the “pernicious influence of Franklin Roosevelt” (Marchand, 1998, p. 203).5 As the 1936 election approached, Sloan became increasingly public in his dissatisfaction with Roosevelt. He endorsed the very lackluster Republican challenger Eugene Talmadge. He also joined conservative organizations dedicated to the defeat of 4  Although Ford agreed with many of the goals of the NIRA, he did not support it because he did not believe in a worker’s right to collective bargaining (Baudreau, 2004, pp. 59–74; Lewis, 1987, pp. 237–268). 5  As Marchand points out, Sloan’s position was an extension of the articulated platform of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which was also trying to convince the American people that American industry had been forced into a position in “sheer self-defense” against the government and its aggressive taxation and union protections.

Loathsome Deutschtum?   243 Roosevelt and his “socialist” agenda including the American Liberty League, a group that funded a host of subsidiary organizations including the Ku Klux Klan, the Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution (the group that disparaged Eleanor Roosevelt for posing for pictures with prominent African Americans), and the Sentinels of the Republic, a racist and anti-Semitic organization that called Roosevelt’s New Deal the “Jew Deal” (Faber, 2002, pp. 182–185). When the negative publicity he received for making a $1,000 contribution to the Sentinels also threatened to sully GM’s reputation, Sloan retreated from public politics. Although he continued to assert the superiority of corporate benevolence over government welfare, he shifted and softened his message to emphasize corporate responsibility. In a meeting of GM stockholders in 1936, reported on by the New York Times, Sloan asserted: Industry must assume the role of enlightened industrial statesmanship. It can no longer confine its responsibilities to the mere physical production and distribution of goods and services. It must aggressively move forward and attune its thinking and its policies toward advancing the interest of the community at large, from which it receives a most valuable franchise.  (Faber, 2002, p. 183)

Sloan realized that to challenge Roosevelt and provide an alternative to his New Deal philosophies, he needed to reshape public perception of industry as benevolent and progressive. His company needed to move “aggressively” to convince the public that corporate America, not the government, was working to “advance the interests of the community at large.” At the same time that he was addressing stockholders with ideas of industrial responsibility, he was also channeling that message into many of GM’s advertising and public relations initiatives. One part of the company’s general public relations platform in the mid-1930s was to convince the public that a vibrant economy and a stable society rested not only on corporate affluence but also even more specifically on the development of technology (Sloan,  1941, pp. 123–168). The technical innovations of American industry, not government welfare, would elevate the country out of its depression. In contrast to Roosevelt’s “pastoral” rhetoric, which built a utopia around an imagined rural America, GM increasingly valorized technology and technological progress. Although the company had since the early 1920s been working to define its corporate image with its own vast employee workforce, in the mid-1930s that campaign was retooled to advertise to the American people that GM and the auto industry were the agents of economic progress.6 In this public relations war between government and industry, the effective use of media was key. GM continued to use established methods of public outreach to promote 6  Famous advertising pioneer Bruce Barton had convinced Sloan in the early 1920s that the company needed to enforce a more coherent image and message with its employees to run more efficiently. In the early 1930s, Barton and Sloan repositioned this idea at the heart of the public campaign to present GM as symbolizing technical progress but also practicing benevolence (Marchand, 1998, pp. 141–148, 202–204, 235–248).

244   Hubbert its message, including advertisements in a variety of print media—newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, and magazines. But it also invested in traveling exhibits to showcase new technologies and new cars. GM’s “Parade of Progress,” for instance, toured the country between 1936 and 1939, bringing new technologies to cities and people via a caravan of 33 vehicles, including over a dozen specially designed streamlined buses.7 Larger versions of these traveling exhibits were also regularly erected and displayed in permanent pavilions at various fairs around the country including the Century of Progress World’s Fair held in Chicago between 1933 and 1934 and the 1939–1940 World’s Fair in New York (Marchand, 1998, pp. 291–311).8 GM also made efforts to use radio more effectively. The medium itself was not new, but Roosevelt’s masterful use of it in his Fireside Chats was. Sloan and GM executives countered the chats by increasing, between 1933 and 1936, the production of radio programs that spread the message of corporate benevolence, programs such as General Motors Family Party and the Parade of the States. GM sponsored a number of new programs, each tailored, like their car brands, to reach consumers of different economic means. In 1934, for instance, they let NBC turn the Cadillac Symphony Concerts into a permanent broadcast retitled the General Motors Symphony Concerts, which featured the New York Philharmonic and its guest conductors and artists.9 Sloan also became interested in using the relatively new medium of sound film to present GM’s corporate philosophy and to advertise new products to the public (Faber, 2002, p. 180). In previous decades, promotional film production had been dominated by fellow industrialist Henry Ford. In 1914, for instance, the Ford Motor Company had been the first American business to establish a motion picture division in its advertising department. By 1918, it was the largest motion picture producer and distributor in the world, producing newsreel and education films that were shown in thousands of theaters in the United States each week. When the economy faltered in the early 1930s, Ford shuttered its film production studios in New York, although it continued to use outside production companies for promotional filmmaking. By then GM, like Ford, was also heavily involved in making promotional and industrial films, albeit now with sound film (Lewis, 1987, pp. 114–118).10 Some of this was Sloan’s doing. GM’s president and CEO was interested in the persuasive power of film to the extent that he later established the 7 GM’s Parade of Progress used 33 vehicles, a large tent, and a crew of over 50 people to transport a large technological-centric exhibit all around the country (Marchand, 1998, pp. 283–291). 8  Other auto manufacturers, and also other industries, AT&T and General Electric, for instance, also displayed current and future technologies in specially constructed pavilions at these World’s Fairs (Bird, 1999, pp. 121–143). 9 GM’s Parade of the States was the brainchild of Bruce Barton, who wrote the scripts for each show. Veteran silent film composer and conductor Erno Rapee was the musical director; he selected pre-existing musical works and composed some new pieces for each program (Bird, 1998, pp. 32–38, 96–118, and 68–85, where he covers Dupont’s Cavalcade of America in detail; Marchand, 1998, pp. 230–231 and 236; Barfield, 1996; Douglas, 2004). 10  When the Ford company made films in the 1930s and 1940s, they frequently contracted the work out to production companies including Audio Productions that worked out of Brooklyn’s Astor Studios, and the Wilding Picture Productions based in Detroit (Kozarski, 2010, pp. 101–140).

Loathsome Deutschtum?   245 short-lived Educational Film Institute at New York University in 1939 (Streible, 2012).11 In the early 1930s, Sloan and GM’s interest in film is visible in the substantial number of films GM produced or sponsored. In 1935, for instance, the Chevrolet Motor Company, a division of GM, launched its Direct Mass Selling series, which by 1941 had produced 115 films. The Direct Mass Selling films, as a collection, feature a mix of film genres and types: documentaries, narratives, newsreels, and animated cartoons. Like advertising, many of the films explain new features of current Chevrolet cars—hydraulic brakes, spring levers in transmissions, and valve-in-head engines. Others examine general issues of automobile safety and safe driving practices and do not explicitly promote Chevrolet cars. A few also focus on general technological processes—how gasoline powers an engine, how an accelerator works, how electric signs function, and how motion pictures are made. The collection also contains several animated films, most notably A Coach for Cinderella (1936), a fairy tale-based cartoon that features one of the earliest examples of three-strip Technicolor production (Oakes, 2010; Prelinger, 2010, pp. 217–218). Some of the films appear to have been distributed by Hollywood studios like Paramount, the Metropolitan Motion Picture Company, and Monogram Pictures, and were shown depending on their subject matter in movie theaters as a short before the feature film (Prelinger, 2012, p. 342).12 Others in the series, especially if they touched on issues of public safety or health or focused on technological developments, most likely circulated nontheatrically and were shown in schools, libraries, churches, and other civic venues. Those that highlighted employee behavior or training were most likely for internal circulation only and were shown at GM sales meetings and department gatherings.13 No matter the subject or intended audience, however, all of the films contain some product placement, subtle kinds of advertising and promotion carefully calibrated so that the films could be shown at multiple venues.

Jam Handy Much of the content and style of these films was determined not by Sloan or other GM executives, but by the company GM hired to make their films. GM outsourced the majority of its film production to a local Detroit media company, the Jam Handy Picture Service Company, named after its charismatic founder, Jamison Handy. Handy had 11  Sloan was dismayed by the overtly leftist agenda he saw in the films the institute produced between 1938 and 1939, including The Children Must Learn, And So They Live, and Valley Town. 12  Many surviving films from the Direct Mass Selling series have film leaders with the logos of the studios or companies that distributed them. The largest collection of these films is viewable online at the internet Archive (http://archive.org). 13  Prelinger (2012, p. 342) points out that the JHO offered a variety of distribution and exhibition services. “Handy men drove mobile projection vans across the country, presenting films at meetings, conventions, and public events.” See also Prelinger (2006, p. ix).

246   Hubbert recognized early that film was an effective tool of mass communication for both training employees and educating customers. After apprenticing at Bray Pictures in Chicago, an advertising company run by famed Hollywood animator J. R. Bray, from 1918 to 1921, Handy struck out on his own in the late 1920s and established his own media company, the Jam Handy Organization (JHO) (Oakes, 2010, pp. 96–98; Prelinger, 2012, pp. 348–349). When GM executives approached Handy with an offer to do business because of the work Handy had done for some of GM’s subsidiary companies, Handy quickly moved his company from Chicago to Detroit to capitalize on the automaker’s business. Although the JHO would have other high-profile clients including Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, and General Electric, its largest client, especially during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, was GM. The JHO quickly became one of the wealthiest advertising firms in the county because of its relationship with GM, but also because of the technical and business acumen of Handy (Prelinger, 2012, pp. 338–340).14 Like Sloan, Handy believed strongly in the power of visual imagery to educate and inform the masses (Oakes, 2010, p. 99). By the mid-1930s, he was running a full-scale film studio, including one of the largest animation departments in the country. As a direct result of the relationship Handy forged with GM, in fact, by the mid-1930s the city of Detroit was being hailed not only as a center of car manufacturing but also one of film production. With production revenues and the number of films reportedly rivaling that of the Hollywood studios, Detroit was beginning to be seen as a new center for filmmaking in the United States, the “Hollywood” of commercial films. As one journalist described it: As Hollywood is to the theatrical entertainment film, so is Detroit to the commercial sound pictures. . . . [I]t leads all the rest when it comes to the production of moving pictures for commercial purposes. Its yearly output is estimated at close [to] $4 million—a figure which other centers of the commercial film, New York, Hollywood and Chicago, cannot approximate.  (McKeown, 1936, p. 1)

Although these two industries, narrative and promotional filmmaking, were separate in purpose, by many metrics of production they were comparable. In terms of production volume, in fact, the Detroit film industry was exceeding the output of the Hollywood studios. Although several film production companies had been formed to meet the media needs of Detroit’s booming manufacturing sector, the JHO was easily the largest. By some estimates it was even the “largest commercial moving picture house in the world.” By 1936, the JHO resembled a Hollywood studio not only in terms of size and revenues but also in terms of the division of labor within its structure.

14  Handy, for instance, lined the halls of the company’s offices with inspirational quotes from a wide variety of businessmen, inventors, artists, and philosophers. A devout Christian Scientist and an Olympic athlete (a member of the U.S. Olympic swim team in 1904 and the U.S. water polo team in 1924), Handy also admonished his employees to pursue a healthy and disciplined lifestyle.

Loathsome Deutschtum?   247 Today the Handy organization employs more than 400 people including 12 camera men, eight directors, 28 writers, six sales representatives, 80 projectionists, 35 advance men, a musical director and two assistants, the rest are artists, still photographers, accountants, and letterers. The organization still retains a conventional department which works on executive’s talks, playlets and road shows. Among the artists employed are men known as animators.  (McKeown, 1936, p. 1)

The JHO made mostly short films, but because the company produced over 70 films a year, their output, and Detroit’s commercial film industry as a whole, was often compared to the Hollywood studios. Exceeding Hollywood, in fact, was a theme that surfaced regularly in descriptions of Detroit’s film industry throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and for good reason. By 1949, the JHO alone maintained a Hollywood-like campus of studio-like lots spread out over 11 buildings in downtown Detroit and a production staff that numbered 245 directors, artists, writers, and technicians, allowing it to “turn out 200 [short] features [sic] each year, which is about four times the annual output of a major Hollywood studio like Paramount” (Morris, 1949, pp. 1, 12).15 The Jam Handy studios also competed regularly with Hollywood for onscreen talent, including actors such as Frank Sinatra, Kay Kyser, or Sterling Holloway, and offscreen production crews. Handy boasted of having several on his staff with Hollywood pedigrees including Ernie Zatorski, former head of sound at Paramount, and Gordon Avil, the cinematographer for the Oscar-winning film The Champ (1931) (Callaghan, 1946). In its animation unit, the JHO had a number of distinguished Hollywood veterans including Max Fleischer, Frank Goldman, and Rockwell Barnes (Oakes, 2010, pp. 100–105).16 By the end of the 1940s, as one journalist described the JHO: It looks like Hollywood. It sounds like Hollywood. It IS Hollywood—the commercial Hollywood of the United States. For this is the studio of Jam Handy Organization, biggest industrial moving picture company in the world, where technic parallels often are a step ahead of methods in the big western studios. Only difference is that in this commercial Hollywood every plot has a purpose, which involves folding money, not of the box office variety.  (Morris, n.d.)17

Because of Jam Handy’s personal belief in film as the most effective media for advertising, for informing and educating the public, by as early as the mid-1930s Detroit was known not just as center for auto manufacturing but as a center for (commercial) film production. 15  Handy (n.d.,Box 9, Folder 2). 16  Because he had already freelanced for Handy in the 1930s, in 1942, when Max Fleischer left Paramount studios in Hollywood, Handy personally recruited the famous animator to work in the JHO studios, which he did until his retirement in 1953, producing among other things the Montgomery Ward–sponsored classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1948). 17  This glossy, multipage article is included in the Jamison Handy Papers, Box 9, Folder 2. The comparison between Detroit and Hollywood persisted well into the 1950s. See Handy (n.d., Box 9, Folder 1) and Tidyman (1957, pp. 7–11, 58–60).

248   Hubbert

Master Hands Although Master Hands was made early in the JHO’s relationship with GM as part of their Direct Mass Selling series, there are several features that set it apart from the rest of the films in the series.18 The exhibition history of the film is still unclear, but it appears to have been produced to advertise GM cars at a special World’s Fair–like event in 1936, the Centenary Celebration of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, DC. Like the Century of Progress Fairs in Chicago, this was a showcase of industrial and technological progress.19 Although Master Hands is not discussed by name, a description of the events for the big, multiday celebration in the New York Times makes mention of a special film to be shown. Both the film and its content, the marvel of industrial automobile manufacturing, were to highlight the technological marvels that had been made possible by the patent office (“Auto Plant Noises,” 1936, p. 21). The untitled film was “a new sound film that fuses auto plant noises with music supplied by the Detroit Philharmonic . . . a leading philharmonic orchestra [that] will play the accompaniment for the myriad of sounds that come from the production of an American motor car.” Although the film may have circulated later in general movie theaters as a theatrical short and was later listed in company records as a “vocational short,” based especially on this description of the score, Master Hands was made by GM for the Centenary Celebration of the patent office and appears to have been premiered at that event (Prelinger, 2012, pp. 150–151). Several additional features mark Master Hands as a film made for special exhibition. Most Handy films, those produced at the time for the Direct Mass Selling series, for instance, do not have production credits. Master Hands, however, has a comparatively extensive production sequence that reveals over the course of three title cards credit for photography, orchestral score, rendition, and editing, and a production credit for the JHO. The editor Vincent Herman was a staff editor with few if any film acknowledgments, but the cinematographer, Gordon Avil, was a cameraman with an impressive Hollywood pedigree. Avil had been the cinematographer for the major director King Vidor and had worked with Vidor on significant narrative films such as Hallelujah (1929), Billy the Kid (1930), and The Champ (1931). Although he would eventually return to Hollywood in the late 1950s and win an Emmy in 1968 for his work on the television series Hogan’s Heroes, Avil, a Michigan native, spent most of the 1930s and 1940s in Detroit working for Jam Handy Picture Services. 18 The Direct Mass Selling Catalogue No. 22 was published February 5, 1936. Many thanks to Rick Prelinger for providing an undated but complete list of the films in the Direct Mass Selling series that was prepared by the Handy Offices (see also Prelinger, 2006, p. 61; 2012, pp. 349–351). Curiously, another film in the series, the 1937 film Helping You Sell, features clips from Master Hands when the narrator describes the kinds of “direct mass methods” Chevrolet has been using to sell cars. 19  For a full description of the multiday event, see Centennial Celebration (1937). Curiously, however, there is no reference to the new film “infused with auto noises” in this document.

Loathsome Deutschtum?   249 Avil’s beautiful and luminous cinematography for Master Hands may indeed have been influenced, as several scholars have pointed out, by the still photography of the period, by the industrial photographs of Margaret Bourke-White or Lewis Hine’s 1932 documentary photographic series “Men at Work” (Egan,  2010, p. 257; Shell,  2014, pp. 713–715). But there are also connections to be drawn between Avil’s cinematography and the visual style of contemporary industrial and experimental films. In terms of content, Master Hands occupies similar territory as Rhapsody in Steel, for instance, a film made by the Ford Company for the Century of Progress Fair in Chicago in 1934. That industrial film was also shot on location, at Ford’s Rouge plant outside Detroit, and similarly showcases to car buyers the technological beauty of the industrial process involved in automobile making. Rhapsody in Steel also features a heavy overlay of animation, however, which gives it a decidedly different and less serious tone than Master Hands (Bird, 1999, pp. 127–129).20 In terms of tone, Avil may have been influenced by Willy Zielke’s Das Stahltier (The Steel Animal, 1935), a German industrial film made in celebration of the 100-year history of the German railway. An unusual mix of narrative, documentary, and avant-garde styles, it features similar careful close-ups of men and machines (Barsam, 1992, pp. 125–129; Tode, 2006, pp. 1032–1033).21 Many sponsored films after Master Hands feature industrial processes: Men and Machines (1937), sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM); Men Make Steel, sponsored by U.S.  Steel; and Symphony in F, the film Ford Company made for the 1939 World’s Fair. But in 1936, Master Hands was one of the first of its kind (Bird,  1999, pp. 131–143; Marchand,  1998, pp. 298–302; Prelinger,  2006, pp. 19, 263, 375; Segrave, 2004, p. 60). The film also predates, with the exception of The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), the well-known New Deal or government- and foundation-sponsored documentary films of the period, including The River (1938), Redes (1937), The People of the Cumberland (1938), Valley Town (1940), One Tenth of Our Nation (1940), The Fight for Life (1940), The Power of the Land (1940), White Flood (1940), A Child Went Forth (1940), The Forgotten Village (1941), and Native Land (1942).22 Since most of these films were made much later, the only government documentary from this group that may have influenced Avil visually was Ralph Steiner’s film, Hands (1934), an avant-garde study of manual labor.

20  The composer for Rhapsody in Steel, Edwin Ludig, would continue his relationship with Audio Productions, later scoring the film screened at the Ford pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, Symphony in F (“F” meaning Ford). 21  As both authors point out, Zielke would go on to have a significant influence on filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who employed Zielke as a cameraman on her films Day of Freedom (1935) and Olympia (1936). 22  All of these films are discussed at length in Alexander (1991) and Campbell (1982). For a summary of New Deal documentaries, see Balio (1993, pp. 365–373). Although Avil might have been aware of some of the work done earlier by filmmakers like Ralph Steiner, Willard Van Dyck, Paul Strand, and Leo Hurwitz for the New York Film and Photo Leagues, the Worker’s Newsreels, and the film New Earth (1934), for instance, because Master Hands has little overlap philosophically with the leftist political agenda of these films, the influence seems less likely.

250   Hubbert Sonically, however, Master Hands is different from either documentary or avantgarde films of the period. Apart from an opening line of dialogue, “From the master hands of the toolmakers, to the hands that master the great machines,” there is no “voice of god” narration to direct our reception of the images. The lack of a “sober, expository tone” audibly separates the film from both the New Deal documentaries and the Rockefeller documentaries, films like White Flood (1940), The Forgotten Village (1941), and A Child Went Forth (1940) (Cain, 2012, pp. 230–248). These films all revel in formal, stentorian narration. Master Hands does not, and its lack of narration generates a meditative tone closer to the experimental films of the period like Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a City (1929), Joris Ivens’s Rain (1929), and Ralph Steiner’s Mechanical Principles (1930), silent films that relied on a live performance of musical score to narrate and support the action (Barnouw, 1993, pp. 71–81; Barsam, 1992, pp. 57–65; Jacobs, 1979, pp. 27–175; Nichols, 2001, pp. 21–60). Rhapsody in Steel also uses a score instead of narration, but composer Edwin Ludig’s score strikes a decidedly different tone that matches the film’s animation sequences, not its serious industrial content. Because its purpose was to promote and advertise GM manufacturing processes and products, Master Hands was not as celebrated as many of the documentaries of the period. In terms of its musical score, Master Hands stands apart from its predecessors. The New Deal documentaries Lorentz directed, The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River, for instance, featured scores by Virgil Thomson that were infused with quotations of American hymns and folk tunes. Although less overtly referential, the sponsored films Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, and Marc Bliztstein scored in the late 1930s were also infused with a folk-inspired sound.23 Hanns Eisler, on the other hand, embraced atonality and modernist musical techniques in the films he composed for the Rockefeller Foundation, White Flood, The Forgotten Village, and A Child Went Forth (Bick, 2008; Gall, 2006). Within just a few moments of the opening frames of the film, Master Hands establishes an altogether different musical landscape. As the credit sequence in Master Hands indicates, the music was an important part of the film’s special status. Where most Handy films, especially those in the Direct Mass Selling series, typically have only small bits of orchestra music at the beginning and end of the film, Master Hands has a full orchestral score throughout. Handy films also typically do not credit a composer or the musicians who perform the scores. The acknowledgment of an orchestra for the “rendition” of the score is the indication of a postproduction splurge more typical of a Hollywood film. Not to be confused with the city’s premiere ensemble the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the credited orchestra here, Detroit Philharmonic, was a large, reputable, freelance group of professional and semiprofessional musicians that had been performing in and around Detroit since the early 1920s, offering typically important but also lighter classical fare.

23  The musical scores for these films have received fairly extensive treatment. See especially Lerner (1997, 1999, 2005). The influence Thomson had on Copland and Harris is spelled out in several places including Crist (2005) and Hubbert (2014). See also Nisbett (1995) and Pollack (2012).

Loathsome Deutschtum?   251

Samuel Benavie and His Score The presence of the Detroit Philharmonic also explains the presence of the score’s composer Samuel Benavie. In 1936, when the film was made, Benavie was the Philharmonic’s conductor and musical director.24 In the late 1920s, Benavie had also been the music director of the 40-piece orchestra for one of Detroit’s biggest movie palaces, the 3,300seat Fisher Theater (Who’s Who, 1929, p. 11).25 Benavie had significant experience compiling, arranging, and composing music scores for silent films. When the Fisher Theater converted to sound film in the early 1930s, Benavie found new work playing in the second violin section of the Detroit Symphony from 1935 to 1942.26 He also continued to conduct, most notably for the Michigan Theater Orchestra and for the Ford Orchestra, the ensemble that played the Ford Sunday Evening Radio Hour, a nationwide broadcast from the studios at the Detroit radio station WJR, from 1937 to 1952.27 Company records and the obituaries for Benavie confirm that he worked for the JHO from 1938 until his retirement in 1970.28 Since his participation in the score for Master Hands predates the official start of his employment at the JHO, Benavie was no doubt approached to work on Master Hands because he was a prestigious local artist with extensive experience arranging and conducting music for feature films. He was a recognizable artist being brought in to lend prestige to the film. Benavie’s music for Master Hands is neither pastoral nor modernist but instead uses a different method and repertoire to persuade. A written score for the film unfortunately does not survive, but it is easy to hear when listening to the film that the score is a typical compilation for a narrative film in the silent era. It features three types of music, each being paired with a certain activity or imagery. For scenes in which light machine work or assembly line work is shown, we hear Mendelssohnian, elfin-like orchestration with a light melodic theme. Where heavy industrial work is featured— forging, smelting, welding, large equipment—more dissonant music is used. Much of  it sounds like classic “interstitial” music from the silent period, that is, lots of

24  Personal information on Benavie can be gleaned from newspaper clippings included in the “Benavie” file in the Burton Historical Collection in the Detroit Public Library (Benavie, n.d.) and also from various obituaries. Benavie was born in a small town in the Ukraine in 1894, and his route to becoming a musician and to coming to Detroit, which took him through Vienna, Palestine, and Egypt during the early turbulent years of the Great War, is fascinating. I am indebted to Benavie’s son Arthur for sharing information with me and for providing me with a translation of his father’s diary from 1915–1916. 25  Benavie got his start in film accompaniment with the Kunsky Players, a group of musicians that accompanied live vaudeville shows and silent film in several Detroit theaters owned by John Kunsky. 26  Information from the Detroit Symphony Archive. I am indebted to archivist Cynthia Korolov for her assistance in providing me with copies of the orchestra’s rosters and records from the 1930s. 27  See “Benavie” file in the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library (Benavie, n.d.). 28  Although Benavie received credit on just a few other Jam Handy Productions, most famously the 1948 claymation classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, it is clear that by the 1940s he was a valuable member of Handy’s postproduction team (Tidyman, 1957, p. 58).

252   Hubbert

Figure 11.1  Master Hands (5:50). Workers smelting ore to be poured into industrial casts (first instance of the Siegfried quotation).

ascending diminished and augmented chords, and motives with prominent augmented intervals (Altman,  2004, pp.  289–379; Marks,  1997, pp. 8–14; Pisani,  2014, pp. 168–206). At the end of each of these sections, however, Benavie punctuates the scenes with a quotation of the Sword motif and forging music from Act I of Wagner’s opera Siegfried. Benavie treats the Siegfried quotation, in fact, like a leitmotif, bringing it back five times during the film. Each time the motive returns, the visual context is different and the quotation is audibly lengthened. The first quotation is heard from 6:13 to 6:33 at the end of a long foundry scene where molten metal is being transported and poured into molds. It is a brief 20-second snippet that features only the Sword motive (Figure 11.1). The second instance, which lasts only slightly longer, happens between 10:40 and 11:06 and accompanies images of engine blocks being lifted and conveyed across the factory via a system of metal hooks and chains. The third quotation, from 13:13 to 13:20, shows machinists grinding and polishing large metal springs that are then carried to another part of the factory (Figure 11.2). The final two quotations are the most extensive, stretching from 25:23 to 26:33 and again from 28:47 to 31:15. During both of these longer quotations, we watch as the car is finally assembled by myriad factory laborers (Figures 11.3 and 11.4). These quotations from Siegfried are

Loathsome Deutschtum?   253

Figure 11.2  Master Hands (13:30). Workers use industrial machines to polish engine coils ­(second instance of the Siegfried quotation).

not the only recurring music in the film, but they are the most prominent, timed to coincide with important moments in the industrial process and to underscore the climactic end of the film when an assembled car is driven away from the factory.29 The connection to Wagner, and to his mythological Ring cycle, is further reinforced in the extensive musical frame Benavie gives the promotional film: it prominently begins and ends with additional motifs from Wagner’s Ring cycle. As we read the opening title card acknowledging the sponsorship of the Chevrolet Motor Company, Benavie underscores the information with energetic statements of Donner’s (or Thor’s) motive, a motive heard throughout the Ring cycle but most prominently during the storm that marks the beginning of Die Walküre. The cue plays over two title cards, reminding us that the 25 million cars on the road in 1936 have been made “by over 5 million skilled workers.” In the card that follows, the title of the film is explained as we read that “the twenty five million drivers and their families who depend on these workers for personal transportation have little opportunity to see at work the skilled craftsmen whose master hands command the great machinery of production.” At the film’s end, Benavie inserts another prominent Wagner quotation: as an owner gets into his newly made Chevrolet 29  The whole film is viewable online at the internet Archive and I have used this version of the film for my timings.

254   Hubbert

Figure 11.3  Master Hands (26:02). Final assemblage of the automobile begins (third instance of the Siegfried quotation).

and drives away from the factory and quite literally into the sunset, the grand processional music featured at the end of Das Rheingold as the gods ascend into Valhalla soars triumphantly in the background. Like most compilation scores of the silent era, this one too has a broad and varied referential range. The dissonant interstitial music has clear and obvious roots. Its uncomfortable augmented intervals point to Raksin’s and Chaplin’s score for the iconic film Modern Times, also made in 1936. Its dissonant brass fanfares are similarly used to accompany the harsh sounds of industrial, mechanized labor (Paulin,  2005). The Wagner quotations, however, point in a different direction. It is hard to ignore the overtly German or Teutonic context they bring to the film and to the very industrial, American process of mass-producing a complex machine like the automobile. In the film’s foundry scenes, the choice of the Sword motive from Siegfried is more than appropriate. The action in those scenes clearly parallels the action of Act 1 of Siegfried, where Siegfried is forging and assembling the shards of his father’s shattered sword. In those instances, the quotations have the effect of casting the American autoworkers as modern-day Siegfrieds, the heroes of industry and free enterprise. The quotations from the Ring cycle that frame the film also facilitate similar acts of transference. As the film’s final shot gives us the only external shot of the film, with a car driving away from an urban factory toward nature and the pristine beauty of the outdoors, the Wagner quotations invite us

Loathsome Deutschtum?   255

Figure 11.4  Master Hands (29:47). A car nears completion (final instance of the Siegfried quotation).

to see Chevrolet and modern industry as a New Valhalla. This reading of the musical score supports the observation that this film is a piece of “industrial fantasy” made by corporate executives for corporate executives, wealthy industrialists, and those most invested in viewing technological advances as benign and progressive (Shell,  2014, p. 714). The Siegfried quotations idealize and valorize industrial mass production as a modern utopia replete with a happy, compliant workforce.

Wagner and the Nazis in America: The Corporate Connections If the Germanness of the score, and specifically the Wagnerian quotations, makes the film sit uncomfortably within both the tradition of American documentary and industrial promotional filmmaking, it may be because these musical references also connect the film to something quite different—to contemporary German documentary filmmaking and Nazi propaganda efforts. Just as Hollywood was coding Wagner as “loathsome Deutschtum,” the same music was being repurposed within Germany itself for a spectrum of uses by the

256   Hubbert Nazi government. Shortly after taking power, Hitler forged a visible connection with the Wagner family and made overt claims on Wagner’s music, using the Bayreuth Festival in 1933, for instance, as a type of party rally.30 Hitler also appropriated the Sword motive from Siegfried, the same one heard in Master Hands, in radio broadcasts to mark his birthday (Bergmeier & Lotz, 1997, p. 180; Kater, 1997, p. 39). Wagner’s music was moreover being put into the underscore of prominent Nazi propaganda films. Leni Riefenstahl’s much publicized film, Triumph of the Will (1935), made the connection between Wagner and Hitler not only inexorable but also international. In that film, Herbert Windt, the film’s composer, uses the “Wachet auf ” chorus from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger.31 Triumph of the Will was not theatrically released in the United States, but notable Hollywood figures, including Walt Disney and King Vidor, saw it in 1935 when the film won the Best Foreign Documentary prize at the Venice Biennale (Bach, 2008, pp. 141–163).32 By early 1936, however, most Americans had some knowledge of Riefensthal and the film. Time magazine put a sensational photo of the filmmaker skiing in what looks to be a swimsuit on its cover with the title “Hitler’s Leni Riefenstahl” (1936).33 By the mid-1940s, most Americans had seen parts of the film, although they did not know it. Frank Capra routinely used footage from Triumph of the Will to represent “loathsome Deutschtum” in his American propaganda series for the U.S. government, Why We Fight (Girgus, 1998).34 There is no explicit evidence to suggest that the Master Hands production team had seen Triumph of the Will, although it is much harder to imagine that Avil, one of Vidor’s favorite cinematographers, had not seen it. Benavie, who was Jewish, most likely had little knowledge of Riefenstahl’s repurposing of Wagner’s music, although as a musician he might have been aware of Hitler’s appropriation of the Bayreuth Festival.35 Instead, 30  Several scholars have dealt with Hitler’s appropriation of Wagner, including Brinkmann (2000), Grey (2002), and Meyer (1991). 31  For good overviews that position Riefenstahl’s films within the German film industry and cinematic output of the Third Reich, see Geisen (2003), Rentschler (1996), and Welch (1983). On the use of Wagner in Triumph of the Will, see Strötgen (2008) and Applegate (2008). 32  Both Disney and Vidor met Riefenstahl in Venice at the screening of her film and became outspoken admirers. When Riefenstahl came to the United States for the first time in 1938, however, Vidor claims never to have met her. 33  Riefenstahl was greatly admired by many in the United States until 1938, when the release of her new film, Olympia, coincided with Kristallnacht. As public opinion shifted against Germany, Riefenstahl was forced to adjust her first visit to the United States to promote her new film. When she arrived in Hollywood, newspaper ads decried that “There Is No Room in Hollywood for Leni Riefenstahl.” The only prominent figures who would meet with her were Walt Disney and later, in Detroit, auto industrialist Henry Ford (Bach, 2008, pp. 175–176). 34  The first full screening of Triumph of the Will in the United States did not take place until the 1950s, where it was shown for eight months straight in a cinema in San Francisco (Bach, 2008, p. 253). 35  When he emigrated to the United States, Benavie changed his name from Greenspoon to Benavie— Hebrew for “son of a prophet.” Benavie most likely had no idea that Wagner’s music, which had been a part of the standard repertoire in silent film accompaniment, had been appropriated so thoroughly by the Nazis. Benavie hated the Bolsheviks because they almost murdered his father and forced the family to flee from Ukraine, but he was equally contemptuous of the Nazis, whose persecutions of friends and family were affecting him personally as early as the mid-1930s. This information derives from notes from phone interviews with Arthur Benavie, Sam’s son, September 1, 2012, and September 15, 2012.

Loathsome Deutschtum?   257 Benavie may have approached the film simply as any silent film accompanist of the 1920s would have. He needed to illustrate mechanical action with compellingly rhythmic pieces of music and imbue the human aspects of industrial labor with artistry and purpose. For knowledgeable listeners, the allusions to Wagner’s operas and Siegfried would have elevated and sanitized the industrial process, overlaying it with a kind of mythic purity. While there is little to connect Benavie and Avil to Nazi propaganda efforts, there is quite a bit to connect both GM and the JHO to them. GM executives had very close ties with Hitler and did everything they could, after 1933, to ingratiate themselves with the Nazi government for the sake of corporate profits. Most of this happened under the innocuous umbrella of international expansion. GM owned Opel, Germany’s largest car manufacturer, for instance, and was using the German company to expand its operations overseas in the late 1920s and early 1930s. GM helped Opel build new factories and retrofit old ones to mass-produce automobiles more efficiently. Once the war began in 1938, however, these factories were quickly converted to produce military trucks and airplanes, specifically the Blitzkrieg trucks that were used in the invasion of Poland and the Luftwaffe’s signature airplane, the Junker Wunderbomber, one of the most effective weapons the Nazis developed to fight American and Allied forces. GM also shared with Opel executives patented formulas for synthetic fuel additives (Snell, 1974, pp. 14–16; Turner, 2005, pp. 42–44, 146–148).36 The company shielded much of this activity from its shareholders, especially in the early 1930s, before Hitler’s intentions were fully realized. At the same time that Sloan was telling GM shareholders in 1934 that “the internal politics of the Nazi Government are not the business of the management of General Motors,” the head of GM’s overseas operations, James Mooney, was very much entangled in Nazi government business (Turner, 2005, p. 45). Mooney attended party functions and was a special guest of the government at a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg in 1934, the rally so famously featured in Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. As historians have pointed out, GM persisted in its connections with the Nazi government even as tensions with the United States’ European allies were mounting. Mooney was so cozy with Hitler that he was awarded the Order of the German Eagle in 1938, the same year that Henry Ford was given a Grand Cross of the German Eagle for his distinguished serv­ice to the Nazi government (Turner, 2005, pp. 82–83).37 Although GM claims to have severed all ties with its overseas subsidiaries when the United States entered the war, there is evidence to suggest it did not and that it continued to help produce and received profits from the military machinery and equipment the Germans used to fight and kill Allied soldiers (Turner, 2005, pp. 127–150). Jam Handy and the JHO also had uncomfortable connections to the Nazi government. Handy had long been interested in pursuing the military applications of his 36  Snell was one of the first to examine classified government documents on the GM and other American automakers’ relationships with the Nazi government during World War II and prepare a report for the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly in 1974. See also Kugler (2000, pp. 33–83). 37  For a discussion of Ford’s medal, see Baldwin (2002, pp. 183–185) and Nehmer (2013).

258   Hubbert methods and the possibilities of using film and other visual techniques for training large numbers of soldiers. The JHO was one of 35 non-Hollywood producers that made films for the U.S. government during the war.38 Between 1941 and 1944, they made over 168 films for the armed forces and several branches of the U.S. government. For the navy, Handy even invented a special training device, an early flight simulator that used projected film imagery to train aerial and shipboard gunners (Prelinger, 2012, pp. 351–352; 2010 p. 218). Handy acquired this business by contacting the deputy chief of staff of the U.S. War Department, Brigadier General William Bryden, with an offer to help the U.S. armed services ready for war in Europe. In the correspondence that ensued between Handy and General Bryden, Handy outlines his general training techniques and philosophies, but he also details the extensive experience he already had giving those techniques military application. The JHO is well qualified to help the U.S. Army prepare for war, he asserts, because it already had been making training films for military forces in other countries. In a seven-page letter to Bryden, dated September 14, 1940, Handy outlines five experiences that qualify him for the job of training American soldiers. One of those he titled, “Nazi adoption of our new devices and instruction techniques.” In this section of the letter, Handy describes his experience exhibiting and preparing training films for both Nazi and Russian military officials. To Bryden he writes: Through the General Motors Export’s use of some of these materials, the Governments of Germany and Russia learned of [our] new [training] methods. Nazi investigators were sent to the plants of the Jam Handy Organization. Long in advance of any impending hostilities, they were allowed to acquaint themselves with the methods of operation, including the national system of holding thousands of small schools on a standardized basis simultaneously. These methods were subsequently employed by the Nazis in transport, tank, and aviation schools and by the Soviet Government for training parachute troops as well. In making their inquiries, it is significant that the Nazi investigators . . . did not view our operations from a photographic standpoint nor discuss with us their older training methods. On the contrary, they directed their inquiries almost entirely to the devices which we had developed for the control of attention, for the multiplication of instructors, for the verification of reception. . . . They were impressed by our automatic instruction methods . . . and our methods for solving the quantitative problems of mechanization instruction on a mass basis nationally.39

Although it is unclear whether this revelation was meant to be a selling point or a proffer, Handy seems to have participated in GM’s collaboration with Nazi officials and 38  Little has been said about the involvement of non-Hollywood film production during the war, although the activity of Hollywood in the war effort has been well studied (Schatz, 1997, pp. 262–284; Doherty, 1999). 39  Handy (n.d., Box 7, File 13).

Loathsome Deutschtum?   259 military officials. He did not build German military equipment, but he did the next best thing. He helped Nazi military officials train “transport, tank and aviation” soldiers to operate their military equipment, the equipment GM was helping the Nazis manufacture for their war effort. Although we have yet to find any corroborating evidence verifying the presence of Nazi officials in Detroit or at JHO facilities before 1940, Handy’s statement complicates the relationship between GM and the Nazi government, and by extension, the corporate ideology behind Master Hands, a promotional film GM made during the prewar period. Certainly many U.S. companies had working relationships with German companies and Nazi government officials before the outbreak of World War II and had difficulty instantly severing those ties once the United States entered the war. But GM’s and Handy’s lingering relationships with the Nazi government add an unexpected dimension to the company’s growing claim of economic patriotism in 1936, a claim at the heart of Master Hands. From this perspective the film resonates not only with antipathy for New Deal pastoralism but also with sympathy for Nazi ideology.

Conclusions The overt Germanness of the film’s score strangely, and perhaps quite inadvertently, hints at the Nazi underbelly of this film. But what it also points to is the great tension and philosophical disparity that existed between American industry and the Roosevelt administration in 1936. Master Hands’ German, Wagnerian score is a purposeful swerve from the overtly American musical rhetoric that was beginning to be heard in New Deal films. If the soundtrack there was American folk song, then the soundtrack advertising American industry, technology, and free enterprise had to be different. In this context, Wagner stands not for all things Teutonic, or Nazi, but rather all things Corporate. The score invites us to see and hear the film not just as industrial fantasy, but more specifically as anti-New Deal propaganda. One final measure of the film’s and score’s propaganda intent occurred just months after it was made, when the featured workers staged a massive strike at the Flint plant, a strike that shut down Chevrolet production completely for several months. It was the famous “Flint Sit-Down Strike” that led to the establishment of the United Auto Workers union (Fine, 1969; Freeland, 2006).40 GM management sent in armed strike breakers to silence the workers and their calls for better pay and working conditions, and Roosevelt sent in the National Guard to protect them. From this perspective Master Hands was a corporate fantasy, a fantastic advertisement not just for GM cars but for its labor policy. Where the film presents factory workers as Siegfrieds, in reality GM was treating its workers like Nibelungen, as inhuman, laboring bodies that did not need or deserve civil rights or protections. In reality, there was no corporate benevolence. In comparison to 40  See also the visual and audiovisual resources listed on the Library of Congress website: http:// www.loc.gov/rr/business/businesshistory/February/flint.html

260   Hubbert the newsreels and photographs of the strike, Master Hands is a fantasy even Hollywood could not have imagined better, a fantasy reinforced by its Wagnerian musical score. In his article on the use of Wagner in American wartime cartoons, Neil Lerner suggests that by 1944, the cliché of using Wagner to represent all things Nazi was showing signs of fatigue, if not dissolution. In the 1944 Warner Bros cartoon “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips,” Wagner’s music is heard “somewhat counter-intuitively,” he notes, not to support the Nazi, nor the Japanese, but “to support the Allies” (Lerner, 2010, p. 221). Master Hands works similarly to destabilize the cliché of Wagner and “loathsome Deutschtum.” In this equally unusual application of Wagner, albeit to a “pre-Allied” America, the use of Wagner is not so much counterintuitive as it reveals the cliché itself to be inchoate. The appropriation is possible because Nazism was not always loathsome; in some sectors of American industry it never would be. The quotations also reflect, though, the struggle the country was experiencing in defining a sense of national identity. In contrast to the folk and proletarian musical rhetoric of the New Deal documentaries, Wagner was the perfect sound through which to articulate the opposing fantasy—of a technologically driven, pro-industrial, corporation-centric society. We have assumed that Hollywood and the government were the only producers of such fantasies, but as Master Hands demonstrates, the Detroit filmmaking industry was equally active in the complex construction of national identity in prewar America.

Recommended Readings Applegate, C. (2008). To be or not to be Wagnerian. In N. C. Pages, M. Rhiel, & I. IngeborgMaier-O’Sickey (Eds.), Riefenstahl screened: An anthology of new criticism (pp. 179–201). London, UK: Bloomsbury. Bird, W.  L., Jr. (1999). Better living: Advertising, media, and the new vocabulary of business leadership 1935–1955. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Orgeron, D., Orgeron, M., & Stredible, D. (Eds.). (2012). Learning with the lights off. Educational film in the United States. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Prelinger, R. (2006). The field guide to sponsored film. San Francisco, CA: National Film Preservation Foundation. Turner, H. A., Jr. (2005). General Motors and the Nazis: The struggle for control of Opel Europe’s biggest carmaker. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Loathsome Deutschtum?   261 Bach, S. (2008). Leni: The life and work of Leni Riefenstahl. New York, NY: Vintage. Baldwin, N. (2002). Henry Ford and the Jews: The mass production of hate. New York, NY: Public Affairs. Balio, T. (1993). Grand design: Hollywood as a modern business enterprise, 1930–40. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Barfield, R. (1996). Listening to radio 1920–50. New York, NY: Praeger. Barnouw, E. (1993). Documentary: A history of the non-fiction Film (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Barsam, R. (1992). Nonfiction film: A critical history. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Baudreau, B. (2004). Mass production, the stock market crash and the great depression. New York, NY: Author’s Choice Press. Benavie, S. (n.d.). Personal file, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. Bergmeier, H. J. P., & Lotz, R. E. (Eds.). (1997). Hitler’s airwaves: The inside story of Nazi radio broadcasting and propaganda swing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bick, S. (2008). Eisler’s notes on Hollywood and the film music project, 1935–42. Current Musicology, 86(Fall), 7–39. Billstein, R., Fings, K., Kugler, A., & Levis, N. (Eds.). (2000). Working for the enemy: Ford, General Motors, and forced labor in Germany during the Second World War. New York, NY: Berghahn Books. Bird, W.  L., Jr. (1999). Better living: Advertising, media, and the new vocabulary of business leadership 1935–1955. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Brinkmann, R. (2000). Wagners Aktualität für den Nationalsozialismus. In S. Friedländer & J.  Rüsen (Eds.), Richard Wagner im Dritten Reich (pp. 109–141). Munich, Germany: C. H. Beck. Cain, V. (2012). “An indirect influence upon industry”: Rockefeller philanthropies and the development of educational film in the United States, 1935–1953. In D. Orgeron, M. Orgeron, & D. Streible (Eds.), Learning with the lights off: Educational film in the United States (pp. 230–248). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Callaghan, J.  D. (1946, January 27). Detroit film-men teach Hollywood tricks. Detroit Free Press. Campbell, R. (1982). Cinema strikes back: Radical filmmaking in the U.S. 1930–42. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press. Centennial celebration of the American patent system: A complete summary of all the speeches and data of the banquet and proceedings of the one hundredth anniversary of the American patent system, Washington, Nov. 23, 1936. (1937). Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Crist, E. B. (2005). Music for the common man: Aaron Copland during the depression and war. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Doherty, T. (1999). Projections of war: Hollywood, American culture and World War II. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Douglas, S. (2004). Listening in: Radio and the American imagination. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Egan, D. (2010). America’s film legacy: The authoritative guide to the landmark movies in the national film registry. New York, NY: Continuum. Faber, D. (2002). Sloan rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the triumph of General Motors. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

262   Hubbert Fine, S. (1969). The General Motors strike of 1936–37. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Freeland, R.  F. (2006). The struggle for control of the modern corporation: Organizational change at General Motors, 1924–1970. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Gall, J.  C. (2006). Modelle für den befreiten musikalischen Film. In J.  Gall (Ed.), Theodor  W.  Adorno, Hanns Eisler: Komposition für den Film (pp. 155–182). Frankfurt, Germany: Suhrkamp. Geisen, R. (2003). Nazi propaganda films: A history and filmography. Jefferson, NC: MacFarlane. Girgus, S. B. (1998). Hollywood renaissance: The cinema of democracy in the era of Ford, Capra and Kazan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Grey, T. S. (2002). Wagner’s Die Meistersinger as National Opera (1868–1945). In C. Applegate & P. Potter (Eds.), Music and German national identity (pp. 78–104). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Handy, J. (Director). (1936). Master Hands [Film]. Chevrolet Motor Company. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/MasterHands27Min1936_201310 Handy, J. (n.d.). Personal Papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. Hitler’s Leni Riefenstahl. (1936, February 17). Cover. Time Magazine, 27(7). Hubbert, J. (2014). Race, war, music and the problem of One Tenth of Our Nation (1940). In H. Rogers (Ed.), Music and sound in documentary film (pp. 56–73). New York, NY: Routledge. Jacobs, L. (1979). The documentary tradition (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Kater, M. (1997). The twisted muse: Musicians and their music in the Third Reich. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kozarski, R. (2010). Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kugler, A. (2000). Airplanes for the Führer: Adam Opel AG as enemy property, model war operation and General Motors subsidiary, 1939–1945. In Billstein, R., Fings, K., Kugler, A., & Levis, N. (Eds.), Working for the enemy: Ford, General Motors, and forced labor in Germany during the Second World War (pp. 33–83). New York, NY: Berghahn Books. Lerner, N. (1997). The classical documentary score in American films of persuasion: Contexts and case studies, 1936–1945 (PhD dissertation, Duke University). Lerner, N. (1999). Damming Virgil Thomson’s music for The River. In J. M. Gaines & M. Renov (Eds.), Collecting visible evidence (pp. 103–115). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Lerner, N. (2005). Aaron Copland, Norman Rockwell, and the “Four Freedoms”: The Office of War Information’s vision and sound in The Cummington story (1945). In C. J. Oja & J. Tick (Eds.), Aaron Copland and his world (pp. 352–377). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lerner, N. (2010). Reading Wagner in Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944). In J.  Jeongwon & S.  Gilman (Eds.), Wagner and cinema (pp. 210–224). Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press. Lewis, D. L. (1987). The public image of Henry Ford. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Marchand, R. (1998). Creating the corporate soul: The rise of public relations and corporate imagery in American big business. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Marks, M. M. (1997). Music and the silent film: Contexts and case studies, 1985–1924. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McKeown, M. R. (1936, June 29). Detroit: The commercial Hollywood. Barron’s: The National Financial Weekly, 1, 12.

Loathsome Deutschtum?   263 Meyer, M. (1991). The politics of music in the Third Reich. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Morris, M. (1949, November 6). Commercial movies want folks. Detroit News, p. 12. Morris, M. (n.d.). Detroit—Hollywood of commercials. Detroit News. Mueller, A. (2010). Listening for Wagner in Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen. In J.  Jeongwon & S. Gilman (Eds.), Wagner and cinema (pp. 85–110). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nehmer, S. (2013). Ford, General Motors and the Nazis: Marxist myths about production, patriotism and philosophies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nichols, B. (2001). Introduction to documentary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nisbett, R. (1995). Pare Lorentz, Louis Gruenberg, and “The fight for life”: The making of a film score. Musical Quarterly, 7(2), 231–255. Oakes, B. (2010). Building films for business: Jamison Handy and the industrial animation of the Jam Handy Organization. Film History, 22(1), 100–105. Paulin, S. (2005). On the Chaplinesque in music: Studies in the cultural reception of Charlie Chaplin (PhD dissertation, Princeton University). Paulin, S. (2010). Piercing Wagner: The Ring in Golden Earrings. In J. Jeongwon & S. Gilman (Eds.), Wagner and cinema (pp. 225–252). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Pisani, M. (2014). Music for the melodramatic theatre in nineteenth-century London and New York. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press. Pollack, H. (2012). Marc Blitzstein: His life, his work, his world. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Prelinger, R. (2006). The field guide to sponsored film. San Francisco, CA: National Film Preservation Foundation. Prelinger, R. (2010). Eccentricity, education and the evolution of corporate speech: Jam Handy and his organization. In V. Hediger & P. Vonderau (Eds.), Films that work: Industrial film and the productivity of media (pp. 211–220). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. Prelinger, R. (2012). Smoothing the contours of didacticism: Jam Handy and his organization. In D. Orgeron, M. Orgeron, & D. Streible (Eds.), Learning with the lights off: Educational film in the United States (pp. 338–356). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Rapee, E. (1925). Encyclopedia of music for pictures. New York, NY: Schirmer. Rapee, E. (1974). Motion pictures moods for pianists and organists. New York, NY: Arno Press. (Original work published 1924) Rentschler, E. (1996). The ministry of illusion: Nazi cinema and its afterlife. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Schatz, T. (1997). Boom and bust: American cinema in the 1940s. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Segrave, K. (2004). Product placement in Hollywood films: A history. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press. Shell, H. R. (2014). Films in the archive: Hollywood in Detroit. Technology and Culture, 55(3), 711–715. Sloan, A. P. (1941). Adventures of a white collar man. New York, NY: Doubleday. Snell, B. (1974). GM and the Nazis. Ramparts, 12(11), 14–16. Streible, D. (2012). The failure of the NYU educational film institute. In D.  Orgeron, M. Orgeron, & D. Streible (Eds.), Learning with the lights off: Educational film in the United States (pp. 271–294). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Strötgen, S. (2008). “I compose the party rally…”: The role of music in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Music & Politics, 2(1), 2–15.

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chapter 12

A bou t a B(r)a n d Geffen Records, Universal, and the (Posthumous) Packaging of Nirvana Laurel Westrup

Despite the demise of the band over two decades ago, Nirvana is still a touchstone of American, and perhaps even international, popular culture. Teenagers can still be seen sporting Nirvana T-shirts, whether gleaned from their parents’ closets or bought new at Urban Outfitters.1 Meanwhile, the 1990s-nostalgic Captain Marvel (2019) prominently features the band’s song “Come as You Are” in a scene where the heroine encounters the “Supreme Being.” But how did Nirvana become one of the most well-known bands of the late 20th century? How was their label, Geffen Records, able to launch an underground act into stardom without compromising the very quality that made them attractive to a young, and at least nominally rebellious, audience? How long can they retain this recognition? This chapter examines Geffen Records’ (now Universal’s) marketing and packaging of Nirvana from their first major label release (1991’s Nevermind) to more recent releases following singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. The history of the marketing and promotion of Nirvana maps onto developments in the recording industry generally, and within Geffen Records specifically. This case study demonstrates the complex negotiation of industrial forces, legal concerns, fan demand, and artistic integrity involved in marketing the band. It also examines recent trends toward record collectability and considers them against the diminishing returns of posthumous releases. Since Cobain’s death, Geffen/Universal has continued to release Nirvana live albums, compilations, box sets, and video albums, and it has also reissued (with Sub Pop) all three studio albums. These posthumous releases fall into three periods, culminating in the anniversary releases of the studio albums in 2009–2013. The chapter concludes with a consideration of Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings (2015), a Cobain solo album released in 1  At the time of writing, Urban Outfitters was selling a Nirvana Unplugged T-shirt dress, a Kurt Cobain T-shirt dress, three other Nirvana T-shirts, and the Nevermind vinyl LP.

266   Westrup conjunction with Brett Morgen’s documentary Montage of Heck. While this album was not released by Geffen, it points to the decreasing finesse with which Universal has managed Nirvana/Cobain releases, suggesting the difficulty of marketing acts—particularly those that are no longer active—over an extended time period. Nirvana’s legacy has much to do with the band’s association with the Generation X zeitgeist of the early 1990s. Cobain quickly became a spokesperson for Gen X following his band’s rise to superstardom with the hit album Nevermind (1991).2 Just as quickly, he became a tragic figure when he committed suicide in 1994, at the height of his career. Despite his short career, he is still remembered as a leader of Gen X in part because of the way he negotiated key tensions underlying the Gen X experience in the 1990s: alternative versus mainstream, authenticity versus inauthenticity, and independent/underground cultural production versus corporate cultural production. These tensions were not new in the 1990s, of course. The tension between musical countercultures and commodity capitalism can be traced at least as far back as the 1960s, when major record labels scouted talent at the Monterey Pop Festival, and this tension grew more pronounced in the punk era of the 1970s and 1980s.3 But the tension between “alternative” rock culture and commodity culture arguably became most pronounced and also most nuanced in the 1990s, when a person could simultaneously claim membership in mediawary “Generation X” and the TV-addicted “MTV Nation.” The migration of alternative rock acts from indie to mainstream labels is one key example of negotiation between these seemingly contradictory positions. In discussing the oppositional cultural politics of Gen X, Leslie Haynsworth (2003) points out that the growth of the Gen X audience meant that their “culture products . . . [became] hot commodities, and [were] increasingly distributed through corporate rather than subcultural channels—major record labels, for example, instead of indies” (p. 41). This does not necessarily mean that mainstream success negates the oppositional messages of these commodities, though. Since “authenticity” is a meaningful marker of value for anti-corporate audiences, the mainstream culture industries had to make concessions to “authentic” anti-corporate expression. Thus, Cobain famously appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a T-shirt that said, “Corporate magazines still suck.” This iconic image stands in for any number of examples of Gen X “punking” the system from the inside. It also gets at the negotiation between mainstream and underground culture that Cobain was constantly obliged to perform, and which arguably contributed to his much-documented

2  Bibliographic information for Nevermind, and many other Nirvana releases discussed in this chapter, has been provided in the references. For a list of most major releases, see the official Nirvana site, https://www.nirvana.com/. For a more extensive discography, see https://www.discogs.com/ artist/125246-Nirvana. 3  These tensions warrant a whole chapter, “Music Versus Markets,” in Reebee Garofalo’s (2011) textbook Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the USA. The 1990s’ complex negotiations between underground and mainstream success arguably began in the late 1980s (Azerrad, 2001b).

About a B(r)and   267 discomfort with fame.4 Cobain was frustrated by the perception that he was not aware of the fine line he walked between underground credibility and fame. He explained to journalist and biographer Michael Azerrad that the Rolling Stone statement was ­overblown and misunderstood: “The funniest reaction to that is people taking it so ­literally—like I hate anything corporate, yet I’m on a corporate label. No shit. Obviously, I would wish that people would give me the benefit of the doubt to realize that I’m smart enough to understand that” (2001a, p. 254). Throughout his brief career, Cobain exhibited a savvy ambivalence toward the media, the music industry, and fame. As Catherine Strong suggests, “grunge’s tendency to call attention to commercialization” is one of its most interesting and distinguishing features (2011, p. 30). Consequently, when Nirvana signed with Geffen Records, the label would need to tread carefully. Cobain was not the first artist on Geffen’s roster to challenge the status quo. Neil Young famously tested the limits of his contract with the label in the early 1980s. According to George Plasketes (2009) in “Geffen Records v. Neil Young: The Battle of the Brands,” Young was to be one of the cornerstones of the new Geffen label (then Geffen–Roberts) when he was signed in 1982. But Young produced two albums that departed from his previous rock hits, and Geffen sued him in 1983 for producing “noncommercial” music. Though the case was ultimately dropped, it dramatized the conflict between corporate logic and artistic freedom. Before leaving Geffen to go back to Reprise a few years later, he recorded “Prisoners of Rock’n’Roll,” in which he sings of a “record company man” who “tried to change us and ruin our band.”5 The song puts Geffen in a negative light, and Plasketes notes that the Geffen–Young case might have tarnished the label’s reputation with artists—he cites REM’s decision to sign with Warner Bros. instead of Geffen when they transitioned to a major label. Nonetheless, Plasketes also acknowledges that Geffen had a reputation, before and after the Young case, of working well with artists. He concludes his case study by remarking that “the undercurrent of creative, economic and legal implications derived from Geffen v. Young demonstrates the enduring and intricate relationships between artists and their record companies, exploration and exploitation, and creative control and commercial imperatives” (Plasketes,  2009, p. 67). Geffen’s, and eventually Universal’s, relationship with Nirvana from the 1990s to the present exhibits such complexities. Initially Geffen, and more specifically the DGC imprint that released Nirvana’s second and third studio albums, understood and worked with Cobain’s and Nirvana’s ambivalent stance toward commercial success. However, as Geffen was increasingly absorbed within the colossal Universal Music Group, the company’s marketing and

4  See D. Giles (2000) for more on the tension between fame and authenticity. Giles suggests that Cobain’s suicide can be traced back to his discomfort with fame (pp. 83–85). For additional discussion of this theory, see Strong (2011), especially pp. 22–24. 5  The song appears on the last album Young released with Geffen as a live recording by Neil Young and Crazy Horse on the 1987 release Life (Los Angeles, CA: Geffen Records).

268   Westrup promotional strategies became less personalized and ultimately, especially with the 2015 release of Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings, more crassly commercial.

“The Underground Isn’t as Underground as It Used to Be”: Nirvana and Geffen The success of Nirvana’s first album with Geffen Records’ DGC imprint, Nevermind, is the stuff of rock lore. From relative obscurity, the group became a best-selling act almost overnight. Nirvana had released one studio album, Bleach (1989), with indie label Sub Pop before signing with Geffen in April 1991. Nevermind was released in September 1991, and it was certified platinum by November. Over the next decade it would attain the rare achievement of diamond certification.6 So, when industry commentators and executives began to speak about a “post-Nirvana” era of the music business, this was not entirely hyperbole.7 The band had tapped into a goldmine of youthful angst and in the process helped to invert the existing relationship between underground and mainstream music. As Melvins founder and friend of Nirvana Matt Lukin puts it in an interview with Azerrad, “The underground isn’t as underground as it used to be” (2001a, p. 232). The success of an alternative rock act on the mainstream stage caused music industry executives to take notice. A&R scouts descended on the Pacific Northwest following Nirvana’s success, hoping to milk the scene for other successful grunge acts. Some industry commentators figured that Geffen must have worked some marketing magic to translate the Seattle sound to the mainstream. Bobby Haber of CMJ New Music Report remarked, “You are going to have some very savvy marketers who are going to look very closely at the way this album was marketed” (as cited in Lev, 1992, p. D8). But the genius of Nevermind’s marketing was as much about what Geffen did not do as what they did. Geffen’s marketing strategy for Nirvana’s first release was something of an antistrategy. The goal was to retain as much of Nirvana’s underground credibility as possible. Geffen was well equipped to work with the band because many of their marketing personnel had indie experience themselves. Azerrad reports that at the time the band signed with Geffen, both Mark Kates, who was the director of alternative music promotion, and Ray Farrell, a marketing executive with the company, had “spent years in the indie world before moving to a major label” (2001a, p. 162). The A&R man in charge of signing Nirvana, Gary Gersh, also demonstrated savvy by giving the band a long leash during the recording of Nevermind: Gersh reportedly counseled Cobain to omit some pop tracks he was working on from the album for fear that it would look like the band 6  The platinum certification of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) corresponds to 1 million units sold. Nevermind was certified diamond, for 10 million sales, on March 24, 1999. These and all other RIAA certifications cited in this chapter are taken from the searchable database available at https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/. 7  See, for instance, Gary Gersh’s comments in Pareles (1993).

About a B(r)and   269 was selling out with their major label debut (Azerrad, 2001a, p. 178). DGC President Eddie Rosenblatt confirmed the label’s laissez-faire approach in an interview with the New York Times, in which he remarks of Nevermind’s success, “We didn’t do anything. . . . It was just one of those ‘get out of the way and duck’ records” (as cited in Lev, 1992, p. D1). In the same article, Vice President of Marketing Robert Smith concurs: “We applied very similar marketing strategies to any number of records in the last year and had results that were nowhere near this. . . . What this means is that despite all the meetings and plannings, there is still something called magic” (p. D8). The record’s success was certainly magical for the fledgling DGC, an imprint that Geffen had just started in 1990, following the company’s sale to MCA earlier in the year (MCA would subsequently be absorbed by Japanese giant Matsushita later that year). Like many smaller imprints housed under major labels and launched around the same time, DGC was supposed to operate more nimbly than the increasingly behemoth company of which it was a part. As Rolling Stone’s Michael Goldberg (1991) reported, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a proliferation of record labels, and also a proliferation of acquisitions of those labels by larger companies. Some commentators were cynical about this strategy. Chrysalis Records cofounder Terry Ellis told Goldberg that the proliferation of subsidiaries was fueled by big companies’ efforts to gain market share during an overall decline in the recording industry in the early 1990s. Nonetheless, DGC, which benefited from sharing A&R and other in-house talent with its larger parent, Geffen, managed to succeed. Goldberg characterized DGC as “a very hip label,” noting its success with Sonic Youth and Nirvana (Goldberg, 1991, p. 15). The Russian doll–like configuration of the music business at that time may have indicated desperation on the part of a slumping industry, but it arguably also provided labels like DGC the best of both worlds: the resources of an enormous corporation and the autonomy of an indie label, since the corporate parent was far too large to micromanage the operations of its subsidiary labels. This industrial climate might explain why Geffen was able to take a risk on Nirvana in the first place, and also why they were able to customize their strategy toward marketing the band. DGC became known as a label that was able to promote alternative rock effectively. In an article for Billboard (Morris, 1994), several of DGC’s top brass comment on the individualistic approach the label takes toward marketing its acts. Robert Smith, head of marketing, explains for instance that a strong live act will receive additional tour support and a local marketing campaign around tour dates, whereas the promotion for other bands might be less localized. On the one hand, these anecdotes belie Rosenblatt’s earlier comment about the label “not doing anything” to launch Nirvana—clearly, even when DGC did “nothing,” that apparent inaction was a strategy. What is more, after Nevermind showed signs of becoming a mega-hit, DGC quickly responded by producing more posters for retail outlets, offering stores a discount on the album to encourage them to promote it, and stepping up manufacturing of the album to meet demand (Lev, 1992). In sum, DGC was highly responsive to the individual needs of its acts—this meant that the label generally kept as low a profile as possible, operating behind the scenes rather than overtly shilling for their acts.

270   Westrup Geffen continued to defer to Nirvana in their promotional strategies throughout the band’s short life. In late 1992, when DGC released Incesticide, a compilation of B-sides and rarities in partnership with Nirvana’s original label, Sub Pop, the album could easily have come across as a cynical attempt to cash in on the Nirvana zeitgeist while it lasted. However, the label played it cool. According to Azerrad, “With . . . the possibility of Nirvana burnout quite real . . . Geffen/DGC elected not to push Incesticide, merely letting fans discover it for themselves” (2001a, p. 296). While Sub Pop reportedly planned to call the album “Cash Cow” (Azerrad, 1993, p. 13), Geffen did not pressure Nirvana to quickly release a compilation to meet demand. Rather, the band embraced the idea of putting out an album of their early work since, as Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said at the time, “We thought it would be something nice for the fans just to see where we’re coming from” (as cited in Azerrad, 1993, p. 13). The deal Geffen made with Sub Pop also allowed the band to retain more control over how the album was packaged. An abstract work of Cobain’s art graces the album cover, putting the band’s imprimatur on the project, and despite some initial objections from Geffen, the first run of Incesticide was packaged with a highly personal note from Cobain, suggesting that racist, homophobic, or misogynist fans should “leave us the fuck alone” (Azerrad, 2001a, p. 295). While Nirvana and Geffen occasionally found themselves at odds, the relationship was largely harmonious. Even after Nirvana’s management and label executives were reportedly unsatisfied with Steve Albini’s raw production of Nirvana’s third studio album, In Utero, the label still put the album out with few alterations. Before they did, though, a public fight with Albini created tension within the Nirvana enterprise, and this publicity exposed the fine line Geffen and Nirvana had to walk to maintain Nirvana’s alternative credibility and their profitability. The tension began when Albini told the Chicago Tribune that he thought Geffen was likely to block In Utero from coming out unless the band softened the edges of the record (Goodman, 1993). He then went on a tirade to Newsweek reporter Jeff Giles about the gullibility of upstart bands like Nirvana: “Every one of them thinks that the record company is on their side. The labels have been hiring hip, young people to lull the bands into being comfortable with the big, faceless record company. That way, the band doesn’t think, ‘Hey, Geffen—this is the company that sued Neil Young! This is the company that gave us Nelson!’ ” (1993, p. 69). Cobain and Nirvana did not appreciate Albini’s painting of the band as naïve, or Giles’s insinuations that Nirvana was at war with Geffen over the album. The band fired back with a letter to the editor of Newsweek, which was also reprinted as an advertisement in Billboard, maintaining that the band had “100% control” of their music (Goodman, 1993). DGC was also upset by Albini’s characterization of their relationship with the band. Gersh, who had signed the band, told Rolling Stone that Cobain was “like my son” and that “the band felt they should be doing some more work, and . . . I did think that the sound of the record needed some work. We asked Steve to do the work; he refused. The picture Steve paints—that some big corporate conglomerate has glopped onto Nirvana’s legs—is just not true” (as cited in Goodman, 1993, p. 69). The publicity did not seem to do anything to hurt the album’s sales. Like Nevermind, In Utero went platinum within several months of its release, and it ultimately sold over 5 million copies.

About a B(r)and   271 The Newsweek incident demonstrates that Geffen continued to support the band in this period, despite rumors to the contrary, but it also indicates the d ­ ifficulty—both for Geffen and Nirvana—of balancing the act’s artistic credibility and mass marketability. This balancing act would become even more difficult following Cobain’s death at the height of his career.

The Posthumous Packaging of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain Kurt Cobain committed suicide on April 5, 1994, while In Utero and Nirvana’s recent MTV Unplugged performance were still in heavy rotation. Initially, Geffen responded by expressing sadness and instituting a moratorium on Nirvana releases. A couple of months after Cobain’s death, Rolling Stone writer Neil Strauss (1994) indicated that the label had chosen “propriety over profits” by cancelling a planned release of a “Pennyroyal Tea” single and an EP that would have come out alongside the band’s planned Lollapalooza tour that summer. But despite Geffen’s decisions not to release any new material, they nonetheless benefited from fans’ investment in the existing Nirvana catalog. The New York Times’ Jon Pareles reported, “For the week ending April 10, Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ rebounded from No. 72 to No. 27 on the Billboard charts, only three days after his suicide became news” (Pareles, 1994, p. A5). Strauss added, “In the weeks following the death of Cobain, Geffen Records found itself with all three of its Nirvana albums . . . in the Billboard Top 200 chart, while 1989’s Bleach jumped to No. 1 on the Billboard catalog-album charts,” even though Geffen had ceased promotional activities for the band following Cobain’s death (Pareles, 1994, p. 17). Geffen still had the unreleased Unplugged recording, but label salesman Ray Farrell told Strauss that it was “too sensitive a time” to release it. Geffen changed its tack fairly quickly, though. Amid a sea of bootlegged versions of the Unplugged performance, the company released MTV Unplugged in New York in November 1994. When the album went platinum in January 1995, the Nirvana zeitgeist seemed, if anything, strengthened by Cobain’s death. As Pareles remarked, before Unplugged was released: Western artists have long tried to achieve immortality through their work, and recorded music confers an especially intimate kind of eternal life: the sound of breath, muscle and motion. To hear the voices of the dead, rock fans don’t need seances; a CD player or a radio tuned to a classic-rock station will do the job. And the death of a performer makes every bit of recorded material that much more precious.  (1994, p. A5)8 8  See Cooper (2005) on the general profitability of posthumous releases. For more in-depth discussion of the relationship between death and popular music, see Strong and Lebrun (2015) and Jones and Jensen (2005).

272   Westrup Cobain’s recordings were, of course, precious, and given the demand for new material by the singer, it was perhaps inevitable that Geffen would continue to release material to meet this demand—this does not make the company inherently exploitative. Nonetheless, the packaging and promotion of posthumous Nirvana and Cobain releases have increasingly abandoned the careful balance between commercial and underground credibility that the company and band previously achieved. These releases have followed the record industry’s tendency to endlessly reissue and repackage their dead stars (to paraphrase Morrissey’s cynical “Paint a Vulgar Picture”).9 As they continue to proliferate, the posthumous releases raise questions about record companies’ responsibilities to themselves, their artists, and those artists’ fans. To the extent that we can observe a marked difference in Geffen’s strategy from Nirvana’s active years to the posthumous releases, this may have something to do with changes to DGC and Geffen around the same time as Cobain’s death. According to Billboard’s Craig Rosen (1995), 1994 was the company’s most successful year to date, as they grossed $505 million. This success was bittersweet, though, as David Geffen had already decided to leave his eponymous company to cofound Dreamworks. Also gone was Gary Gersh, Nirvana’s A&R man, who left Geffen in 1993 to become president of Capitol Records. Continuity was provided by Eddie Rosenblatt, who had helped to cofound the company and stayed on to run Geffen (Rosen & Jeffrey, 1995). However, Rosenblatt resigned just a few years later, in 1998, after a series of corporate restructurings. Canadian multinational Seagram had already taken over MCA (now Universal Music Group after a 1996 name change) and with it, Geffen, and when Seagram purchased Polygram in 1998, the re-formed Universal Music Group became the largest music company at the time. The restructuring of the new, massive UMG resulted in a merger of Geffen, Interscope, and A&M (IGA), in which Rosenblatt was to report to Interscope head Jimmy Iovine. According to Variety, Rosenblatt decided to leave based on his concern that he would no longer have the same control over the Geffen label (Sandler, 1998). By the end of 1999, Geffen President Bill Bennett as well as most of Geffen’s staff had jumped ship, and Jordan Schur of Flip Records (Limp Bizkit’s label) had taken over as Geffen president (Hay, 1999). What all of this means is that, by 1999, Geffen was a different label than it had been throughout Nirvana’s active recording years (1991–1993). The Geffen label has continued to release Nirvana material quite frequently, but without the kind of personal oversight that Gersh, Rosenblatt, and others invested in Nirvana’s early career. The posthumous releases are too numerous to discuss exhaustively here, but to show the continuities and discontinuities in Geffen/Universal’s packaging and marketing of these releases, three periods will be examined: the early posthumous releases (1994–1996), which came out before the UMG mega-merger; the midperiod releases (2002–2005), which mostly consist of best-ofs and a standalone box set; and the anniversary releases (2009–2013), which repackage Nirvana’s three studio albums in myriad ways. This 9  The song “Paint a Vulgar Picture” (Morrissey/Marr Songs Ltd.) was released in 1987 by The Smiths for the album Strangeways, Here We Come on Sire Records.

About a B(r)and   273 section concludes with a brief discussion of Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings (2015), a Cobain solo album released in conjunction with Brett Morgen’s documentary Montage of Heck. Released by End of Music in conjunction with Universal, the album demonstrates Universal’s waning interest in thoughtfully packaging Nirvana’s work.

The Early Posthumous Releases (1994–1996): Unfinished Business Of the four releases that came out in the years immediately after Cobain’s death, three appear to respond directly to fan demand for live recordings, which had previously only been available as bootlegs. The fourth, the six-CD Singles, was significant in that it was the first Nirvana box set, but because it was only released in the European market, it did not really register on the American charts. Unplugged in New York was the first live release, in November 1994. Later that month, Geffen released the video Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! (Kerslake, 1994), which provided fans with live audiovisual footage of the band. This release was already planned when Cobain died (Strauss, 1994), and Unplugged probably was as well. Both releases sold well, and Unplugged won the 1996 Grammy for Best Alternative Album. The final Nirvana album to be released before the end of Rosenblatt’s reign was From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, in October 1996. This live album was reportedly compiled by Novoselic and Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl (Strauss, 1996). Like Unplugged, Wishkah went platinum within several months. It also adhered to the band’s earlier pattern of following a relatively radio-friendly release with something more hard-hitting. As Newsweek reviewer Karen Schoemer remarked: Opening with a long shriek from Cobain, the album careens between blasts of feedback, abbreviated metal riffs, constant cymbal crashes, guttural bass lines and eerie breaks of silence that were always Nirvana’s most ominous moments. . . . “Wishkah” shows how unpleasing Nirvana was in concert: the point wasn’t to finesse or recreate the hits but to get lost in the furious immediacy of the moment, to shake things literally until they broke.  (1996, p. 72)

Taken together, Wishkah and Unplugged present two different dimensions of the band: one soft (the acoustic, melodic arrangements of Unplugged), the other hard-hitting. Both Unplugged and Wishkah, while clearly trading on fans’ remembrances of Cobain, put less emphasis on the singer in their packaging than we might expect. The Unplugged album cover features a photograph of the whole band on the set of the show, and Wishkah’s cover features images of all the band members playing at the shows represented on the album. The cover art for these albums marks a departure from Incesticide and In Utero, both of which featured cover art by Cobain. The mid-1990s live releases seem to realize plans set before Cobain’s death more than they exploit his short career, since a live album/video was inevitable at some point to satisfy fan demand for a quality

274   Westrup (rather than bootleg) live release. Some critics thought that these releases exhausted the Nirvana archive, and a few even believed, perhaps naively, that Wishkah would be the band’s final release.10 The album does, arguably, mark the end of the era where Nirvana was one of Geffen’s biggest and most respected acts, during which the band basically had carte blanche to do things their way.

The Midperiod Releases (2002–2005): Legal Battles Over Legacy For a period in the late 1990s, it did seem that the Nirvana zeitgeist was finally over. Eight years elapsed between Wishkah and the next major release, the best-of album Nirvana in 2002. While Geffen/Universal might have been cautious about oversaturating the market following the mid-1990s releases, the main reason for the dearth of releases in this period is probably legal. Following Cobain’s death, the surviving members of Nirvana, Novoselic and Grohl, and Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, had formed Nirvana LLC to control rights to Nirvana’s music (“Members of Nirvana Fight Cobain Widow’s Mismanagement Suit,” 2001). According to Rolling Stone journalist Appleford, the battle began in spring 2001, when Love sued Novoselic and Grohl for mismanagement of the company. They countersued in December 2001, in an effort to oust Love from the company. Both parties issued appeals to fans, with Novoselic and Grohl painting Love as a “mercurial” threat to future Nirvana releases and Love reminding fans that “Kurt was Nirvana” (as cited in Appleford, Baltin, Eliscu, & Hendrickson, 2002). The dispute hinged on a box set that Novoselic and Grohl planned to release to mark the 10th anniversary of Nevermind, in 2001. The box set would have included a song that Cobain recorded shortly before his death, “You Know You’re Right” (Fields-Meyer & Flash, 2002). What was really at stake here, though, is the musical legacy of Nirvana and Cobain, a legacy about which Love and the surviving band members had different ideas about preserving. According to Love’s lawyer at the time, O. Yale Lewis Jr., Novoselic and Grohl were in too much of a hurry to get out the remaining unreleased material: “With their plan [the release of new music] would have been over by now, generated a significant amount of money, but that would be it. . . . It’s simply not the proper way to introduce music of this quality” (as cited in Fields-Meyer & Flash, 2002, p. 107). By contrast, Love wanted to release material more slowly, guaranteeing each release maximum care and, to be fair, maximum sales. During the legal battle, she told Rolling Stone that she wanted to be able to “sell the shit out of the record and make sure [it gets] the kind of legacy that it deserves—the kind of packaging, the kind of quality, the kind of mix, the kind of mastering, the kind of everything that this guy deserves, instead of being a 10  See, for instance, Willman, who refers to the album as “one last postmortem morsel” (1996, p. 53), and Ali and Fricke, who write in their review “One Last Blast”: “There's one catch: By the end of From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, you want more. Except you can’t have it. When Kurt Cobain died, he took it with him” (1996, p. 129).

About a B(r)and   275 scapegoat for an entire generation” (as cited in Heath, 2002, p. 54). Love’s statement demonstrates a good deal of marketing acumen, but she also seems genuinely interested in putting focus on Cobain’s artistry. Love, Novoselic, and Grohl were finally able to settle their dispute in late September 2002, and both parties ultimately got their way. The single CD best-of that Love wanted came out in November 2002 under the name Nirvana, and the box set, With the Lights Out, was released in 2004. Nirvana was packaged extraordinarily simply: a black cover with the band’s name emblazoned across it in gray. It included 14 tracks that spanned the band’s career, including the famously last recording, “You Know You’re Right,” which had also been released as a single for the album.11 While the collection did not explicitly play up the theme of Cobain’s death, his specter hung over the release. In a review for Rolling Stone, Charles Cross tells the story behind each song on the album, focusing heavily on Cobain’s contributions and fixations. He notes of “The Man Who Sold the World,” from the Unplugged session, “This was one of six covers Cobain played during Nirvana’s Unplugged show. Five of the six concerned death or dying” (Cross, 2002, p. 21). The memorial function of this release is clear, especially given its somber packaging. In terms of its visual presentation, With the Lights Out is similarly understated. The box features a black-and-white image of the band in suits and includes three CDs and a DVD, each of which is black with gray text, similar to the cover of Nirvana. The only additional item included with the release was a 60-page booklet containing information about the band’s history and the tracks. According to the fan site livenirvana.com, the box set did have one gimmick: its heat sensitive packaging, when warmed, revealed images of session tapes.12 The With the Lights Out box set is composed mostly of demos and live material that had not been released previously outside of bootlegs, and it was ostensibly intended for Nirvana completists. A short announcement for the album in the New York Times reads, for instance, “Nirvana for Nirvana Fans” (Leeds, 2004, p. B8). It does, however, appear in a December 17, 2004, ad for Virgin Records in the New York Times (p. E47) amid a variety of releases, most of which are not box sets or special editions. No special emphasis is placed on the album in the ad, perhaps indicating that it was not viewed as an extraordinary commodity within the larger music market. New York Times reviewer Jon Pareles (2004) does not explicitly comment on whether With the Lights Out is meant for the collector or the casual fan, but he does note its emphasis on low-fi and amateur recordings. The release seems to indicate a turning point both in Nirvana’s posthumous career and in the recording industry more broadly where labels were starting to figure out that audiences would gladly purchase ephemera from legendary bands. Back in 1995, Pareles had commented that it was bootleggers, rather than record companies, who primarily served fans’ desires to own everything by a performer. He argued, “What bootleggers do, in fact, is serve a market—collectors and other obsessives—so small and 11  The song had also leaked online prior to the single’s release (Rayner, 2002). 12  See “The LiveNirvana Companion to Official Releases: With the Lights Out (Geffen Records),” at https://www.livenirvana.com/official/.

276   Westrup marginal that recording companies don’t bother with it. Major labels want to polish a performer’s output and ration it in marketable doses; bootleggers serve fans who want to gorge” (Pareles, 1995, p. H34).13 However, that same year saw the profitable release of the expansive Beatles Anthology. With the release of With the Lights Out, Geffen and the stewards of Nirvana’s legacy (Love, Novoselic, and Grohl) further demonstrated that there was a market for this kind of release. Despite its hefty price tag—on par with other box sets for big acts—With the Lights Out followed the pattern of all other major Nirvana releases to that point: it went platinum within a few months.

The Anniversary Reissues (2009–2013): Something for Everyone By the time the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s first studio album, Bleach, came around in 2009, the market for reissues and bonus material had arguably grown even stronger than it was in previous years. In fact, the boom in reissues and physical artifacts, most notably vinyl LPs, has been much observed recently. Forbes’s Mark Beech reports, “Reissues and vinyl are holding their own in terms of profitability.” He cites a U.K. survey that found that “52% of consumers prefer physical formats and 18- to 24-year olds are actually powering the resurgence.” Beech also notes that vinyl sales have grown internationally over the past decade (Beech, 2017). The Guardian’s Hannah Ellis-Petersen similarly found that “Sales of vinyl in 2016 reached a 25-year high as consumers young and old have once again embraced physical formats of music.” Ellis-Petersen speculates that the boom in vinyl sales was fueled by “the deaths of some music world giants . . ., as people invested in records as a mementos [sic]” (Ellis-Petersen,  2017). As Strong (2011) points out, the commemoration of popular musicians is often left to the media, which “plays a large part in maintaining the memories of those who were a part of popular movements such as grunge and constructing a sense of what happened for those who were not involved” (p. 87). The 20th anniversary reissues of Nirvana’s studio albums in 2009 (Bleach), 2011 (Nevermind), and 2013 (In Utero) speak strongly to these trends toward collectability and commemoration for fans old and new.14 The first of the 20th-anniversary releases, Bleach, is the only one not to appear under Universal, as Sub Pop retained the rights to the album when Nirvana went to DGC. The Bleach reissue includes the original album, remastered from producer Jack Endino’s tapes (with Endino’s oversight); a live set from a February 1990, Portland, Oregon, show (Live at the Pine Street Theatre); and a booklet of unreleased photographs and ephemera (including Nirvana’s Sub Pop contract). The release, which was available in CD and vinyl editions, seems to take its lead from the earlier With the Lights Out release, offering fans 13  For an astute defense of bootlegs and their value for academics, see Hughes (2006). 14  The descriptions provided draw from the marketing copy for each of the reissues, available on Nirvana’s official site, nirvana.com, hosted by Universal Music Enterprises. The site does include copy for Bleach, but it is not entirely accurate, so the copy on Sub Pop’s site has been consulted for that release.

About a B(r)and   277 additional access to the band’s Bleach-era lives and performances. The collectability of Sub Pop’s “deluxe” edition of Bleach was also bolstered by a limited-edition first run on white vinyl (which mimicked the first run of Bleach’s initial release on vinyl). The Sub Pop–DGC joint ownership of the band’s legacy does not come across as entirely amicable in the promotion of the Bleach reissue. Sub Pop’s marketing copy expresses pride that the album went from a modest 40,000 run in 1989 to eventual platinum certification, even though this only happened after the band’s mega-success with Geffen and Nevermind, but the copy also includes a few digs at the band’s decision to jump ship to a major label. The copy for the deluxe addition coyly states, “Bleach . . . remains unequivocally/unsurprisingly Sub Pop’s very favorite Nirvana fulllength” (Bleach: Deluxe Edition, 2009). In the copy for a simplified, non-deluxe version of the reissue, Sub Pop sarcastically includes, “Continuing our legacy of reminding people Nirvana had a record before Nevermind, . . . Sub Pop Records presents a non-deluxe, affordably-priced, single-LP version of Bleach, Nirvana’s debut album.” The copy is quite explicit that the price ($14) is half that of the deluxe edition. Sub Pop’s decision to produce multiple versions of the reissue (the simplified version is also available on cassette, on CD, and as a digital download) would lead the way for Geffen/Universal’s reissues of the other two studio albums, which try to capture both a superfan/collector market with deluxe editions and a broader market with standalone releases available at lower cost. Geffen/Universal was also active in promoting its Nirvana assets in 2009. Not to be outdone by Sub Pop’s reissue of Bleach on vinyl, they struck a deal with Original Recordings Group (ORG) to produce high-fidelity vinyl editions of Nevermind, In Utero, and Unplugged (Prince, 2009). They also released Live at Reading, a concert film and album paying tribute to one of Nirvana’s most iconic performances. The marketing copy emphasizes that the August 30, 1992, show was “one of the most bootlegged concerts in the annals of rock’n’roll,” and that the release will provide a “pristine” experience of “color-corrected video from the original film with audio sourced from the original multi-track masters” (Live at Reading, 2009). The concert was released on DVD and in audio-only formats (CD and double LP) and was perfectly packaged to provide continuity from the Bleach reissue to the forthcoming Nevermind reissue. The cover artwork references the DIY black-and-white cool and frenetic energy of Bleach’s cover—it is graced by a grainy photograph of Cobain midjump with Novoselic and Grohl playing in the background. Given that the Reading performance features many of the tracks from Nevermind, it also functioned in a promotional capacity for the Nevermind rerelease a couple years later. The hype around the reissue of Nevermind was, unsurprisingly, the most intense of the three reissues. Geffen/Universal went all out in assembling material for the 20th anniversary of the band’s paradigm-shifting major label debut. The average Nirvana fan would likely be satisfied with either the two-CD or four-LP deluxe editions, each of which included the remastered original album and B-sides, demos made in original producer Bruce Vig’s Smart Studios, and the “boombox” recordings of rehearsals where, according Universal’s marketing copy, “the listener can actually experience ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ ‘Come As You Are,’ ‘On A Plain’ and [other songs] take shape before his or her very ears”

278   Westrup (Nevermind—20th, 2011). But for the true completist, Universal also produced a “super deluxe” version of the reissue, which included all of the previously listed perks in addition to the “Devonshire Mixes”—Bruce Vig’s original mixes of the album before mixer Andy Wallace altered it. Thus, the “super deluxe” edition offers die-hard fans the opportunity to compare the Vig mixes to the mixes that made the band a household name. The release also includes “a pair of previously unreleased BBC recordings” and “the Halloween 1991 Paramount Theatre show on CD and DVD” (Nevermind 4 CDs, 2011). These treasures were packaged with a 90-page book “full of rare and never-before-seen photos, documents and various other visual artifacts of the Nevermind era” (Nevermind 4 CDs, 2011). Like Sub Pop’s limited-edition white vinyl enticement, the marketing copy also tempts potential buyers (“some lucky fans”) with “an original 1991 fanzine randomly inserted into a limited number [of] Super Deluxes that were extra copies found in the Nirvana archive” (Nevermind 4 CDs, 2011). This combination of a classic marketing strategy (“some lucky fans will receive . . .”) with a ‘zine, a key form of 1990s alternative cultural production, is remarkable, and it harkens back to Geffen’s meticulous marketing of the band in their prime. The “super deluxe” edition is carefully calibrated for Nirvana obsessives, while the “deluxe” editions serve those who are not interested or wealthy enough to purchase the more extensive version. The Nevermind reissue arguably demonstrates Geffen/Universal’s most fully developed strategy toward cashing in on Nirvana’s legacy. However, the advertising for the album seems less carefully calibrated. In an ad for Universal releases appearing in the June 10, 2012, issue of the New York Times, the Nevermind super deluxe box set is featured along with box sets for George Harrison, Dean Martin, and the Who. The advertising copy reads, “Think Inside the Box: Great Box Sets for Dads & Grads” (p. AR21). The generic June marketing slogan of “dads and grads,” especially when applied to such a wide range of releases, undercuts the careful packaging of the Nevermind super deluxe release. The prospect of audiences thinking “inside the box” when purchasing a Nirvana release would no doubt have sent Cobain into fits of derisive laughter. Nonetheless, the strategy of producing multiple versions of the reissue was likely to make the album more accessible to both new and long-time fans, and it gave them a choice over how much they wanted to invest in the album and how they wanted to listen to it (CD, vinyl, digital download). In 2013, the In Utero 20th-anniversary reissue followed a similar strategy, with twoCD and three-LP deluxe editions, and a four-CD, one-DVD super deluxe edition. The In Utero reissue is especially peculiar, since Universal somehow convinced Steve Albini, the producer who warred with Geffen over the low-fi quality of the original In Utero recording, to remix and master the album for the anniversary release. This “2013 Mix” was released as a standalone double LP for Record Store Day.15 The marketing copy for this release reads, “producer Steve Albini revisited the original multi-track tapes and created a new stereo mix using modern equipment and 20 years of additional experience to provide fans with a new and updated album experience” (In Utero 2013 Mix, 2013). 15  See Westrup (2018) for more on Record Store Day and its role in promoting the rerelease of the Singles Official Soundtrack album, another key album from the 1990s.

About a B(r)and   279 This description makes it sound like Albini essentially made the mix that he refused to make in 1993 when he was less “experienced.” The copy for the super deluxe edition of the reissue also glosses over the ancient Albini wars. Instead, it focuses on presenting “the unwitting swansong of the single most influential band of the 1990s” along with an array of special features, including B-sides and other rarities. They include “a CD and DVD of the complete and newly edited MTV Live and Loud show from Seattle’s Pier 48 on December 13, 1993,” additional videos and performances, and—scaled down from Nevermind—a 60-page book “showcasing never-before-seen photos, documents and various other artifacts of the In Utero era, as well as a double-sided 17” x 24” poster” (In Utero—20th 3CD/DVD, 2013). While the In Utero super deluxe edition is akin to the Nevermind reissue in the sheer amount of material it packages together, it seems less carefully oriented toward the superfan—it does not promise to bring the band’s creative process to light or to grant fans the ability to draw their own conclusions about dueling mixes. Had the album included Albini’s original mixes for In Utero, it might have served fans’ analytical activities similarly to the Nevermind release. In terms of their packaging and promotion, the three anniversary releases seem increasingly to take a “something for everyone” approach rather than appealing to a particular demographic. Nonetheless, they still seem reasonably calculated to generate renewed enthusiasm among Nirvana fans (both casual and die-hard).

Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings (2015): The Bottom of the Barrel? In 2015, Brett Morgen released the aptly titled documentary Montage of Heck, which was largely built out of fragments from Kurt Cobain’s vast artistic output: paintings, films, sculptures, poetry, music, and sound collage. Morgen was approached by Courtney Love to make the film, and he received unprecedented access to Cobain’s music and art, as well as family photos, personal recordings and notebooks, and other ephemera. Given that much of the material he worked with was audio—in the film, we hear everything from sketchy demos of future Nirvana songs and Cobain’s experiments with reverb and other effects, to new instrumental arrangements of Nirvana songs and album versions of these tracks—a soundtrack release was inevitable. Universal, in partnership with End of Music,16 released Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings six months after the release of the film. Morgen compiled the album, with a “cinematic” rendering of the material in mind (Fricke, 2015). His 31-track compilation includes songs, sound collages (many of which highlight Cobain’s biting satire of the media), and diary-like tracks. While not an official Nirvana release (the album is not included on the Nirvana official site, although it is included under the Nirvana page on Universal’s site), The Home Recordings exhibit a somewhat misguided continuity with the previous Nirvana anniversary releases of this period. 16  End of Music is an LLC owned by Kurt Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean.

280   Westrup Like the anniversary releases, Universal released The Home Recordings in several different editions: a stripped-down 13-track release (which Morgen reportedly did not participate in culling), a 31-track “deluxe” edition (available only on vinyl in the United States), and a “super deluxe” edition that included everything but the kitchen sink: DVD/Blu-Ray of the film, two CDs and one cassette (31-track version of the album), a 160-page hardbound book with art from the film, a bookmark to accompany it, a movie poster, postcards, and—the kicker—a puzzle featuring the cover artwork. The problems with this packaging are too numerous to fully analyze here.17 For one, the sensitive nature of some of the material included—“Aberdeen,” for instance, features Cobain talking about a previous suicide attempt—clashes with frivolous add-ons like the puzzle. In the film, the intimacy of Cobain’s personal recordings is tempered by Morgen’s intricate layering of audiovisual textures, including footage of Cobain’s public life, animations, and better-known recordings. However, laid bare as album tracks, the private recordings feel intrusive rather than revelatory. There were other glaring problems with Universal’s packaging and marketing of the project. First, it came out long after the film’s release, when hype about Morgen’s documentary had already subsided. Second, unlike the anniversary releases, there was no familiar album at the center of this project. Fans who bought the reissue of Nevermind knew that even if they did not love the add-ons, they would still have a new copy of an album they loved. There is no such central crux in The Home Recordings, and consequently the 13 tracks on the pared-down version feel, at best, arbitrarily chosen, and at worst “dumbed down” for a mass audience. Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings has been, unsurprisingly, the least successful of the posthumous Nirvana/Cobain releases.18 The specter of this release was enough to make Cobain biographer Jeff Burlingame (2015) proclaim, in a Time magazine headline, “I Changed My Mind—Let’s Leave the Legend Alone.” Burlingame’s about-face from poring over Cobain’s life to counseling that we not buy his outtakes raises a significant question: Has the Nirvana/Cobain phenomenon finally run its course for fans and the general market?

Conclusions It is unlikely that Universal will stop releasing Nirvana/Cobain material. Nirvana’s brief career has, after all, been outrageously profitable. But the band’s initial success depended a great deal on the label respecting their artistic autonomy. Without Cobain or any of 17  For an astute recounting of Universal’s many failings in the production, packaging, and promotion of this album, see long-time Nirvana commentator Nick Soulsby’s December 1, 2015, blog post, “A Curse on Your House: Universal’s Failings with ‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.’ ” 18  The album did enter Billboard’s soundtrack album chart at #1, but this is misleading since the album only sold 5,000 copies in its first week (Rutherford, 2015). The album also only spent one week at that position, dropping off the chart completely within five weeks (Chart History, n.d.). This precipitous drop might have been due in part to poor word of mouth.

About a B(r)and   281 Geffen’s original team in place to shepherd future releases, it seems more likely that they will miss the mark, as The Home Recordings did. We may actually find ourselves at the point of diminishing returns for Nirvana releases. Geffen/Universal’s best hope might be to think smaller, as they did so well in the early days of DGC. Instead of “super deluxe” editions, they might take a page from Sub Pop’s book and offer smaller, more collectible runs: if they can bring some art back to their commerce, they might yet revive Nirvana’s legacy again. In the meantime, we can look to the Geffen/Universal–Nirvana saga to reveal the difficulties of marketing an alternative act, and of maintaining credibility and accountability when such an act succeeds. This is certainly not a uniquely 1990s concern. We might ask, for instance, how Interscope (also a Universal subsidiary) is serving previously indie act Kendrick Lamar, and how he is serving them. This case study also raises questions about what happens when an act is no longer able to participate in decisions about their career. How does a record company meet fan demand for posthumous material without cynically scraping the vaults? How do they consider an act’s legacy when packaging this material for sale? At what point should a label cease to offer new material by long-gone acts? With the passing of trailblazers like Prince and David Bowie in recent years, these questions will only become more pertinent.19

Recommended Readings Azerrad, M. (2001). Come as you are: The story of Nirvana (1st Broadway Books trade paperback ed.). New York, NY: Broadway Books. Cooper, B. L. (2005). Tribute discs, career development, and death: Perfecting the celebrity product from Elvis Presley to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Popular Music & Society, 28(2), 229–248. Plasketes, G. (2009). B-sides, undercurrents and overtones: Peripheries to popular in music, 1960 to the present. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Strong, C. (2011). Grunge: Music and memory. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Strong, C., & Lebrun, B. (Eds.). (2015). Death and the rock star. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

References Ali, L., & Fricke, D. (1996, October 17). One last blast. Rolling Stone, 745, 129. Appleford, S., Baltin, S., Eliscu, J., & Hendrickson, M. (2002, January 31). Nirvana fight back against Love. Rolling Stone, 888, 19. Azerrad, M. (1993, January 7). Nirvana: New noise for ‘93. Rolling Stone, 647, 13. Azerrad, M. (2001a). Come as you are: The story of Nirvana (1st Broadway Books trade paperback ed.). New York, NY: Broadway Books.

19  As this book was in progress, streaming platform TIDAL released Prince: Originals, a collection of Prince demos of songs he wrote for other artists. The “album” was curated by Prince’s estate in collaboration with Jay-Z (Darville, 2019).

282   Westrup Azerrad, M. (2001b). Our band could be your life: Scenes from the American indie underground, 1981–1991 (1st ed.). Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Beech, M. (2017, November 23). Forget Taylor Swift, the real “Black Friday” music boom is in reissues and vinyl. Forbes. Retrieved January 13, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ markbeech/2017/11/23/forget-taylor-swift-the-real-black-friday-music-boom-is-in-reissuesand-vinyl Burlingame, J. (2015, August 19). Kurt Cobain biographer: I changed my mind—Let’s leave the legend alone. Time. Retrieved January 15, 2018, from http://time.com/4002000/kurt-cobainlegacy/ Chart history: Montage of heck: The home recordings (soundtrack). (n.d.). Billboard. Retrieved March 10, 2019, from https://www.billboard.com/music/kurt-cobain/chart-history/rockalbums/song/955431 Cooper, B.  L. (2005). Tribute discs, career development, and death: Perfecting the celebrity product from Elvis Presley to Stevie Ray Vaughan. Popular Music & Society, 28(2), 229–248. Cross, C. R. (2002, November 14). Nirvana’s best. Rolling Stone, 909, 21. Darville, J. (2019, June 7). There’s a new Prince album on TIDAL, just FYI. The Fader. Retrieved June 26, 2019, from https://www.thefader.com/2019/06/07/prince-originals-tidal Ellis-Petersen, H. (2017, January 3). Record sales: Vinyl hits 25-year high. The Guardian. Retrieved January 13, 2018, from http://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jan/03/ record-sales-vinyl-hits-25-year-high-and-outstrips-streaming Fields-Meyer, T., & Flash, C. (2002, May 20). Grunge match. People, 57(19), 107. Fricke, D. (2015, October 7). Inside “Montage of Heck” LP’s unreleased Kurt Cobain trove. Retrieved April 7, 2017, from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/insidemontage-of-heck-albums-trove-of-unreleased-kurt-cobain-52759/ Garofalo, R. (2011). Rockin’ out: Popular music in the USA (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Giles, D. (2000). Illusions of immortality: A psychology of fame and celebrity. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Giles, J. (1993, May 19). You call this Nirvana? Newsweek, 121(20), 69. Goldberg, M. (1991, November 28). New labels face tough times. Rolling Stone, 618, 15. Goodman, F. (1993, June 24). Nirvana to “Newsweek”: Drop dead. Rolling Stone, 659, 21. Hay, C. (1999). Schur aims to revive Geffen. Billboard, 111(41), 6. Haynsworth, L. (2003). “Alternative” music and the oppositional potential of Generation X Culture. In J. McAllister Ulrich & A. L. Harris (Eds.), GenXegesis: Essays on “alternative” youth (sub)culture. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Heath, C. (2002, June 6). The Nirvana wars. Rolling Stone, 897, 54. Hughes, T. (2006). Nirvana: University of Washington, Seattle, January 6, 1990. In I. Inglis (Ed.), Performance and popular music: History, place and time (pp. 155–171). Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Jones, S., & Jensen, J. (Eds.). (2005). Afterlife as afterimage: Understanding posthumous fame. New York, NY: P. Lang. Leeds, J. (2004, October 16). Nirvana for Nirvana fans. New York Times, p. B8. Lev, M. (1992, January 13). Is hit album a fluke or a marketing coup? New York Times, p. D1, D8. Live Nirvana! (n.d.). Livenirvana. Retrieved August 2, 2020, from https://www.livenirvana. com/official/ Members of Nirvana fight Cobain widow’s mismanagement suit. (2001). Wall Street Journal, 238(116), B13.

About a B(r)and   283 Morris, C. (1994). Geffen’s modern rock methodology pays off. Billboard, 106(7), 10. Nirvana. (n.d.). Discogs. Retrieved August 2, 2020, from https://www.discogs.com/ artist/125246-Nirvana Nirvana. (n.d.). Nirvana. Retrieved August 2, 2020, from https://www.nirvana.com Pareles, J. (1993, November 14). Nirvana, the band that hates to be loved. New York Times, p. A32. Pareles, J. (1994, April 17). Music confers an afterlife as cacophony lingers on. New York Times, p. A5. Pareles, J. (1995, December 17). Where bootleggers thrive, labels follow. New York Times, p. H34. Pareles, J. (2004, November 29). Critic’s choice: New CD’s. New York Times, p. E4. Plasketes, G. (2009). Geffen Records v. Neil Young: The battle of the brands. B-sides, undercurrents and overtones: Peripheries to popular in music, 1960 to the present. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, pp. 51–68. Prince, D. (2009, March 20). Nirvana catalog to be re-released on vinyl. Retrieved January 15, 2018, from https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/269160/nirvana-catalog-to-be-rereleased-on-vinyl Rayner, B. (2002, September 28). Nirvana reborn with a powerful song. Toronto Star, p. A3. Rosen, C. (1995). Geffen Records enjoys best year. Billboard, 107(3), 1. Rosen, C., & Jeffrey, D. (1995). For Geffen’s Rosenblatt, intriguing power transfer. Billboard, 107(16), 105. Rutherford, K. (2015, November 24). Kurt Cobain makes first solo appearance on Billboard charts. Retrieved March 11, 2019, from https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chartbeat/6777024/kurt-cobain-first-solo-appearance-billboard-charts-nirvana Sandler, A. (1998). Rosenblatt refuses to play 2nd string. Variety, 373(2), 2. Schoemer, K. (1996, October 14). Germ warfare. Newsweek, 128(16), 72. Soulsby, N. (2015, December 1). A curse on your house: Universal’s failings with “Kurt Cobain: Montage of heck.” Nirvana Legacy. Retrieved March 10, 2019, from https://nirvana-legacy. com/2015/12 Strauss, N. (1994, June 16). Nirvana projects on hold. Rolling Stone, 684, 17. Strauss, N. (1996, July 4). Nirvana, Madonna and more: Big names have big plans for fall CD’s. New York Times, p. C10. Strong, C. (2011). Grunge: Music and memory. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Strong, C., & Lebrun, B. (Eds.). (2015). Death and the rock star. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Westrup, L. (2018). Merchandising Gen X: The Singles soundtrack album (1992/2017). Film Criticism, 42(2). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/fc.13761232.0042.204 Willman, C. (1996, July 26). Rapid “hi-fi” movement. Entertainment Weekly, 337, 53.

Discography and Videography Cobain, K. (2015). Montage of heck: The home recordings [Album]. The End of Music, LLC. Kerslake, K. (1994) Nirvana: Live! Tonight! Sold out!! [Video]. DGC Nirvana. (1989). Bleach [Album]. SubPop. Nirvana. (1991). Nevermind [Album]. DGC. Nirvana. (1992). Incesticide [Album]. DGC. Nirvana. (1993). In utero [Album]. DGC.

284   Westrup Nirvana. (1994). MTV unplugged in New York [Album]. DGC. Nirvana. (1996). From the muddy banks of the Wishkah [Album]. DGC. Nirvana. (2002). Nirvana [Album]. Geffen Records. Nirvana. (2004). With the lights out [Album]. DGC. Nirvana. (2009). Bleach deluxe edition [Album]. SubPop. Nirvana. (2009). Live at Reading [Album]. DGC. Nirvana. (2011). Live at the Paramount [Video]. DGC. Nirvana. (2011). Nevermind 4 CDs + DVD super deluxe edition [Album, Film]. UMe. Nirvana. (2011). Nevermind—20th 2CD deluxe edition [Album]. DGC. Nirvana. (2013). In utero—20th 2CD deluxe edition [Album]. UMG. Nirvana. (2013). In utero—20th 3CD/DVD super deluxe [Album]. UMG. Nirvana. (2013). In utero 2013 mix [Album]. UMe. The Smiths. (1987). Paint a vulgar picture [Song]. On Strangeways here we come [Album]. Sire Records. Young, N., & Crazy Horse (1987). Prisoners of rock’n’roll [Song]. On Life [Album]. DGC.

A dv ertisi ng Au diov isua l En terta i nm en t

chapter 13

M usic a n d th e For m a l Struct u r e s of Con tempor a ry Action Fil m Tr a il ers Catrin Watts

Film trailers have been used to promote and preview films since the early days of ­cinema. Carmen Daniela Maier writes, “The main purpose of film trailers is to arouse viewers’ curiosity and expectations so that they will be persuaded to go and see the film” (Maier, 2009, p. 159). This is typically achieved by establishing the film’s basic narrative premise and previewing short excerpts of dramatic moments within it. “Trailers . . . maintain a relationship to the narrative they promote,” writes Lisa Kernan; however, “images are selected and combined in a way that privilege [sic] attracting the spectator’s attention over sustaining narrative coherence” (Kernan, 2000, p. 7). In the case of trailers for action films, these dramatic moments are primarily excerpted from action sequences to showcase the spectacular feats of the heroes and the trials that they will have to overcome (Kernan, 2000, p. 20). In addition to establishing the narrative expectations of the feature film, film trailers also preview the film’s audiovisual style, the music and audiovisual editing patterns that will feature in the film. However, it is also common for trailers to feature music, whether composed or popular music, that is not used in the film because (1) the trailers are cut before the film is finalized, and (2) popular music is frequently used for promotional value with no expectation that it will appear in the film. Scholarly work on trailers has grown exponentially since 2000, with the focus falling on topics such as visuals, narrative, and the film industry (Gray, 2010; Johnston, 2009; Kernan, 2004). Only in recent years has attention turned to the music and sound of film trailers—for example, the research project “(Re-)Framing Film: Trailers, Music and Meaning in the Digital Age,” hosted by Carleton University and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada in 2012. From this research project

Music and Contemporary Action Film Trailers   287 emerged “A Laugh a Second? Music and Sound in Comedy Trailers,” coauthored by James Deaville and Agnes Malkinson, who write: If the trailer is intended to thrive on narrative and visual gaps to create desire for completion among audiences . . . the sonic realm typically serves the purposes of establishing believability for the narrative world, maintaining continuity, reinforcing and even creating structure, and fashioning hooks for the audience. This is traditionally accomplished through a continuous soundscape that combines music, sound effects, and dialogue in varying proportions, according to genre and even individual preview. Trailers in general draw upon pre-existing musical material, exploit sound—and silence—to articulate structure, and interweave music and sound into an overarching aural continuum. (Deaville & Malkinson, 2014, p. 124)

In other words, music and sound are key to creating film trailers that are coherent pieces of media because the visual and narrative content is so fragmented. From a survey of over 100 trailers, the researchers concluded that “the trailer experience of the cinematic ear” is “excessively sonorous, musically constricted, sequentially constructed and audiovisually compressed” (Deaville & Malkinson, 2014, pp. 124–125). Deaville and Malkinson adopt Michel Chion’s principle of synchresis to create a framework for “considering how the aural and the visual—the audiovisual—can function in mutual relationship” (Deaville & Malkinson, 2014, pp. 124–126). Chion defines synchresis as “the spontaneous and irresistible weld produced between a particular auditory phenomenon and visual phenomenon when they occur at the same time” (Chion, 1994, p. 63). Synch points are a special type of synchresis in which “a sound event and a visual event meet in synchrony,” which “give[s] the audiovisual flow its phrasing” (Chion, 1994, pp. 68, 59). Deaville and Malkinson note that “Synch points tend to occur with significantly greater frequency in trailers than in narrative films” (Deaville & Malkinson, 2014, p. 126). In what follows, I develop this claim of Deaville and Malkinson further: Not only are synch points more frequent in trailers than in narrative films, but also, in sections of the trailer less concerned with narrative, such as the action sequence montage that usually occupies much of its final third, synch points extend to small-scale musical characteristics such as the beat and rhythm of the music. I call this kind of synchronization “tightly organized” (Watts, 2018). The tight synchronization of music and images in action film trailers similarly aids the visual cohesion of a montage of action clips because the music provides a framework that connects one image to the next. Trailers do not, however, use only tightly organized synchronization. Indeed, in those portions of trailers that play to narrative, the audiovisual coordination can be quite relaxed, closer to what is typically found in feature films. I call this kind of synchronization “loosely organized.” Loose synchronization can make use of higher-level musical structures such as phrases and sections to create a sense of overall synchronization while remaining relatively loose in organization. Although feature films similarly move between sections with music that is loosely and tightly synchronized to the action, trailers for action films have a greater

288   Watts proportion of their runtime that uses tight synchronization. Furthermore, trailers feature a more overt synchronization of music to larger structural divisions in more loosely synchronized sections, such as coordinating the arrival of verses and choruses to mark changes in trailer structure. In the corpus of contemporary action film trailers that I studied—the survey of 50 film trailers is listed in Appendix 1—the trailers fall consistently into two large parts, and these parts subdivide into sections yielding six main types of structures. The first part consists of two, sometimes three sequences oriented around narrative exposition, and the second part is an action sequence montage that often concludes with a short coda. The audiovisual coordination fluctuates inversely with narrative, with music following patterns of more loosely organized synchronization in the narrative sections and more tightly organized synchronization in the action sequence. This means that trailers tend to move from loosely organized synchronization in its first part to more tightly organized synchronization toward the end. The six main types of structure all have three or four main sections, the boundaries of which are articulated by marked changes in visuals, narrative or action focus, and music. The close relationship between music and these section changes make the structure of the trailer appear molded to, or organized according to the logic of, the music, like a music video, but in most cases the music is also being edited or composed, at least in part, to conform to the trailer (Arnold, Cookney, Fairclough, & Goddard, 2017; Frith, Goodwin, & Grossberg, 1993; Goodwin, 1992; Vernallis, 2004). Because trailers are not for the most part guided by narrative logic, the audiovisual editing, particularly in the action sequence montage, is often highly stylized to the point where neither audio nor visual stands out as the dominant organizational force, and this is especially true of action films. Tightly organized synchronization predominates in the action sequence montage, but even the loose organization in the opening sections focusing on basic narrative exposition eases the audience into a style of audiovisual editing that establishes the expectation of a certain level of coordination between music and action at the level of structure. The action sequence montage—an almost mandatory element of these trailers, occurring in 49 of the 50 trailers I examined—uses much more tightly organized synchronization that also gives a heightened stylized effect, perhaps in compensation for the rapid, disorienting cutting of these passages. Indeed, although action sequences in films often have rapid cutting rates as well, those sequences do not generally have to contend with creating sense out of a sequence of shots that were not designed to make sense together. Action in trailers resembles cause and effect, but because the montage so fragments the action in trailers, the cause or effect is usually missing, or the trailer posits a causal logic—one character seeming to strike another—that the audience often knows for other reasons is unlikely. Trailers relish these kinds of improbable edits that bring shots from disparate action scenes together. For example, in the third trailer for Star Trek Beyond (2016), Scotty (Simon Pegg) connects two large cables that seemingly launch a ship upward into the air, although these two scenes are taken from different positions in

Music and Contemporary Action Film Trailers   289 the feature film. Both trailers and action sequences utilize tightly synchronized editing, but trailers often appear more stylized in their audiovisual editing since they are not bound by the same cause-and-effect, indexical narrative rules of commercial feature films. While the trailer will typically highlight the film’s basic narrative arc, the montage sequences are important in obscuring the full plot while also luring the audience with the film’s characteristic feel or idea. Looking back at trailers for films such as Die Hard (1988) or Mission: Impossible (1996), we find that the trailer structure has in fact changed quite a bit since the end of the 20th century, and these montage sequences are prioritized more in action film trailers released after 2000. Trailers released before 2000 typically begin with a short segment of narrative setup that introduces the film’s villain and the goal for the protagonist. After the film’s title card and the name of the main actor, the second part constructs a montage of scenes from the film—some of them action focused—and dialogue to establish more information about the protagonist and the challenges that he (action films during this era were very focused on male action figures) will face. This second part ends with a second showing of the title card to conclude the trailer. Although it has a two-part structure and features an action montage in its second part, this older trailer structure is much more concerned with conveying narrative information, the star’s name, and the title of the feature than presenting a dizzying montage of action shots. Furthermore, the music in the older trailers is fairly consistent throughout with only small changes to distinguish between the first and second parts. Trailers for contemporary action films, by contrast, use narrative as a point from which to launch into an action sequence montage, and it is this action—or rather the compelling audiovisual flow of action, music, sound, and editing—that is designed to entice the audience.

Formal Structures of Contemporary Action Film Trailers As I have intimated, trailers for contemporary action films follow a consistent formula: the first part, often divided into sections, introduces characters or narrative situations, and a second part features a montage of clips from action sequences. These generalizations about the structure of trailers of contemporary action films derive from a survey of 50 film trailers listed in Appendix 1. I selected these films more or less at random, using the YouTube “up next” feature to propose the next trailer to watch until I reached my goal of 50 trailers. The YouTube “up next” feature is algorithmic and would be seeded by the individual’s prior viewing practices on the site, which suggests that the films on my list are a consistent subset of action films in general. Contemporary action films typically feature more than one trailer, often initially promoted with a teaser trailer that has

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Figure 13.1  Chart showing average section lengths for the six trailer types identified in the corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

a runtime of under one minute, followed by one or two full-length trailers around two to three minutes in length, all of which were surveyed in this study.1 The majority of the films in this survey have more than one trailer, and when that was the case the YouTube “up next” engine selected which version of the trailer I would analyze. I divided the trailers into sections by following their overt visual, formal, and musical articulations and determined the length of the section with respect to the trailer as a whole. I then grouped the sections according to three lengths: short (S) sections that account for 5 to 25 percent of the trailer, medium (M) sections that are 25 to 35 percent of the trailer, and long (L) sections that constitute 35 percent or more of the trailer. While each category shares a boundary percentage, the final distinction between categories— is 25 percent M or S, for example?—relates to the trailer structure as a whole. Using this terminology, I identified six basic trailer structures: SSSL, SSLS, SLLS, MMMS, LSMS, and LLS. (Other structures, such as MMM and SMMS, are possible, but they did not occur in the corpus of trailers I analyzed.) Typical divisions of these six types are shown in Figure 13.1. The large-scale two-part structure is clearly evident in Figure 13.1, with the white sections marking the narratively driven first part, the dark-shaded section indicating the action sequence montage that serves as the second part, and the light-grey section representing the coda. The coda is typically a very short clip from the film, and is often a comedic quip. All of these sections are emphasized by musical articulations. Indeed, every section identified within the corpus featured some type of prominent musical change, for example, a new musical style, the addition of a new instrumental layer, or a tempo change. When the first part had more than one section, each section was marked by a change in musical style, pace, or texture, and in the corpus the second part always featured a very pronounced shift in musical texture. Even in cases where narrative exposition made up more than 50 percent of the trailer, the music always emphasized the 1  The National Association of Theatre Owners guidelines states that “Trailers will not exceed two minutes in length. Two exceptions per year per distributor, with a maximum length of 3 minutes, based on the theatrical release date of the film being advertised” (National Association of Theatre Owners, n.d.).

Music and Contemporary Action Film Trailers   291 arrival of the action sequence montage through an increase in textural energy, such as an increase in the rhythmic layers. The second section of the first part frequently begins with the production credits; and the second part usually ends with the title card and release date, or in cases where a distinct section follows the action sequence montage as a coda, the title card will be followed by a short clip featuring dialogue. In the case of action films with a comedic element, this final section of dialogue presents a funny interaction drawn from the film. Generally, the title card or coda features minimal music, usually a low drone or the reverb tail of an explosive hit, and this minimal music is often crucial to the branding of the film. As shown in Figure  13.1, the narrative exposition is usually divided into sections, which allows for varied presentation. Thus, the four sections of SSSL are typically grouped by function: narrative (SSS) and action montage (L). The other forms involve a brief coda after the action sequence montage but similarly divided into narrative and action montage function. LLS, for instance, begins with a narrative function (L), followed by the action montage (L), ending with a coda (S). MMMS similarly bifurcates its narrative function (MM) before coming to the action montage (M) and concluding with a coda (S). (The bifurcation of the narrative function is useful for films that have a dual focus, especially those featuring a strong antagonism between hero and villain.) This large-scale two-part structure—narrative followed by action montage—also forms an intriguing parallel to the verse-chorus structure common in pop songs, and it is noteworthy that when a popular song is used for the whole trailer, the chorus hook is typically saved to mark the arrival of the action sequence montage. For example, Rihanna’s “Sledgehammer” (2016) plays throughout the third trailer for Star Trek Beyond (2016), which follows the MMMS structure (Summers, 2018). The chorus hook is saved for the arrival of the action sequence montage. It is a revealing parallel, for in popular music, the verse tends to be introspective and concern the recounting of subjective experience, whether as narrative or lyrical expression, whereas the chorus is more extroverted and often even involves a call to action. This is reflected in instrumentation changes too: the verse often uses a single voice with a relatively sparse texture, and the chorus frequently adds vocal harmonies and features a thicker texture. Trailers feature a similar shift, with a release into the action sequence montage that is analogous to the release of the verse into the chorus. Whereas pop songs alternate between verse and chorus, between setup and arrival, and build to a final chorus, trailers more typically are structured around a single arrival. The trailer, therefore, acts like a curtailed pop song that both delivers—it provides the action sequence—and leaves the audience wanting more: the feature film. Aligning the trailer structure with popular song form affords a different way of thinking about the relationship of the trailer to the feature film, particularly the oscillation between narrative and action in contemporary action film. The action in trailers is far more condensed than it is in feature films. Instead of a series of action bursts over two hours, trailers present a continuous arc of action designed to be “stop-and-stare worthy” and to leave us wanting more after the closing title card. Furthermore, trailers build to the action sequence montage, presenting it as the most enticing part of the experience.

292   Watts This suggests that while feature films are organized around an oscillation between narrative and action, trailers are organized around the spectacularization of the action sequence itself. However long and however complex the narrative exposition of a trailer is, its function is to build to the action sequence montage, which is the “structural dominant” of the trailer. Looking back at action trailers pre-2000, such as the aforementioned Die Hard and Mission: Impossible trailers, which also divide into two parts, we recognize that both sections focus on narrative, and the action clips serve merely to punctuate that highly condensed narrative. In other words, these earlier trailers are structured around the lure of narrative, not action sequences, and the music does not necessarily shift to take account of the arrival of action. I will next elaborate on the characteristics of each of the six trailer types. Using film trailers from the corpus as case studies, I will show how music is employed in these different trailer structures to articulate the boundaries between sections and the larger move from narrative to action. I have organized the typology from the most divided narrative (three S sections) to least divided (one S section).

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The proportional section lengths of the SSSL examples in the corpus are shown in Figure 13.2. The SSSL type provides significant space for narrative setup, as the opening SSS structure allows for a quick exposition of several characters or incidents before a final long section that displays spectacular clips from the film’s action sequences. In Atomic Blonde (2017), for example, the first two narrative sections introduce the protagonist, Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron), and present the basic premise of her mission to Berlin. The third section introduces David Percival (James McAvoy), her contact in Berlin. In The Expendables (2010), the first section introduces the Expendables team and their competitive dynamic. The second shows the team exploring a job they have been asked to undertake, and the third highlights the team making sacrifices for the sake of others in accepting this job. In Transformers (2007), the first narrative section introduces Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) choosing a used car, and the second section reveals his car to be a good Transformer, Bumblebee. The third section then introduces the dramatic axis of the two types of Transformers: the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons.

Atomic Blonde (2017) Trailer 2 The Expendables (2010) Trailer 1 Transformers (2007) Offical Trailer

Figure 13.2  Examples of SSSL trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage.

Music and Contemporary Action Film Trailers   293 Music changes with each section, whether by adding a new layer to the existing track or by switching to completely new music. For example, the trailer for Atomic Blonde begins with composed underscore for a 20-second segment. The second segment, which begins with the production credits, is 40 seconds long and uses a song written for the film in a 1980s pop style called “Blue Monday” (2017) by Health. The third segment is also around 40 seconds and is accompanied by “Personal Jesus” (1990) by Depeche Mode. The result is a fairly quick succession of music that emphasizes the brevity of each segment. One way that this structure throws weight onto the concluding action montage is by using the changes in music to break up the narrative function. The final section is both longer (50 percent of the trailer’s length) and more continuous. This action montage remixes Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead” (2013) with “Personal Jesus,” and this music provides the rhythmic framework for the highly stylized approach toward audiovisual editing that will be carried over into the feature film. The narrative part features some prominent sync points but overall remains loosely synchronized. The stylized techniques and tightly organized synchronization of the montage, therefore, mean that the action sequence montage stands out as dominant in the trailer despite the narrative SSS part that begins the trailer.

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Figure 13.3 shows the proportional section length of the SSLS examples in the corpus. The SSLS type provides significant space for the long action sequence montage after the opening SS structures and presents a quick narrative setup of the antagonist/protagonist relationship. The final S section features the title card and a funny quip or striking moment from the feature film. In Ant-Man (2015), for example, the first two narrative sections introduce the villain, Darren Cross/Yellowjacket (Corey Stoll), and the hero, Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd). In Inception (2010), the two narrative sections present Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the concept of being able to infiltrate and alter other people’s dreams. In Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016), the first two narrative sections reveal protagonist Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her antagonist, the Umbrella Corporation, which is trying to annihilate the survivors of the apocalypse.

Ant-Man (2015) Trailer 1 Inception (2010) Trailer 1 Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) Official Trailer

Figure 13.3  Examples of SSLS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

294   Watts Musical changes reinforce each section of the SSLS structure. For example, the trailer for Ant-Man begins with sparse music for a 30-second segment. The second segment begins with the Marvel production logo, is 30 seconds long, and emphasizes the percussive qualities of the music. The textural changes between the first two sections create a divide in the narrative orientation, and the music is loosely synchronized with the visuals. In contrast, the third section takes a minute and 15 seconds and features a strong heroic brass sound and generic action strings that are tightly synchronized with the action sequence montage. While the Ant-Man trailer does not feature a complete shift in music between each section, it does deploy instrumental, textural, and dynamic changes that work to articulate these divisions. The music very clearly builds into the L action sequence montage section, and the changes in music between the narrative SS sections emphasize their quick succession. The final S coda section uses only sound effects until the heroic music returns for the release date title card. The initial lack of music further separates it from the action sequence montage.

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Figure 13.4 diagrams the SLLS examples in the corpus. The “mirrored” or arch form structure of the SLLS type suggests a balance between narrative and action, though the form remains oriented toward the action sequence montage. The opening SL structure allows for an initial exposition with very little context or explanation, often dropping us into the middle of a scene with no accompanying dialogue that is then clarified in a longer narrative setup before the long action sequence montage. Like the SSLS structure, the second L section is followed by a coda, a short segment that includes the title card and often an ironic clip from the feature film. In 300 (2006), for example, the first narrative section introduces the Spartan warriors in standard form. The second L section outlines their conflict with the Persian empire and introduces the protagonist, King Leonidas (Gerard Butler). In Casino Royale (2006), the first narrative section shows James Bond (Daniel Craig) becoming a 00 agent and the second section outlines the film’s narrative premise: Bond—funded by the British government—will participate in a high-stakes poker game at Casino Royale against terrorist banker Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). In Mad Max: Fury Road (2015),

300 (2006) Official Trailer Casino Royale (2006) Official Trailer Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Official Trailer

Figure 13.4  Examples of SLLS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

Music and Contemporary Action Film Trailers   295 the first narrative section introduces Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), who is on the run from War Boys. The second narrative section shows Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) rescuing the captive wives of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne). Music in this form can allow significant contrast between the two segments of narrative exposition. For example, the trailer for 300 begins with dramatic mythic choral music for the first short section. The music in the first long section murmurs in the background, which works in contrast to the second long section that features an instrumental song by Nine Inch Nails titled “Just Like You Imagined” (1999) for the action sequence montage. The use of Nine Inch Nails for the second long section gives the montage a stronger musical identity in comparison with the initial long section, and this musical identity provides energy and power to the montage. Furthermore, the music in this section is tightly synchronized with the visual action, which is in contrast with the opening narrative part. The music fades out to nothing after the title card, and the final section, which is only 10 seconds, utilizes a famous understated line from the film: “We’re in for one wild night.” Similar to the Ant-Man trailer, the lack of the music in the final S section highlights the prominence of the previous L action montage.

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Figure 13.5 shows sectional diagrams for three of the MMMS examples in the corpus. The MMMS type provides significant space for narrative setup, as the opening MM structure allows for substantial exposition of characters and the subsequent conflicts they must overcome. This trailer structure concludes with a quick S coda after a relatively taut action sequence montage. In Avatar (2009), for example, the first narrative section establishes both the Earth’s interest in mining Pandora and the indigenous people, the Na’vi, who are an obstacle to that goal. The second section focuses on protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington). The first narrative section of Fast Five (2011) introduces two fugitives, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), while the second section features the agent, Luke Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), who is trying to capture them. In The Dark Knight (2008), the first medium section presents the villain, the Joker (Heath Ledger), and the second section introduces the hero, Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale) and the hero-turned-villain, Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart).

Avatar (2009) Official Trailer Fast Five (2011) Trailer 1 The Dark Knight (2008) Trailer 1

Figure 13.5 Examples of MMMS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

296   Watts Music underscores these sectional divisions, whether by switching to a completely new idea or by adding new layers to an existing track. For example, the trailer for The Dark Knight begins with music that supports action-based gestures such as explosions and falling for a 45-second segment. The second medium section, which is around oneminute long, uses music associated with Batman, but it becomes fragmented and is interrupted by the Joker’s violent acts. There is a clear musical shift into the third section, which runs about 30 seconds and reuses the Batman music, but this time the texture is fuller and more triumphant, investing Batman’s onscreen success with a sense of hope. The continuity and grandeur of the music in the action sequence montage is a contrast with the fragmented soundtrack of the opening MM narrative sections. The final S section is separated from the action montage by a focus on dialogue and sound effects during a sarcastic quip from Alfred, the butler (Michael Caine).

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Figure 13.6 shows diagrams of the LSMS examples in the corpus. Like MMMS, the relatively brief action sequence montage of the LSMS type provides significant space for establishing the world of the film and the conflict that must be resolved. This type frequently ends with a comedic coda. For Ready Player One (2018), the initial long section introduces Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) and the virtual reality the “OASIS.” The subsequent short section reveals that the OASIS creator is leaving control to whomever wins a competition. The L section in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) provides a summary of the previous two installments in the franchise, and the S section reintroduces Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). In Wonder Woman (2017), the L section establishes the Amazon’s paradise island of Themyscira and Diana’s (Gal Gadot) warrior training, while the S section introduces Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), who reveals that, unbeknownst to the Amazons, the world is at war. Here again, music significantly contributes to articulating the structure. The “Origin” trailer for Wonder Woman begins with light minimalist piano music accompanying the first section. The second section continues with similar music but marks the new section through a textural change that builds tension. After these narrative sections, a major musical shift marks the start of the action-sequence montage. The composed score here features strong percussion and a soaring string melody to accompany images of Diana

Ready Player one (2018) Trailer 1 The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) Trailer 1 Wonder Woman (2017) Original Trailer

Figure 13.6 Examples of LSMS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

Music and Contemporary Action Film Trailers   297 on the battlefield. At the end of this section, the title card appears, and the rock-style Wonder Woman theme plays, followed by a short comedic excerpt with no music as Diana tries to use a revolving door in London while carrying a shield and sword. The progression of music in the Wonder Woman trailer is similar to that in The Dark Knight. In the first section, the music is underarticulated but is still used to punctuate the narrative exposition. The music then grows in texture and complexity through the second section and becomes the full action-film music sound in the action-sequence montage. In addition to the textural shift, the music moves from loosely to tightly organized at the start of the third section. The shift in music from the second to third section articulates the change from narrative to action.

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Figure 13.7 presents diagrams of three LLS examples from the corpus. Similar to the SLLS type, the LLS structure gives a balance of narrative and action, with the initial long narrative section focusing on the protagonist or establishing the world and serving as a setup to the action montage. These two long sections are followed by a short coda. Black Panther’s (2018) long narrative opening introduces the hidden African nation of Wakanda and the role of the title character. In Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015), the narrative section presents the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), the protagonist Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), and the desire of Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) to dissolve the IMF. In the Total Recall reboot from 2012, the long narrative section introduces Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) as he tries the Recall procedure—which turns dreams into real memories—and realizes his own memories may not be true. Music varies between each section, typically a full change of material rather than the addition of new layers to an existing track. Trailer 1 for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation begins with sparse music that punctuates dialogue and sound effects. The second long section features a radical change in music to a remix of the Fugees’ “Ready or Not” (1996). The remix is layered with the sound of a ticking clock and percussive action music that is tightly synchronized with visual changes and kinetic action, such as kicks or explosions. In addition to the thicker musical texture of the second section, the music in the action part is also more continuous in comparison with the narrative exposition.

Black Panther (2018) Trailer 1 Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015) Trailer 1 Total Recall (2012) Official Trailer

Figure 13.7  Examples of LLS trailer structures from corpus. Dark grey shows action sequence montage, light grey shows coda.

298   Watts The use of a popular song also articulates the boundary between the narrative and action sections. The final short section begins with the Mission Impossible theme and an actor title card announcing Tom Cruise, who has starred throughout the film franchise that began in 1996.

Conclusions In all of the trailers, music in the narratively oriented first part is loosely synchronized and often quite in the background. The sparser texture of the music in the first part allows space in the soundtrack for dialogue, such as a voiceover, to establish the basic premise of the film’s narrative. Whether popular music or composed score, the music then becomes more complex or layered and active with each new section, and the audiovisual editing becomes more tightly organized. This shift in music marks the second section of the narrative as a transition to action. The subsequent action sequence montage then features an even thicker texture in the music and tightly organized synchronization that propels it forward. The majority of the film trailers considered fall into four sections, this final section very short, similar to a coda. It either contains a complete phrase of the composed score main theme, or popular song hook, or no music followed by a percussive orchestral chord that punctuates the release date title card. For each of the examples, the divisions in the narrative part and the foregrounding of music in the action sequence montage give weight to action. In terms of the structure of the trailer, the narrative part acts as an introduction that leads into the action part, which is designed to lure and entice the audience in preparation for the feature film. The music and audiovisual editing for the action part is typically highly stylized and/or features a musical theme or song strongly associated with the film’s protagonist(s), further emphasizing the focus on the action sequence. Contemporary trailers differ from their predecessors in that they do not just serve to advertise the feature film but have become a form of audiovisual entertainment in their own right. Indeed, one way of understanding the shift in trailer structure around 2000 is by examining the changing ways audiences consume trailers. As the internet became the primary vehicle for film promotion, trailers ceased being restricted to theaters, VHS tapes, and DVDs. In her study of the Lord of the Rings franchise, Kristin Thompson notes that the internet changed fundamentally the way trailers are used in promotion: On 30 September 2002, for example, the first full length trailer for Towers was made available for twenty-four hours exclusively on AOL, before being placed on the official site, lordoftherings.net, on 1 October. Several show business and Tolkien-fan

Music and Contemporary Action Film Trailers   299 websites with access to AOL quickly uploaded the trailer themselves, so non-AOL users had access to copies during most of the twenty-four-hour-period. . . . [F]ans reveled in getting something highly desirable ahead of its official date of availability. The same trailer premiered theatrically on 4 October, an event of considerably less note to site managers and fans, since trailers are viewed far more often online than in movie theatres.  (Thompson, 2007, pp. 135–136)

While exclusive release on AOL may be a thing of the past, the release of trailers—particularly for big franchises with built-in audiences—are advertised on social media and watched millions of times on YouTube. If a trailer will likely be closely examined by fans, then the trailer plays to the fan community—helps keep fans interested—by enticing through spectacularity in its own right and not just serving to promote the feature film. Therefore, it follows that trailer structures have changed to account for new behaviors of consumption. In particular, narrative in these trailers serves as the pretense to the spectacle of action, just as the action sequence montage serves to frame and spectacularize the character conflicts that will (presumably) drive the film’s narrative. Music plays an integral part in unifying and organizing the trailer’s materials into a compact audiovisual experience. This leads to new questions about the relation of music, narrative, and spectacle in both trailer and feature film. Blockbuster films increasingly promote themselves through “named” trailers, for example, the Wonder Woman (2017) “Origin” and “Rise of the Warrior” trailers, the Ready Player One (2018) “Dreamer” trailer, or the Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) “Uprising” trailer. Such naming suggests a purpose to these trailers beyond advertising the feature film. The structures of these trailers are not optimized to use action to draw us to the story—the fans rarely need to be enticed to see the story— but rather to use narrative to establish a new angle on the familiar franchise, to keep fans excited about the world they have invested themselves in, and above all to set up the dramatic conflicts that will burst into compelling action. The ways these structures tap narrative energy and transform it into action and use music to underscore the process are not yet well understood, nor are the ways trailers and their music function to appeal to an existing community of fans. However, it is clear that music plays a substantial role in the work that trailers do and that further inquiry must address their stylized and musical form if we are to understand how contemporary trailers go beyond promoting and previewing the feature film.

Appendix 1 SSSL Leitch, David (Director). (2017). Atomic Blonde. Trailer 2. 87Eleven. Stallone, Sylvester (Director). (2010). The Expendables. Trailer 1. Millennium Films. Bay, Michael (Director). (2007). Transformers. Official Trailer. Paramount Pictures.

300   Watts SSLS Reed, Peyton (Director). (2015). Ant-Man. Trailer 1. Marvel Studios. Nolan, Christopher (Director). (2010). Inception. Trailer 1. Warner Bros. Anderson, Paul  W.  S.  (Director). (2016). Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Official Trailer. Constantin Film.

SLLS Snyder, Zack (Director). (2006). 300. Official Trailer. Warner Bros. Cuesta, Michael (Director). (2017). American Assassin. Trailer 1. CBS Films. Villeneuve, Denis (Director). (2017). Blade Runner 2049. Official Trailer. Columbia Pictures. Campbell, Martin (Director). (2006). Casino Royale. Official Trailer. Columbia Pictures. Derrickson, Scott (Director). (2016). Doctor Strange. Official Trailer. Marvel Studios. Dobbs, Lem (Director). (2011). Haywire. Trailer HD. Relativity Media. Vaughn, Matthew (Director). (2014). Kingsman: The Secret Service. Official Trailer. Twentieth Century Fox. Besson, Luc (Director). (2014). Lucy. Trailer 1. TF1 Films Production. Miller, George (Director). (2015). Mad Max: Fury Road. Official Trailer. Warner Bros. Collet-Serra, Jaume (Director). (2014). Non-Stop. Trailer 1. Studio Canal. Peyton, Brad (Director). (2018). Rampage. Official Trailer. New Line Cinema. Mendes, Sam (Director). (2012). Skyfall. Official Trailer. Eon Productions. Morel, Pierre (Director). (2008). Taken. Official Trailer. EuropaCorp. Waititi, Taika (Director). (2017). Thor: Ragnarok. Trailer 1. Marvel Studios.

MMMS Kurzel, Justin (Director). (2016). Assassin’s Creed. Trailer 1. Regency Enterprises. Cameron, James (Director). (2009). Avatar. Official Trailer. Twentieth Century Fox. Travis, Pete (Director). (2012). Dredd. Trailer 1. DNA Films. Lin, Justin (Director). (2011). Fast Five. Trailer 1. Universal Pictures. Wright, Joe (Director). (2011) Hanna. Trailer 1. Focus Features. Wright, Edgar (Director). (2007). Hot Fuzz. Trailer 1. Universal Pictures. Stahelski, Chad (Director). (2014). John Wick. Trailer 1. 87Eleven. Zack Snyder (Director). (2017). Justice League. Official Trailer. Warner Bros. DeKnight, Steven  S.  (Director). (2018). Pacific Rim Uprising. Official Trailer. Legendary Entertainment. Lin, Justin (Director). (2016). Star Trek Beyond. Trailer 3. Paramount Pictures. Whedon, Joss (Director). (2012). The Avengers. Trailer 1. Marvel Studios. Nolan, Christopher (Director). (2008). The Dark Knight. Trailer 1. Warner Bros. Jee-woon, Kim (Director). (2008). The Good, The Bad, and The Weird. Official Trailer. CJ Entertainment.

LSMS McQuarrie, Christopher (Director). (2012). Jack Reacher. Trailer 1. Paramount Pictures. Vaughn, Matthew (Director). (2017). Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Official Trailer. Twentieth Century Fox.

Music and Contemporary Action Film Trailers   301 Johnson, Rian (Director). (2012). Looper. Official Trailer. Endgame Entertainment. Spielberg, Steven (Director). (2018). Ready Player One. Trailer 1. Amblin Entertainment. Fuqua, Antoine (Director). (2007). Shooter. Official Trailer. Paramount Pictures. Greengrass, Paul (Director). (2007). The Bourne Ultimatum. Trailer 1. Universal Pictures. Jenkins, Patty (Director). (2017). Wonder Woman. Origin Trailer. Warner Bros.

LLS Coogler, Ryan (Director). (2018). Black Panther. Trailer 1. Marvel Studios. Blomkamp, Neill (Director). (2009). District 9. Official Trailer. TriStar Pictures. Liman, Doug (Director). (2014). Edge of Tomorrow. Official Trailer. Warner Bros. Mangold, James (Director). (2017). Logan. Official Trailer. Donners’ Company. McQuarrie, Christopher (Director). (2015). Mission Impossible: Rouge Nation. Trailer 1. Paramount Pictures. Rønning, Joachim, and Sandberg, Espen (Directors). (2017). Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Trailer 1. Walt Disney Pictures. Ritchie, Guy (Director). (2009). Sherlock Holmes. Official Trailer. Warner Bros. Wiseman, Len (Director). (2012). Total Recall. Official Trailer. Original Film. Liebesman, Jonathan (Director). (2012). Wrath of the Titans. Official Trailer. Warner Bros. Cohen, Rob (Director). (2002). xXx. Official Trailer. Revolution Studios.

Recommended Readings Deaville, J., & Malkinson, A. (2014). A laugh a second? Music and sound in comedy trailers. Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 8(2), 121–140. Gray, J. (2010). Show sold separately: Promos, spoilers and other media paratexts. New York, NY: New York University Press. Johnston, K. M. (2009). Coming soon: Film trailers and the selling of Hollywood technology. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Kernan, L. (2004). Coming attractions: Reading American movie trailers. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

References Arnold, G., Cookney, D., Fairclough, K., & Goddard, M. (Eds.). (2017). Music/video: Histories, aesthetics, media. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic. Chion, M. (1994). Audio-vision: Sound on screen. (C. Gorbman, Trans., Ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Deaville, J., & Malkinson, A. (2014). A laugh a second? Music and sound in comedy trailers. Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 8(2), 121–140. Frith, S., Goodwin, A., & Grossberg, L. (Eds.). (1993). Sound and vision: The music video reader. New York, NY: Routledge. Goodwin, A. (1992). Dancing in the distraction factory: Music television and popular culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gray, J. (2010). Show sold separately: Promos, spoilers and other media paratexts. New York, NY: New York University Press.

302   Watts Johnston, K. M. (2009). Coming soon: Film trailers and the selling of Hollywood technology. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Kernan, L. (2000). A cinema of (coming) attractions: American movie trailer rhetoric (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles). Kernan, L. (2004). Coming attractions: Reading American movie trailers. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Maier, C. D. (2009). Visual evaluation in film trailers. Visual Communication, 8(2), 159–180. National Association of Theatre Owners. (n.d.). In-theatre marketing guidelines. Retrieved from https://www.natoonline.org/initiatives/marketing/natos-in-theater-marketingguidelines/ Summers, T. (2018). From “sabotage” to “sledgehammer”: Trailers, songs, and the musical marketing of Star Trek Beyond (2016). Music and the Moving Image, 11(1), 40–65. Thompson, K. (2007). The Frodo franchise: The Lord of the Rings and modern Hollywood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Vernallis, C. (2004). Experiencing music video: Aesthetics and cultural context. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Watts, C. (2018). Popular music and audiovisual editing in contemporary action films (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin).

Discography Depeche Mode. (1990). Personal Jesus [Song]. On Violator [Album]. Puk Studios. Fugees. (1996). Ready or not [Song]. On The Score [Album]. Ruffhouse. Health. (2017). Blue Monday [Song]. On Atomic blonde original motion picture soundtrack [Album]. Back Lot Music. Nine Inch Nails. (1999). Just like you imagined [Song]. On The fragile [Album]. Nothing Studios.

chapter 14

Cr eati ng Big-Scr een Au diences Through Sm a l l-Scr een A ppea l s Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound1 James Deaville

To open the discussion of television advertising for feature narrative films, it is instructive to compare assessments of the practice’s viability from its beginnings and from recent times: Televiewers may . . . catch occasional glimpses of Hollywood stars as trailers are telecast. Recognizing the publicity value of trailer-telecasts, Columbia Pictures has granted permission to show samples of pictures, according to the National Broadcasting Corporation. Scenes from “Golden Boy,” to be released in September, have been selected to test the possibilities in such telecasting on Saturday night at 9:15 o’clock.  (“Televiews of Pictures,” 1939, p. X10) The top marketing platform for domestic theatrical releases is Thursday night network-broadcast TV because theatrical films usually open in theaters the following day.  (Marich, 2013, p. 97)

In the 75 years separating these two statements, television had become the preferred medium for selling movies, above print, radio, and billboard advertising. This chapter 1  My thanks extend to Adrian Matte of Carleton University for his assistance in the preparation of this chapter. I also recognize the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada for this project.

304   Deaville considers the rise and fall of television trailers or spots for films,2 as an example of intermedial marketing that heavily relies on the sonic realm—music and sound—to enhance its impact upon the television public.3 Its very brevity—from six to 30 seconds—dictates finding alternatives to the standard trailer narrative of two minutes and 20 seconds, whereby the theater audience learns about genre, characters, and plot (and even outcome in the case of poorly produced trailers). By examining television marketing campaigns for representative films (Goldfinger and Barbarella from the 1960s, The Dark Knight Rises from the 2010s), we will consider the options available to the creators of TV spots for film, which in recent years have come to adopt distinct marketing strategies from cinematic trailers. Above all, we will observe how music and sound effects increase in positive valence the shorter the audiovisual text becomes. As film marketing specialist Robert Marich (2013) observes, “Television is the most popular medium with film marketers because television commercials deliver both video and audio” (p. 94). The typical television advertising campaign for a film begins four weeks prior to cinematic release, with a special push in the final week and above all on the day before release, Thursday in North America. In distinction to the customary two or three cinematic trailers, the number of spots in a campaign widely varies according to factors such as the film’s advertising budget, its target demographic, and even the time of year for cinematic release: studios could produce from 20 to 50 TV trailers for major releases like The Hangover (2009) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), while a film that fares poorly during audience testing may generate only one or two television spots. Also in contrast to theatrical exhibition, trailers and spots for North American television differ in length, from one minute in the early phase of the campaign to 30 seconds and 50 seconds as the release date approaches. The factors that loom over all of these considerations are those of budget and cost, the return on investment driving practical and aesthetic decisions. Marich reviews the complexities of pricing for film advertising in the diverse formats of television; suffice it to say that in its heyday, 30-second ads on American Idol cost $600,000, compared with $29,000 on Access Hollywood and $90,000 on Entertainment Tonight (2013, p. 98).4 The number of viewers is only one consideration in the marketplace of coming attractions, which also depends on the medium (national broadcast network, national cable network, etc.), market (the United States is divided into 210 markets), time of day and day of the week, and even the specific program for ad placement. 2  This text uses the designations “television trailers” and “television spots” according to their lengths or the language used to identify them in the referring source; the terminology is quite variable prior to the standardization of TV spots in the mid-1960s, at which point the distinctions become much clearer. The designation “promo” arose in the 1960s and has generally been limited to advertising for television programming. 3  In her dissertation, Anne Dotter argues for audio’s dominance in television trailers for films (Dotter, 2009, pp. 180–182), but she makes a case for voiceover as the unifying feature without any reference to music’s role. 4  Those fees have decreased as television has become less a source of entertainment and information for the general public.

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   305 This last factor of temporal specificity merits closer attention as one of the distinctions from advertising in cinemas, which cannot deliver the same audience targeting that the variety of television programming can. Marich argues that cable television is demographic specific, and thus “MTV draws the youth audience, ESPN pulls men, and Lifetime corrals women” (2013, p. 64). However, the same type of audience segmentation occurs on “comprehensive” television networks, albeit on a more limited basis, since such national broadcasters as CBS, NBC, and CBC provide a wide array of programming, ranging from sporting events to daytime dramas and talk shows—the diversity aims at a succession of demographics during the course of the broadcast day, and the advertising, including advertising for film, is targeted to maximize exposure to potential consumers and audience members.

Understanding and Interpretation What elements make up the advertising for film in the format of television spots? As a result of comparing a theatrical and television trailer for the same film, we discover that the TV spot shares features with that for cinema: both solidly establish cinematic (and trailer) genre, consist of a closed audiovisual text, present images ostensibly from the film being marketed, use music and sound to drive pacing and support and/or create narrative, and mobilize mechanisms of appeal to attract potential cinema audience members. Other similarities run along genre lines, including conventions for the communication of narrative, genre-specific visual editing practices, and clear markers for musical styles. On first glance, the differences between cinematic and televisual trailers would appear to amount to the brevity of TV spots, their domestic sites of consumption, their use of critics’ comments, and the provision of exact details for the cinematic release. Basing his comments on film advertising from the 1950s and 1960s, Johnston argues that “television trailers demonstrate unique structural conventions that are imposed and inspired by the technology that underpins them” (2009, p. 3). He provides us with a veritable taxonomy of characteristic features for film advertisements on television:

1. The importance of audio, particularly voiceover 2. Standard time lengths, imposed by the commercial format 3. Close images to fill the screen 4. Long shots as background for large graphic titles 5. A reliance on visuals to suggest genre

Johnston’s last point neglects the soundtrack, however, which can more efficiently establish genre than visuals, especially in the prominence assigned to the aural domain by the television ad (Johnston’s first point).

306   Deaville In addition, the television spot performs an interdiegetic mediation between screens, so that the consumer engages in and is ultimately directed to the cinematic experience, whereby the small-screen advertising extends beyond its televisual diegesis. The intimacy of the site of consumption for TV spots certainly contrasts with the cinematic setting for the theatrical trailer with its spectacular screen and bombastic sound, yet the devices and strategies outlined by Johnston—close images that fill screens, large graphic titles over long shots, prominent audio—all extend the television screen into a home-theatrical experience (Kerins, 2017). Thus, the television trailer invokes, if not actually simulates, the cinematic experience rather than fostering the intimacy that the living room setting might imply. As Philip Auslander summarizes, “Television was thought to make the home into a kind of theatre” (1999, p. 16). This is the context for John Caldwell’s theoretical concept of “televisuality,” with its emphasis on “the televisual” as “an excess of style,” as “spectacle, high-production values, and feature-style cinematography,” making it seem appropriate for trailers on post-1980 television (Caldwell, 1995, p. 12). And technological advances that have enabled the conversion of the television set and its accessories into the home theater have facilitated the cinematization of the television spot experience. Thirty seconds is generally not adequate time to establish cinematic narrative other than providing a sense of genre and the central conflict or the identity of celebrity characters. The narrative arch is compressed, allowing for only a selection of genre markers, whether two or three punch lines in comedy, a concluding montage of screams in horror, or a handful of the most spectacular mises-en-scene in action-adventure. The television spot works on the assumption that prior marketing—especially the cinematic trailer— has already informed the consumer about a film’s plot elements. For example, the halfminute ads for The Dark Knight Rises of 2012 altogether dispense with presenting a coherent story line: The TV campaign for the Christopher Nolan film compensates for the lack of plot through the images and voices of the stars, fragments of dialogue, and, above all, a fast montage of spectacular sights over an extended dynamic crescendo. It stands to reason that a television campaign will draw at least some of its visual material from the cinematic trailers for a given film. However, the newly added time-based elements—music, sound effects, narration—must be fashioned to accommodate the compressed world of the TV spot while ironically invoking the cinematic experience. Whereas genre conventions prevent establishing a standard soundscape for television trailers, certain aural principles can be observed in comparison with their theatrical counterparts, based on a study of over 200 TV spots 15 and 30 seconds in length between 2012 and 2018:5

1. Music and sound design occupy even more prominent roles in TV spots, collectively as a supra-diegetic structuring force. 2. The pace and editing of audio change is faster, and silence takes on greater significance.

5  Because of the number of TV spots for a given film—up to 50—the survey selected representative examples of 30-, 15-, and 10-second spots for comedy, action-adventure, and drama film genres from the various stages of a television campaign (prior to last week, last week, and “Now Playing”).

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   307



3. Sync points, defined by Michel Chion as “a salient moment of an audiovisual sequence during which a sound event and a visual event meet in synchrony,” abound in much greater concentration, to the extent that the practice loses its salience. 4. Production music figures even more heavily here, since the brevity of time and the need for immediately identifiable affect do not permit the presentation of full themes or songs. 5. Comments by critics—not available for theatrical trailers—are often narrated over dynamic graphics. 6. Promotional information, encompassing release date, format, and rating, is both spoken and shown at the end.

The televisuality of images and graphics and the heightened aurality of music, sound effects, and dialogue/narration conspire to make for a TV spot experience that can border on the cinematic. In action-adventure spots, goal-directed tracks of production music, integrated with sound effects and arranged in conjunction with visual features, conspire to create a dynamic, climax-driven short form that ultimately impels the consumer to the product information at the end, hopefully motivating purchase. The “Now Playing Spot #2” for Gravity well illustrates how careful editing of sight and sound can create a compelling audiovisual text in 30 seconds, in this case with the added appeal of the voices of George Clooney and Sandra Bullock (Gravity—Now Playing Spot 2, 2013). Indeed, Clooney serves as a narrator, giving unity to the point where the dynamic and visual crescendo takes the spot to its end. Before undertaking a closer reading of soundtracks for contemporary movie spots on television, however, it is important to consider their developmental history to understand how they came to adopt their current status and form.

Beginnings The emergence of the television spot for film was tied to developments in the mediascape of the 1920s and 1930s, although the practice did not fully enter American televisual advertising before the 1950s. Both radio and early television did feature movie promotion in various forms, from review programs to trailers (Groskopf, 2013), even as they established themselves as viable vehicles for commercial broadcasting in North America. Radio had the advantage of its persuasive narration in advertising contexts, for as Kesten observed in 1935, the radio voice had the “supple power to move people and mold them, to enlist them and command them” (as cited in McGovern, 2006, p. 52). As Su Holmes has determined, Hollywood studios like Warner Brothers, Paramount, and MGM “developed their own radio shows, although these did not appear on the established networks. . . . In many of the big network shows, however, control remained with

308   Deaville the advertising agency” (Holmes, 2005a, p. 26). With regard to the British scene, Holmes notes that “the film industry participated in film-related programming on BBC radio from the late 1920s,” but without the commercial aspects of the American scene, it was less promotional, more in the manner of a preview. Indeed, in the 1930s, the BBC offered “service talks” on radio that informed listeners about cinematic releases while critiquing the films (Holmes, 2005b, pp. 459–460). Nevertheless, television—like cinema—had the ability to leave a visual impression, and it was exploited as such for film advertising once it became recognized for its potential to reach wide segments of the movie audience (Holmes, 2005b, pp. 465–466). Network television in the United Kingdom and the United States, of course, had their origins in the radio networks: BBC television in 1927 and NBC and CBS in 1926 and 1927, respectively. Over a decade of technological experimentation ensued as the television receiver and transmission processes were continually being refined until suitable for wider distribution. Although local stations affiliated with both the BBC and CBS and NBC existed in the 1930s, their early programming was limited in terms of broadcast hours as well as in the reach of their transmissions. The BBC began producing its own programming in 1932 and first broadcast a regular schedule in 1936, but it is important to keep in mind that the cost of the early sets was prohibitive, so in combination with the few hours and restricted range, the prewar audience for television was necessarily quite small. American television broadcasting nevertheless became a reality in the 1930s with CBS and NBC network stations broadcasting in New York and then in Los Angeles. Possibly the earliest reference to a trailer for film produced specifically for television marketing occurs in a document from late 1935 by Gerald Cock, director general of television for the BBC, who proposes the creation of “special television film ‘trailers’ ” (Holmes, 2005b, p. 460). In distinction to the service’s radio talks that reviewed films, Cock suggested that BBC television “deal with films descriptively (rather than critically). . . . The speaker’s remarks would refer chiefly to interesting facts about the stars, production, direction, and story, and would be illustrated by ‘floating in’ . . . visually and in sound, one or more brief excerpts from each of the films concerned.” He designated it as a “new and interesting form of ‘trailer,’ designed specially for television purposes and technique” (Holmes, 2005b, p. 460). Holmes points out the conflict between the promotional implications of the “trailer” and the BBC’s charge of public service. The American networks had no such qualms, so we observe the New York Times reporting on the agreement between Columbia and NBC from August 27, 1939, cited at the beginning of the present chapter. Several months later, Orrin E. Dunlap Jr.—television maven and reporter for the Times—detailed a setback for the cause of the trailer, albeit one connected with a trailer for a Broadway production: It was just when telecasters thought that they beheld a ray of hope in avoiding encirclement in drama, by cooperating with Broadway producers in telecasting “trailers” or bits of current plays, that the Actors Equity demand for the equivalent of a full

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   309 week’s salary for each performer . . . stopped the show. Arrangements had been made to televise a preview of the musical show “Very Warm for May.” (Dunlap, 1939, p. X12)

Once broadcast television became a reality in the mid-1930s, the Hollywood film studios (and BBC) came to realize the value of the small screen for marketing large-screen entertainment, although the televisual presentation of feature films would remain a closed door for some time. The New York Times explained that “full-length current motion pictures are withheld from television by the producers to protect the box office” (“Televiews of Pictures,” 1939, p. X10). This attitude anticipated the difficult and at times adversarial relationship that would develop between film and television after the latter became commercially viable in the late 1940s. In the meantime, Hollywood studios helped in the early development of television, as evidenced in Paramount’s ownership of pioneering Los Angeles station W6XYZ, which began regular if limited broadcasting in 1942. Already in late 1938 Paramount announced its intention to “telecast on a major scale” (Clickman, 1938, p. 17) and the publication Broadcasting made clear in April 1939 what the studio proposed for its television station: “The film company recently announced it planned to ‘cash in’ on the public’s interest in television and merchandise its products through television trailers” (“Paramount Still Silent,” 1939, p. 78). That this intention did not become reality until 1944 is the result of converging factors: the technological issues that continued to plague broadcast television and the onset of World War II.

The War Years The war and its demands on society led to the cessation or at least limitation of television broadcasting, which most directly affected the BBC Television Service, necessitating it to shut down its broadcasting operations between September 1, 1939, and June 7, 1946 (Webb, n.d.). American television networks and stations did not discontinue service, but limitations were placed on its development, such as the Federal Communication Commission’s ban on new station construction (Hart, 2004, p. 29) or the embargo on the production of new television sets (Gentzkow, 2006, pp. 939–940). Further complications entered after the war when musicians were banned by Petrillo from working for the nascent television industry 1945 because of disagreements over royalty payments (Deaville, 2016, p. 193). Still, Paramount’s W6XYZ in Los Angeles not only began to offer a limited broadcast schedule during the war but also was able to exploit its intermedial capacity by televising trailers for the studio’s own cinematic productions. Among the first was a television preview for The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek in 1945 that little resembled the eventual practices of television spots for films: it was 20 minutes long and used stills from the film, with narration by male lead Eddie Bracken and an interview with actor Diana Lynn

310   Deaville (Paramount, 1945). As Billboard reported in August 1945, that trailer “proved so successful then that [Paramount] studio is expected to make regular use of [the] medium for pic plugs” (“Paramount Using Pic Tele Trailers,” 1945, p. 12). These planned trailers would not just draw on film footage, but also include information on stars and directors and “will be along behind-the-scenes line.” That other studios did not immediately follow Paramount’s model stems from the longstanding fear of television on the part of studio executives: “Hollywood's greatest danger is the use of feature films in tele, according to N. Peter Rathvon, RHO pictures prexy, who admitted that studios might find video a good ad medium via trailers” (“Use of Features,” 1946, p. 21). Faced with the cost of buying commercial time on stations not owned by the studio, however, the longer format proved impractical, so that in 1948 we discover United Artists featuring a three-minute trailer for an unspecified film on independent station WPIX in New York (“Television Commercial,” 1948, p. 13). Indeed, 1948 and 1949 were crucial years for the film industry’s exploitation of television as a marketing platform, not least through the new involvement of National Screen Services—the chief company behind film ­trailers—in the production of cinema previews for television (“Film Notes,” 1948, p. 17).6 Moreover, according to the same Televiser notice, Hollywood short-film producer Jerry Fairbanks Inc. “will shoot 30-second and one-minute ‘coming attractions’ for use by NBC affiliated stations”—these timings would become standard for televised film spots. As television’s advertising power became ever more apparent to the film industry, increasing numbers of Hollywood studios joined Paramount and UA in exploiting the small screen for marketing their big-screen releases. In December of 1947, Billboard observed that “several film studios [are] planning to use tele to sell pix” (“Pix Turn to TV,” 1947, p. 15). RKO entered the small-screen market in 1948 (WNBT in New York City), Warner Brothers in 1949 (WPIX New York City), and Columbia, 20th Century Fox, and Universal in 1950 (NSS for broader distribution).7 The studio move toward marketing through television occasioned Billboard to report in the summer of 1949 that “these recent decisions to use video [i.e., television] to plug films seems to point up the waning opposition on the part of the companies to a competing medium” (“Pix Make Trailers,” 1949, p. 14). NSS was not the only advertising firm providing television trailers, however: in May 1949, Broadcasting magazine informed the industry that the venerable agency Foote, Cone & Belding’s Los Angeles office was working with RKO on a one-minute spot “for use in television cities to coincide with local showing of ‘Big Steal’ ” (“RKO Trailer,” 1949, p. 8). It stands to reason that with the proliferation of television stations in the late 1940s, independent of Hollywood studios, the marketplace would open for television trailers produced not only by NSS but also by major advertising agencies in Los Angeles. Foote, 6  An ad for NSS in Televiser issues of 1948 boasts the following: “The same expert craftsmanship that has made our Prevue Trailers the standard of Showmanship in motion picture theatres, goes into your Television Trailers” (“Trailers…, Titles…, Special Effects…,” 1948, p. 36). 7  Disney was the only studio that resisted the principle of advertising its films in television, with the explanation that they “didn’t find black and white reproduction of the color film satisfactory” (“Decca, Disney Map Joint Bally Drive,” 1949, p. 17).

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   311 Cone & Belding would also run television spots for RKO’s Outlaw and Argosy’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (“Film Report,” 1949, p. 57). In Chicago, even a theater chain— Balaban & Kahn—owned a television station (WBKB), regarding it as a “powerful sales, entertainment and promotion weapon,” to which end they regularly featured television trailers, created by the station if the studios were not forthcoming (“Balaban & Katz Eyeing TV,” 1949, p. 10).

Establishing Film Advertising Practices in 1950s Television By 1950 advertising theatrical feature films on television had become an established practice, with the goal of improving the box office: “Columbia Pictures is out to prove that the motion picture industry can harness tele’s terrific selling power in boosting theater turnouts” (“Columbia to Use Tele,” 1950, p. 5). Moreover, Hollywood already recognized the different requirements of the small screen, which another Billboard item from that summer confirms: “Experimentation has proved that trailers aimed directly at the tele audience reap far greater results than TV use of theater reels . . ., [which] are usually of a brash, punch-‘em-hard type of commercial often found annoying when projected on the home screen.” That article, under the revealing title “All Major Pic Producers Set TV Ad Programs,” notably surveys various studios’ practices of exploiting television trailers: HOLLYWOOD, July 1.-“If you can’t fight 'em, use ’em,” is the axiom to be followed by movie makers in harnessing tele’s sales powers to hype pic grosses. A survey by The Billboard of major lots shows all studios definitely hopping aboard the TV ad bandwagon. . . . All agree the medium is ideally suited to beat the drum on coming attractions and are experimenting how to best utilize it. (“All Major Pic Producers,” 1950, p. 3)

While Columbia was experimenting with targeting one movie within a specific television market (711 Ocean Drive in Los Angeles), Paramount was disseminating its film promotion to over 30 “tele towns” and 20th Century Fox televised a trailer for The Gunfighter in San Francisco. Moreover, Billboard reported that 20th Century was specifying to NSS trailer lengths from 15 to 55 seconds, thereby compressing the pitch, but without music because of “American Federation of Musicians’ (AFM) curb on tele pic music.” Through its experimentation, the studio also established the effectiveness of the so-called shock technique of saturating the market the night before theatrical opening (“20th Eyes Tele,” 1950, p. 3). Despite these initial steps, studios exercised caution in their adoption of the small screen for advertising their products. The fear of television that seemed to permeate Hollywood studios in the 1950s had multiple reasons, not least of which was the union ban on the use of film music in television trailers, which required TV spot producers to

312   Deaville “dub in other music or use none at all” (“TV Can Build Movie Boxoffice but—,” 1950, p. 4). As late as 1955, Television Digest could ask the following question: “TV is a natural for promoting and advertising movies—so why don’t exhibitors make more use of it?” (“Telecasting Notes,” 1955, p. 7). Possibly the most insightful of the early assessments of the relationship between film and television is provided by Alan Ames writing in the New York Times in 1951, where the author observes that “the industry is no longer averse to taking advantage of the new medium as a valuable means of selling screen attractions” (Ames, 1951, p. X6). Ames reviews the history of television advertising for film and cites several trade representatives in describing the ongoing experimentation with the new medium, including the use of close-ups and sepia-tinted film for the best effects on small screens. By outlining successful television campaigns of the present, Ames’s intent was to sell the technology of television as the most effective vehicle for advertising film. Nonetheless, any change involving financial risk would come only slowly to the film industry. The television trade magazines of the 1950s make occasional reference to studios that have committed to promoting their theatrical releases on the small screen, which would of course interest TV industry insiders, especially if the practice were to generate new advertising revenues for television and at the same time “build theatre audiences” (American Broadcasting—Paramount Theatres, Inc., 1956, p. 11). Thus, we discover that in 1953, Allied Artists claimed to have become the first major studio to set the policy of “preparing telefilm trailers for all of its future top-bracket features” (“Allied Preps TV Trailers,” 1953, p. 7). Due to the ephemerality of the product, even more so than theatrical trailers, few television spots for Hollywood films of the 1950s have survived. The situation in Britain differed from that of North America by virtue of the BBC’s monopolistic control over programming during television’s early years—film studios in the United Kingdom nevertheless also exploited TV for its marketing potential. As Keith Johnston has established, the early British television trailer was a manifestation of the intersection between the aesthetics of the two entertainment industries during the 1950s and 1960s (Johnston, 2011). Furthermore, Su Holmes has argued that through film review programs like Current Release (BBC, 1952–1953), Film Fanfare (ABC, 1956–1957), and Picture Parade (1956–1962), television’s coverage of film played the formative role in forging the early, institutional, textual, and cultural relations between British television and film culture (Holmes, 2005a).

Aesthetic Considerations for Film Spots in the 1950s Keith Johnston has examined in detail the development of the television trailer from 1950 to 1964 in the chapter “The Rival Screen” from his valuable trailer study (Johnston, 2009, pp. 60–90), although his focus is on the visual rather than aural element of the brief

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   313 n ­ arratives.8 He subdivides this segment of small-screen film advertising into essentially two periods: one of experimentation from 1950 to about 1960, and what he calls the “return to cinema” from 1960 to 1964. The chapter’s end is determined by the stabilization and proliferation of television. Working from scripts and related documents, Johnston argues that no one aesthetic is discernible in television spots for films (p. 79), even though certain traits are apparent, including uniform lengths, close images of actors (to enhance the intimacy of the television screen), long shots behind large graphics, visuals suggesting genre, and references back to the cinema screen (p. 79). He posits the dominance of voiceover and audio in general (p. 68), which can be affirmed through examples of television trailers that have come to light since the appearance of Coming Soon. Ironically, the two trailers upon which Johnston bases a large part of his speculation—Born Yesterday from 1950 and Bedtime for Bonzo from 1951—feature no music at all, in keeping with the union ban mentioned previously: They are dominated by an omniscient narrator, with dialogue by the leading actors, respectively Judy Holliday and Ronald Reagan. The RKO rerelease of King Kong in 1956 spawned a series of minute-long television trailers based on the original footage, which similarly had no music but rather sound effects from the original with a dramatic voiceover. While one could posit that the absence of music intensifies the diegetic sounds of horror, the budg­et­ary issue cannot be discounted, which may also be the case in the main TV spot for The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), which Johnston analyzes for its effective audio—aural countdown, dialogue, and voice-over—without reference to the absence of music (p. 81). The 30-second TV spot for The Screaming Skull from 1958 circumvents legal or aesthetic issues by maintaining a high-pitched, piercing electronic tone throughout, drawing the audience in by breaking down the fourth wall at the outset with the narrator’s question “Can you hear it?” Nevertheless, music was present in television trailers, especially during the 1950s, at times as dubbed-in stock tracks, at others from the film itself. The 30-second TV spot for Sleeping Beauty (1959) is particularly interesting for several reasons: (1) the light-hearted musical cue perfectly fits the time frame, suggesting it was composed for the trailer even though there is no evident attempt at synchronization; (2) the narration makes reference to the cinematic experience: “to enjoy it most you must see it in the one theater in your area equipped to show it in Technorama 70 and in full stereophonic sound”; and (3) the spot itself is in black and white, thus suitable for the most common televisual display of its day (color television was not widespread until later in the 1960s). The following year, the one-minute television spot for William Castle’s Thirteen Ghosts (1960) reflects the enduring diversity in the aural and visual elements in smallscreen appeals. Initially narrated by one of the actors, the young Charlie Herbert, the ad’s adult voiceover addresses potential audience members about the gimmicky “ghost viewer” that they will obtain in the theater. We hear a swirling string track underneath a menacing voiceover that introduces some of the horrific characters with sound effects 8  To be fair to Johnston, North American television spots for the films he discusses were not available at the time of publication (2009).

314   Deaville and scenes from the movie. The extended music cue serves to unify the spot, even as it shifts back to Charlie’s narration. Another short ad for the film, 30 seconds in length, dispenses with images altogether, presenting instead scary titling and a reference to “Illusion-O,” the gimmick that allows theatergoers to see the ghosts in color.

Music Since the 1950s The variability in the images and audio of the television spot as well as the diversity in its modes of appeal mark the 1950s as a period when studios were attempting to balance financial exigencies and advertising strategies. As time passed and television ads for movies became shorter, more of the burden for structural cohesion and for outreach fell upon music and sound, on the one hand for their economy and effectiveness in conveying information to consumers, on the other for their “hailing function” to capture the living room audience, which is not captive like that for theatrical trailers. Established in the 1960s, this dominant aurality in the TV spot for film has continued to the present day, with the other features—screen-filling images, dense editing style, cinematic feel— remaining fairly stable. Specifically examining the music in two examples from audiovisual film campaigns of the 1960s, Goldfinger (1964) and Barbarella (1968), and one from the 2010s, The Dark Knight Rises (2012), will help to illustrate the roles assigned to the soundtrack in film advertising on television. We shall observe that during the 1960s, the practice of condensing the theatrical trailer’s images and sound elements was quite common when either the studio or NSS produced the TV spots. In contrast, with the rise of boutique trailer houses in the 1980s and their differentiation according to product format and contractual limitations (cinema versus television), TV spots took quite different approaches to sight and sound from “full length” theatrical trailers.

Goldfinger (1964) Jon Burlingame has written the definitive study of music in the James Bond films (Burlingame, 2012), yet he does not address the music used in the promotional campaign, and possibly for good reason: As is conventional for franchise movies, the series theme needs to serve a branding function, and thus must permeate the audiovisual and radio advertising. The Bond theme was composed by Monty Norman in 1962 (though John Barry scored 11 of the Bond films) and arguably features two elements: the rising and falling minor-third scale under the rhythmic electric guitar motive and the upward and downward leaping brass idea. Burlingame calls it “one of the dozen or so most­recognized musical signatures of all time” (Burlingame, 2012, p. 3), and its immediate popularity in Dr. No (1962) caused Bond producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to have it used in all of the series’ audiovisual advertising at that time.

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   315 The theatrical trailer, shot and exhibited in color, is over three minutes long and is suffused with the Norman thematic material. However, it withholds the clearest and fullest statement of the trademark guitar theme for the final title card, thereby reinforcing the audience’s association of the music—which they might have heard in different ­contexts—with the film title. Despite its inordinate dimensions even for cinematic practices, the theatrical trailer does not develop any kind of narrative other than re-presenting Bond to the audience and introducing the villains, the women, and the general danger facing him. The music helps to make sense of the whole, but only by unifying the trailer scenes. Devoid of narrative teleology, the trailer becomes a series of action sequences, only interrupted in the middle by a more lyrical moment of apparent romance. The appearance of a title card “Goldfinger” at the one-minute mark elicits the first few lines of the eponymous song in the voice of Shirley Bassey, which could also serve as an audio hook for potential ticket buyers. The 50-second, black-and-white television spot essentially condenses and rearranges the visual and musical material from the theatrical trailer, but with interesting differences. We hear the guitar theme at the outset and Shirley Bassey sings the word “Goldfinger” twice against the title graphic, once at the halfway point and once at the end. Thus, a more intense branding is at work here, with no time to spare, for example, for details about the characters who are simply named both with graphic lettering and by the voiceover. In the economy of television spots, no second can be wasted, which results here in a less desultory, more directed message than in the theatrical trailer.

Barbarella (1968) As a nonfranchise film, Barbarella affords perspectives on a trailer/spot campaign that did not have the necessity of tying into pre-existing music. Composers Bob Crewe and Michael Fox wrote a score that Philip Hayward has described as “orchestral pop pieces that range from Ennio Morriconesque atmospheric tracks . . . to more uptempo popfunk numbers and jazzy cues” (Hayward, 2004, p. 14). Like that for Goldfinger, the theatrical trailer for Barbarella is three minutes long and it presents a similarly fragmentary narrative about the titular character, here selling the movie as a sexually charged character sketch with elements of parody interspersed (Noonan, 2005, pp. 91–92).9 The trailer music tends toward a pop-lounge style like that by Crewe and Fox for the film except at two points: where the voiceover mentions her adventures in locales like the “deadly doll house” (2:15) and at the end, where we hear the character’s theme song (written by Crewe and Fox) over the film credits (again an interesting parallel with Goldfinger). Given its stylistic unity with certain film scenes, the trailer’s (and spot’s) music is probably also by Crewe and Fox. 9  The voiceover words “get lost in space with Barbarella” just before the trailer end is a not-verysubtle reference to the television show Lost in Space, which had ended its three-season run six months before the theatrical release of Barbarella.

316   Deaville The TV spot carries on in this vein of musical kitsch (Hayward, 2004, p. 14), but condensed to one minute. Structure is more clearly delineated here, with a three-part scheme of character introduction–dangers–resolution that is mirrored in the score. The music itself abbreviates the styles and themes of the cinematic trailer, without the title song at the end, however. The overall effect is more satisfying with cohesively delineated sections, clearly contrasting visual and musical styles, and yet a greater sense of continuity through fast-paced musical and visual editing. While the TV spot thoroughly “cannibalizes” the longer cinematic trailer for music and image (the voiceover is new), the short video reflects careful editing of those sounds in particular to enhance the spot’s impact, in keeping with the aesthetic of the television trailer. Jumping ahead in time by over four decades, we arrive at the current state of music for television trailers and spots, where durations are standardized according to stage in the advertising campaign and music is edited in accordance with desired affective responses among consumers. As already described, the closer one gets to the release date, the greater the element of compulsion in the appeal. In this age of minutely calculated television advertising for film, nothing is left to chance: Music and sound drive and structure the spot; the pace is quick, even frenetic, but tightly regulated; sync points take on greater significance; and in the shortest, “now playing” spots the comments of critics crucially figure in the visual and—at times—audio presentation.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Following the audiovisual advertising campaign for the superhero film The Dark Knight Rises (2012) enables us to witness how each phase—the two-minute-plus theatrical trailer, the 30-second prerelease TV spot, and the 16-second Now Playing spot—deploy different sonic strategies to entice potential audience members to the cinematic experience. Space does not permit a full thematic, harmonic, and timbral analysis of the second cinematic preview, available on YouTube as of December 19, 2011, but we can hear how the longer time frame allows the development of musical material, in this case the American national anthem, which serves as an ironic recurring and ultimately receding backdrop for the violent images and dialogue that present themselves in the first half of the trailer. It will eventually be superseded by the stridently rhythmic prisoner chant that, after an interruption by a deafening silence over an alternative sound effect and Banes’s pronouncement of Wayne’s fate, resumes and builds in tandem with sound effects.10 All the while we read about the film trilogy’s eventual conclusion, distributed as mute, expanding titles: “Next summer . . . the epic conclusion . . . to the Dark Knight Legend.” Ever increasing with accompanying sounds and giving pace to the visual edits, the chant eventually leads us to the reveal of the Dark Knight logo and minor third theme, climaxing with three percussive hits synched with the titling “The Legend . . .  Ends . . . Experience it in IMAX Summer 2012.” No narration occurs at the end: It is not 10  The chant repeats the Arabic words “Deshi Basara,” which means “Rise Up” (Warner, 2012).

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   317 needed. In this world of oversaturated sound, the boundaries between music and sound effect have become so porous that the two are indistinguishable in such full-length action-adventure trailers. This is even more so in the case of the TV spots for The Dark Knight Rises, considering the prominent role assigned to audio in film advertising for television, which takes the form of readily apperceived sonic gestures. Television Spot No. 2, posted on YouTube by Warner Brothers on June 19, 2012, brings sound design and production music to the fore from the very start. The ad reveals virtually nothing of the plot, there is no narration or dialogue except for the spoken product information at the end, the stars are only obliquely referenced, and it falls into two connected sections (slow and fast montages) that overall form one sweeping, rising gesture. Through a strategic integration of graphic titles (“On July 20 . . . the wait . . . is over”), images (brief scenes that are rhythmically paced and quicken), and sound (a pulse that increases in intensity and gives way to a fast percussive groove), the studio has created an appeal that awakens the desire and conveys the urgency for cinematic attendance to resolve the unanswered questions posed by the spot. I would also argue that its sights and sounds, with their “excess of style,” extend beyond the TV screen, creating a tel­e­vis­ ual foretaste of the theatrical experience at home. The trailer studio had fun with the 16-second “Now Playing” tv spot, posted on release date July 20, 2012. The opening narration, “The Dark Knight Rises has critics across America speechless,” ironically contrasts with Selina’s words that immediately follow: “cat got your tongue?” Narration has returned for the shortest spots, and with a good reason: The critics’ comments, the main substance for these “Now Playing” ads, are presented as voiceover, while scene elements visually interact with the fluid typography of the review words. Deferring to the spoken word, music and sound hover in the background other than to deliver sonic punches at stressed points and a climactic push to the product information at the end. Although the 16-second spot still relies on televisuality, its impact derives more from the reviewers’ comments than the ability to immerse potential audience members in the theatrical experience through sight and sound.

Conclusions We have observed how television advertising for feature film has developed in parallel with the rise and development of television itself since the 1930s. As a theatrical promotional vehicle, the trailer was at work for decades before its adaptation to the small screen became a possibility through technological advances and regulatory changes. Nevertheless, the greatest obstacle was erected by the film industry itself, which needed to overcome its fear of competition from the small screen. As this study has established, the television trailer and spot were introduced incrementally during the late 1940s and early 1950s, as ever more film studios became aware of the advertising potential of television. Although music now functions as the dominant element in television advertising for movies, it had to grow into that role, granted the hindrances posed by a union ban,

318   Deaville the costs of licensing, and the expense of advertising on television. Initially a small number of Hollywood studios circumvented those issues by owning the television stations, while the others came to rely on NSS or produced their own spots drawing on video and audio from the theatrical trailers for a given movie. In film advertising of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, television spots for theatrical film releases have come to function on a different level than the cinematic trailer, despite some similarities in basic content. The marketing campaigns of films on television begin after the final trailers are displayed in theaters, and then the TV spots adopt different perspectives on the film: They presume that the movie audience already possesses narrative information from the cinematic trailer campaign, so they focus instead on facilitating the living room experience of the look and sound of the cinematic spectacle. The increasing attention to details of cinematic release as well as the greater need for cohesion in the absence of visual narrative means that voiceover and music occupy leading positions and functions (the time is too short for interjection of dialogue between film characters). To reinforce the commercial appeal, for instance, the voiceover may verbalize displayed graphic text, whether the release information or the commendations of critics. As we have observed in The Dark Knight Rises audiovisual advertising campaign, all of these elements conspire to create an urgency that increases as the theatrical premiere date approaches. Their purposing and mechanisms as lastminute audience appeals, whatever the genre, rely on sights (moving images and graphics) and sounds (narration, dialogue, music, and sound effects) in various configurations to create consumer desire and compel theatrical attendance. Despite its ongoing transformation into an internet-based streaming platform, television persists in maintaining a strong presence in people’s lives. Published in the Journal of Advertising Research in March 2019, an article about television advertising argues that “television remains the most ubiquitous and effective advertising-supported medium today. None of its rival media match television’s ability to build brands, by virtue of the fact that more people watch television and its advertising. A full 87 percent of adults tune in to traditional linear television each week” (Bulgrin, 2019, p.9). And through that contact with television, however it may remake itself, filmgoers will continue to consume trailers and spots that may (or may not) direct their steps to the local movie theater and—hopefully—to cinematic pleasure.

Recommended Readings Deaville, J. (2017). Trailer or leader? The role of music and sound in cinematic previews. In M. Mera, R. Sadoff, & B. Winters (Eds.), Routledge companion to screen music and sound (pp. 240–254). New York, NY: Routledge. Deaville, J., & Malkinson, A. (2014). A laugh a second? Music and sound in comedy trailers. Music, Sound and the Moving Image, 8(2), 121–140. Holmes, S. (2005). British TV and film culture in the 1950s: Coming to a TV near you. Bristol, UK: Intellect Books. Johnston, K. (2011). An intelligent and effective use of the rival screen. Media History, 17(4), 377–388.

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   319 Marich, R. (2013). Marketing to moviegoers: A handbook of strategies and tactics. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Nardi, C. (2012). Library music: Technology, copyright and authorship. In S. M. Fernández, S. E. Castelo-Branco, P. Roxo, & I. Iglesias (Eds.), Current issues in music research: Copyright, power and transnational music processes (pp. 73–83). Lisbon, Portugal: Edições Colibri.

References 20th eyes tele as plug medium. (1950, May 13). Billboard, p. 3. All major pic producers set tv ad programs. (1950, July 8). Billboard, p. 3. Allied preps tv trailers. (1953, November 28). Billboard, p. 7. American Broadcasting—Paramount Theatres, Inc. (1956). Annual Report 1955. New York. Retrieved from http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/lippincott/corprpts/abc/abc1955. pdf Ames, A. (1951, September 16). Utilizing video. New York Times, p. X6. Auslander, P. (1999). Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. New York, NY: Routledge. Balaban & Katz eyeing tv as powerful sales weapon. (1949, August 27). Billboard, p. 10. Bulgrin, A. (2019). Why knowledge gaps in measurement threaten the value of television advertising: The best available screen for brand building is at a crossroads. Journal of Advertising Research, 59(1), 9–13. Burlingame, J. (2012). The music of James Bond. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Caldwell, J.  T. (1995). Televisuality: Style, crisis, and authority in American television. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Clickman, D. (1938, November 15). Television activity is spurred as Paramount acquires rights. Broadcasting, p. 17. Columbia to use tele as flicker house ad medium. (1950. June 17). Billboard, p. 5. Deaville, J. (2016). Toscanini, Ormandy, and the first televised orchestra concert(s). In J. Deaville & C. Baade (Eds.), Music and the broadcast experience: Performance, production, and audiences (pp. 193-211). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Decca, Disney map joint bally drive on “Ichabod” flick album. (1949, September 17). Billboard, p. 17. Dotter, A. (2009). Transnational cultural transactions: Distributing American teen-girl-films in France, 1986–2006. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas). Dunlap, O. E. (1939, October 29). Outside looking in: Television constantly widens its field. New York Times, p. X12. Film notes. (1948, June 18). Televiser, p. 17. Film report. (1949, June 27). Broadcasting, p. 57. Gentzkow, M. (2006). Television and voter turnout. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(3), 931–972. Groskopf, J. (2013). Profit margins: The American silent cinema and the marginalization of advertising. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgia State University). Hart, J. A. (2004). Technology, television, and competition: Politics of digital TV. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Hayward, P. (2004). Off the planet: Music, sound and science fiction cinema. Bloomington, IN: John Libbey. Holmes, S. (2005a). British TV and film culture in the 1950s: Coming to a TV near you. Bristol, UK: Intellect Books.

320   Deaville Holmes, S. (2005b). “Designed specially for television purposes and technique”: The development of the television cinema programme in Britain in the 1950s. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 25(3), 455–474. Johnston, K. (2009). Coming soon: Film trailers and the selling of Hollywood technology. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Johnston, K. (2011). An intelligent and effective use of the rival screen. Media History, 17(4), 377–388. Kerins, M. (2017). Home theater(s): Technology, culture, and style. In R. Sadoff, M. Mera, & B. Winters (Eds.), Routledge companion to screen music and sound (pp. 388–399). New York, NY: Routledge. [Kesten, P.]. (1935). You do what you’re told! New York, NY: CBS. Marich, R. (2013). Marketing to moviegoers: A handbook of strategies and tactics (3rd ed.). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. McGovern, C. F. (2006). Sold American: Consumption and citizenship, 1890–1945. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Noonan, B. (2005). Women scientists in fifties science fiction films. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Paramount still silent on plans for television activities in Hollywood (1939, April 1). Broadcasting, p. 78. Paramount using pic tele trailers on video outlet. (1945, August 20). Billboard, p. 12. Pix make trailers for exhibs’ tv use. (1949, July 2). Billboard, p. 14. Pix turn to tv as b. o. hype. (1947, December 13). Billboard, p. 15. RKO trailer. (1949, May 30). Broadcasting, p. 8. Telecasting notes. (1955, January 15). Television Digest, 11(3), 7. Televiews of pictures. (1939, August 27). New York Times, p. X10. Television commercial & sustaining program changes. (1948, October 16). Billboard, p. 13. Trailers…, titles…, special effects. . . . (1948, February 15). Televiser, 5(2), 36. TV can build movie boxoffice but—. (1950, August 26). Television Digest, 6(34), 4. Use of features a Hollywood ache. (1946, March 23). Billboard, p. 21. Warner, K. (2012). “Dark Knight Rises” chant rooted in real language, Hans Zimmer says. MTV News. Retrieved from http://www.mtv.com/news/2600833/dark-knight-rises-hanszimmer-chanting Webb, A. (n.d.). Resurrection: 1946. History of the BBC. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/ historyofthebbc/100-voices/birth-of-tv/resurrection

Trailerography (unless indicated otherwise, the links are for television spots) (unless indicated otherwise, the links are for television spots) Columbia. (1950). Born Yesterday Trailer. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Me49syEsmCs Columbia. (1960). Thirteen Ghosts TV Trailer 1960. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=f3cV9_RAxBk Paramount. (1945). The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. Retrieved from http://www.tcm.com/ tcmdb/title/83564/The-Miracle-of-Morgan-s-Creek/notes.html

Film Marketing on Television Through Music and Sound   321 Paramount. (1958). The Screaming Skull & Terror from the Year 5000 – 1958 – TV Trailer. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JRsEdL0TBs Paramount. (1968). Barbarella (1968) Trailer. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=0Xo6FaypcpY Paramount. (1968). Barbarella (1968) TV Trailer. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=I08_-6fiobg RKO. (1956). King Kong TV Spots. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DL12CVl_SAM&t=83s United Artists. (1964). Goldfinger Official Trailer #1. Retrieved from https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=MA65V-oLKa8 United Artists. (1964). Goldfinger TV Spot (1964). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HoFVsC0uSpU Universal. (1951). Bedtime for Bonzo. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=_zHN4vCfwh4 Warner Bros. (2013). Gravity: Now Playing Spot 2. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=iHyIgTjflTk Warner Bros. (2011). The Dark Knight Rises Official Trailer #2. Retrieved from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=7gFwvozMHR4 Warner Bros. (2012). The Dark Knight Rises: TV Spot 2. Retrieved from https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=jZgS47ZRsiE Warner Bros. (2012). The Dark Knight Rises: Now Playing TV Spot 2. Retrieved from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISmn6hPQgX4

chapter 15

“H av e You Pl ay ed Ata r i Today?” Music and Audience in an Early Video Game Advertising Campaign William Gibbons

In the early 1980s, as an epidemic of “Pac-Man Fever” spread across the United States, Atari was the hottest video game company around. Not only was the California-based company a dominant force in the video arcade, but also their sole rights for home distribution of Pac-Man (1982) on the Atari Video Computer System, or VCS—later known by the retronym Atari 2600—allowed them to corner the previously competitive home console market. The company produced hundreds of games, and their parade of hits seemed unstoppable. As Montfort and Bogost detail in their study of the VCS, “by 1981 the Atari VCS accounted for 75 percent of home videogame sales. Indeed, the generic term for a videogame system in the early 1980s was ‘an Atari’ ” (2009, p. 4). In terms of marketing, that put the company in a unique position. As Donovan notes in Replay: The History of Video Games, “The 2600’s lead over its nearest rival, the Mattel Intellivision, was . . . approaching 20 million units. Atari had pretty much stopped worrying about rival consoles” (2010, p. 89). Yet despite its virtual monopoly, Atari remained in a somewhat uncertain position with regard to marketing. Advertising games and consoles on television was a natural fit. Since games were centered around the home TV set, anyone watching the commercials was a guaranteed potential customer. As a result, television commercials for video games appeared as early as the first half of the 1970s. Most of these ads focused on novelty, introducing the concept of video games to viewers, or lauding this or that new console. Atari’s position was different. Everyone already knew what an Atari was, and presumably already had some idea of whether they thought they needed one. Thus, the company was concerned less with expanding their market share—which was already massive—than they were invested in reaching out to and winning over a broader audience.

“Have You Played Atari Today?”   323 In this chapter, I am interested in exploring the music in an especially noteworthy series of interconnected commercials from Atari, each of which asked viewers a simple question: “Have you played Atari today?” This campaign profoundly shaped how Atari represented its VCS console and its games in the early 1980s—the console’s heyday, as well as the period immediately prior to the first North American game industry “Crash” of 1983 and 1984. As Wolf (2012) points out, “the years leading up to the Crash were full of exhilaration and enthusiasm” (p. 3), a Wild West of technological possibilities and seemingly endless economic growth. The advertising of those experimental years, when video games first invaded the domestic space in earnest, reveals game developers struggling with how to market their products. It also reveals perhaps, how not to market them. Much of the Atari VCS’s success rested on bringing its successful arcade titles into homes, but—unlike many earlier consoles— this approach linked the company to the somewhat unsavory arcade environment. Indeed, home consoles of the 1970s and early 1980s were initially viewed as an alternative to arcades—a replacement rather than a replication. Video arcades inherited from earlier public coin-operated entertainments a reputation as a hangout for lowlifes and undesirables. Newman, for example, points to the negative perceptions of pinball in the 1970s, which, “like rock and roll, connoted a vaguely threatening low culture likely to arouse the disapproval of one’s parents and other guardians of civilization” (2017, pp. 28–29). To combat that perception, some of the earliest television commercials for video game consoles were marketed to adults rather than teenagers. The Magnavox Odyssey (1972) is a case in point. With a title that evoked Arthur C. Clarke’s sci-fi novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), as well as Stanley Kubrick’s well-known film adaptation of the same year, Magnavox’s console promised to be the next evolution of the entertainment industry. Throughout the Odyssey’s lifespan, television advertisements likewise emphasized its advanced technology with music alternately (or simultaneously) evoking the sounds of science-fiction film scores and the technologically mediated melodies of Wendy Carlos’s landmark album Switched-On Bach (1968). Like the visuals, the music presented the Odyssey as a futuristic, even avant-garde, product to a demographic group of progressively minded upper-middle-class adults who could afford the expensive equipment and were interested in embracing innovative technology. As console games became more commonplace, however, the focus shifted to portraying them as part of any standard living room setup, rather than the luxury product of tomorrow. Print and video advertisements alike emphasized broad, intergenerational appeal rather than a specifically teenage demographic, most often portraying large family groups together.1 No doubt game companies hoped to market their products as a safe, wholesome spin on the arcade culture—all the fun, none of the danger. Huhtamo, for example, has pointed to a print advertisement for the Odyssey’s second iteration, 1978’s Odyssey2, featuring an adult male and young girl (presumably a father and daughter) playing together: “The ad presents Odyssey2 as a way of bonding—family 1  See, for example, the advertisements reproduced in Burnham (2001).

324   Gibbons members, sexes, and generations.” Furthermore, the console’s slogan, “We Make Staying at Home Fun,” contains an “unstated cultural context [that] can be stated as follows: ‘so that children will never leave their parents, and will stay away from bars, game arcades, and other bad influences’ ” (Huhtamo, 2012, p. 32). At the same time, however, even as companies continued to market their consoles as family-friendly products, the early 1980s also saw a shift toward embracing the game-crazed teenagers whom consoles had originally eschewed. In contrast to the family social events depicted in late 1970s commercials, for instance, Newman notes—somewhat hyperbolically—that by the early 1980s, “in television commercials for home versions of arcade games . . . the player is invariably a teenage or young adult male whose entire being is consumed in electronic play” (2017, p. 42). It was precisely this point, as game companies thus were poised between familyoriented and teenage markets, when Atari launched its ambitious “Have You Played Atari Today?” campaign. This was a scattershot media blitz, simultaneously targeting children, teenagers, and adults. Although their earlier television commercials featured no (or very little) music, this new campaign positioned music centrally, and with a clear goal: unification. In other words, as Atari expanded their marketing to diverse new demographic groups, it needed a core brand identity, which music could help provide.2 Although that goal sounds simple, the ways in which music achieved it are fascinatingly complex. For the remainder of this chapter, I will explore how music and lyrics functioned in these interconnected ads, beginning with the still-iconic hook and then moving to the full jingle.3

The Hook The most memorable musical element of Atari’s advertising campaign came in the form of their jingle’s musical tagline, or “hook”: “Have you played Atari today?” (see Figure 15.1). Despite the campaign’s relatively brief duration, this eight-note tune certainly did its job. It became almost synonymous with the company’s golden age, and consequently has enjoyed a long afterlife. For example, as a nod to the company’s more illustrious past, the familiar melody reappeared in the startup music of the ill-fated Atari Jaguar console (1993). As was standard in commercial jingles, the hook always appeared in the final moments of the commercials in the “Have You Played Atari Today?” campaign, as an audio counterpoint to the appearance of the Atari logo on the screen— although, as I will discuss later, it sometimes appeared earlier in the commercials as well. 2  Although the academic study of video game music has expanded remarkably since the earliest major studies were published in the late 2000s, to my knowledge there are as yet no published writings on the use of music in the marketing of games. 3  To be clear, I am not suggesting that all of Atari’s television commercials from this time period employed these musical techniques. Several—in particular those targeting teenagers—used popular music, while others continued the trend of no music at all.

“Have You Played Atari Today?”   325

Figure 15.1 The “hook” of Atari’s television advertising campaign. Composer unknown, transcription by the author.

Occasionally, however, the texted hook was replaced by the “logo”—the hook without the words. The music could ask the central question of listeners (“Have you played Atari today?”), without resorting to actually uttering the text.4 Regardless of the instrumentation of the commercial as a whole, at the end the hook was typically stated first by a synthesizer, then echoed immediately by a large choir singing the tune in unison with orchestral accompaniment. This orchestration choice feels significant, particularly given the campaign’s overall move away from overly “computerized” sounds. The use of the synthesizer suggests—like the commercial for the Odyssey identified earlier—the Atari’s advanced technology, but the rapid addition of the human voices both humanizes the sound and implies the vast multitude of the company’s fans. Though by design simple musically and textually, this hook is a clever way of positioning the product in viewers’ minds.5 Product purchasing is frequently habit based, and companies often create ad campaigns that stress repeated use. Consider Atari’s slogan in the context of, for example, Campbell’s Soup’s 1950s jingle, “Have You Had Your Soup Today?,” or McDonald’s “Have You Had Your Break Today?” jingle of the mid1990s. In each case, the purpose is to normalize the purchase as part of a cycle. With Atari, however, the situation is somewhat different. Their question in effect normalizes the act of playing video games, transforming it from a niche activity into a part of mainstream American life. Rather than presenting the Atari console as a novelty, in other words, or even as the latest technology, this simple question instead helped viewers see the Atari as part of a routine, as comfortable and predictable as watching the evening news. Unfortunately, documentation regarding the exact dates on which these commercials aired is scant, and often several of the TV ads in the campaign were being aired in the same time period, in rotation. For that reason, throughout this chapter I am a little vague regarding the specific timeline of the campaign. One noteworthy early use of the tag, however—perhaps the first one—occurred in a 30-second advertising spot in 1981, which seems to me to set the tone for the entire series. Given its prominence and setting of the musical stage for the ads to come, this commercial is worth consideration at length here.6 The live-action commercial begins 4  On music as a mnemonic device for recalling ad text, see, for example, Yalch (1991). 5  The hook also makes use of what Phillip Tagg refers to as a “transscansion”—the music emulates the rhythmic and melodic inflection of spoken text. See Tagg (2012, pp. 489–490). 6  I base this 1981 date on the release dates of the games mentioned in the advertisement. Missile Command was released in 1981, as was Defender, which is identified as an upcoming release. We may assume, then, that the commercial initially aired sometime between the release of these two titles.

326   Gibbons Table 15.1 Atari’s Multigenerational Commercial Voiceover

Video

Only Atari makes the world’s most popular video games.

• Breakout footage • Cut to two young boys playing Atari on the couch

The only Space Invaders.

• Space Invaders footage • Cut back to see father added

The only Asteroids.

• Asteroids footage • Mother and sister added

The only Pac-Man.

• Pac-Man footage • More adults added

The only Missile Command.

• Missile Command footage • Grandparents added

And soon the only Defender.

• Defender footage • Add pizza delivery person, mail carrier

And the only way you can play any of them is on a home video system made by Atari.

• Continues image of large group playing Atari

Have you played Atari today?

• Atari logo

with a shot of the by-then classic Breakout! (released on the Atari VCS in 1978), then cuts to a reverse shot of two young boys intently playing the game on their couch.7 The pattern repeats with several other games (see Table 15.1), but each time the action cuts back to the couch, more people have gathered around the television. Soon, what began as two boys transforms into a large group, involving the whole family and more: parents, sister, grandparents, aunt and uncle (or perhaps the neighbors?)—even the pizza boy and postal worker cannot resist. Although never made explicit in the voiceover, which focuses on listing games available only on Atari, the subtext is clear: Atari’s wholesome fun brings families, and even whole neighborhoods, together. Overall, the music for this advertisement draws on a kitschy language common to much early 1980s television, blending an orchestra with a drum set and embracing a light, postromantic style. We might also understand this musical style as a reference to the broad, intended audience: The music combines multiple styles, including “classical” (adult) and “popular” (teens/children) instruments, suggesting that the Atari likewise appeals across generations. The score begins quietly, with only a unison repeated pitch in the strings, but quickly gains in intensity as the crowd grows larger. Woodwinds introduce thematic material, which gradually transforms into a melody very similar to the musical hook. Finally, we hear the synthesizer fully state the tagline as the Atari 7  This and the other advertisements mentioned throughout can be difficult to find through official sources. This one may be accessed via YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vX2nHBploM (accessed June 16, 2019).

“Have You Played Atari Today?”   327 Video Computer System logo appears onscreen, and the choir’s enthusiastic “Have you played Atari today?” response seems to emerge from the crowd of people we have just witnessed in the living room. Just as the family and neighbors cannot help but lose themselves in the Atari’s allure, the voices immediately respond to the machine’s song. This commercial encapsulates several aspects of Atari’s campaign. For one thing, it clearly demonstrates that games are fun for everyone, and that they can become the center of attention in the family room. Moreover, the gradual coalescence of the musical tagline during the communal experience of playing Atari seems—like many ads—to position the viewer as a potential part of an in-crowd of people who play Atari daily. The subsequent musical or textual repetition of the question/hook seems designed to bring this group experience to mind regardless of the setting—a notion reinforced by the persistence of the choral response, even when the preceding music has been a solo voice. While this commercial was targeted to the broadest possible audience rather than promoting a single game or appealing to an individual demographic group, it nonetheless set the stage for the more specific jingle-based commercials that followed, integrating the hook and its now-established meanings into a more focused message.

Jingle-Based Commercials The hook was not the extent of Atari’s strategy of musical unity, however. A number of commercials from the campaign featured a full-length jingle, which culminated in the familiar “Have you played Atari today?” tag. Jingles, of course, are a venerable method for marketing products musically, and made the leap from radio ads to television commercials in the 1950s.8 By the early 1980s, however, the genre was dying. Even as Atari began its campaign, the increasing prevalence of popular music in television advertisements was clearly one factor at play. As Rodman (2010) notes, “By the 1980s, advertising agencies recognized that pop tunes were highly desirable for TV commercials, and rather than writing jingles that resembled pop tunes, some advertisers used actual pop tunes” (pp. 205, 208). Atari bucked this trend by using a jingle, but they created one that was unusual and innovative in several ways. For one thing, although the jingle is always fundamentally the same song—by which I mean that the melody, rhythm, and harmony were essentially unchanged from commercial to commercial in the manner of traditional product branding—both the lyrics and the musical style were highly malleable to suit the needs of the particular commercial. The jingle-based commercials came in two distinct types: those dedicated to a specific game and those that instead targeted a particular demographic. To make matters more complicated, the ads also had two distinct visual styles. Some featured live action, while others were animatics—essentially storyboards synced with music, consisting of a series of still images shown for a few seconds 8  On the history and structure of jingles in television advertisements, see, for example, Rodman (2010, Chapter 3). For an inside perspective on the rise and fall of the jingle, see Karmen (2005).

328   Gibbons at a time, often while panning over the image to create the illusion of movement.9 Unusually, in several cases commercials exist in both animatic and live-action forms, featuring the same lyrics, but different recordings of the jingle. The “Have You Played Atari Today?” jingle is well constructed—immediately recognizable, memorable, and singable—and it helped sell many of Atari’s biggest hits of the early 1980s. A diverse range of games were marketed using variant lyrics and music, including Super Breakout (1981), Defender (1981), Pac-Man (1982), Yar’s Revenge (1982), and Berzerk (1982). In this series of 30-second game-based commercials, the lyrics of the jingle typically hinted at the content of the game before turning to the tagline.10 In the commercial for Super Breakout, for instance, the hook is incorporated as the final line of the Seussian verse: Did you try to break out with a moving wall? Did you try to break out with an extra ball? It’s what fun’s all about! It’s Super Breakout! It’s a brand-new game from Atari; Have you played Atari today?

For good measure, after a voiceover, the hook appeared again at the end of the ad in its familiar form with the synthesizer and choral response, linking the commercial to both the initial “neighborhood Atari” commercial I described earlier and the overall ad campaign.11 Although this example seems fairly straightforward, the relationship between music, lyrics, and video in these ads can be deceptively complex. Given its iconic status today, Pac-Man seems a good choice for a more thorough exploration. Like the live-action commercial about bringing the whole neighborhood together, the animatic Pac-Man commercial opens on two boys playing Atari. It then zooms in on the television screen, where the ever-ravenous hero re-enacts the game’s action: traversing the maze, eating pellets, and alternately avoiding and consuming his ghostly nemeses. At no point in this version does the commercial show actual gameplay footage or images, nor is the music based in any way on the sounds of the game. Rather, the music in some sense fills both roles. Though the commercial’s visuals give only the vaguest idea what the game might be like, the lyrics reinforce its basic principles: First the Pac-Man eats through a maze of dots, Then the Pac-Man heads for the corner spot, Then he eats his fill 9  Animatics are typically a phase of live-action commercial design, just after storyboarding, to give a sense of how the final version will flow and sync with audio elements. 10  There is also an animatic jingle-based commercial that references five different “classic” games— Breakout (1978), Warlords (1981), Asteroids (1981), Missile Command (1981), and Space Invaders (1980)—with one line of text each. 11  Many jingles feature what songwriters sometimes call the “donut,” meaning a “hole” in the middle that contains no lyrics, which allowed for a voiceover offering details of the product.

“Have You Played Atari Today?”   329 Of a power pill! And then All those ghosts turn blue [Boo!] And Pac-Man eats them all, too.

Given that Pac-Man would have been familiar to many—perhaps most—Americans of the time, using the valuable airtime to describe the game’s action seems an odd choice. Perhaps, however, the commercial aimed to dramatize the experience as much as possible, adding a description of action that was otherwise left entirely to the player’s imagination. This approach was particularly savvy given that the Atari VCS home version of Pac-Man was roundly derided as being graphically inferior to the arcade version, and by describing the action rather than showing gameplay, the company avoided revealing the difference. Of the game-based jingles, perhaps the most unusual is that for Berzerk, which almost feels like two separate ads, combining the visual and musical style of the hook-based commercial with the jingle. Accompanied by a saccharine string score, a young boy and his grandmother sit on a porch swing. The grandmother is absorbed in her knitting, but when the bored young boy asks her if she would like to play Berzerk, she immediately replies, “You’re on!” and starts walking toward the neighborhood video arcade. When her grandson patiently explains that now they can play Berzerk at home—a revelation that causes the grandmother to grin and exclaim “Atari!”—the scene moves indoors, and the jingle begins. The strings never stop, however, resulting in a musical style that evokes the same intergenerational “fun” as the first commercial I examined. As Taylor (2012) establishes in The Sounds of Capitalism, by the middle of the 1970s, jingles had developed a readily identifiable musical style, which became standardized into the 1980s in relentlessly optimistic, bubble-gum anthems.12 Particularly given this rampant standardization, the variety of instrumentation and musical style in Atari’s jingle between commercials is remarkable. One explanation for this variety is that Atari was exploring the ability of its jingle to reach across demographic barriers and appeal to multiple groups. As Cook (1994) notes of music in television advertising: Musical styles and genres offer unsurpassed opportunities for communicating complex social or attitudinal messages practically instantaneously. One or two notes in a distinctive musical style are sufficient to target a specific social and demographic group, and to associate a whole nexus of social and cultural values with the product.  (p. 35)

The question, then, becomes: Who, exactly, are these commercials targeting? In the case of the Berzerk commercial, is this ad targeted to grandparents who want to connect with the younger generation, or to children looking to enliven otherwise dull time at grandma’s house? The music does not provide us with a clear answer. If the “Have you played Atari today?” commercials were all aiming at the same demographic group, it would 12  See in particular Chapter 5, “The Standardization of Jingle Production in the 1950s and After.”

330   Gibbons stand to reason that the overall musical style would remain similar. Instead, the opposite seems to be the case: the variety of the music seems designed to make the jingle appeal across groups in the same way Atari hoped their console would. In other words, the individual jingle-based commercials create a musical patchwork quilt. Taken together, the jingles mimic the broad, intergenerational message we saw in the first commercial in this chapter: men and women, old and young—Atari is for everybody. This message is made even more explicit in the demographic-based jingle commercials, which focused not on marketing particular Atari games, but on reaching out to particular groups of potential buyers.13 The idea of marketing targeted in this way certainly was not new, but the methods by which advertisers approached demographic groups were rapidly becoming more sophisticated—including musically. As Taylor tells us, “interest in demographics and music grew in the late 1970s and beyond, as advertising agencies increasingly targeted consumers based on their tastes, their lifestyles, income, and much more” (2012, p. 179). In Atari’s case, although the company’s other marketing campaigns undoubtedly appealed to the teenage male market most commonly associated with video games at the time (and now, for that matter), the “Have You Played Atari Today?” campaign reveals an eagerness to reach out to new groups. As far as I can determine, there are two jingle-based commercials that make this kind of direct appeal, with live and animatic versions of each. In both versions of the first, a woman stands unseen in a door frame, watching adoringly as an adult man (her husband, presumably) plays Breakout. Although the two versions differ in musical arrangement and tempo, the lyrics remain the same, sung—unusually for the campaign—by a woman: Way down deep inside of every man, There’s a little boy—an Atari fan. And without any doubt, That boy will break out! When he plays a game from Atari; [full chorus] Have you played Atari today?

The voiceover then suggests that an Atari would make an excellent gift for any man, but “don’t worry—he’ll be grown up enough to share it.” The textual and musical implication is clear: Any good woman should purchase an Atari VCS for her boyfriend or husband—and, moreover, doing so would benefit the whole family. Women were not typically the target audience for video game advertisements of the 1980s. In fact, they were more often the butt of jokes—mothers who cannot understand their game-loving teenagers, for instance, were a common theme. This commercial, on 13  There is also an intriguing use of the jingle in several settings to imply intergenerational gaming, like in the commercial for Berzerk, which features a young boy and his grandmother playing, as well as an ad that stresses Atari’s wide appeal with its lyrics: “Did you play with your friend on a rainy day?/ Did you play with your dad? Did you show him the way?/Did you play with your sis?/Did your mom always miss?/Did you play a game from Atari?/Have you played Atari today?”

“Have You Played Atari Today?”   331 the other hand, seems to reach out to women as a potential target market for their consoles. Musically, that outreach relies heavily on timbre and orchestration; the ad features a female singer accompanied by soft strings and woodwinds, before a brass section enters alongside the last two lines. Yet despite the musical and textual appeals to women, even here Atari never goes so far as to suggest that the games might actually be for women. Instead, their role is to purchase the VCS for a man, who might be willing to “share it” with her and the rest of the household. The treatment of the adult man is also reductive, however; the implication is that he would never buy an Atari for himself, and can only experience the pleasure of play as a secret, forbidden passion, hidden from prying eyes (hence the woman remains unseen). Moreover, the man’s enjoyment is rooted in releasing the “little boy” inside him. This subtext gives the jingle an odd lack of focus compared to the game-based commercials, for even as Atari targets adult women (to address adult men), they imply that video games are generally products for young boys. This supposition is somewhat challenged in another demographic-based commercial, which aims directly at younger children—especially girls. The lyrics point to children’s ability to succeed at video games, unlike (one assumes) many family-based games: If her dad is so strong, and her mom is so smart, If the girl knows that at the very start, Then why even begin? ’Cause kids always win When they play a game from Atari. [full chorus] Have you played Atari today?

This ad clearly intends to demonstrate that young girls—who, like women, were seldom targeted in game marketing—could enjoy the gameplay experience. Notably, the music differs significantly between the live-action and animatic versions of this commercial: While the animatic commercial features the same male singer as the majority of the ads, the live-action version begins with a woman singing in a thin, child-like style, before a chorus of children joins in on “’Cause kids always win.” Along with the visuals of a child happily playing Atari with her parents, this (real or emulated) musical emphasis on childhood plainly positions younger children as a consumer group for Atari. Of course, children typically lack the funds necessary to purchase a video game console for themselves, so the goal of the advertisement is to convince adults to purchase it on their behalf, by suggesting that the Atari VCS would enrich family time. Significantly, however, although the jingle implies that girls can be successful at games, it falls short of suggesting that they were the equal of boys of the same age. The overall effect of these two demographic-based jingles is one of ambivalence. Atari hoped to expand its customer base as broadly as possible, and to that end the company reached out musically and visually beyond its teenage boy market to embrace younger boys, women and girls, adult men, and even senior citizens. Yet at the same time, these groups feel specifically targeted because they are at the fringes. The “Have You Played Atari Today?” campaign is noteworthy for its relative diversity (at least in age and

332   Gibbons gender), but its total lack of teenagers also feels unusual, particularly given their (over) representation in other Atari ads of the era.14 Nevertheless, the use of music to target games to different demographic groups was innovative in video game promotion of the era, and doubtlessly influenced future advertising campaigns.

Conclusions By the end of the Atari VCS’s astounding lifespan—consoles were manufactured until 1992—the landscape of the video game market had changed dramatically. Nintendo and Sega were amid the much-discussed “console wars,” and despite best efforts, Atari was largely left behind.15 Yet Atari’s dominant position at a pivotal point in the console market’s infancy meant that the company established a number of industry norms, many of which persist today in some form or another. In particular, Atari shaped an audience for home video game consoles, in many ways determining not only how to reach an intended audience but also who the audience for video games would be. The ambitious “Have You Played Atari Today?” campaign featured music as central to the video-game giant’s attempt to market its product to the masses.16 Substituting a dozen or more sets of lyrics for the jingle—as well as subtly varied musical styles designed to appeal to different demographic groups—allowed the jingle an unusual and highly effective degree of flexibility, while the hook afforded a unifying experience through its memorable tagline. The campaign also represented a complex and multifaceted attempt to offer a musical representation of the overarching theme: positioning the Atari VCS as a game system that could bring together whole neighborhoods—and an indispensable part of American living rooms.

Recommended Readings Newman, M. Z. (2017). Atari age: The emergence of video games in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rodman, R. W. (2010). Tuning in: American narrative television music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

14  Consider, for example, the 60-second “Nobody’s hotter than Atari this summer” commercial of 1983, which featured bikini- and bathing suit-clad teenagers having a beach party with an Atari 5200. 15  On the impact of the so-called console wars, see, for example, Harris (2015). 16  Atari tried a somewhat similar approach with the hip-hop-influenced “The fun is back!” campaign of 1986–1988, albeit with substantially less success. The company’s reduced influence and the pandering nature of the musical campaign came across as a desperate attempt to remain relevant to young players.

“Have You Played Atari Today?”   333

References Burnham, V. (2001). Supercade: A visual history of the videogame age, 1971–1984. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cook, N. (1994). Music and meaning in the commercials. Popular Music, 13, 27–40. Donovan, T. (2010). Replay: The history of video games. East Sussex, UK: Yellow Ant. Harris, B.  J. (2015). Console wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the battle that defined a generation. New York, NY: Dey Street. Huhtamo, E. (2012). What’s Victoria got to do with it: Toward an archeology of domestic video gaming. In M. J. P. Wolf (Ed.), Before the crash: Early video game history (pp. 30–52). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Karmen, S. (2005). Who killed the jingle? How a unique American art form disappeared. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard. Montfort, N., & Bogost, I. (2009). Racing the beam: The Atari video computer system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Newman, M. Z. (2017). Atari age: The emergence of video games in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rodman, R. (2010). Tuning in: American narrative television music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Tagg, P. (2012). Music’s meanings: A modern musicology for non-musos. New York, NY: Mass Media Music Scholars’ Press. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wolf, M. J. P. (2012). Introduction. In M. J. P. Wolf (Ed.), Before the crash: Early video game history (pp. 1–8). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Yalch, R. F. (1991). Memory in a jingle jungle: Music as a mnemonic device in communicating advertising slogans. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 268–275.

Selling on Radio

chapter 16

“A ll Those Hom e s Beyon d th e Microphon e” Advertising, Domesticity, and Early Country Music Variety Programs in the 1930s David VanderHamm

On a Saturday evening in late February 1939, listeners in the United States tuned in to radio station WLS to hear a rousing program of music and comedy called the National Barn Dance. The program was the most popular home for early country music during the Great Depression, featuring trick yodelers, cowboy crooners, novelty acts, fiddle tunes, and really any music that could be valued as old, rustic, or southern in presentation and sentiment, if not in actual origin (Malone & Neal, 2010, p. 97). The 8:00 p.m. hour of the program could be heard even in places beyond the reach of the Chicago station’s 50,000-watt tower, as it was also carried by the NBC Blue Network.1 Such wide broadcast enticed major sponsorship, and if listeners missed the mention of AlkaSeltzer at the program’s outset, they were reminded of the sponsor soon enough. Just as the MC declared it was time for a square-dance and the fiddler ripped into “Devil’s Dream,” the music faded to the background and the announcer began: “Friends, beware of colds” (National Barn Dance, 1939). 1  NBC operated both a Red Network and a Blue Network from 1927 to 1943, when the Blue Network was sold and eventually renamed the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). The Red Network generally carried the most popular programming on stations with the greatest broadcast reach, whereas the Blue Network provided more “sustaining” (unsponsored) programs and often served as a proving ground where programs could be introduced and eventually moved to the Red Network if they garnered popularity. Still, in 1938, the NBC hour of The National Barndance could have reached as many as 131 stations, as 24 of NBC’s 154 affiliated stations carried all of the Blue Network programming, and 107 of those affiliate stations chose programming from both the Red and Blue Networks (Sterling, 2004, pp. 447–449).

“All Those Homes Beyond the Microphone”   337 This shift from a well-worn fiddle tune to a friendly address about a modern cold remedy—common on the National Barn Dance and programs like it—encapsulates the ethos of the radio barn dance, for “friends” was more than a segue to an unrelated sales pitch. It was an invocation and reminder of the relationship that the station, musicians, and advertisers had all worked to cultivate with listeners, and which WLS declared on a regular basis. When the station published its first fan magazine in 1935, it began with a reflection from its president, Burridge D. Butler, which focused on music’s role in creating this friendliness: WLS is very friendly, and is at its best when it expresses personality in the most natural way. You hear a friendly voice in your home that comes to you out of the air. When the song is ended you wish to know the singer because you warm in response to the personality that beckons to you in friendship so naturally. It is not the art of the play actor culturally correct, but the heart and emotion of the unseen singer that goes out to you in the song.  (Butler, 1935, p. 2)

The songs aired by WLS were diverse—everything from the aforementioned fiddle tunes to hymns, Tin Pan Alley favorites, and light symphonic fare—and even the music and performers who appeared on the National Barn Dance varied widely. Although barn dance–style programs were the primary context for the presentation of what we now label early country music, such a clear genre identity was not present at the time, and people used any number of names to refer to the music, from “hillbilly” to “old familiar” and a host of other genre designations. But if the music’s heterogeneity resists easy characterization, its essential qualities were captured in the words that Butler’s foreword repeated like a refrain: naturalness, personality, and friendliness. These pervaded the rhetoric of program promotions and listener comments alike, and they also duly served the interests of advertisers. These qualities allowed music and advertising to enter seamlessly into “all those homes beyond the microphone,” speaking of radio friends and presenting imagined versions of home to actual American households (Childers, 2008, p. 43). Barn dance radio was so intertwined with broadcast advertising that early country music during the 1930s can be understood as a subset of the advertising industry rather than the music industry (Pecknold, 2007). Yet some commentators still argued it was a “sober truth” that a sponsor’s message “does not have any logical connection with the entertainment he offers” (Cantril & Allport, 1935, p. 240). From this standpoint, program content was mere bait meant to lure listeners into consuming an unrelated advertisement. Conversely, this chapter argues that as a result of the ways programs were developed, presented, and received, advertisers and entertainers (and their broadcast content) actually shared a great deal of common ground—even if that ground was riddled with contradictions. Drawing on business correspondence, transcription discs of radio broadcasts, listener surveys, and scripts, I demonstrate how musical performances, advertising, and on-air patter worked together to promote a sense of friendly sociality.

338   VanderHamm Situating this imagined relationship in an idealized rural past further enhanced the effectiveness of advertising pitched to the domestic consumer. Music and advertising— not to mention the ongoing patter and comedy of such programs—each sought to create and benefit from the same mediated sociality. This chapter begins with an exploration of how advertising became central to radio broadcasting and the concerns about intruding on the family home that advertisers and broadcasters confronted. I then shift to the role of imagination in broadcasting before analyzing specific examples of advertising tactics on barn dance programming. The chapter concludes by reflecting once more on radio’s attempts to build friendship with listeners and considering how real such mediated friendship could be.

The Domestic Dilemmas of Radio Advertising The question of how to fund (and eventually monetize) radio programming was frequently revisited during broadcasting’s first decade in the United States. Prior to the 1920s, radio technology had been the domain of inventors, entrepreneurs, and amateur operators until the U.S. Navy seized control of the airwaves during World War I. After the war, KDKA in Pittsburgh became the first station to begin broadcasting in 1920, and 1922 saw a “radio boom” with a rapid expansion of broadcasting (Douglas, 1987, p. xv). By 1923, there were 556 stations in the United States (Berry, 2008, p. 2). The types of organizations that initially undertook broadcasting varied widely; many stations were run by newspapers, others by colleges and churches, and some, like KDKA, were owned by radio manufacturers, who provided programming to drive sales of radios themselves (Taylor, 2012, p. 15). WLS-Chicago, home of the National Barn Dance, was slightly different, as it was essentially started as a farm service that hoped to generate goodwill with rural consumers who might spend money via the popular catalog offered by the station’s owner, Sears and Roebuck. In 1928, Sears sold the station to an agricultural publication, The Prairie Farmer, which continued the station’s rural focus. It might seem that radio and advertising were an obvious pairing. During the 1920s and 1930s, both advertising and radio were seen as powerful modernizing forces. Radio was a miraculous technology, utilizing the “luminiferous ether” to broadcast the human voice, seemingly transcending time and space (Douglas, 1987, p. xxvii). Likewise, advertising’s organization and presentation of ideas had the power to displace “the customs of ages” and do away with “the barriers of individual habits of limited thinking” (Hess, 1922, p. 211). In this formulation, advertising was the driver of modernization: “It works for the future and establishes concepts related to higher standards of living. It is at once destroyer and creator in the process of the ever-evolving new. Its constructive effort is to superimpose new conceptions of individual attainment and community desire” (Hess, 1922, p. 211).

“All Those Homes Beyond the Microphone”   339 Yet advertising was by no means the obvious or inevitable funding solution for radio, and advertisers expressed serious concerns with the medium’s aural and temporal qualities (Smulyan, 1994). They had plied their trade with the image and written word, and it was not altogether clear how well advertising would translate to the purely sonic medium of radio (Taylor, 2012, p. 22). Its ephemerality further exacerbated these concerns: Could an advertisement really be effective when it dissipates even as it is broadcast, leaving no lasting object or symbol to remind listeners of its message? Additionally, advertisers were wary of intruding upon the domestic sphere. The advertising trade publication Printers’ Ink cautioned regularly during the early 1920s that radio advertising would backfire, creating ill will by impinging upon the family circle. This too was tied to the aural and temporal nature of the medium. Whereas family members perusing a newspaper or magazine could put it down momentarily to interact with one another and then return to the advertisement, their only option when listening to the radio was to either endure a sales pitch despite its inopportune timing—potentially learning to resent the sponsor’s intrusion—or turn the radio off and miss the advertisement altogether. Perhaps the first sector to realize the promotional potential of radio was musicians themselves. Music was common during the first decade of broadcast radio precisely because it was fairly easy to find musicians interested in performing on air for little or (more often) no compensation (Peterson, 1997). Many did it for fun or novelty, but it also became clear that performing on the radio could be an effective way of promoting an act. Even on nonsponsored radio programs, performers were constantly hoping to parlay their appearances into additional, hopefully more lucrative opportunities. Live appearances, recording opportunities, songbook sales, a spot on a better program, or a sponsor for their existing one could all serve to pay the musicians in a way that time on the radio rarely did. In one sense, musical performance was already an advertisement for itself— sponsorship simply added another product and brand to the mix (Adorno, 2006, p. 162).

The Role of Imagination Most broadcasters—and even many advertisers—had far more high-minded goals for radio than advertising. Radio was to be a means of cultural uplift, and advertising entered radio under the guise of program sponsorship as a public service meant to generate goodwill (Meyers, 2013, pp. 38–40). Whereas advertisers questioned the wisdom of entering the home, some broadcasters did not think of radio as a primarily domestic medium. They realized that most listeners tuned in from home, of course, yet they saw radio as a tool for transporting listeners out of the home and into the institutions that constituted the public sphere. Robert Bingham, the original owner of WHAS-Louisville, declared that his station would give even the most isolated residents of Indiana and Kentucky “a pew in church, a seat at the opera, or a desk at the university” (Nash, 1995, p. 14). In this formulation, radio would bring listeners together into a great community,

340   VanderHamm safely gathered within the halls of public institutions. Announcers and performers shared this conception, perhaps without its goal of cultural uplift, as they “imagined themselves in a vast auditorium,” addressing massive audiences in halls where the back of the room was “hundreds of miles from the stage” (Barnouw, 1966, p. 164). By the 1930s, broadcasters conceptualized the audience and its location in different ways that helped facilitate the shift to advertising as the primary funding model for radio broadcasts. Erik Barnouw—a writer and producer of radio programs who would later author a formative three-volume history of American broadcasting—published a guide to writing for radio in the 1930s, which began with “two simple facts” about the medium. First, “radio’s audience is not a crowd audience, as is the theater’s, but one of individuals. The individuals may be gathered in small groups, but these are seldom large enough to bring into play anything we call ‘crowd psychology.’ Radio’s audience unit = an individual” (Barnouw, 1947, p. 11, emphasis in original). Herman Hettinger, an academic and occasional radio executive, concurred: “Radio is communication between the announcer and each individual listener, not between one person and massed millions” (Hettinger, 1934, p. 290). This new “simple fact” directly contradicted the meaning of the term broadcasting, which had been introduced to distinguish “radio as a means of one-way communication from a single transmitter to multiple receivers,” from the “two-way, ship-to-ship communications” like those the Navy had used during World War I (Baade & Deaville, 2016, p. 8). Yet this atomization of the audience into separate individuals proved a powerful idea that returned the locus of broadcast reception to the family home. Listeners’ language similarly reflected the shift toward thinking of radio as a tool for transporting the world to them. Whereas a contest in the 1920s featured a listener’s characterization of tuning in to distant radio signals as a visit to faraway cities (Smulyan, 1994, p. 16), a contest run in the periodical Rural Radio found listeners describing the entire world as neighbors: We are busy farm folk. You might think us uninformed . . . isolated . . . but we’re not! Radio makes the whole world our neighbor—brings us “company” every day! Also it is a teacher, counselor, forum. Entertainment, information, inspiration, enlightened understanding, broadened minds, enriched lives! That’s what RADIO means to us!  (Golay, 1938, p. 2)

Such neighborliness invited friendliness, and it was precisely the warm, conversational tone of the letters that radio announcers and performers received that tempted advertisers to explore radio advertising more fully. Any medium capable of inducing listeners to “sit down and write a friendly and personal letter to a large corporation” was too powerful to ignore (Marchand, 1985, p. 93). By the late 1920s, the domestic setting of radio consumption offered what some considered an ideal scenario rather than a problem. As NBC executive Frank Arnold explained, “Here you have the advertiser’s ideal—the family group in its moments of relaxation awaiting your message. Nothing like this has ever been dreamed of by the advertising man” (Arnold,  1929, p. 7). This “advertiser’s ideal” was one increasingly

“All Those Homes Beyond the Microphone”   341 shared by performers (Barnouw, 1966, p. 164). Radio star Bradley Kincaid affectionately addressed “my radio friends” in a letter that prefaced a songbook he released during his tenure at KDKA Pittsburgh: When I sing for you on the air, I always visualize you, a family group, sitting around the radio, listening and commenting on my program. If I did not feel your presence, though you be a thousand miles away, the radio would be cold and unresponsive to me, and I in turn would sound the same way to you. Sometimes I feel that I could almost reach out and shake your hand and give you a cheery “good morning,” and I wish I could.  (Kincaid, 1932, p. 3)

All this talk of friendship and neighborliness might have been rejected as empty rhetoric were it not for Barnouw’s second “simple fact” about radio, which stressed the centrality of the imagination to broadcasting: Absence of the visual element means that radio drama really exists only in the imagination of the listener. In the theater, dramas have an actual external existence on stage or screen. The theater thus demonstrates stories. But radio only cajoles its listeners into imagining them. Whatever may happen in broadcasting studios bears only faint resemblance to what goes on in the listener’s mind. That is where the drama really unfolds. . . . Radio’s stage = the imagination. (Barnouw, 1947, p. 12, emphasis in original)

Radio thus had to “enlist the active collaboration of the audience’s imagination,” who imagined themselves first and foremost as intimately connected to the voices they heard on the air (Barnouw, 1947, p. 12). Psychologists of the time also argued that the absence of visual stimulus gave free rein to listeners to create imagined spaces to accompany the sonic canvas of radio (Cantril & Allport, 1935, p. 10). And again, just as the focus on broadcasting to individuals fit the plans of both performers and advertisers, the focus on imagination brought an alliance between the two. As Lefebvre (1971) has argued, 20th-century advertising was increasingly engaged in the imaginative “realm of make-believe,” where goods promised not just the satisfaction of material desires but the production of new identities and ways of being. Barn dance radio engaged listeners’ imagination on multiple levels. Having invited listeners into an imaginative encounter with radio personalities, sponsors invited them to imagine their future lives improved by the products on offer. Imagination further allowed listeners to construct nostalgic versions of the past that barn dance radio consistently promoted. The pairing of avowedly old, “down-home” music with the modernizing force of advertising would seem to be a contradiction, but it is one at the heart of nostalgia. As Boym writes, “Preoccupation with tradition and interpretation of tradition as an age-old ritual is a distinctly modern phenomenon, born out of anxiety about the vanishing past” (Boym, 2001, p. 19). Thus, the “modern ideas of progress” promoted by advertising and “antimodern claims of recovery of national community and the stable past” made by early country music radio broadcasts were

342   VanderHamm codependent on one another both ideologically and commercially. The very nostalgia of country music “signals its own modernity” (Comentale, 2013, p. 73). The barn dance paradoxically promised to bring listeners back to authentic old-time music-making through the new broadcast technology. This is the contradictory promise identified by Outka (2009) as the “commodified authentic,” a marketing strategy that offers goods previously seen as outside the commercial realm through well-worn consumer channels. The commodified authentic “allow[ed] consumers to be at once connected to a range of values roughly aligned with authenticity and yet also to be fully modern” (p. 4). Advertising thus entered into and capitalized on this already present tension, offering the both/and promise of the commodified authentic: that the modern wonders of radio and advertising could simultaneously achieve progress and preservation. As the “best of both worlds,” they provided ways forward and the means to preserve the most precious parts of the past. Programs made these claims in more down-to-earth ways, of course. The “Crazy Water Crystals” program, for example, blamed intestinal problems “on the stresses of modern living” while “suggesting that the best way to regain bodily control was to purchase a specific product” (Grundy, 1995, p. 1596). Much as programs might decry the negative effects of modernization, the way out of any difficulty was through the avenues of the rapidly spreading consumer culture.

Advertising on the Radio Barn Dance The availability of sources is a perennial problem of research into early radio programming, and the vast majority of barn dance radio left no aural or written record. One notable exception is the extensive scripts written by John Lair for the National Barn Dance and similar sponsored programs that aired throughout the day. Lair was a Kentucky-born radio programmer, talent manager, and collector of songs who began his career as a music librarian and show creator at WLS-Chicago before moving to WLW-Cincinnati and eventually WHAS-Louisville. He is best remembered today for his creation of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, a program based on a mythologized version of his childhood home in Rockcastle County, Kentucky. Lair had a flair for the imaginative that fit well with radio; he began basing program narratives around this romanticized home in some of his earliest scripts written for WLS in the early 1930s. In 1939, Lair took his vision a step further when he erected a giant barn, built a stage, and moved his childhood schoolhouse to the site, creating “the first country music autotourism site,” which functions to this day (Williams & Morrisey, 2000, p. 162). From its outset, and long before Lair’s arrival, the National Barn Dance was conceived as a presentation of “typical Americana” through idealized forms of rural sociality (Evans, 1969, p. 215). The very first National Barn Dance on April 19, 1924, announced the program’s goal “to remind you folks of the good fun and kinship of the barn warmings, the husking bees and the square dances in our farm communities of yesteryear and even today” (Biggar, 1971, p. 11). Although these events all differed in their reasons for socializing—the

“All Those Homes Beyond the Microphone”   343 celebration of a newly constructed barn, a way to ease the tedium of the corn harvest, a dance social—each provided images of rural, communal gathering and opportunities for music, which the modern marvel of radio brought to listeners’ homes. One listener declared his preference for “the old-time kind of programs, especially John Lair and his type of life programs,” and contrasted the rural sociality of such programs with his impression of contemporary life: “I wish I could have lived back in the good old days when we were not always in such a hurry and had time to visit with our neighbors and make real friends” (Bunge, 1936). The social nature of the experiences described in these scripts and the imagined settings into which they insert musical performances are perhaps their most consistent and salient features: gathering around the parlor piano, meeting in church, sitting on the front porch, traveling to a fiddle contest. The MC and the characters of the program never listened alone, and by extension, neither did those at home. Because radio performers were companions, it was essential that they found ways to project traits that audiences could recognize and ideally come to love. In the earliest years of broadcasting, radio “had been dominated by anonymous personalities,” as the only voices consistently on the air—those of announcers—went unnamed (Barnouw, 1966, p. 164). But by the 1930s, “personality” was a key quality for performers, and one that WLS listener surveys constantly found to be essential. A 1937 campaign asked listeners to design their own ideal barn dance program—using WLS’s current lineup of performers, of course. The station manager’s report concluded that the survey was “proof that the great cross-section of National Barn Dance listeners still prefer those principles of Barn Dance building which have always prevailed, viz: personality; simplicity; sincerity; ability to ‘sell’ numbers; selections of proper numbers for various acts; and variety with old-time flavor, comedy and novelty predominating” (Biggar, 1937). Personality had been an object of discourse throughout the 20th century, with advice manuals stressing its importance and defining it as “the quality of being somebody” (Susman, 2003, p. 277). Whereas Victorian conceptions of character stressed the moral obligation of the individual within a social order, personality responded to the threat that one might have no place within that social order at all. As Susman writes: “We live now constantly in a crowd: how can we distinguish ourselves from others in that crowd?” (Susman, 2003, p. 277). Certainly musical style and vocal timbre were key to conveying a performer’s personality, but both scripts and listener letters also emphasized less subtle traits like a fiddler’s insistent foot-stomping or a singer’s penchant for breaking into laughter. In addition to contributing to the popularity of performers, personality was considered particularly useful in conveying the desirability of products. Writing in a business journal in 1934, Herman Hettinger explained how sound’s ability to convey personality compensated for the lack of visual stimulation inherent in the medium: Psychologically, radio has the advantage of the spoken versus the written word, and as such has greater memory value where presentation of copy content is to be considered. However, it has the disadvantage of not having the assistance of the illustration, of being limited to comparatively short copy, and of being incapable of

344   VanderHamm being re-read. Yet, it possesses the vital if thus far somewhat unappreciated, asset of voice personality, and the quality of being a personal, conversational appeal to an individual listener.  (Hettinger, 1934, p. 295)

The greatest potential of radio was to serve as “entertainment ideally adapted for consumption in the home,” which is precisely what the radio barn dance strove to be. Thus, Hettinger made what, in retrospect at least, was an easy prediction: “It seems reasonable to assume that convenience goods, foods, food beverages, drugs, pharmaceuticals, toilet goods, tobacco products, and similar items will continue to occupy the position of major importance in national radio advertising” (Hettinger, 1934, p. 289). These were precisely the types of products that rural variety radio hawked throughout the 1930s, using the down-home personae of artists to recommend domestic goods to their friends and neighbors. As Hettinger highlighted, health products were particularly popular sponsors, as they could be marketed as beneficial to every member of the family. Alka-Seltzer was one of the longest-running sponsors of the WLS National Barn Dance, and other less prominent brands often produced smaller variety shows that aired outside of the Saturday evening slot. One such example is Pinex Merrymakers, a morning program on WLW-Cincinnati with performers brought by John Lair from WLS. On this program— sponsored by Pinex cough syrup, a bargain cold remedy—a character complaining of a cough or failing voice could be told by a kindly female voice: “Take this Pinex I got for the children” (Lair, 1938a). Advertisers assumed that their daytime audience consisted mostly of women tending to the affairs of their households and programs readily pushed consumer goods that might aid in that task (Meyers, 2013, pp. 103–104). In conveying personality, WLS sought to emphasize their performers’ “naturalness.” This was crucial, for the program’s whole conceit was as a participatory social event to which listeners were invited. This drive for sincerity—which WLS once defined for its listeners as “the art of being natural”—was also the result of radio bringing musicians and announcers “closer” in many senses of the term (Biggar, 1935). Broadcasting into the home made the situation less fitting for grand theatrics, and the literal closeness of performers to microphones facilitated softer crooning styles, which gave the sonic impression that this was an intimate encounter with the singer (Peterson, 1997, pp. 106–107).

Selling Across Social Spaces Surveying the scripts and recordings in the Lair Collection provides multiple examples of how Lair worked to integrate entertainment and advertisement together. One strategy was to present the advertisement as an extension of the social interactions that the radio program facilitated. After declaring the need for a square dance on Renfro Valley Barn Dance, he segued: “and while that’s going on, some of us will mosey on over here and see what the Keystone man has to say. Tonight you’re playing ‘Gray Eagle.’ Let him

“All Those Homes Beyond the Microphone”   345 fly.” Those listeners not in the audience then “stepped aside” to listen to this friendly advice: Well, friends, whenever we see someone doing real well, it’s interesting to find out just how they do it. Lots of times we can pick up ideas we can use ourselves. So when you see a really prosperous farm that produces good crops and livestock year after year and makes its owner a good income, it sometimes pays to see what it is that makes the place so productive. Now of course, I’m talking for the people who make Red Brand Fence, but just the same, you’ll have to admit that good fences do have a mighty important part in making those farms pay like they do.  (Lair, 1939)

Such strategies allowed the large barn dance programs to present on-stage dancing for their live audiences while giving time for a full-fledged radio advertisement. It also recognized that some listeners found the broadcast of square dances to be the least enjoyable part of barn dance programming. As one listener wrote: “A square dance is all right if you can see it being danced, but if you just hear it it sounds like a Victrola record that was stuck—the same grind over and over” (Kerber, 1935). Even more integrated into the program were those advertisements read by the program MC, which Lair facilitated by weaving mention of sponsors into the narrative or theme of the program. Indeed, some program themes were created entirely to suit the sponsored product, as was the case for Plantation Party—“A refreshing half-hour of entertainment from your plantation party in old tobacco town” that was designed to sell Brown and Williamson Tobacco products (Lair, 1938b). On a more local level, Lair occasionally situated the advertising pitch in between two songs that made it seem more fitting. “In That Good Old Country Town” reflects on a hometown to which the song’s protagonist plans to return. Whereas the lyrics claim that the speaker had no reason to leave, Lair’s advertising pitch that follows takes a different tack, telling rural listeners that they could not blame their children for moving away: Youda done the same thing when you wuz young if youda had a chance. When you wuz growin up people didn’t have no other way of doin things but it’s different now. You CAN have modern conveniences in your home and they aint no reason why you shouldn’t an you caint blame the kids fer gittin kinda impatient with ye sometimes. Course, some of the conviences of life costs more, maybe, than you kin afford but where you kin git em fer less money than you’re spendin now on a pore makeshift way that aint half as good, they aint no earthly reason, only keerlessness, for you to keep on the old way. A international Blue Flame Oil Burner will heat yore home er cook yore meals in the easiest an best way an cost ye less than it’s costin ye now to burn coal. Write to International, keer of WLS, git full perticklers on this burner an a free book on home heatin an bring yore home up to date sos it will be a REAL home fer yore kids an they’ll be proud of it an proud of you.  (Lair, 1932)

A performance of “Ramshackle Shack” followed this somewhat manipulative pitch, now reflecting on the domicile that the International Heating Oil burner could improve. The highly stylized dialect of the excerpt was typical of Lair’s early scripts, and it was likely

346   VanderHamm meant to remind both him and his performers of their radio personae. The spellings are generally far more exaggerated than the actual vocal delivery of the musicians and MCs. Surviving recordings of Lair evince what one listener described as a pleasant “drawl” that allowed him to deliver “any kind of ad, painlessly” (Unsigned letter to John Lair, 1935). Beyond thematic integration like this, Lair also situated advertisements in careful relation to the imagined community at the heart of his programs. In one of his earliest scripts, Lair pitched an advertisement not to the bulk of WLS’s Chicago-area audience, but to those folks back home in Renfro Valley: The Old Renfro Valley is a mighty good place to live an theys some mighty good folks livin there. Hope they’re listenin in tonigh, fer weed like fer them to know about this Aladdin Lamp that we’ve found out so much about since we bin up here. Lissen, Renfro Valleyers, this is straight talk. This here Aladdin Mantel Lamp is the greatest thing of its kind we ever seen. It don’t cost much, an hardly nuthin at all to run it. . . . We wouldn’t tell you homefolks this if it wasn’t so.  (Lair, 1930)

Four years later, on a different program, Lair reversed his tactic. Now, he told listeners that the product on offer was so popular in Renfro Valley that they had a hard time understanding “why anybody would hafta be told about Hamlin’s Wizard Oil” (Lair, 1934b). Beyond the folksy phrasing, the rhetorical framing of the pitch positioned the advertisement as a substitute for the local knowledge that might arise from the direct and consistent social relationships of a rural setting. The underlying message was clear: You may not be lucky enough to have lived in Renfro Valley, but you can enjoy the easy knowledge that its residents maintain by lending your ear to this advertisement. Along with the imagined social context of listening, advertisements often invoked sociality by encouraging listeners to purchase an item for someone else. Lair’s copy generally assumes that the younger generation had moved to the city, and he sometimes attempted to instill guilt into these recent urban arrivals for not giving back more to family still living in rural areas. The same 1930 program cited earlier encouraged listeners to remember their “homefolks” by sending them an Aladdin mantel lamp—punctuating the request with the minstrel song turned old-time favorite, “Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane” (Lair, 1930). The song, which had become a staple of many hillbilly and oldtime acts since Fiddlin’ John Carson’s recording in 1923, provided an apt “metaphor for the disintegration of rural southern communities” (Huber, 2008, pp. 89–91). Thus, Lair’s promotion of new products was presented between avowedly old, familiar music: They aint many folks livin in town that aint got somebody back on the farm that’s kinda responsible fer them being where they are an what they are. Ever jest set down an think about them much an figger jest how hard it is fer them to git along. You bin imposin on them an takin favors off them for a long time without ever thinkin about it. How about the stuff they send you off the farm, the jars of strawberry preserve you brought back in yore suitcase last time you was down there. Ever one of them things cost sweat an hard work an worry, even if they didn’t cost money. How about

“All Those Homes Beyond the Microphone”   347 payin back a little this Chrismus. Yeah, I’m gonna say send them a Aladdin Mantel lamp. I don’t know anything that will last longer and do all of them any more good. If you know of something better, send THAT to them. They deserve the best, these homefolks of ores, whether they’re livin Down on the Old Plantation or in Jest a Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane.  (Lair, 1930)

In examples like this, Lair invoked nostalgia for the rural home even as he encouraged purchases to improve it. He further invited listeners to move beyond “passive listening” to participate in an experience that synthesized both sensory pleasures and social spaces, mixing music, dance, and the light of a lamp with the city and the country, the home and the department store (Asai, 2016, p. 169). Yet this was also an invitation to perform work, to engage in “the social discipline of the imagination, the discipline of learning to link fantasy and nostalgia to the desire for new bundles of commodities” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 82).

Conclusions: The Mediated Sociality of Advertising In 1934, Lair promised those tuning in to his new program that it would become a steadfast radio companion: You’ll learn to depend upon this half hour for its genuine sincerity and friendliness just as millions of families have depended upon Hamlin’s Wizard Oil through three generations as a prompt and soothing relief for muscular soreness, aches and pains, burns, cuts and bruises, chest colds, and for the hundred and one other uses where an external application is needed.  (Lair, 1934a)

Such an offer of friendship and stability through down-home entertainment had precedent, Lair claimed, not only in the rural sociality that his programs dramatized, but also in consumers’ relationship to the sponsored product. This notion of a social interdependence between radio listeners and sponsored programs may seem like pure advertising rhetoric that ought not be taken seriously. After all, the sociality of mass media is what sociologist Alfred Schutz labels a “they-relationship”—abstract, impersonal, based on ideal types. It is hard to argue with Schutz on this point; the consumer occupies a semianonymous, predetermined social role in relation to the advertiser, without all the complications found in reciprocal relationships between concrete individuals. Overcoming this anonymity would seem insurmountable, as advertising “has no way to approach individuals as individuals or to form the We-relationships at the heart of communities” (Nagel, 2000, p. 251). No doubt, advertisers could not do this of their own power, but the strategy of emphasizing friendliness encouraged listeners to respond in personal ways. Musicians might know nothing of the many people tuned in to their performance, but

348   VanderHamm listeners did not relate to these sounds as abstract voices emanating from the radio speaker. They were fleshed out in sound, print, and story, attended to as familiar voices with lovable quirks. To use Schutz’s terms, a “we-relationship” was impossible, but listeners could adopt an unreciprocated “thou-orientation,” relating to performers as fellow subjects, copresent in time if not space (Schutz, 1967, p. 165). A “thou-orientation” was impossible for advertisers to reciprocate, partially because of their lack of information. One of the great ironies of the friendship proclaimed by all sides was that broadcasters knew so little about their listeners. This uncertainty can be heard on a program for Hamlin’s Wizard Oil, which declared that listeners would “want to have it handy after a strenuous day of gardening, fixing up the lawn, or working in the field. Keep a bottle in your locker at the club, too—you’ll like its cool, soothing relief after an afternoon of golf or other outdoor sport” (Lair, 1934c). The huge range of activities and contexts is indicative of both the product’s claim to be a cure-all of sorts and a general uncertainty about the class or regional identities of listeners. Although friendliness and neighborly goodwill could not overcome the anonymity of relations within a mass market, it could enlist listeners in personalizing mass messages to themselves, and the evidence suggests that they did just that. They adopted the language of neighborly visits, gladly taking on the role of host to the entirety of the world (McCusker, 1998). The strength of ties felt by listeners to WLS can be heard in a letter published in the “Listener’s Mike” section of Stand By, which complained that the previous week’s Barn Dance had featured too much popular music—likely swing-inflected numbers and Tin Pan Alley tunes. Rather than turning the dial, however, the listener likened WLS to an old friend: “Yes, we can get old-fashioned music on another station but that station can’t take the place of the Barn Dance in our lives any more than a new friend can fill the place an old friend has held for years” (Corbin, 1937, p. 2). The problem wasn’t that the listener could not find what she wanted on the open market—she knew it was available—but her radio friends had earned her loyalty, even when they did not deliver what she desired. Cultural analyses, especially those inspired by Stuart Hall and the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, often interpret consumers’ creative repurposing of the materials of popular culture as a form of potential resistance. In the case of early barn dance radio, such creative listener interactions with programs were something programmers and advertisers encouraged. Indeed, they provided listeners with the rhetorical and imaginative tools to do so. The connections formed and the stories told were in some way less important than the fact that advertising and barn dance radio provided the cast of characters and products. And even when the meanings audiences found in programs were precisely those that advertisers hoped to convey, radio could still give them the sense that they were making individual responses to beloved programs rather than acquiescing with countless others to outside forces. Highly uniform reactions to advertising could feel individual if audiences believed, as psychologists Cantril and Allport (1935) did, that the domestic isolation of radio listeners meant they were “less emotional and more critical, less crowdish and more individualistic” than those in an audience (p. 13). Such beliefs demonstrate radio’s

“All Those Homes Beyond the Microphone”   349 remarkable ability “to deny its own status as a mass medium” (Marchand, 1985, p. 88, emphasis in original). Listeners’ nostalgic enjoyment of a sad song, their foot-tapping to a fiddle tune, and their decision to do right by their family and buy a particular product all appeared to them as highly individual experiences, not mass-mediated events. If, as Lenthall argues, listeners during the 1930s “discovered limited space to invent radio’s meanings for themselves” (2007, p. 13), this space was something that programs worked both to create and to circumscribe. Although advertisers could not personalize each song and advertising pitch to the homes they reached, they could utilize a rhetoric that encouraged listeners to do so for them. Claims that broadcasting was friendly, oneto-one communication within the family home were simultaneously advice for radio talent and statements meant to influence how listeners engaged with programs. If friendliness was deployed as simple rhetoric—or as a cynical sales tactic—its reception and reciprocation made it real.

Recommended Readings Berry, C. (Ed.). (2008). The hayloft gang: The story of the national barn dance. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. McCusker, K. M. (2008). Lonesome cowgirls and honkey tonk angels: The women of barn dance radio. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Pecknold, D. (2007). The selling sound: The rise of the country music industry. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Peterson, R. A. (1997). Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Williams, M. A. (2006). Staging tradition: John Lair and Sarah Gertrude Knott. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

References Adorno, T. (2006). Towards a theory of musical reproduction: Notes, a draft, and two schemata. (H. Lonitz, Ed., W. Hoban., Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Polity. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Arnold, F. A. (1929). High spots in radio broadcasting techniques. Broadcast Advertising, 1(2), 7. Asai, R. (2016). “From operatic pomp to a Benny Goodman stomp!”: Frame analysis and the national biscuit company’s Let’s Dance. In C.  Baade & J.  Deaville (Eds.), Music and the broadcast experience: Performance, production, and audiences (pp. 153–172). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Baade, C., & Deaville, J. (Eds.). (2016). Music and the broadcast experience: Performance, production, and audiences. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Barnouw, E. (1947). Handbook of radio writing: An outline of techniques and markets in radio writing in the United States (Rev. ed.). Boston, MA: Little Brown and Company. Barnouw, E. (1966). A tower in Babel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Berry, C. (Ed.). (2008). The hayloft gang: The story of the national barn dance. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

350   VanderHamm Biggar, G. C. (1935). When the cowbells ring out on Saturday night it’s National Barn Dance time. In J. Lair (Ed.), 100 WLS barn dance favorites (p. 96). Chicago, IL: M. M. Cole. Biggar, G. C. (1937). Listeners’ ideal national barn dance program. Southern Folklife Collection Radio and Television Files #30015, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Biggar, G. C. (1971). The early days of WLS and the national barn dance. Old Time Music, 1, 11–13. Boym, S. (2001). The future of nostalgia. New York, NY: Basic Books. Bunge, V. (1936, October 17). Listener’s mike. Stand By, 2(36), 2. Butler, B. D. (1935, February 16). Foreword. Prairie Farmer’s New WLS Weekly, 1(1), 2. Cantril, H., & Allport, G. W. (1935). The psychology of radio. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Childers, S. (2008). Images of America: Chicago’s WLS radio. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. Comentale, E.  P. (2013). Sweet air: Modernism, regionalism, and American popular song. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Corbin, G. (1937, January 23). Listener’s mike. Stand By, 2(50), 2. Douglas, S.  J. (1987). Inventing American broadcasting, 1899–1922. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Evans, J. F. (1969). Prairie farmer and WLS: The Burridge D. Butler Years. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Golay, H. H. (1938, May). Here are the winners: “What radio means to my family” contest. Rural Radio, 1, 2. Grundy, P. (1995). “We always tried to be good people”: Respectability, crazy water crystals, and hillbilly music on the air, 1933–1935. Journal of American History, 81(4), 1591–1620. Hess, H. W. (1922). History and present status of the “truth-in-advertising” movement. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 101(1), 211–220. Hettinger, H. S. (1934). The future of radio as an advertising medium. Journal of Business of the University of Chicago, 7(4), 283–295. Huber, P. (2008). Linthead stomp: The creation of country music in the Piedmont South. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Kerber, B. (1935, July 28). Letter to WLS. John Lair Papers, Box 73, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Kincaid, B. (1932). My favorite mountain ballads and old time songs: Book 5. Pittsburgh, PA: KDKA. Lair, J. (1930, December 13). Aladdin barn dance frolic. John Lair Papers, Box 31, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Lair, J. (1932, February 9). International oil heating co. John Lair Papers, Box 33, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Lair, J. (1934a, February 24). Hamlin’s wizard oil. John Lair Papers, Box 32, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Lair, J. (1934b, March 10). Hamlin’s wizard oil. John Lair Papers, Box 32, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Lair, J. (1934c, March 31). Hamlin’s wizard oil. John Lair Papers, Box 32, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Lair, J. (1938a). Pinex merrymakers. Audio recording. John Lair Papers, JL DT 001-A, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Lair, J. (1938b). Plantation party. John Lair Papers, JL DT 004-A, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY.

“All Those Homes Beyond the Microphone”   351 Lair, J. (1939, November 18). Renfro valley barn dance. John Lair Papers, JL DT 005-A, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Lefebvre, H. (1971). Everyday life in the modern world. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Lenthall, B. (2007). Radio’s America: The great depression and the rise of modern mass culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Malone, B. C., & Neal, J. R. (2010). Country music, U.S.A. (3rd rev. ed.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Marchand, R. (1985). Advertising the American dream: Making way for modernity, 1920–1940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. McCusker, K.  M. (1998). “Dear radio friend”: Listener mail and the National Barn Dance, 1931–1941. American Studies, 39(2), 173–195. Meyers, C. B. (2013). A word from our sponsor: Admen, advertising, and the golden age of radio. New York, NY: Fordham University Press. Nagel, C. (2000). Phenomenology, authenticity, and truth in advertising. In M.  Carroll & E.  Tafoya (Eds.), Phenomenological approaches to popular culture (pp. 237–255). Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Nash, F.  M. (1995). Towers over Kentucky: A history of radio and television in the Bluegrass State. Lexington, KY: Host Communications. National Barn Dance. (1939, February 25). Audio recording. Catalog ID: RB:14588. Paley Center for Media, New York. Outka, E. (2009). Consuming traditions: Modernity, modernism, and the commodified authentic. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Pecknold, D. (2007). The selling sound: The rise of the country music industry. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Peterson, R. A. (1997). Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Schutz, A. (1967). The phenomenology of the social world. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Smulyan, S. (1994). Selling radio: The commercialization of American broadcasting, 1920–1934. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Sterling, C. H. (Ed.). (2004). Encyclopedia of radio. New York, NY: Fitzroy Dearborn. Susman, W. (2003). Culture as history: The transformation of American society in the twentieth century. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Unsigned letter to John Lair. (1935, October 6). John Lair Papers, Box 70, Berea College Special Collections & Archives, Berea, KY. Williams, M. A., & Morrisey, L. (2000). Constructions of tradition: Vernacular architecture, country music, and auto-ethnography. Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, 8, 161–175.

chapter 17

M usic a n d I nstitu tiona l A dv ertisi ng Consolidated Edison and Echoes of New York Rika Asai

New York radio listeners tuning in to WJZ on Tuesday evening, October 1, 1946, would have heard the nostalgic strains of a hurdy-gurdy churning out the lilting refrain from “On the Streets of New York,” a showstopper in Victor Herbert’s 1906 musical comedy The Red Mill. As the hurdy-gurdy faded into the background, popular radio host John Reed King (1914–1979) announced the premiere episode of the 1946–1947 season of Echoes of New York—resuming after a five-year hiatus during World War II—with a cavalier, “Yes, it’s back on the air.” “On the Streets of New York” connected Echoes with its prewar antecedents, the most well known of which was Echoes of New York Town (1935–1941).1 The creators were also no doubt aware that they were capitalizing on the Broadway revival of The Red Mill, which had opened in October 1945. The use of this song and the sound of the hurdygurdy served as a nostalgic foil, not only for the modern image of electricity but also for the up-to-date impression the sponsor of the program, New York gas and electric utility Consolidated Edison, wished to impart to its audience.2 As a utility, Con Edison lacked product-oriented sales objectives, but as this chapter will establish, the company had reason to engage in institutional advertising, a form of advertising that aimed to positively shape public perception of a company or brand. 1  The first two pages of the script for episode No. 18 from January 15, 1941, show that the signature is “Streets of New York.” 2  Another layer of meaning may have been evident to radio listeners—The Red Mill follows the adventures of two young Americans in Holland and the song is sung in the context of a joyous return to New York City; a fourth layer may have been for listeners who had returned from serving in Europe during World War II.

Music and Institutional Advertising   353 Echoes’ radio-variety format, introduced each week by King as “packed with music, drama, history and news of the most exciting place on earth,” ideally suited what has been described by Beard (2004) as the “transformational consumer orientation” (p. 141) of soft-sell advertising. Echoes persuaded listeners of the centrality of Con Edison to New York City, both in terms of “echoes” of the city’s past and for the anticipated reverberations of Con Edison’s important work for the city’s future. The company entrusted this important task to its long-time advertising agency, McCann-Erickson. This chapter explores music and advertising in the golden age of radio by focusing on the activities of the music department at McCann-Erickson, thereby contributing to studies that have illuminated the foundational position of advertising agencies in driving the form and content of radio programming during the era.

Radio Scholarship and Documentary Context The flowering in recent decades of radio scholarship has added much to broader studies of advertising in U.S.  culture (e.g., Fox,  1984; Lears,  1994; Marchand,  1985,  1998; McGovern, 2006; Pope, 1983). Scholars have established radio’s role at the heart of the commercial system; parsed the competing ideologies that contributed to, and remained within, the centralized networks of broadcasting; and repositioned the advertising industry as a principal source of radio programming (Baade & Deaville,  2016; Doerksen,  2005; Douglas,  1987,  1999; Goodman,  2011; Hilmes,  1997,  2007; McChesney, 1993; Meyers, 2014; Russo, 2010, 2016; Smulyan, 1994). Several studies have also complicated the understanding of the relationship between producers of radio programming and audiences, suggesting that rather than simply inciting consumer desire in a passive listening audience, radio advertising taught audiences to resist sponsored broadcasting. Programming also both transgressed and reinforced the boundary between public and private spheres. Rather than serving solely as a market, listeners critiqued and shaped the programming of the early commercial broadcast system (Loviglio, 2005; Newman, 2004; Razlagova, 2011). In terms of music in the U.S. commercial radio system, Goodman (2011) has explicated the role of classical music programming in connection with what he describes as the “civic paradigm” of network broadcasting (p. 70). Nevertheless, in showing how networks attempted to balance their business interests with the high-minded aims for radio’s educational and civic duties, Goodman’s attention is drawn more to the function of music and the role of genre rather than logistical and analytical considerations related to the music itself. Other analyses of music in advertising on radio in the United States have, on the whole, focused on product-oriented advertising (e.g., Asai,  2016; Russo,  2016; Taylor, 2003, 2012). Common to much of the radio scholarship mentioned earlier is an impressive command of archival resources, necessitated by the fortunes of the medium and the dearth

354   Asai of published “works” that can be studied. Although many media products are described as “ephemeral,” not only did most radio programming disappear into the ether upon production, but also the producers discarded documentation of the work. Thus, in addition to the general ephemerality of historic popular culture, as Hilmes (1997) has stated, “many—the vast majority—of broadcast hours are lost forever” (p. xvi). Our understanding of the medium is thus pieced together from extant archival materials; the problems of the methodology have been described by Hilmes (1997) and by Meyers (2014), who compared the situation with a wonderful analogy of a “drunk forced to look for his lost keys under the streetlight because that is where the light is” (Meyers, 2014, p. 5). Nevertheless, the necessity of archival research in radio scholarship has established a compelling model for popular culture and media studies. By not always being able to solely focus on a final “product” of programming—that is, the “show” as it was heard on the radio—there is a strong sense of awareness that the body of knowledge is shaped by the materials at hand. Scholars have audiated programs from scripts and used other documentation to present a nuanced understanding of radio programming in the broader context of a commercial broadcast system and within a developing consumer culture. “Radio” is illuminated as a complex and entangled social, cultural, and economic phenomenon. This chapter draws on a complete set of scripts for the 1946–1947 season of Echoes of New York, along with accompanying scores, memos, and financial documentation, found in the Josef Bonime Collection of Radio Music, Special Collections of the Music and Dance Library of the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. The Bonime Collection was assembled by Josef Bonime (1890–1959), the music director of the radio department at McCann-Erickson from 1930 to 1958. In other words, the archival resources extend from the year when Alfred Erickson and Harrison McCann merged their respective advertising agencies, through the golden age of radio as a commercial entertainment medium, to the establishment of television as the leading broadcast medium for advertising. The Bonime Collection is an important repository. First, the materials provide a glimpse into the history of a prominent, but less well-known, advertising agency. Second, in preserving what remains of the music library of McCannErickson, the collection represents the only extant agency music library presently known. The scripts for the 25 episodes of the season are rich with information that reveals much about the sociocultural contexts of New York City. They also illuminate McCannErickson’s perception of current events and their understanding of the mix of classes, educational backgrounds, races, and occupations that made up Con Edison’s employees, the musical guests, and the listening audience—Con Edison’s customers. While some of these issues will be touched upon in the following discussion, this chapter narrows its focus to three aspects divulged by the primary sources. First, we will examine the formal and structural issues of format as a means to consider broadcast entertainment’s creation and perpetuation of a formulaic construction, which is often considered an integral component of broadcast advertising’s effort to streamline production and simplify programs for audiences. Second, we will consider the music department at McCann-Erickson, exploring the various types of musical

Music and Institutional Advertising   355 activity a typical work week may have entailed. Finally, we will discuss Con Edison’s allmale company chorus, the Edisoneers, as an embodiment of the kind of message Echoes sought to impart. The extraordinary glimpse into the workflow of an agency music department allows us to establish what seems to be in place in the first episode and then follow not only how the format is altered but also what happens when it is altered and consider why the choice was made. Rather than thinking of formula as artistic complacency or a deficiency of creativity, formulaic construction was a deliberate and evolving choice that helped to develop the desired effect of familiarity between the program, and thus the sponsor, and its audience. In focusing less on the end product and more on the development of the program, my goal is to view radio programming less as text and more as process. Nevertheless, as the program format gradually took shape, we may identify in Echoes, as a whole, the effort to promote Con Edison as a company that was morally in the right, benefiting both the public and its employees, and as such, did not require regulatory scrutiny.

Echoes and the Radio-Variety Formula From radio’s earliest days, the variety format had been a popular and uncontroversial choice for advertisers due to its familiarity through vaudeville and because, as Meyers (2014) points out, “vaudevillian labor” was plentiful (p. 150). By 1946, the format not only was well established as a radio genre but also appears to have had nostalgic value, as indicated by Episode No. 22, which celebrated vaudeville’s Old Palace Theatre. The emotional valences as well as the flexibility of the format lent themselves well to institutional advertising’s interests in balancing education and specific genres of music to provide the cultural uplift that reflected well on the sponsor. In the first episode, a basic formula is already in place (see Table 17.1). Structurally, the show is arranged in three general sections. The first and third sections rely on the emcee King’s introductory and closing statements, which furnish cohesion within each episode as well as between episodes. The body of the program relies on the tradition of variety shows and accommodates musical performances, dramatic presentations, an audience “quiz,” and a trivia segment. With “Streets of New York” still lingering in the listener’s ear, King introduces the guests and the title of the dramatic sketch and gives particular emphasis to features that would become regular items in later episodes: the Consolidated Edison Concert Orchestra; the Edisoneers; and the “I’ll Bet You Never Knew Department,” a trivia segment devoted to Con Edison’s activities around New York City. Following King’s introduction, the orchestra and Edisoneers enter with “City of Light,” Echoes’ theme song. The text of the theme amounts to a commercial jingle for New York City: “New York with her wonderful past; bringing promise of wonderful things yet to come; New York for millions of us; in our hearts is our old home town.”

356   Asai Table 17.1  Echoes of New York, Episode No. 1, October 1, 1946, Outline Structure

Segment

Description

Opening

Signature

“In Old New York” (“Streets of New York,” Red Mill), on “hurdy-gurdy”

 

Program identification

John Reed King announces program, hurdy-gurdy finishes

 

Features

King outlines evening’s program: lists guests, orchestra, and Edisoneers; the title of dramatic sketch; and George Hicks of the “I’ll Bet You Never Knew” feature

 

Theme

“City of Light”

Body

First guest

Banter with soloist, Jane Pickens

 

Performance

“They Say It’s Wonderful”

 

“Quick Quiz”

Pickens’s answer; unscripted audience responses

 

Second guest

Al Gallodoro

 

Performance

“Oodles of Noodles”

 

Guest speaker (audience plant)

Segue to dramatic sketch

 

Dramatic sketch

“The Joneses of New York”

 

Theme

“City of Lights”

 

Performance

“Summertime” (Pickens)

 

“I’ll Bet You Never Knew” George Hicks, “ace reporter”

 

Theme

Theme: “City of Light” with voices

Closing

Closing announcements

King describes features of next week’s episode

 

 

“Orchestra: Theme Up and Finish”

 

 

King says good night

Reinforcing the conceit of the program, the text brings together small-town sensibilities with the promise of the future for a brilliant city. The theme functions as a musical bridge to the body of the program. Musical entertainment was accentuated in the first episode with two guests, soprano Jane Pickens (1919–1992) and saxophonist Al Gallodoro (1913–2008), both of whom exemplified broad musical careers encompassing classical and popular styles.3 King introduces Pickens first, referring to her as “a true Consolidated Edison gal.” In the subsequent banter, King asks her: “What in your opinion entitles a person to be called a New Yorker?” It 3  Originally from Macon, Georgia, Pickens had risen to fame in the early 1930s as one of the Pickens Sisters, a popular vocal trio, but Pickens states in the script that she had studied voice at Juilliard. Gallodoro, who spent his early years in Birmingham, Alabama, was known for having played in Paul Whiteman’s orchestra from 1936 until it disbanded in 1940 and the NBC Symphony, in which he played bass clarinet.

Music and Institutional Advertising   357 is a question that provides a recurring thematic unifier for the episode. As Pickens feigns a thoughtful pause, King suggests that she sing a song while she thinks the question over. The song “They Say It’s Wonderful” is from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, which had opened May 16, 1946, at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway and would go on to become the third longest-running musical of the 1940s. Pickens had no part in the Broadway production and in later programs too, guest vocalists typically sang current popular songs rather than works that may have had stronger associations with their own careers. Following Pickens’s performance, she wittily replies that a person becomes a New Yorker once they can find a place to live. King then announces that he will turn to the audience for the “Quick Quiz,” reminding listeners that the “first quiz show ever on the air was presented on our ‘Echoes’ program years ago.”4 Although the banter with Pickens is scripted, the segment involving the audience is not. Nevertheless, it seems clear from the context that the question remains “What in your opinion entitles a person to be called a New Yorker?” The same question provides a transition to the introduction of Gallodoro, who is introduced as another “Southerner,” like Pickens, who now claims New York as his home. When King asks Gallodoro why he decided to stay permanently in New York, Gallodoro replies: “In what other city in the world could you play one week with Paul Whiteman and the next week with Toscanini?” To introduce Gallodoro’s performance of “Oodles of Noodles,” a virtuosic showpiece for saxophone perhaps most closely associated with its composer Jimmy Dorsey, King promises that “serious music lovers as well as jive hounds are going to get a thrill,” emphasizing the broad audience appeal anticipated for Echoes. Following the performance, King comments, “We’ll all go for that ‘Oodles of Noodles,’ ” and refers to the national beef shortage, a current event that may have concerned listeners (Truman, 1946). He states further that on October 1, 1875, 71 years prior to the broadcast, New York exported the first American beef to England. The year 1875 provides a transition to the next guest, scripted as “New Yorker” Charles Herbert Martin, who appears to be an audience “plant” helping to create the illusion of reality and immediacy for the audience. Martin has seemingly lived in New York for decades and can recall the city of the 1880s. King asks Martin to describe the “most exciting event” of the late 19th century, the answer to which provides the transition into a dramatic sketch about the spectacular lighting of Broadway with electric lights. “The Joneses of New York” begins with a father, Sam Jones, desperately trying to bring a doctor to attend to his young son, who has fallen off a roof. Unfortunately, the carriage driver is unable to move his “horse car” through the crowds that have gathered to see the unveiling of the lights. All ends on a hopeful note when the driver, an unrelated man named Jones, unharnesses his horse and allows the doctor to ride away to the rescue, leaving Sam Jones and the driver to celebrate the “Joneses of New York” helping each other out. As a Con Edison-sponsored episode, they also take note of the lights: In the 4  Echoes of New York is not mentioned in DeLong (1991), but King is described as a prominent quiz show emcee in the mid-1940s.

358   Asai last line of the sketch, the driver exclaims that he “wouldn’t be a mite surprised if folks took to referrin’ to this street . . . as the Great White Way.” The punch line is emphasized by the entrance of the rousing climax of the theme “City of Light.” The dramatic sketch serves as a richly layered message to its audience. On the surface, the plot is a sentimental Victorian story—a child is hurt! A crisis occurs (caused perhaps oddly, by Edison) but is ultimately averted by a horse, an “old technology.” The dramatic sketch establishes that Con Edison and what the company represents have been part of New York for a long time. Further, it demonstrates that Con Edison epitomizes New York itself. When taken alongside the “Southerner” guest artists, the dramatic sketch suggests that newcomers arrive and become the New York City that Con Edison has shaped. And, if the city is full of newcomers, Con Edison will even supply their memory of the city—a “history” that also imparts a utopian view of the present. The excitement of today is further emphasized as King elaborates on the continuing importance of electric lights along Broadway. His description of the lighted marquees contextualizes the next musical number: The name on our marquee tonight is the lovely star, Jane Pickens. She returns to sing the unforgettable song, “Summertime” from George Gershwin’s folk opera . . . “Porgy and Bess.” [Ellipses in original.]

Until this point, the various segments have been integrated into a cohesive sequence. After the performance of “Summertime,” however, there is a distinct break as King introduces the “I’ll Bet You Never Knew” department, which highlighted George Hicks (1905–1965) as an “ace reporter.” As King elaborates, Hicks was a well-known radio reporter who had gained “enormous stature for . . . the famous D-Day report of the Allied landing in Normandy.”5 In the “I’ll Bet You Never Knew” segment, Hicks seems to be reporting from a remote location, though the actual text and sound effects are scripted. The subject in the first episode is the “astronomical time switch,” which regulates streetlights. As Hicks draws the segment to a close, the “City of Light” theme returns as an orchestral bridge to the conclusion of the program. A line drawn through the script in pencil indicates that “City of Light” continued through the conclusion as background. King credits the program’s sponsor Con Edison and describes the following week’s highlights, which include the guest, the music, and Hicks. Finally, the script instructs, “Orchestra: Theme Up and Finish.” King bids the audience good night, encouraging his listeners to tune in to next week’s program. As the first episode makes clear, the Echoes formula relied heavily on King and Hicks to provide the stability of recurring and stereotypical “characters,” the former as ­charming host and the latter as intrepid reporter. It is also likely that Con Edison 5  According to DeLong (1996), Hicks was the announcer for another McCann-Erickson production, Death Valley Days, from 1932 to 1941 (p. 129). Carskadon (1935) states that as the announcer for Death Valley Days, Hicks’s “straightforward, unaffected delivery has made him one of the ablest and best liked announcers on the NBC staff, and his lively sense of news values has made him especially useful in broadcasting public occasion and ‘spot’ news events.”

Music and Institutional Advertising   359 hoped listeners would associate the qualities of these on-air personalities with the company itself. Structurally, the formula allowed for at least three musical performances that highlighted not only the featured guests but also the Concert Orchestra and the Edisoneers. The musical guests and their performances were clearly important elements in the program because the bulk of the script is devoted to contextualizing their performances. In addition to its function as featured entertainment, music was also used to bridge the show’s structural elements and to provide an emotional emphasis to the dialogue. The “City of Light” theme is used three times, providing aural unity throughout the program. There are nonetheless some clear flaws, particularly in the pacing of the episode. For a program that highlights music, the first musical feature is not heard until well into the episode. Also, although both musical and textual themes require repetition to provide cohesion, at many points the effect seems more static than cohesive. In the “Quick Quiz” segment, for instance, King simply repeats the question numerous times.6 The quiz may also have been unwieldy for timing a live broadcast because the audience responses would have been unpredictable. Similarly, while the use of “City of Light” provided structural cohesion, it overlaps in function with the signature song, “Streets of New York.” Although this may not undermine the efficacy of either theme, it is a less efficient use of time. It is no surprise, then, that throughout the first five episodes, the scripts show evidence of attempts to tighten the formula. Beginning with Episode No. 3, “City of Light” is eliminated and the orchestra and Edisoneers join the hurdy-gurdy in a new arrangement of “Streets of New York.” By Episode No. 4, King no longer enumerates all features of the program in the introduction. Instead, after “Streets of New York,” King identifies the program and sponsor, then moves directly into the body of the episode. Also by Episode No. 4, the “Quick Quiz” is eliminated and the overall trajectory of the program seems to settle on emphasizing the musical component by closing with a final ensemble number rather than the “I’ll Bet You Never Knew” segment. In Episode No. 5, the first guest performance comes much earlier in the program. Dispensing with the badinage with guests, King introduces the first song directly after outlining the evening’s program. Finally, King’s concluding statement is greatly shortened. Beginning in Episode No. 6, King offers a summary of the following week’s theme, names the guest(s), and signs off with a brief ID, “This is John Reed King saying good night for Consolidated Edison.” The show’s writers thus gradually streamlined the formula, but it remained quite flexible, as one would expect.

6  Although the quiz may not seem compelling because it is merely a subjective question, Echoes’ audience “Quick Quiz” resembles the “sidewalk interviews” of popular shows such as Vox Pop. Shows like these became popular in the early 1930s and did not emphasize knowledge or prizes (DeLong, 1991; Loviglio, 2005). In alluding to Vox Pop, McCann-Erickson cleverly advertised its own work—the 1946 Radio Annual lists McCann-Erickson as the advertising agency responsible for Vox Pop (Alicoate, 1946, pp. 866–896).

360   Asai The main exception to the formula is the “cavalcade” format, used in Episode Nos. 15 and 19. The cavalcade is essentially a medley that spans most of the body of the program. After the usual opening introduction, one song is performed after another, with narrative commentary over the musical modulation between each song; this format allows for more songs per episode. After Episode No. 1, which featured only three songs, the musical numbers ranged from four to eight per installment. In the episodes featuring the cavalcade format, there were 22 and 21 musical numbers, respectively. The use of the cavalcade occurred during a long absence of King, at which time Hicks substituted for him in the role of host. Although the cavalcade format required considerable skill on the part of the emcee, particularly in terms of timing, it placed more emphasis on the music and required less in terms of the emcee’s persona. A final element in refining the formula was to choose an overarching topic. Episodes No. 1 and 3, though generally “about New York,” rely primarily on the “Quick Quiz” to tie the episode together. Episode No. 2, however, was tightly focused on the guest, film star Marsha Hunt (b. 1917), and featured a radio dramatization of her latest film, Carnegie Hall (1947), in which she played an Irish immigrant who arrives in New York just as Carnegie Hall is erected and whose life becomes intertwined with the hall. The writers of the program seem to have recognized the cohesion that the topic, and perhaps this specific topic, brought to the content and form of the episode. As a great New York institution, Carnegie Hall offered a natural focus. Further, the plot of the film Carnegie Hall lent itself to performances of classical music, with excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1 arranged for radio orchestra, as well as jazz, with newly composed cues for the Rhapsody in Blue-style symphonic jazz work described in the radio drama. The desire to refer to classical and popular music was evident in Episode No. 1, and musical selections throughout the season typically mingled wellknown classical works with jazz numbers and music connected to current films and stage musicals that would appeal to a wide audience.

The Music Department Radio called upon the many skills associated with various individual music professionals, including performers, arrangers, orchestrators, copyists, and librarians (Chase, 1946; LaPrade, 1947). Network music departments are perhaps best known due to celebrated “sustaining” music programs, such as the first several seasons of the NBC Symphony broadcasts. Sustaining programs were essentially sponsored by the network and were well equipped in terms of department personnel and resources. Human (1943) reported that the CBS music library contained 850,000 pieces—a significantly larger library than Josef Bonime’s at McCann-Erickson, which consisted of some 25,000 items by the mid-1950s. Although McCann-Erickson’s music library was relatively modest, Bonime appears to have adopted network practices in building, organizing, and utilizing the library for

Music and Institutional Advertising   361 radio programming. Handwritten catalog numbers on the scores show that as Bonime purchased published music or, more frequently, received complementary copies from publishers, scores were assigned a letter indicating the type of arrangement and an acquisition number. Different arrangements of the same title received the same number but carried different letter indications. Thus, a piano-vocal version of Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies” might be catalogued as V-2002, while a dance band arrangement of the same tune would be catalogued as D-2002. Like network music libraries, Bonime’s music library used a card indexing system to maintain the functionality of the library. Popular music was indexed by title; classical and light classical music were indexed by composer. Within these categories, the music itself was filed simply in order of acquisition, making the card index essential to navigating the collection.7 Bonime maintained a separate catalog for “mood music” (orchestral bridges for radio drama) and also appears to have segregated materials related to noteworthy programs (e.g., Let’s Dance for the National Biscuit Company) and projects (e.g., music for Con Edison’s 1939 World’s Fair pavilion). In the case of Echoes, music used in the program was filed within the music library, but the scripts for each episode were filed in individual folders with ancillary documentation, including bills, receipts, and/or contracts that provide evidence for expenses related to renting music, arranging scores, extracting and copying parts, and preparing new orchestral bridges. The financial documentation suggests that one major distinction between the music area at McCann-Erickson and a network music department is that Bonime himself, aside from secretarial staff, appears to have been the sole employee of McCannErickson’s music department. As “music director,” he was responsible for overseeing a vast network of freelance musicians in New York City. The documents provide a glimpse into the bursts of activity and long hours required of the musicians, particularly of the arrangers and copyists. A contract between McCann-Erickson and the American Federation of Musicians (Local 802) indicates that the Concert Orchestra consisted of “twenty-one men.” The parts in the Bonime Collection list the following orchestration: piano, drums, and bass forming the rhythm section; a brass section made up of B-flat trumpets I and II, trombones I and II, and horn; a string section consisting of violins A, B, and C, along with viola and cello; a reed section consisting of four saxophones; and harp, probably played by Laura Newell, the only woman among the “men.” The violin parts were doubled, bringing the number of musicians to 21. As was customary in radio and theater orchestras and dance bands of the time, each of the saxophone players doubled on another wind instrument: clarinets I and II, oboe, and flute. Music charges indicate that a hurdy-gurdy tuner was paid before each episode, which suggests that the instrument was in fact some type of barrel organ that could be cranked by anyone in the orchestra (there is no separate hurdy-gurdy part). The hurdygurdy is used in every episode as part of the theme and also appears in Episode No. 6, 7  The card catalog has since been lost or discarded by BYU. The description of the original shape of the collection is derived from Bonime (n.d.).

362   Asai which honored George  M.  Cohan (1878–1942), providing further evidence that the sound of the barrel organ was coded as “nostalgic.” The radio orchestra is perhaps most similar in orchestration to the “sweet” dance bands of the era, with the addition of horn and oboe and the omission of banjo/guitar. As a typical radio orchestra, the Consolidated Edison Concert Orchestra, with its varied instrumentation, was sufficiently flexible to accompany both popular and classical music. A hallmark of Echoes was the participation of Con Edison’s company chorus, the Edisoneers, composed of 16 men, with a TTBB distribution. Lee Montgomery is listed in the music charges for Episode Nos. 3–5 for “vocal arrangements including coaching.” From Episode No. 6 onward, Maurice Gardner, who had been arranging the orchestral music, appears to have taken over the vocal arrangements as well. The arrangements for the Edisoneers reflect careful consideration of the limitations of an amateur chorus, and the repertoire itself is limited to popular and so-called novelty songs, such as “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” from Disney’s Song of the South (1946), which was programmed twice during the 1946–1947 season. The parts for the Edisoneers also provide evidence of the early use of time-saving mechanical reproduction techniques: Several folders contain the translucent original for reproduction by the Ozalid process at Alfred J. Mapleson’s music renting library. The manuscript orchestrations were prepared by various arrangers, primarily Maurice Gardner, Sam Grossman, and Richard Mohaupt, depending on the style of work being arranged.8 Although the music charges list both “orchestration” and “arranging,” all of the orchestrators working for Bonime were arranging published stock music and piano-vocal sheet music to suit the needs of the radio orchestra and the Edisoneers, and to fulfill the requirements of timings. Mohaupt, the orchestrator typically assigned to arrange the classical repertoire, seems to have been the only person who regularly composed new material in the form of orchestral bridges. Following the arrangement of the musical numbers, the parts were extracted by hand. This was done almost exclusively by Alfred Saenger, although Peter Feldhann and Aldert van der Molen occasionally assisted, as did Bonime himself in one instance. For their orchestrations, Gardner and Mohaupt were paid $3.30 by the page, whereas Saenger received $3.00 per hour for his extractions. For two rehearsals and the broadcast, each member of the orchestra earned $6 per hour for rehearsals and a flat rate of $14 for the broadcast. The music charges varied from show to show, depending on the number and stature of the guest soloists, the amount of music, and whether any music was rented or required copyright fees. A large portion of the music charges went toward paying the ad hoc orchestra. The average rehearsal time for a show was four hours; the five-and-a-half ­ ayment hours for Episode No. 15 was the maximum rehearsal time. The lowest recorded p 8  Kosovsky (2000) has noted a similar classification for composers in the music department at CBS, which had established a system by 1939 in which composers were essentially typecast for specific styles of music and thus specific kinds of shows (p. 148).

Music and Institutional Advertising   363 for a musical guest was $100; the highest, $500.9 The Edisoneers do not appear to have been union musicians or paid as guests for their performances on the program.

The Edisoneers Echoes’ radio-variety formula, which blended edification and entertainment, and the corporate context of the program function well within the framework of welfare capitalism established in the early decades of the 20th century. As Cohen (1990) has described in her study of unionism in Chicago’s working class during the 1920s and 1930s, industrialists were incentivized to assume greater social responsibility by the desire for favorable public opinion, of course, but even more so, manufacturers had noted that those involved in their communities and “stabilizing institutions,” such as the Boy Scouts or the YMCA, suffered fewer labor problems (p. 180). Extracurricular athletic, artistic, and social organizations within corporations were also thought to help dissolve ethnic and class boundaries among employees (p. 176). While Echoes as a whole promoted goodwill, the Edisoneers as company chorus and their weekly performances may be interpreted as a decisive musical articulation of Con Edison’s efforts to be perceived as a socially responsible institution. The Edisoneers themselves were a form of advertising for Con Edison. As a recreational company chorus, the Edisoneers were neither employed by McCann-Erickson nor were their activities officially part of their work at Con Edison. Thus, like other examples of amateur music-making, historical evidence related to the Edisoneers is relatively scarce. The most detailed information about the group is found in the script to Episode No. 8, the Thanksgiving episode, where the Edisoneers are the subject of the “I’ll Bet You Never Knew” segment. The Edisoneers are introduced by the conceit that the musical guest, Metropolitan Opera soprano Dorothy Kirsten, believes that the Edisoneers are “professional singers dressed up in those Consolidated uniforms.” We learn that the 16 members of the TTBB chorus hail from various divisions within the company. Hicks speaks with four of the Edisoneers in scripted interviews, beginning with two bass singers. George C. Becker briefly relates his 28-year career at Con Edison, where he is now the head of the department that maintains nonresidential electric 9  Vaudevillians Eileen Stanley and Gus Van were each paid $100 for their participation in Episode 22. Contracts for this episode note: “The fee called for in this agreement is a token payment and is understood by artist to be accepted without prejudice, as a gesture to the old Palace Theatre.” Vocal stars Vivian Della Chiesa, Dorothy Kirsten, and Jane Pickens received $500 for their appearances. The minimum wage in 1946–1947 was 40 cents/hour (U.S. Department of Labor, 2009). A weekday issue of the New York Times cost 3 cents and ads within the February 20, 1947, Times show that A&P’s Eight O’Clock Coffee sold for 77 cents for two 1-lb bags; 52nd Street Wines and Liquors had Moët-Chandon champagne for $59/case and $4.95/bottle; and American Airlines advertised nonstop flights from New York to Chicago four times a day for $32.85, plus tax.

364   Asai meters. John T. King works in the payroll department for the division in charge of building the underground conduits that held electric cables. Although Con Edison’s underground conduits were considered important contributions to improving New York City by hiding unsightly wires that had crisscrossed the skies in earlier decades, John T.’s experience with Con Edison is not explored; rather, Hicks emphasizes John T’s “three years and seven months in Uncle Sam’s Army.” The emphasis on military service underscores Con Edison’s social responsibility through the service that Con Edison’s employees had provided to the nation, but also in terms of the company’s support of veterans—a point that is highlighted when the next interviewee, Eugene Coughlin, an 18-year employee in the Commercial Relations Department and a veteran of the Marine Corps, emphasizes that he found his job “waiting for him” upon his return from the war. A tenor, Coughlin provides historical information about the group when he states that he has “been with the Edisoneers ever since the group was first organized about 8 years ago.”10 Finally, John Garel, second tenor and substation operator who has worked at Con Edison for 26 years, is the only one among the Edisoneers who speaks of additional musical activities, mentioning his most recent role as Sir Tristan Mickleford in Flotow’s Martha, with what he describes as a “semi-pro opera group.”11 Although Martha was the type of popular opera from which a musical guest might have performed a particularly well-known number, the role of Sir Tristan is considerably more challenging than the repertoire the Edisoneers performed. The Edisoneers served two roles in each episode: they performed background harmonization accompanying the musical guests and they also sang at least one arrangement that highlighted them as the company chorus, with the radio orchestra accompanying them. The arrangement of Irving Berlin’s perennial favorite “Blue Skies,” used in Episode No. 4 (Figure 17.1), is representative of this latter role and is typical of the Edisoneers’ repertoire in drawing from the most popular songs of the mid-1940s. The Edisoneers’ parts include all four vocal lines (TTBB) and, as Ozalid photoreproductions, are identical to each other with the exception of hand-written names at the top of the page. The arranger never highlighted individual voices or attempted contrapuntal complexity within the vocal parts; the group is always treated as a unit. The songs usually have a dominant melodic line, here in the second tenor, and were arranged with fairly simple harmonies. There are also large swaths of unison and octave singing. In addition to the information the script provides about the members of the 16-man chorus, the manner in which the Edisoneers are presented to the listening audience is 10  Coughlin’s date roughly corresponds with the earliest evidence of the Edisoneers in the Bonime Collection—musical materials related to Con Edison’s pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It is uncertain whether the Edisoneers’ activities also ceased during the hiatus of Echoes, but there appear to have been no public performances by the group between 1941 and 1946. 11  The role of Sir Tristan in Friedrich Flotow’s Martha is for bass. The names written on the parts for the Edisoneers include Montgomery; G. Becker; McVeigh; J. W. Fitzpatrick; Bing (?); J. F. Murphy; M. Beuson; B. Penno; Hugh Draffin; Garel; Tietjen; W. J. Carpenter; Phil Franznick; John T. King; Cooney; and Griffith. Montgomery may be Lee Montgomery, the choral arranger and rehearsal director.

Music and Institutional Advertising   365

Figure 17.1  Edisoneer John  T.  King’s part for “Blue Skies,” used in Echoes, Episode No. 4. Accompanied by the radio orchestra, the performance by Consolidated Edison’s company chorus served as a form of institutional advertising. Credit: Josef Bonime Collection of Radio Music, Music Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

366   Asai key to the institutional advertising campaign of Echoes. While the Edisoneers allowed Echoes to purvey Con Edison’s largesse to the listener (Con Edison’s customers) as a patron of music, what seems most striking is the effort to portray Con Edison as an upstanding employer, both to the radio audience and, perhaps, to the employees of the company. The treatment of the Edisoneers within the Echoes scripts illuminates the social and cultural hierarchies of the time. In Episode No. 5, for example, Hicks interviews Dwight S. Sargent, personnel director for Con Edison, and remarks that the “prime concern” for Sargent is the “big family of Consolidated Edison people.” In Episode No. 8, when the members of the Edisoneers are addressed by their first names alone, it seems at first glance to emphasize familiarity. Yet each Edisoneer addresses Hicks as “Mr. Hicks,” which, to continue the familial analogy, suggests that in the corporate structure, employees are the children. This is in keeping with the ideals of welfare capitalism, where companies take a paternal interest in the welfare of their employees. Goodman (2011) connects sustaining or network-sponsored programming of classical music to a form of welfare capitalism engaged with efforts to avoid regulatory oversight, arguing that public service programming was the price paid by networks for private ownership. Marchand (1998) links the use of high culture in advertising with the development of what he terms “corporate soul,” or the desire of corporations to establish a social and moral legitimacy. At the same time, the “paternal neighborliness” exhibited in Echoes, particularly by King, and the program’s mixture of popular and classical music also suggest that Echoes straddled the transition to the “good neighbor” metaphor that Marchand suggests corporations began to favor by the 1940s (pp. 361–363). Cohen, Goodman, and Marchand all show that while institutional advertising tends to use soft-sell techniques, this form of advertising is also frequently a direct response to regulatory concerns (Goodman, 2011, p. xviii), labor issues (Cohen, 1990, p. 180), or damage control of negative publicity (Marchand, 1998, p. 333). In the case of Echoes’ 1946–1947 season, the return of the program after a five-year hiatus may perhaps be explained as a public relations campaign in response to just these sorts of concerns, as recorded in the New York Times. In January 1946, the Times began coverage of efforts by the Transport Workers Union of America to block the pending sale of city power plants to Con Edison (Crowell, 1946, p. 1). Of particular concern was Con Edison’s monopoly on power and the negative effect this would have on electricity rates. In June 1946, the Times reported that several entities had filed a complaint with the Public Service Commission due to Con Edison’s “excessive” electricity rates (“Electricity Rates Called Excessive,”  1946, p. 18; “Consolidated Edison Is Scored,” 1946, p. 38). Amid the ensuing rate inquiry hearings, Con Edison was forced to pass rate cuts; castigated for failing to act in the best interests of consumers and shareholders; and then threatened with a strike by employees (“Edison Employees Demand Pay Rise,” 1946, p. 11), who were concerned that the rate cuts would be passed on to workers. The workers’ union also noted in the print ad “Is ‘Con Edison’ a good place to work?” that Con Edison’s wages were considerably lower than other New York utilities (1946, p. 26).

Music and Institutional Advertising   367 In this light, Echoes may be seen as a precisely targeted defense. In Episode Nos. 4–13, King’s closing remarks include the statement: “Making Consolidated Edison a good place to work has helped these companies to give New Yorkers the best utility service at the lowest possible cost.” After concerns of an employee strike were averted, in Episode Nos. 14–24, King’s closing remarks changed to: “Labor and Management in this businessmanaged concern are working together to give New Yorkers the best utility service at the lowest possible cost,” emphasizing Con Edison’s corporate interests, which in the context of postwar America and the nascent days of the Cold War may have served as a standard-bearer for capitalism.

Conclusions Although any corporation can undertake institutional advertising, in which the company promotes itself rather than a specific product, Con Edison’s advertising as a utility was necessarily focused on shaping its image and building goodwill. To further these aims, institutional advertising could seek to inform the public about the work of the organization, which in Echoes was perhaps best seen in the “I’ll Bet You Never Knew” segments, which represented Con Edison as a valuable—if not central—public service for New York City. Nevertheless, the building of the kind of rapport that saw Con Edison as family and neighbor relied heavily on the persuasion of feelings. In Echoes, music—as opening and closing themes, background to dramatic sketches, bridges between segments, and featured numbers for musical guests and the Edisoneers—did much of this emotional work. From the first strains of the hurdy-gurdy playing “On the Streets of New York,” one role of music was to harness the power of nostalgia. Whether a listener was taken to a distant past or simply a few years back to a prewar New York City, nostalgia seems to have been a ready tool in Echoes’ programming. Longing for the past may have lowered listeners’ critical guard, but such feelings also allowed Con Edison to be inextricably tied to the founding of the modern city. The radio-variety format itself may have been a nostalgic reference, but the choice of this format also created a structure that allowed for a variety of musical genres to be heard within one episode. The musical selections offer a sense of the scope of the light classical, Broadway, and jazz repertoire that was deemed appropriate for Con Edison’s broad, middle-class audience. The weekly presence of Bonime and the Consolidated Edison Concert Orchestra further built Con Edison’s image. In keeping with patronage systems dating back centuries, the fact that Con Edison could, and did, support a “concert orchestra” no doubt enhanced the company’s prestige. Likewise mirroring traditional musical institutions, the company chorus reflected a desire to edify and uplift employees, but of course the Edisoneers also functioned as good advertisement: not only could they be used to carry the message, but also they were the message. The fact that the orchestra and perhaps even the Edisoneers were assembled solely for advertising campaigns emphasizes the deliberateness with which music was connected

368   Asai to the reputation Con Edison sought to build. Nevertheless, as this chapter has found, it is a mistake to limit our understanding of institutional advertising as merely about public image. The feelings institutional advertising sought to effectuate addressed real problems for the sponsor. Echoes was a response to particular contexts and worked for Con Edison to counter negative publicity related to regulatory concerns, electricity rates, and labor issues over wages. McCann-Erickson viewed the familiar radio-variety format, with its ability to combine education and entertainment, as most appropriate for a company seeking to shape public opinion. Echoes deliberately evoked nostalgia, but the past was clearly a foil for the present. This juxtaposition allowed Con Edison to frame itself as an established part of New York City, as a civic leader, and encouraged its customers to support the utility as a business.

Recommended Readings Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices: American broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Huron, D. (1989). Music in advertising: An analytic paradigm. Musical Quarterly, 73(4), 557–574. Marchand, R. (1998). Creating the corporate soul: The rise of public relations and corporate imagery in American big business. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Meyers, C. (2014). A word from our sponsor: Admen, advertising, and the golden age of radio. New York, NY: Fordham University Press. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

References Archival Resources Bonime, J. (n.d.). Summary of the Josef Bonime Library of Special Orchestral and Choral Music Arrangements. Josef Bonime Collection of Radio Music, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. McCann-Erickson. (1946–1947). Echoes of New York, Episodes 1–25.

Secondary Sources Alicoate, J. (Ed.). (1946). The 1946 radio annual. New York, NY: Radio Daily. Asai, R. (2016). “From operatic pomp to a Benny Goodman stomp!” Frame analysis and the National Biscuit Company’s Let’s Dance. In C. Baade & J. Deaville (Eds.), Music and the broadcast experience: Performance, production, and audiences (pp. 153–172). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Baade, C., & Deaville, J. (2016). Introduction. In C. Baade & J. Deaville (Eds.), Music and the broadcast experience: Performance, production, and audiences (pp. 1–28). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Music and Institutional Advertising   369 Beard, F. K. (2004). Hard-sell “killers” and soft-sell “poets”: Modern advertising’s enduring message strategy debate. Journalism History, 30(3), 141–149. Carskadon, T. (1935, March). Down the Death Valley Trail. Tower Radio. MSS 201, Box 15, Folder 19, Papers of John I. White, Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections & Archives, Logan, UT. Chase, G. (Ed.). (1946). Music in radio broadcasting. NBC-Columbia University Broadcasting Series. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Cohen, L. (1990). Making a new deal: Industrial workers in Chicago, 1919–1939. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Consolidated Edison is scored for its failure to refinance: Maltbie charges it has allowed months to pass in “most favorable market”—says rates will be based on low interest. (1946, June 5). New York Times, p. 38. Crowell, P. (1946, January 19). Power plant issue: TWU head sets strike within two weeks to halt proposed sale. New York Times, p. 1. DeLong, T.  A. (1991). Quiz craze: America’s infatuation with game shows. New York, NY: Praeger. DeLong, T. A. (1996). Radio stars: An illustrated biographical dictionary of 953 performers, 1920 through 1960. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Doerksen, C. J. (2005). American Babel: Rogue radio broadcasters of the Jazz Age. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Douglas, S. (1987). Inventing American broadcasting, 1899–1922. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Douglas, S. (1999). Listening in: Radio and the American imagination. New York, NY: Times Books. Edison employees demand pay rise: 25,000 unionized workers of utility. (1946, October 4). New York Times, p. 11. Electricity rates called excessive: Complaint filed with Public Service asks investigation of Consolidated Edison. (1946, May 3). New York Times, p. 18. Fox, S. (1984). The mirror makers: A history of American advertising and its creators. New York, NY: William Morrow. Goodman, D. (2011). Radio’s civic ambition: American broadcasting and democracy in the 1930s. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices: American broadcasting, 1922–1952. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hilmes, M. (Ed.). (2007). NBC: America’s network. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Human, A. (1943). Music library is “heart” of CBS network. Musical Courier, 127, 8. Is “Con Edison” a good place to work? (1946, October 26). New York Times, p. 26. Kosovsky, B. (2000). Bernard Herrmann’s radio music for the Columbia Workshop (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The City University of New York). LaPrade, E. (1947). Broadcasting music. New York, NY: Rinehart & Company. Lears, T. J. J. (1994). Fables of abundance: A cultural history of advertising in America. New York, NY: Basic Books. Loviglio, J. (2005). Radio’s intimate public: Network broadcasting and mass-mediated democracy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Marchand, R. (1985). Advertising the American dream. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

370   Asai Marchand, R. (1998). Creating the corporate soul: The rise of public relations and corporate imagery in American big business. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. McChesney, R. (1993). Telecommunications, mass media, and democracy: The battle for the control of U.S. broadcasting, 1928–1935. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. McGovern, C. F. (2006). Sold American: Consumption and citizenship, 1890–1945. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Meyers, C. (2014). A word from our sponsor: Admen, advertising, and the golden age of radio. New York, NY: Fordham University Press. Newman, K. M. (2004). Radio active: Advertising and consumer activism, 1935–1947. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Pope, D. (1983). The making of modern advertising. New York, NY: Basic Books. Razlagova, E. (2011). The listener’s voice: Early radio and the American public. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Russo, A. (2010). Points on the dial: Golden age radio beyond the networks. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Russo, A. (2016). Passing Pappy’s biscuits: Dynamics of uneven modernization in regional radio voices. In C. Baade & J. Deaville (Eds.), Music and the broadcast experience: Performance, production, and audiences (pp. 173–190). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Smulyan, S. (1994). Selling radio: The commercialization of American broadcasting 1920–1934. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Taylor, T. D. (2003). Music and advertising in early radio. Echo: A Music-Centered Journal, 5(2). Retrieved from http://www.echo.ucla.edu/volume5-issue2/taylor/index.html Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Truman, H. S. (1946). President’s News Conference, 26 September 1946 [Transcript]. Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. Retrieved from http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers. php?pid=1759 U.S.  Department of Labor. (2009). History of federal minimum wage rates under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938–2009. Retrieved from https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/ minimum-wage/history/chart

pa rt I I

TEXT Edited by Ron Rodman

TEXT Analytic and Historical Perspectives on Music and Advertising Ron Rodman

Part II of this volume deals with analyses and commentaries of advertising texts themselves. The authors of the chapters in this section borrow analytic concepts from musical, literary, and media analysis, using tools such as hermeneutics, genre theory, structural analysis, Schenkerian-style linear analysis, and more. The section is broken down into several subsections, including chapters on the nature of music and ­advertising in general, chapters on the use of musical genres in advertising (rock, punk rock, hip-hop, classical music), the borrowing of other media genres (animation and the American Western) in advertising, and the special advertising genre of political ads. To open the section, Timothy Taylor problematizes advertising within the system of late capitalism and how it transforms cultural goods into commodities through a capitalist lens. He contends that what advertising seeks to do is to retransform the commodity back to its cultural goods status, making it seem essential for consumers to have. Put another way, the process reveals a sort of strategy of occultation, where the appeal to the consumer is masked within a text that conveys its product as a necessary cultural good, all the while maintaining its status as a commodity. Nickolai Graakjær’s chapter is a classic example of a traditional semiotic analysis to describe how advertising uses sound, music, and images to “colonize” emotional states, thus claiming ownership of that emotion for the duration of the ad campaign. He demonstrates how the Coca-Cola Company has colonized the emotion of “happiness” through its “Open Happiness” campaign, designed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Coke “hobbleskirt” bottle.

374   Rodman Ron Rodman provides structural analyses of jingles, the brief, catchy tunes that accompanied many advertising texts on radio and television in the 1950s to 1970s. As of the early 21st century, jingles are rare on the airwaves; nevertheless, they have persisted in the imagination of American audiences. In his chapter, the author demonstrates the relationship of advertising jingles to contemporary popular song by using Schenkerianstyle linear analysis. The larger questions in these analyses are: (1) How brief can a musical work be and still be considered a complete musical piece? (2) How brief can snippets of music be and still persist in the memories of the audience? Rodman shows that jingles, including jingles of no more than four or five seconds, still have the requisite beginning– middle–end structures found in complete works of music, similar to pop tunes. Several chapters in this section examine the use of musical genres in advertising and how these different genres are used to target specific audiences. Bethany Klein grapples with the issue of “selling out,” that is, how popular musicians have gone from regarding their output as works of art and thus restricting their music to be associated with a particular product to artists actually embracing advertising and allowing their songs to be used for commercials—even to the point of appearing in radio and TV spots themselves. Klein covers issues of licensing, ad agency production values, and artists’ and fans’ attitudes toward marketing their music. This drastic change in position by performers marks a different attitude toward the media and to the notion of artistic production itself, where commercials are now considered a vehicle to help artists reach a larger audience for their compositional output. Jay Beck’s chapter deals with the use of punk rock in advertising and the irony of punk’s role in advertising. Beck provides a timeline for the use of punk rock in ads from the 1970s to the present, and accompanies this chronology with commentary of the ironies that accompany each decade. Beck points to the irony that in the 1970s, punk musicians would grant licenses for their music to be used in ads in the first place, as the antiestablishment attitude of punk would seem contrary to this—the “sell-out” trope that Klein covers in her chapter. However, many ads of the 1980s use punk rock music to massage and recontextualize the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos of punk through remixing the songs for ads in the sound booth. By the 2000s, punk music in advertising resonates with audiences familiar with the genre and creates a feeling of nostalgia for the music they heard in their youth. However, Beck poses the question of what this audience was nostalgic about. Was the nostalgia based on drug addiction? The alienation of culture? Rage? Nihilism? Beck concludes by raising the question of whether punk in advertising is really about the ethos of the movement, or do advertisers use it because it is just full of “good riffs.” Exploring the use of popular music in advertising even further, Katherine Reed traces rock icon David Bowie’s career in advertising. Bowie was a chameleon-like persona throughout his career in his live concerts, music videos, and recordings, portraying characters like Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, and others. Reed traces how Bowie’s placement in ads reflected his changing personae, from his 1987 Pepsi spot (“Creation”), to the 2003 Vittel ad (“Never Get Old”), to the 2013 Louis Vuitton short (“L’Invitation au Voyage”). As Reed says: “In these ads, Bowie’s iconicity as a performer is manipulated to effectively and immediately communicate not only Bowieness but

Text   375 also the timeless coolness of each brand through the invocation of specific images.” These ads featuring David Bowie continues the symbiotic relationship of celebrity and a product’s image that has permeated advertising for decades. Turning from pop tunes, David Clem writes about the use of classical music in ads, in particular, the use (or overuse) of “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff ’s Carmina Burana, and the opening, “Sunrise” to Richard Strauss’s tone poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra (better known to many as the opening to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey). Using Michael Long’s theory of register in music, Clem points to how these two pieces not only are used from the canon of Western art music but also, due to their use in cinema, have come to signify the trope of the “epic” to contemporary audiences—oftentimes ironically—in advertising. While both musical pieces are considered epic, “O Fortuna” approaches the epic from the medieval, while “Sunrise” from Also Sprach Zarathustra approaches epic from a futuristic perspective. Joanna Love considers the role of hip-hop music in advertising through a close reading of a popular commercial by the Geico Insurance Company in 2014. Love analyzes the ad “Push It/It’s What You Do” that features the 1980s hip-hop artists Salt-n-Pepa and DJ Spinderella. Love’s chapter deals with theories of humor that can be found in the ad, but ultimately, issues of race and privilege problematize the humor in the ad. While the ad’s intent is to show middleclass whites in precarious situations, the humor boomerangs by showing the hip-hop artists in typical white settings (the suburbs, urban coffee shops) where they have been historically excluded. The humor of the ad is thus blunted by the perpetuation of systematic racial and socioeconomic stereotypes that advocate for the cultural status quo. The third subsection of this part of the handbook deals with music in different advertising genres. Reba Wissner discusses the public service announcement (PSA), more specifically, how PSAs were used to inform the American public of a nuclear attack during the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s. In her chapter, she provides close readings of several short films from the 1950s and 1960s where musical tropes are borrowed from Hollywood cinema to convey the idea of “Americana” and “Otherness,” that is, the threat of the Soviet Union. Wissner determines that these films transcend advertising and may well go under the heading of “propaganda” instead. Kate Galloway covers environmentalist advertising by focusing on a protest video by Greenpeace against the LEGO toy company and their collaboration with the Shell Oil Company. In her chapter, Galloway takes a satirical video made by Greenpeace as a sort of “pseudo” PSA that turns its message around. The ad in question parodies the exuberant anthem “Everything Is Awesome” from The LEGO Movie by Tegan and Sara/The Lonely Island, changing the lyrics and playing the song against a backdrop of ecological disasters portrayed by LEGO toys. Galloway then shows how a transmedial relationship between YouTube video and film create an effective protest by using to The LEGO Movie in a satirical way. Mariana Whitmer explores the influence of the TV and movie Western genre soundtracks in advertising. Using Anna Lisa Tota’s concept of “hybridization,” Whitmer traces the use of Western music in TV commercials for cigarettes, women’s

376   Rodman undergarments, beef, data systems, ice cream, and other commodities. At the heart of Whitmer’s analysis is the notion of how perceptions of a familiar piece of music from a Western film change by the pairing of these pieces with advertising images on television. Political advertising receives a great deal of attention during election cycles in the United States and other democracies around the world. Three authors cover various phenomena of political advertising in this section. Lisa Scoggin furnishes a close reading of an animated cartoon, “Hell Bent for Election,” a political feature produced by UPA Studios as a vehicle for Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 re-election. Scoggin focuses on Earl Robinson and Yip Harburg’s score to the film, which is an interesting pastiche of quotations of familiar tunes combined with original composition. Scoggin provides an analysis of how the different musical styles provide a musical hermeneutic of meaning in the ad, with musical topics conveying the virtue of the Roosevelt administration and the ineptitude of the Republican challenger. Justin Patch surveys the changing landscape of music in political ads through the mid- to late 20th century. He traces the turning point of the political ad on electronic media to the “Daisy” ad of the Johnson campaign of 1964. This ad marked the end of the jingle and testimonial ads of the 1950s and ushered in ads that used musical tropes that are common in the narrative cinema or, more accurately, by movie trailers that would reach an even larger audience. Patch asserts that the affect (and effect) of these ads was actually to narrow or close debate by leveraging the emotional responses of a candidate’s partisans, rather than to appeal to logic or reason. The implication that audiences are manipulated by these sonic soundscapes is chilling. This type of advertising continues to this day, as found in the ads of the Obama and Trump campaigns. Finally, continuing the topic of emotion and meaning in campaign ads, Paul Christiansen posits a taxonomy of musical emotions for political ads. Using theories of emotion by Martha Nussbaum as a model, Christiansen traces emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and patriotism in the political campaign ads of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and candidates in local elections.

Approaches to A na lyz i ng M usic and Advertising

chapter 18

Ta k i ng th e Gift Ou t a n d Pu t ti ng It Back I n From Cultural Goods to Commodities1 Timothy D. Taylor

This chapter is about how the economic value of cultural commodities in the capitalist marketplace is created or increased. I am interested in the ways that cultural goods are transformed into commodities through processes of translation and purification, which appear to strip away the noncapitalist social relations and noneconomic forms of value that went into the production of a particular cultural good, and I am interested in the processes of consecration and/or promotion that reanimate cultural commodities with values that are designed to emulate noneconomic forms of value, in effect seemingly, but only seemingly, defetishizing them. The many processes of consecration and promotion are designed to make the newly minted cultural commodity appear to be something other than what it is, a commodity, the product of alienated labor. In essence, I am arguing that capitalism takes the gift out of the commodity (as Anna Tsing [2013] theorizes the process usually called commodification) by alienating labor and masking social relations, but through processes of consecration and/or promotion 1  This chapter began life as a conference presentation at the American Anthropological Association in 2014. I would like to think the panel organizers, Samuel Weeks and Vanessa J. Diaz, for organizing the panel and inviting me to participate, and the other panelists, Andrew Apter, Camille Frazier, Daniel Bradburd, and Fred R. Myers, for their contributions and support. I would also like to thank my anonymous interviewee for their willingness to be interviewed. Hannah Appel offered trenchant comments and recommendations that were extremely useful and for which I am grateful. And thanks go out to the audience at the Department of Music at Hong Kong University who heard and responded to an early version of this chapter, with further thanks to audiences at the University of Edinburgh, University of Oxford, and Kings College, London, and attendees at the conference “Branding ‘Western Music’ ” at the University of Bern, who heard a later version. As ever, deepest thanks go to Sherry B. Ortner.

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   379 creates a simulacrum of a gift through representations of unalienated labor and intact social relations. To make a distinction between economic and noneconomic forms of value (or commodities and gifts) is something of a heuristic; I do not conceptualize “the economic” as an autonomous realm; rather, people are engaged in practices all the time  that make capitalism appear to be autonomous (see Bear, Ho, Tsing, & Yanigisako, 2015). Here, I am concerned with how goods circulate and move through different regimes of value. Goods circulate, possessing social lives or cultural biographies (Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff, 1986). I can spend money to buy a musical instrument, but that doesn’t capture or quantify the pleasure I derive from playing it and, at least in my mind, bears little or no relationship to the occasional income I derive from playing in Irish bars. But capitalism is the dominant economic system in the West and, increasingly, everywhere else, even if it, as I will discuss, depends on other modes of the production of value. So, I align myself here with Anna Tsing’s (2015) view of things with the acknowledgment of the prevalence of capitalism, but while recognizing just how much it relies on other modes of production, other forms of value. The dominance of capitalism, alongside the continuing existence of noneconomic regimes of value, constitutes the reason that I still believe it useful to focus on capitalism while employing the heuristic of sorting out economic and noneconomic forms of value. What interests me in this chapter is a specific set of processes by which a musical good is transformed into a commodity—a good with an economic form of value—and how some forms of noneconomic value are (sometimes) created for it after it has become a commodity. What is usually reduced to “commodification” is actually a set of processes in which noneconomic forms of value seem to be systematically removed. I write “seem to be” because commodities remain full of the social relations of their production, and new social relations are created in their circulation and consumption: Commodities remain social goods (see Maurer, 2006). But the processes of commodification seem to strip away these social meanings. The purpose of consecration and promotion is to execute a kind of sleight of hand, the creation of an illusion of a good that represents noneconomic forms of value that may precede them and is superior to them. The history of consecration and promotion—and not just of cultural commodities—is a history of attempting to build ever stronger connections between commodities and consumers as supply chains grow longer—both in number of workers and discrete nodes and geographically—and more complex. In other words, the more alienated a commodity becomes through its traversal of ever greater nodes in a supply chain, the more that strategies of consecration and promotion are required to present to consumers the appearance of a unique good. Such processes aren’t always employed, however, since decisions always need to be made about what to promote, with how many resources, and more. In making these arguments, I will be examining the production of music as part of a supply chain in what anthropologist Anna Tsing has called “supply-chain capitalism”; economic value, she argues, is created at every stage of a supply chain (Tsing, 2009, 2013, 2015).

380   Taylor For her, supply chain capitalism is a way of amassing wealth without much factory work, and without rationalizing labor and raw materials. Supply chain capitalism relies on what she calls “translation,” from one social or political space to another, one regime of value to another (Tsing, 2015, p. 62). I will also be drawing on other anthropological theories of value, and updated treatments of a classic sociological theory, to understand how processes of consecration and/or promotion can create or add value to cultural commodities. Examining these two ways of creating or adding to the economic value of cultural goods—supply chains and myriad strategies of promotion and/or consecration—is a useful means to understand how the value of cultural commodities is created and amplified. Tsing seems to view the workings of supply chain capitalism as fairly distinct processes, commenting that the athletic shoe giant Nike chose advertising and branding as ways to generate economic value rather than “making value through trade as translation” (2015, p. 118). The point of this chapter, however, is that promotion isn’t simply another way to create value but is a way of producing or generating value necessitated by supply chain capitalism. Processes of promotion only seem to be incidental because people need to decide what to advertise and/or market and/or brand, how, and with how many resources—not all goods in an inventory are promoted, and if they are, not to the same degree or in the same way. Nonetheless, I argue that industrially produced inventory necessitates, at the very least, decisions about advertising, marketing, and branding to make one firm’s inventory appear to be different from—and more desirable than—another’s. Tsing’s insightful discussion of the importance of assessment—sorting—in the collecting and sale of matsutake mushrooms gathered in nature (2013, 2015) might seem to be far from the world of the production of cultural commodities. But she makes important points about the workings of supply chain capitalism and the integral role played by distinct groups of social actors in these processes. While supply chain capitalism of mass-produced goods is indeed far from Tsing’s study, the capitalist music industry is not that different, with its own supply chains, whether of published music, recorded music in physical formats or digital formats, or music produced for film, television, streaming, or gaming. Tsing makes powerful observations about the nature of today’s capitalism—that it is not a totality, and that it continues to rely, as it always has, on noncapitalist modes of production, whether the gathering of mushrooms by volunteers harvesting them from public lands in nature or, in the realm of musical goods, all the labor performed by fans, disciples, colleagues, and many others in discovering this or that musician and championing that musician over another, defending that musician against critics, and more. The practices of assessment carried out in the sorting of mushrooms—much of which is logically unnecessary, as mushrooms are sorted multiple times—is, Tsing argues, how they are converted from gift status to commodity status, purified as commodities. And this is also, I argue, how cultural goods such as music become cultural commodities as well.

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   381 I will continue to employ Tsing’s arguments in what follows, but at this point I need to lay the groundwork for the discussion of the other main way that economic forms of value of commodities are created or enhanced, through processes of consecration and/ or promotion. I use the latter term to encompass not just advertising, but the use of marketing and, later, branding. In part, of course, Tsing’s ideas still obtain, since all of the mechanisms of promotion constitute more nodes in the supply chain. But in what follows, I will mainly be relying on some 19th-century social theorists: Werner Sombart, whose work I have found to be useful in sorting out questions about this sort of value, especially as the former has been taken up by Chandra Mukerji (1983) and Arjun Appadurai (1986). Appadurai proposes to place luxury goods—which, in his formulation, correspond nicely to artworks—in a special “register” of consumption; they are not the opposite of, or bereft of, use value; their principal use, he says, is rhetorical and social. They are what he calls “incarnated signs,” and “the necessity to which they respond is fundamentally political” (1986, p. 38, emphasis in original). I would, however, construe “political” as “cultural” more broadly—certain goods take on seemingly nonutilitarian values in certain social groups in certain places and times. Appadurai takes off from Sombart (1967), whose theory of the origin of capitalism is founded on the idea of the consumption of luxury goods in the French court beginning in the 13th and 14th centuries, and who viewed luxury goods as being nonutilitarian. Appadurai is correct not to follow Sombart and dwell on the lack of utility of luxury goods; at least with respect to the arts, I would argue that this can only be understood ethnographically and historically. And Appadurai makes a point about luxury goods that also carries over equally well to artworks: “From the consumption point of view, aspects of this luxury register can accrue to any and all commodities to some extent, but some commodities in certain contexts, come to exemplify the luxury register” (1986, p. 38). It is the same with artworks: Some become considered to be important, timeless, and indispensable, while others do not. But this can change over time. Appadurai argues that this definition of luxury goods means that they can be found in all cultures, as can, of course, practices and cultural goods that could be considered to be artistic. Appadurai provides a useful list of the characteristics of luxury goods in this special register of consumption: They are restricted, by price or law, to social elites; there is complexity in their acquisition, which may or may not be related to actual scarcity; there is semiotic virtuosity in their social signifying and interpretation; specialized knowledge is required for their consumption that is thought to be appropriate; and there is a close connection between the consumption of such goods and the consumer’s body, person, or personality (Appadurai, 1986, p. 38). If we view cultural goods as luxury goods, we can then begin to understand why consumers might decide to invest time in seeking them, collecting them, and consuming them, and why they might desire to spend disproportionately more money for artworks than other goods that were produced in the same amount of labor time (see Taylor, 2017).

382   Taylor

The Advent of Sound Recording and Advertising and Changes in the Creation and Amplification of Economic Forms of Value Now let me briefly consider Anna Tsing’s discussion of assessment—sorting, judging. She calls forms of assessment that are intended to block gift-like social relations “alienation assessment” (2013, p. 23)—this is how the gift is taken out of the commodity in her thinking. But alienation is achieved through other strategies, which, she believes, are designed into all commodity chains, “from design through marketing.” “Thinking through assessment,” she writes, “allows us to consider how the commodity form can be made without industrial labor though a process of translation” (2013, p. 23). What she calls “alienation assessment,” she writes, “privatizes and commodifies by interposing a process that is self-consciously blind to constitutive social relations.” And Tsing points out the importance of assessment in supply chain capitalism, in which the rationalization of inventory takes precedence over the disciplining of labor and natural resources (2013, p. 24). The advent of sound recording in the late 19th century introduced a new form of the music commodity, music as sound, not as a concert ticket and experience, or sheet music, and also incorporated new nodes in the music supply chain, new workers such as recording engineers, and everyone involved in reproduction, promotion, distribution, and sales of the recorded music. Assessment is present at every stage—who to record, the quality of the result, what to release, which recordings to distribute, advertise, stock. And inventory becomes more important. One way that player piano roll manufacturers peddled their wares was by claiming that people could purchase more player piano music than they could ever learn to play themselves (see Taylor, 2017), and both these manufacturers and the record labels touted a better roster of artists than their competitors; this is part of supply chain capitalism, in which, as Tsing writes, “discipline is directed toward inventory” (2013, p. 25). Industrialized promotion thus begins to emerge as a powerful way of creating value for inventory, though in this instance it is closely tied to the consecration of record labels or label lines by drawing on the cultural prestige of classical music, as I will discuss. At first, sound recordings could not be mass-produced—musicians had to make them one or perhaps a few at a time by singing or playing into the recording horn. Each phonograph recording was therefore in some sense an original, unique, or one of just a few, closer to being a gift than a commodity, its value determined by the labor time of the musicians and others in the supply chain. This was part of a 19th-century ethos when many goods were still not mass-produced and people were accustomed to purchasing unique goods, whether or not bespoke. Thomas Edison’s famous 1878 article on the uses of the phonograph makes it clear that he is thinking of the phonograph as an instrument

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   383 mainly for individuals to create sound recordings for themselves and others—as gifts (reprinted in Taylor, Katz, & Grajeda, 2012). One could make one’s own recordings using Edison’s machine—that’s what he thought it was for. Recordings of prerecorded music were thus not the alienated commodities they would become. The focus in the recording industry in this period was therefore more on the machine than the recording: The machines provided a way of continuing an earlier set of social relations by recording oneself and sharing with others one knew—making gifts of unique objects. Commercial recordings of music were sold in this period, but there were few stars; most recordings were sold by genre or instrument or vocal group. Phonograph manufacturing companies advertised recordings in the most basic fashion, simply listing what was in their catalogs, and not always including names of performers. In 1900, processes of mass reproduction were introduced. Performers were already somewhat alienated from their audiences (stories abound of the difficulties performers had performing for horns or, later, for radio microphones and not live audiences; see Taylor et al., 2012) and from their recordings. But the advent of mass reproduction added a node in the supply chain—factories for the mass reproduction of sound recordings. To generate inventory, major record labels in the United States and Europe immediately sent recording engineers to record music in East and South Asia and other places to generate more inventory; hundreds and hundreds of such recordings were made (see Gaisberg,  1942; Gronow, 1981; Jones, 2001; Lubinski & Steen, 2017). With this emphasis on inventory, the modern sound recording industry was born. The main commodity ceased to be the playback machine but the sound recording, which increasingly became commodified through the processes of supply chain capitalism and became the main means of creating economic value. Individual recordings were no longer unique possessions, the gift having been taken out by this new reproduction technology, reminiscent of the absence of aura famously argued by Walter Benjamin (though not in relation to music) (Benjamin,  1968; see Taylor, 2001, for a consideration of Benjamin’s argument with respect to music). The introduction of mass duplication technologies meant, of course, that recordings could no longer be sold as unique items. Consumers had to be convinced that these new mass-produced recordings were more desirable than the originals they were accustomed to purchasing, and the recording industry adopted much the same strategy as the player piano industry had, by emphasizing the quality of performances and touting especially highbrow releases—and by advertising heavily (see Samples, 2011). Prices of prerecorded music fell, from $1 to $2 each to 50 to 75 cents as they began to flood the market. Demand for playback machines and recordings skyrocketed early in the 20th century (Millard, 2005, p. 49). The rise not so much of recording technology as technology but of the music recording industry in general after the introduction of mass reproduction in 1900 is quite striking as a transitional moment, particularly if one is interested in questions of value. Before mass reproduction, some people conceptualized recordings as commodities, but the vast majority of proselytizing and advertising in this period was for playback devices, not recordings. Not until the rise of mass reproduction did the industry shift from mainly focusing on playback technologies to an increasing emphasis on prerecorded music. And with this shift we find an explosion of promotional strategies surrounding

384   Taylor music recordings, invoking every conceivable discourse of noneconomic value in attempts to consecrate these commodities: from the sociopolitical (access to the world’s greatest music has been democratized) to value in terms of heirlooms (the world’s greatest musicians are now recorded for posterity), convenience (one can listen to the world’s greatest music in the comfort of one’s home), and quantity (one can own more recordings of music than one could ever learn to perform oneself), and still more (see Taylor et al., 2012). With the mass reproduction of recordings of music and the shift of emphasis to them, more detailed advertisements for labels and their wares appeared, sometimes focusing on particular segments of manufacturers’ catalogs in ways that were intended to create perceptions of value. Here we see the beginning of the necessity for creating value through advertising and marketing as a way of not only promoting a particular firm’s own inventory but also competing with other firms and theirs. One strategy was to create specialty lines for certain kinds of music. The creation of value was frequently attempted around high-prestige music, for it was thought that it would be easier to justify charging higher prices for recordings if they were of music considered to be highbrow, about which there was a fair amount of discussion in this era (see Levine, 1988, and Taylor et al., 2012). The creation of specialty lines like Red Seal at the Victor label consecrated those lines by valorizing certain musicians, perhaps especially the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso (1873–1921). Before the Red Seal line, introduced in 1902, all of Victor’s recordings had been issued on discs with black labels, but the company decided to create this upscale line for its classical artists such as the celebrated tenor. Victor used different packaging, placed the Red Seal releases in a different catalog, and charged more for these recordings than those with black labels. Victor attempted to leverage the fame of its musicians not only to create the new Red Seal line but also to justify charging more (see Suisman, 2009): $2, when most recordings cost between 35 cents and $1 (historical inflation calculators don’t go back to 1903 dollars, but $2 in 1913, the earliest year for which calculations are available, would be worth over $48 today, a shocking number). Victor was quite naked in its strategy of both producing and profiting from the fame of its artists. “The reputation and popularity of Victor artists is a large factor in the merchandising of their Records,” declared the company to its dealers in 1924. “Their fame is really one of the things you deal in, and yet one that costs you nothing. Therefore, it is to your advantage when that fame is widespread” (quoted by Suisman, 2009, p. 130). With respect to Caruso, Victor exhorted its dealers in 1910: “Push Caruso—push his great big name (the biggest in the musical firmament) and his wonderful records for all their worth. . . . He is the one artist who stands alone” (quoted by Suisman, p. 130, ellipses in Suisman, emphasis in original). Victor’s Red Seal recordings were peddled with lavish, full-page advertisements, sometimes in color, in national magazines; a 1904 advertisement read: Just think of it, to hear in your own home the soul-stirring arias and concerted numbers that have immortalized the names of Verdi, Gounod, Donizetti, Mozart, Wagner, Puccini, Leoncavallo and all the other great composers . . . to hear the

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   385 masterpieces of music that before the days of the Victor were almost always hidden mysteries, which few indeed could ever know or hope to understand. (quoted by Suisman, 2009, pp. 109–110, ellipsis in Suisman)

This lofty, even hyperbolic, rhetoric and extravagant advertising persisted for decades (see Figure 18.1). David Suisman writes that between 1901 and 1929, Victor spent $52.7 million on advertising, making the company one of the most extravagant advertisers in the world in this period (Suisman, 2009, p. 114). Frank Presbrey’s history of advertising in the

Figure 18.1  Victor advertisement of Enrico Caruso, 1921 (author’s collection).

386   Taylor

Figure 18.2  Victor advertisement, Caruso and others listening to a recording, 1914 (author’s collection).

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   387 United States reported that the centerspread advertisement for the Victor Talking Machine company made up one-fifth of all the advertising of the 38 pages of the Saturday Evening Post, one of the most popular magazines in America in that period, on April 25, 1903 (Presbrey, 1929, p. 440). Just in the year 1912, the company spent $1.5 million on advertising (if this were 1913 dollars, it would be over $36 million today). Advertisements did not simply push these goods but attempted, as I have been arguing, to create an illusion of a unique good, a good that was not a commodity fetish, not produced by alienated labor. Recorded musicians would be pictured listening to recordings (Figure 18.2), or, sometimes, as Suisman writes, they were shown touring factories, as if to lessen the distance in the supply chain from artist to factory and, by implication, from factory to listener (Suisman, 2009). Victor wasn’t simply borrowing the prestige of classical music; it was building on discourses of prestige that already existed, discourses that created a form of noneconomic value for this music. These discourses weren’t that old at the time of Victor’s employment of them to consecrate its products. Lawrence W. Levine has written of the campaign waged by the journalist, critic, and editor John Sullivan Dwight, who was a tireless champion not just of classical music but of that music as something sacred. Dwight was instrumental in the founding of the Boston Symphony along those ideals in 1881, aided by a sympathetic financial backer, Henry Lee Higginson (Levine, 1988). The point here is that the sacralization of Western European classical music that now goes largely unquestioned by most in American university music departments and concertgoers is actually a regime of value that not only has a history but also has a fairly recent one, and that Victor and other record labels drew on it in the consecration of some of their products. This is the sort of noneconomic form of value created in noncapitalist social relations that capitalism requires not just for its continued hegemony but for its existence. Supply chain capitalism in the sales and distribution of recordings draws not only on various nodes in the chain to create value; some of those nodes are dedicated to making commodities seem to be gifts again.

Brands and Branding as Modes of Enhancing Forms of Economic Value as Commercial Consecration Let’s move now to branding, which is of course a form of promotion, but it is also a sort of commercial consecration. What we now call branding began in the late 19th to early 20th centuries mainly as a form of distinctive packaging, a way for consumers to distinguish easily between different products on the store shelves (Moor, 2007). The rise of inventory creates the necessity for producing differences, illusory or not, between one firm’s inventory and another’s. Capitalism requires these sorts of distinctions, and we have seen them already with respect to record labels or lines within labels such as

388   Taylor Victor’s Red Seal. But in the 1930s and 1940s, advertisers and their agencies began to realize that it could be possible to produce psychologically closer relationships between consumers and brands (see Taylor, 2012), and by the 1960s, particularly after the publication of some influential articles (Gardner & Levy, 1955; Levy, 1964) and changes in market research (see Taylor, 2012), brands in some ways became seen by consumers as more important than the products themselves. The process that makes this all happen became known as “branding,” which is analyzed and proselytized in a massive number of works in the advertising and marketing trade press and is beginning to be taken seriously by scholars (some cited previously). It has become, as Jean Baudrillard once observed, the “principal concept of advertising” (Baudrillard, 1988). I will reserve the term branding to refer to this more recent phenomenon, viewing usages of the term before the 1960s (e.g., Vazsonyi, 2010) as anachronistic, referring more accurately to forms of self-promotion and publicity that have a much longer history that continues to the present. Today, branding is a concerted industrial effort to use the apparatus of advertising and marketing (and polling and the use of focus groups, coolhunting and trendspotting firms, and ethnography and more) to attempt to create personal connections between consumers and commodities. Commodities are animated, and consumers are encouraged to think of them almost as friends or confidants, part of their social worlds. Branding in effect is a kind of further heightening of the fetishism of the commodity, in which the actual but unperceived social relations that went into its production are not revealed but are replaced with social relations manufactured by advertising agencies and others. Such processes can be used for all commodities, and cultural commodities are no different. It has become routine to speak of musicians and bands as brands, their “brand image,” what is good or not good for their brand (see Taylor, 2016b). There is a massive apparatus that is available to be deployed to create noneconomic forms of value for cultural commodities today. Some of this is fairly rudimentary marketing and publicity, but some of it could also be considered to be branding. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) , marketing and promotion are the biggest expense in “breaking” (introducing) a new artist to the public, which creates a fan base and opportunities for merchandising and touring. It costs roughly $1 million to break an artist. Table 18.1 shows how IFPI details the cost of breaking a new artist. Marketing and promotion can be anywhere from about a quarter to a third of this budget, and as many have argued, music videos—another significant chunk of the budget— are really nothing more than advertisements for recordings, and could just as easily be counted in the marketing and promotion budget. In film the increase in marketing costs is even more dramatic: in 1980, the average cost of marketing a studio film in the United States was about $4.3 million (almost $12.5 million today). By 2007, that figure was almost $36 million (over $41 million today), a figure that has become standard (McClintock, 2014). Another statistic puts it this way: in 2008, the average cost of producing a film was $106.6 million, $70.8 million of which was on production costs and $35.9 million of which was on advertising and marketing, or roughly a third (Friedman, 2008).

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   389 Table 18.1  Typical Investment by a Major Record Company in a Newly Signed Artist (IFPI 2012, p. 11) Advance

US $200,000

Recording

US $200,000–300,000

Two or Three Videos

US $50,000–300,000

Tour Support

US $100,000

Marketing and Promotion

US $200,000-500,000

TOTAL

US $750,000–1.4 million

Early efforts to brand musicians were not based on the practices of them as musicians but were instead endeavors to cobrand them with other commodities, the recording industry perhaps being savvy enough to let consumers form their own emotional connections with music and musicians they liked; probably the best example still is a series of commercials for Pepsi featuring Michael Jackson in the 1980s (see Love, 2015). In 1997, Billboard reported that Sony Music’s arm Sony Signature Music (SSM), founded four years earlier, was attempting to cobrand its stars with all sorts of merchandise, “taking recording artists’ images, logos, and even their names far beyond concert souvenir stands to shelves in department and specialty stores across the globe” (Kaplan, 1997, p. 59). SSM’s CEO Dell Furano said, “Our goal is very simple: We have to bring in more value to the artist than simply selling their merchandise at concerts” (Kaplan, 1997, p. 59). SSM’s clients included artists that weren’t signed to Sony. SSM licensed music and genres as part of a strategy they called Totally Integrated Music Marketing (TIMM), which combined live events, retail merchandising, radio, sponsorships, and commercial endorsements, all designed to generate non-tour revenue (Kaplan, 1997, p. 59). The initial aim was to earn $500,000 annually for artists in royalties from licensing; Furano hoped to reach $3 to $4 million eventually by developing products sold at major retailers and elsewhere (Kaplan, 1997, p. 59). SSM wanted to move beyond merchandising of common items such as T-shirts and move into entire lines of clothing and “apparel accessories”—backpacks, bandanas, hats, jewelry, scarves, shoelaces, umbrellas, slippers, wallets, and purses. And then there were housewares— lamps, sheets, blankets, curtains, glassware, shot glasses, towels, and more. According to Furano, “Just think of any accessory in the licensing industry that’s been exploited somewhat, some way, with something” (Kaplan, 1997, p. 59). SSM had three different options they could pursue in linking clients to brands. One was through imagery, employing the artist’s logo or signature, such as the Grateful Dead red and blue skull (the Dead were clients). Another approach was to find a manufacturer to create a line of a product, such as Toni Braxton jewelry, and match that product with what were thought to be Braxton’s qualities—“her sassiness, her appeal, her sexiness, her sophistication” (Kaplan, 1997, p. 59). This strategy was not intended to be that overt, simply an association with a client with a brand. Kristine Ross, SSM’s vice president of

390   Taylor worldwide licensing and marketing, said, “It becomes more of a branding issue than having the product itself actually say Toni on it” (Kaplan, 1997, p. 60). Around the same time, a strategy that was known as “brand extension” was in use, finding “an outside partner to enhance their brand and to get our product into the hands of the target market at a low price,” according to PolyMedia Senior Vice President (U.S.) John Esposito (Fitzpatrick,  1998, p. 10). Esposito was speaking of a compilation CD aimed at teen girls that PolyMedia was producing with Teen magazine. By the end of the last century, licensing and merchandising in the music industry were worth about $5.5 billion in royalties, the result of about $110 billion in retail sales of licensed products, according to Charles Riotto, executive director of the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association (Traiman, 1999, p. 63). Today, guides for budding musicians frequently contain advice about how to create and manage one’s brand. These guides, both published (e.g., Tortorella, 2013) and seemingly ubiquitous on the internet, articulate the gospel according to today’s marketing and advertising industry, that to stand out in today’s crowd, it isn’t enough just to be good; you have to have a recognizable brand or “branded image,” one that “immediately tells your fans who you are and what you do.” This is accomplished in part through the creation of a logo, which allows a band “to instantly gain recognition and set a mood” for its audience. “The more your audience sees your branded image,” this website advises, “the more likely you are to gain credibility and earn fans . . . paying fans.” More than that, “a branded image establishes you as a legitimate musician and makes it easier for your fans— or ‘customers’—to identify with you, and it presents upsell opportunities such as apparel, hats and other merchandise.” If you don’t have a branded image, you have nothing but a band name, but “with a branded image, you have a unique style that sets you apart from all other musicians.” In other words, it’s not your music that sets you apart from other musicians, but your branded image. This branded image is created by considering both the genre of music of the band and the fans, “their likes and dislikes, their passions, and what they respond to.” And it is important to research your competitors and attempt to figure out how you are different (“Musician Marketing: Branding,” n.d.) In processes of branding, cultural producers can lose control of their own selfrepresentations, their own self-authored forms of publicity and self-promotion, surrendering to an industry that specializes in such things. Branding today is really an attempt largely by people external to cultural producers themselves—more nodes in the supply chain—to create noneconomic forms of value for cultural producers and their image and work to generate greater profits. It is a recognition that the profit derived from the creation of noneconomic forms of value around an artist can be worth more than whatever profit the artist generates through his or her actual cultural production. Many have written of how human labor was reconceptualized by proponents of neoliberal capitalist ideologies and policies as “human capital,” and branding is one manifestation of this shift (see Taylor, 2016b). Every promotional strategy from the past—merchandising, music videos, and much more—has been pulled in and subsumed under the ideology of the brand, and each is yet another way of employing a form of economic value to (it is hoped) convert noneconomic forms of value into

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   391 greater profits. Today, most major musicians routinely sign what are known in the industry as “360 deals,” contracts that cover everything—recordings, touring, merchandise, licensing, guest appearances, and more. Such deals make use of all of the modes of creating and amplifying noneconomic forms of value that I have discussed: They give to those who control the deal a cut of all possible revenue streams. All this contributes to the branding of the artist, though many resist since they realize that the record labels are taking money out of their pockets (see Taylor, 2016b). A table from a 2013 book on the music industry (O’Reilly, Larsen, & Kubacki, 2013, p. 136, reproduced here as Table 18.2) shows just how many available strategies there cur-

Table 18.2  Layering of Texts in Musical Production (from O’Reilly, Larsen and Kubacki, 2013, p. 136) Layer 1

Layer 2

Layer 3

Layer 4

Layer 5

 

 

MERCHANDISE T-shirts Sweatshirts Hoodies Hats

WEBSITE Newsletters Tour Record News News Archive Talk

GIGS Stage design Lighting Instruments Equipment Sound mix Movement Setlist Musical performance

SONGS Music Lyrics Sounds

  COVER ART/ SLEEVE NOTES Artwork Text Lyrics Logo Photographs

 

 

VISUAL IMAGES Artwork Photographs

 

MUSICAL PRODUCT Vinyl CD Concert DVD Music DVD

Lyrics Music Art   Side projects

PERSONAL APPEARANCE Jewelry Tattoos Piercings Clothing

 

 

MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS Interviews Posters Flyers Advertisements Website Social Media

Noticeboard Links Contact      

MERCH BOOTH Musical product Merchandise

The Shop

392   Taylor rently are for these industrial uses of economic forms of value to brand artists, to ­create, disseminate, and translate noneconomic forms of value into economic forms—many more nodes in an almost bewilderingly complex series of supply chains. It perhaps doesn’t need to be said that the workers who perform the operations laid out in Table 18.2 are numerous, and increasingly decentered, no longer located in record labels, which have left to musicians themselves many of former promotional functions they used to perform. Musicians today are expected to spend a good deal of time on social media; record labels also employ specialty firms that advertise, brand, or publicize their musicians. The supply chain has grown immensely—perhaps we should call it a supply web—creating value at every node, some of which are concerned with consecration or promotion. We could just as easily speak of value chains, though perhaps a more apt metaphor would be scenes or situations in which value is in constant motion. A Los Angeles–based music worker in a managerial position who didn’t want to be named explained the complex ways that musicians in the indie rock fields are related to fans, and how fans in other industries are able to support musicians through brand relationships. The indie rock field, with its dominant noneconomic value of the hip and the cool (see Taylor, 2016a), is attractive to many outside the field. This worker’s job is to bring brands, musicians, and fans together, commingling noneconomic and economic forms of value, while appearing to make noneconomic forms of value seem to be available outside of the field where they originated. This requires a good deal of effort, part of which is directed at laundering economic value so that it still appears to be authentic and intact as a noneconomic form of value. They told me: Indie music in particular is full of creative fans. If you really want to look at the psychographics of someone that listens to a band that’s on 4AD [a British indie label], ok, let’s look at The National, for instance, one of my favorite bands, seen them a million times. It took the National 4 records to ever chart. They got a New York Times piece about it, for God’s sakes, there’s a documentary about it. You know the average National ticket is now $70-80, ’cause they’re playing these really special things, and they wear rag & bone [designer clothing], the people who go to see them wear rag & bone, the people who go to see them probably have a four-year degree if not more, probably work in the ad or entertainment media space in some capacity, and the ones that probably don’t live in metropolitan areas are probably the coolest, most hip people in the area that they live in. And they’re drinking $25 bottles of wine, because he’s drinking $25 bottle of wine onstage, and there’s a science to that, there’s a methodology to that, and there’s a longevity that comes from that as well. The people that follow that type of artist are the people that have disposable incomes, so it makes sense for a tech company to want to back them. It makes sense for the rag & bone, which makes a $200 T-shirt, to back them, because at the end of the day, you’ve really hit on something, because people want to feel cool, they want to feel a part of something. And the psychology behind that is never going to go away.  (Interview, September 18, 2014)

So, we have an indie band with a lot of credibility—a noneconomic value—that has achieved some degree of success and wears expensive clothes supplied by a hip brand,

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   393 clothes that are copied by their fans (see Zemler, 2013), who also drink wine that is consumed by the band. The National has such an indie reputation that it is effectively inoculated against whatever negative impression that might arise from being seen as promoting commodities, with the result that the National essentially launders those goods, turning them from commodities with economic value into signs of indie credibility, a noneconomic form of value important in the indie rock world. In a sense, they are actively “untranslated,” to refer back to Tsing’s framework—transformed from commodities to gifts to the band that come to signify something other than their commodity status, reinjected into a world as social values.

Conclusions I have attempted to show that what is usually called “commodification” is, as Tsing argues, a process of translation, of taking something produced in a system of noneconomic (or noncapitalist) social relations and transforming it into a commodity bearing economic value. This process can occur through the workings of what she calls supply chain capitalism, and there are many examples in the history of the music industry that bear out this argument. There are also many examples of how economic forms of value are created through processes of consecration and/or promotion. One could argue that the labor theory of value underlies all of these forms of the creation of economic forms of value, but this, I would say, runs the risk of being reductionist, and can be something of a red herring. Our focus, as Tsing writes, should be on these processes of translation and, I am adding, consecration and promotion. While one could conclude that capitalism has become ever more efficient at locating the next big thing from which to profit, I will instead recall Tsing (2013) one last time, in particular her very useful point that capitalism is not total, though, I would say, it is increasingly hegemonic. And it relies, as it has always done, on noncapitalist modes of production, as well as the employment of noneconomic forms of value, in fields of cultural production, and in other fields. Thanks to Marx and those after him, there has been a tendency to think of modes of production in historical, successive terms (“precapitalist,” “capitalist,” and so forth). But capitalism’s very existence produces, even cultivates, other modes of production that are symbiotic with it (see Gibson-Graham,  2006). Today, many noneconomic forms of value are co-opted to be used by capitalism as economic forms while still retaining their facades as noneconomic forms, if they can even be considered to be distinct forms of value at all in fields of cultural production. Labor can be expended to convert noneconomic forms to patently economic forms, but it can also be expended to make noneconomic forms appear to be more separate from economic forms to preserve its value, as the anonymous manager’s story illustrates. Capitalism appropriates, and creates, different forms of value that are constantly in circulation and constantly in processes of translation, untranslation, and retranslation. Through supply chain capitalism and processes of translation, capitalism takes the gift

394   Taylor out of the commodity, alienates labor, and masks social relations, but through advertising, marketing, and branding, it adds simulacra of the gift, unalienated labor, and social relations to make the commodity appear to be a gift again.

Recommended Readings Appadurai, A. (1986). Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value. In A. Appadurai (Ed.)., The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (pp. 3–63). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Sombart, W. (1967). Luxury and capitalism (W. R. Dittmar, Trans.). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wernick, A. (1991). Promotional culture: Advertising, ideology and symbolic expression. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.

References Advertisements Victor advertisement of Enrico Caruso. (1921). National Geographic. Victrola advertisement. (1914). National Geographic.

Unpublished Materials Samples, M. (2011). A package deal: Branding, technology, and advertising in music of the 20th and 21st centuries (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon).

Books and Articles Appadurai, A. (1986). Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (pp. 3–63). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Baudrillard, J. (1988). The system of objects. In M. Poster (Ed.), Selected writings (pp. 10–28). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bear, L., Ho, K., Tsing, A. L., & Yanagisako, S. (2015). Gens: A feminist manifesto for the study of capitalism. Retrieved from https://culanth.org/fieldsights/gens-a-feminist-manifestofor-the-study-of-capitalism Benjamin, W. (1968). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (pp. 217–251; H. Zohn, Trans.). New York, NY: Schocken. Fitzpatrick, E. (1998, June 10). PolyMedia, teen mag link. Billboard, p. 10. Friedman, J. (2008, March 6). Movie ticket sales hit record. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/06/business/fi-boxoffice6 Gaisberg, F. W. (1942). The music goes round. New York, NY: Macmillan. Gardner, B. B., & Levy, S. J. (1955, March–April). The product and the brand. Harvard Business Review, pp. 33–39.

Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In   395 Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006). The end of capitalism (as we knew it): A feminist critique of political economy (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gronow, P. (1981, May). The record industry comes to the Orient. Ethnomusicology, 25, 251–284. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. (2012). Investing in music: How music companies discover, nurture and promote talent. Retrieved from http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/investing_in_music.pdf Jones, A. (2001). Yellow music: Media culture and colonial modernity in the Chinese jazz age. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kaplan, D. (1997, April 5). Sony arm spins artists into brands. Billboard, pp. 59–60. Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (pp. 64–91). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Levine, L.  W. (1988). Highbrow/lowbrow: The emergence of cultural hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Levy, S. J. (1964). Symbolism and life style. In S. A. Greyser (Ed.), Toward scientific marketing: Proceedings of the winter conference of the American Marketing Association (pp. 140–150). Boston, MA: American Marking Association. Love, J. (2015). From cautionary chart-topper to friendly beverage anthem: Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Pepsi’s “Choice of a New Generation” television campaign. Journal of the Society for American Music, 9, 178–203. Lubinski, C., & A. Steen. (2017). Traveling entrepreneurs, traveling sounds: The Early gramophone business in India and China. Itinerario, 41, 275–303. Maurer, B. (2006). The anthropology of money. Annual Review of Anthropology, 35, 15–36. McClintock, P. (2014, July 31). $200 million and rising: Hollywood struggles with soaring marketing costs. Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ news/200-million-rising-hollywood-struggles-721818 Millard, A. (2005). America on record: A history of recorded sound. (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Moor, L. (2007). The rise of brands. New York, NY: Berg. Mukerji, C. (1983). From graven images: Patterns of modern materialism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Musician Marketing: Branding. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.psprint.com/resources/ musician-marketing-branding/ O’Reilly, D., Larsen, G., & Kubacki, K. (2013). Music, markets and consumption. Woodeaton, Oxford, UK: Goodfellow. Presbrey, F. (1929). The history and development of advertising. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran. Sombart, W. (1967). Luxury and capitalism (W. R. Dittmar, Trans.). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Suisman, D. (2009). Selling sounds: The commercial revolution in American music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, T. D. (2001). Strange sounds: Music, technology and culture. New York, NY: Routledge. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Taylor, T. D. (2016a). The hip, the cool, and the edgy, or the dominant cultural logic of neoliberal capitalism. Rivista di analisi e teoria musicale, 22, 105–124.

396   Taylor Taylor, T. D. (2016b). Music and capitalism: A history of the present. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Taylor, T.  D. (2017). Music in the world: Selected essays. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Taylor, T. D., Katz, M., & Grajeda, T. (Eds.). (2012). Music, sound, and technology in America: A documentary history of early phonograph, cinema, and radio. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tortorella, N. (2013). Starting your career as a musician. New York, NY: Allworth Press. Traiman, S. (1999, July 3). More music-related projects using merchandise licensing. Billboard, p. 63. Tsing, A. (2009). Supply chains and the human condition. Rethinking Marxism, 21, 148–176. Tsing, A. (2013). Sorting out commodities: How capitalist value is made through gifts. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3, 21–43. Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vazsonyi, N. (2010). Richard Wagner: Self-promotion and the making of a brand. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Zemler, E. (2013, August 14). The National on their new documentary and being the Kings of Leon of Denmark. Elle. Retrieved from http://www.elle.com/culture/music/news/a23549/ the-national-mistaken-for-strangers-documentary-interview/

chapter 19

The Sou n ds of Coca- Col a On “Cola-nization” of Sound and Music Nicolai Jørgensgaard Graakjær

In 2015, the Coca-Cola Company distributed a television ad entitled “Love at First Taste” as part of its “Open Happiness” campaign (2009–2016). The campaign was part of the company’s promotion of the 100th anniversary of Coke’s “hobbleskirt” bottle and represented “the second-largest global effort in the brand’s history” to distribute commercials in more than 140 countries (Schulz,  2015).1 Table  19.1 presents an overview of the commercial. By being part of the “Open Happiness” campaign, the commercial is illustrative of a promotional “colonizing process.” “Colonization” in advertising is described as follows: We are witnessing an emotions arms race in which companies vie to own one of the short list of top emotion words. This process encourages companies to pursue generic “emotional territories” that any brand in any category can claim. Coca-Cola becomes the champion of “happiness,” Pepsi becomes the champions of “joy,” Fanta becomes the champion of “play,” Snapple becomes the champion of “fun.” (Holt & Cameron, 2010, p. 10)

In light of this proposition, this chapter examines how a commercial can “colonize” and “cultivate” generic territories of music, sound, and brand image. The chapter also examines how music and sound accomplish this in a brand’s pursuit of this emotional territory, whether or not this pursuit is successful or not, through a process of signification. By being part of the 100th anniversary campaign of the Coke bottle, in which both the image and the sound of the bottle play an important role, the commercial illustrates that music often appears in a setting of sounds that may originate directly from the product 1  The ad is available on YouTube on the Coca-Cola Bottle 100 Anniversary Television Play List.

398   Graakjær Table 19.1  Overview of the “Taste” Commercial for Coca-Cola (2015) Episode

1

2

Presentation of product

3

Location of product

Presentation of campaign

16–24

24–30 On a nondiegetic red background, written white text emerges: “Irresistible for over 100 years,” “Celebrating 100 years of the Coca-Cola bottle,” and “Open happiness,” the latter accompanied by animated bottles

The bottle

The content

Time (sec)

0–7

7–16

Visuals

Close-up shots of Close-up shots of slowly rotating the opening and Coca-Cola bottle pouring of Coca-Cola in a glass with ice

A diegetic situation: A young man and woman are sitting in front of each other at a diner. She drinks a glass of Coca-Cola

Sounds Nonmusical sounds

Sound effects

Sounds from opening and pouring a bottle of carbonated beverage

Sounds from the [None] woman’s consumption of Coca-Cola

[None]

[None]

Excerpt from “Nobody Like You” by Francesco Yates lyrics: “there’s nobody, nobody like you. There’s nobody, nobody . . . ”

Music

“. . . like you. The way you walk, the way you talk, the way you move . . . [fade out]”

and its packaging. Such sounds arguably exemplify “a product-related attribute, an aspect of the product that is often critical to the creation and communication of brand identity” (Underwood, 2003, p. 63). These sounds also function as a tool of “expression and knowledge” and “repositories of feelings and value” (Hine, 1995, pp. 17, 205; see also Spence,  2012). This commercial thus offers an opportunity to examine nonmusical sounds and their relation to the music—in this case, an excerpt from a track by the Canadian singer/song writer Francesco Yates—from the perspective of sound branding. Since the commercial presents some significant variants of sound branding, the commercial has the potential to advance our understanding of both sound branding (where

The Sounds of Coca-Cola   399 music has attracted the most attention; see, e.g., Gustafsson, 2015; Yorkston, 2010) and sound onscreen.2 Also, since the commercial includes excerpts of a track by a relatively unknown artist, the ad demonstrates how “advertising agencies are increasingly producers of popular music, not just its brokers” (Taylor, 2007, p. 235), and how there currently exists “myriad ways that advertising . . . is infiltrating the world of popular music production and dissemination” (Taylor,  2012, p. 225). This examination will indicate how such processes of “production” and “infiltration” can be seen to manifest at the level of textual organization.

The Coca-Cola Bottle and Its Sound In 2015, the Coca-Cola Company launched an advertising campaign to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its world-famous bottle, and several ads were created with the bottle as the centerpiece of the commercial. The label, with the brand name’s wavy, white typography on a red background, is obviously an important source of identification. But even without the label, the bottle would be recognizable through its distinctive curves and lines of its shape. The bottle’s curves have been interpreted as a structural anthropomorphic form (DiSalvo, Forlizzi, & Gemperle, 2005) that mimics the female form. Whether or not this was in fact the intention during the initial design process—reportedly, the bottle design was inspired by coca leaves and cocoa beans that would leave the bottle recognizable in the dark by way of touch (Pendergrast, 2013, p. 98)—the bottle was soon and persistently compared to a female form. For example, the bottle was called “the hobbleskirt bottle” inspired by a short-lived, tight-fitting dress code during the early 1910s. Also, the bottle has evoked images of specific women celebrities throughout the 20th century, notably actresses Mae West and Marilyn Monroe, who was said to be as “shapely as a Coke bottle” (Hine, 1995, p. 12). Indeed, the shape of the bottle has changed over time; for example, it has been “slimmed” slightly compared to the original version from 1915 (see Bayley, 2015, p. 134ff.). Nonetheless, the bottle has retained a consistent design that, supported by global promotion, propagation, and nicknames, has secured worldwide recognition for the bottle—“Who does not recognize a Coke bottle . . . ?,” one might ask (as does Danesi, 2006, p. 60; see also Hays, 2005; Pendergrast, 2013). While the bottle makes a distinguished appearance when it comes to sight and touch, it can, of course, be neither tasted nor smelled to any noteworthy degree. When it comes to sounds, the interaction between the bottle and the content produces a perceptible sound, “pssft,” when the bottle is opened for a sudden release of pressure and burst of carbon dioxide molecules. This particular sound—also termed “zzzsch” (Kilian, 2009, p. 45)—has played a significant role for Coca-Cola, as it has been integrated into several commercials over the years (Bronner, 2009, p. 81). It is beyond the scope of this chapter 2  Kassabian (2017) has identified this lacuna, stating: “There are some glaring holes in our work, among them . . . advertising, sonic branding” (p. 113).

400   Graakjær to examine to what extent the sound has actually appeared in commercials for CocaCola. Instead, the chapter will examine how the sound emerges, relates to the music, and has consequences for potentials of signification including the sound’s possible position as a brand for Coca-Cola. To examine the music and sound’s potentials of signification, this chapter adopts a text analytical approach and aims to meet the requirement for such type of analysis of “getting close to the text’s integral compositional elements” (Jacobs & Peacock, 2013, p. 2). Theoretically, the chapter is inspired by text analytical notions on audiovisual media that specify how sound and music “has the potential for specific meanings to emerge under specific circumstances” (Cook, 2001, p. 181). Consequently, the chapter will demonstrate how processes of signification are highly dependent on these “specific circumstances” of the commercial’s music and sounds represented generally by (1) the relation to music and sounds from outside the realm of the commercial and (2) the relation of music and sound to other textual elements in the commercial.

Transtextuality The notion of transtextuality here refers to “the ensemble of any type of relation, explicit or not, that may link a text with others” (Lacasse, 2000, p. 36). Although this perspective is relevant for the text as a whole and all textual resources (objects, shapes, colors, etc.), here we focus on the auditory elements of the ad, that is: How do the sounds of the commercial relate to sounds from outside the commercial? The answer to this question can generally be examined from the perspective of “interobjective comparison”—a term suggested by Philip Tagg to indicate the procedure to examine “shared similarity of structure” between the sounds from inside the commercial text and outside the commercial (Tagg, 2013, p. 238). The outside sounds and contexts in which they appear stimulate the sound’s potentials of signification, which in turn are brought into play in the commercial setting. The musical track “Nobody Like You” was produced specifically for Coca-Cola to appear as the campaign’s signature anthem throughout 2015 in various commercial settings. The track debuted on February 26, 2015, as Francesco Yates performed it live at a campaign launch event in Atlanta at the High Museum of Art—the same day the track was made available for digital download (Coca-Cola Company, 2015; Mark, 2015). The partnership between Coca-Cola and Yates was serendipitous for both parties, as Coke received a signature song for their campaign, while Yates, billed as an “emerging artist” (Coca-Cola Company, 2015), received public exposure. Yates himself declared: “If this isn’t the perfect way to get your name out there, we’re not sure what is,” and “It feels so special—I’m in good company” (Firman, 2015). The Coca-Cola company has a long history of integrating music in promotional settings. As an early (although inaudible) example, opera singer Lillian Nordica made visual appearances in print ads, posters, and other promotional materials as one of the

The Sounds of Coca-Cola   401 first celebrities endorsing Coca-Cola from the very beginning of the 20th century (Winkle, 2015). More recent examples are numerous (see, e.g., Laver, 2015, p. 142). Due to its long-running tradition of advertising, the use of music has often been considered a particularly significant promotional ingredient for Coke. As one writer put it: “One of the most memorable things about the Coca-Cola brand is the music associated with it” (Butler & Tischler, 2016). When comparing the version of “Nobody Like You” in the commercial to the released track (Yates, 2015), the relationship presents a case of intertextuality, as there is an “actual presence of a text within another” (Lacasse, 2000, p. 37; see also Kristeva, 1980). The commercial includes a 13-second excerpt consisting of the third refrain of the track (beginning at time 2:06; see Yates, 2015). Since the commercial aired at the same time as the track’s release, it seems to challenge the conventional distinction between preexisting and original music. While the latter refers to (excerpts of) tracks that have been distributed—and have hence existed—outside and prior to its current appearance in the commercial, the former refers to music that is composed for and appears exclusively in the commercial setting. This distinction is generally important from a text analytical perspective, since the prior distribution and uses of pre-existing music allow for certain potentials of signification to emerge—potentials that in turn can be realized by viewers depending on their knowledge of the (prior distribution of the) music. However, in this commercial, where the music has not been distributed prior to its appearance in the commercial, the transtextual potentials of significance originate from somewhat unspecific features of the lyrics and the musical style of the track. The lyrics present a relatively open text including open spaces (Iser, 1974), specifically in the form of the personal pronouns: An “I” addresses and characterizes admirable aspects of a “you” while the identity of both is undisclosed in the time, place, situation, and activities of the relationship. There is also no mention of a bottle or Coca-Cola. The music can generally be considered a “popular song”—articulating an “interaction of everyday words and music” (Moore, 2012, p. 3)—in the style of what could be described as a lighthearted, cheerful soul/pop track including the following style indicators (Tagg, 2013, p. 52): a major key (F-sharp) in an up-tempo (approximately 122 beats per minute) fouron-the-floor strum (by drums, guitar, and bass) in a simple quadruple meter including swing eights and handclaps on the last beat of the bar. Notably, the version of the track that is available outside the realm of the commercial bears the significant auditory imprint of Coca-Cola. As mentioned, this is not attributed to the organization of the lyrics. Instead, an imprint of Coca-Cola transpires throughout certain parts of the track, which are not included in the commercial. First, a five-note motif, or sonic signature, which Coca-Cola developed as part of their 2007 “Open Happiness” campaign (Moye, 2013), is integrated in the track. It emerges at the end of the track’s refrain (at 0:39 and 1:32) by whistling, and subsequently as an instrumental introduction to the refrain (at 2:02). This practice apparently echoes previous uses of the motif, as “the five notes have been featured in literally hundreds of Coca-Cola anthems” (Moye, 2013). Second, in addition to the musical integration of the motif, and representing, it seems, a more unusual feature, the Yates track includes sounds from the

402   Graakjær preparation and enjoyment of a carbonated beverage in a glass with ice cubes, for example, “pssft,” clinks, fizz, and, as an expression of pleasure, “aahs.” From a textual perspective, the sounds appear as musicalized—that is, structured to function as elements of the musical text—versions of the sounds one might experience when actually preparing and enjoying the carbonated beverage. The nonmusical sounds in the commercial feature the sounds of Coca-Cola’s car­bo­ na­tion. In fact, carbonated beverage sounds make up a substantial proportion of the commercial’s sounds and sync closely with the visual images of the ad. Nothing but the sequence of sounds of the beverage’s preparation is heard for nine seconds, unaccompanied by music or any other sounds (the commercial does not include a voiceover). Compared to the spread and isolated integration of such sounds during the musical track, this period of the commercial reveals a particular sequencing of the sounds that serves as a sort of onomatopoeia: “pssft-clunk”—then a brief moment of silence—“dlug, dlug,” “clink, clink,” and “zzzz”; at the very end of this sequence, a short-lasting crescendoing swish sound appears with no obvious relation to the carbonated beverage sounds. When compared to sounds from outside the commercial, these sounds—although intensified at a high volume and slightly slowed down—clearly resemble the sounds from the opening of a bottle, followed by the pouring and immersion of carbonated beverage in a glass with ice cubes. Because of familiarization with conventions of mediated advertising, which imply that brand objects are typically represented “looking (or sounding) their best” and not necessarily the way they will precisely appear in all settings of real life, viewers are possibly inclined to accept the sounds as embodying a high level of so-called naturalistic modality: “In the case of representation, naturalistic modality is based on a criterion of verisimilitude. The more a representation is felt to sound like ‘what one might hear if present at the represented event,’ the higher its naturalistic modality” (Leeuwen, 1999, p. 181, italics in original). Inspired by Charles Peirce’s tripartite classification of modes of relationships between a representamen and its object, the relationship between the sounds can thus be interpreted to produce an iconic mode of relationship. Furthermore, the “pssft” sound—which has a principal position as the episode marker or starting signal for this sequence of sounds—could be considered to resemble the nonverbal sound occasionally produced when someone is trying quietly to get someone else’s attention during interpersonal interaction. As already implied, the sounds in the commercial do not merely refer to similar sounds from outside the commercial. At the same time, the sounds refer causally and physically to the handling of a bottle and the quality of its content—in this sense, the sounds are properties of the objects we identify (inspired by Pasnau, 1999). Viewed from the perspective of the indexical mode, the sounds indicate that a bottle of carbonated beverage has been opened by somebody and that the content is still fresh and made ready to consume. Also, a mark of indexicality is arguably represented by the possible attentionseeking function of a humanly produced “pssft-sound”—inspired by the notion that “Anything that focusses the attention is an index” (Peirce in Chandler,  2007, p. 42). Generally, the sequence of sounds seems to exemplify that “Hearing is particularly good at grasping ‘the dynamics of things coming into being over time’ ” (Leeuwen, 1999, p. 195).

The Sounds of Coca-Cola   403 In addition to the music and the sounds from (the handling and content of) a bottle of carbonated beverage, the commercial includes a period of seven seconds of sounds that are less obviously specified in their possible relation to outside sounds. The sounds— consisting of indistinct, vague sizzling and hissing sounds, as well as a pure tone sine wave in a high register—are perceptibly not properties of any particular object, and as such they embody a relatively low level of naturalistic modality. Consequently, they sound like sound effects, compared to the (more) real(istic) sounds from the preparation of carbonated beverage.3

Cotextuality Cotextuality refers to how the sounds relate to each other and to the visual dimensions within the commercial. The specific circumstances of the music and sound here are based on the premise that “the alignment of the other media with music . . . induces a specific perceptual selection from its available attributes” (Cook, 1998, p. 83), and “when music is combined with other media, the music readily finds an object” (Cohen, 2001, p. 263). These relevant “attributes” and “objects” apply to music and to other types of sound as well. As indicated by Table 19.1, three types of sounds help establish the structure of the commercial. The nonmusical sounds occupy the commercial’s first episode, including a presentation of the promoted product in two subepisodes. First, the sound effects accompany a sequence of five slowly revolving close-up shots from different angles of a Coca-Cola bottle. The shots include detailed shots of the logo as well as water droplets on the outside and bubbles on the inside of the bottle—indicating that the content of the bottle is cold and carbonated. At this point, the sound effects could be considered to “find (aspects of) the objects” (inspired by the above quote from Cohen, 2001), as the subdued hissing and sizzling sounds could seem to correspond to the inside (still enclosed) bubbles and/or to the slow revolving movement. Although in this particular setting it might appear to connote “coldness” so as to emphasize the temperature of the bottle, the sine wave tone is less clearly localized and it seems to add a sense of unresolvedness, mystery, and suspense to this part of the commercial. This impression is furthered by the visual presentation of the bottle on a blurred light-brown background surface, which leaves the exact setting unspecified. Second, the particular sequence of bottle sounds is synchronized in detail with the display of the opening and pouring of Coca-Cola in a glass with ice cubes. The sounds are now visually specified as properties of the objects on display. The visuals are intensified 3  From the adopted text analytical perspective, sound effects refer to sounds that in a given setting invoke a low level of naturalistic modality, whereas real sounds imply a high level of naturalistic modality. From the perspective of production, however, most if not all sounds are sound effects in the sense that some sort of technical manipulation has been deployed.

404   Graakjær in a way that seems to parallel the sounds, as the camera focuses in close-ups on the ­bottle and its cap, the liquid, the fizz, and the ice cubes in the glass. The “pssft” sound is essential. It marks a transition to a sequence composed of more naturalistic, recognizable sounds, and it informs the viewer that the beverage is opened. As such, the sound acts as a kind of sensory gatekeeper: Prior to the “pssft,” the product is available only for sight and touch, whereas following the pssft, the product is available for smell and taste too. In the commercial, the touch, smell, and taste are merely insinuated based on possible processes of “quasi-synesthesia” or “cross-sensory analogies” (Cook,  1998, p. 28; Haverkamp, 2009, p. 168). At this point the sounds embody a relatively high naturalistic modality, but the visuals parallel this impression only to a certain extent. Obviously, the visuals anchor the sounds “literally” by specifying unmistakably and fairly realistically what can be heard— for example, the sounds are not juxtapositioned to produce a metaphoric relation as would be the case if, say, the sounds were accompanied by somebody at a gas station filling a car with petrol (for a similar example, see Forceville, 1996, p. 203). However, the excessive visual focus on the objects and the continued vague background surface do not specify a time, setting, situation, or characters. The period ends as the camera focuses on a detail from the outside of the bottle: a descending droplet of water is seen rolling down the side accompanied by the brief crescendoing swish sound. The next shot specifies a setting. The bottle and glass are located on a table, where a young man sits and stares dreamingly at the glass with Coca-Cola. The sounds from the previous period have now disappeared, and indistinct background sounds (e.g., chatter and clattering of utensils) help specify the diegetic setting of a diner. This new sequence seems to suggest that the previous sequence displayed the opening and pouring of the Coca-Cola at the diner from the perspective of the daydreaming young man. The next shot indicates that the young man has company. As he reaches for the glass, a young woman, sitting in front of him, abruptly leans forward and grabs the glass from him. At this point, the musical excerpt commences and accompanies the visual cross-cuts between the face of the now bewildered man and the woman, who rapidly slurps the entire glass of Coca-Cola to the sounds also of clinking ice cubes. She smiles teasingly at the man as she finishes, and she breaks out a well-satisfied “Ahh!,” accompanied visually by a superimposition of gray-white clouds of steam, indicating the coldness and freshness of the beverage she has just consumed. This expression and display of satisfaction further adds to the quasi-synesthetic appeal to the senses of smell and taste. As the commercial includes characters and (inter)actions in a specific setting, it is relevant to consider the music’s relation to the diegesis. Although it is not inconceivable that (the musical style of) the track could actually appear in a setting like the one presented in the commercial, the textual appearance of the music does not clearly establish the music as diegetic, that is, as originating from the “story world of the text itself ” seen and heard by both characters and viewers (Rodman, 2010, p. 53). Most significantly, the music is not audible from the opening of the ad, and nonmusical diegetic background sounds are the only sounds. Moreover, the music is not introduced from the beginning of the track and is not clearly expected from what is seen onscreen. Rather, the music

The Sounds of Coca-Cola   405 seems to function as an intradiegetic element that “call[s] attention to the characters, emotions, settings, and objects in the diegesis without actually being in the diegesis” (Rodman, 2010, p. 54). Following this observation, various dimensions or attributes of the music allow for potentials of signification to emerge. Since the music is synchronized to begin exactly as the woman reaches for the glass, the track calls attention to aspects of this particular action, as well as the reaction of the man. In general, the musical style accentuates or frames the situation and interaction— which otherwise could hold the potential to appear awkward—as cheerful and playful. Also, the introduction of the music—in this case the excerpt of the chorus—characterized by a relatively high-pitched melody line and repetition of the hook, suggests that drinking Coca-Cola can offer a joyful experience in an everyday setting. The musical tempo and rhythm support this reading, as it could seem to correspond to the girl’s fastpaced slurping. Further potentials of signification are fueled by the symbolic resources offered by the track’s lyrics. In the lyrics of the track, the line “there’s nobody like you” is open to various readings as the supposedly exceptional “you” is left unspecified, as is the imaginable source or agent (i.e., “I” or “we”). Of course, outside the setting of the commercial, “I” could be determined as the singer, Francesco Yates (or a performed persona of his), and “you” could be determined as somebody significant to him. In the second period of the commercial, though, alternative readings manifest due to the particular cotextualization that does not include further identification of Yates. For example, from the perspective of the woman, “you” could be specified as the (taste and freshness of) “Coca-Cola” or the man she is with, flattered by his, perhaps unintended, generosity. From the perspective of the man, “you” could be specified as “Coca-Cola” as well (a reading motivated by his daydreaming stare) or the woman, flattered by her teasing boldness. From the perspective of the commercial and the brand, “you” could even be specified as the couple seen onscreen—and, by extension, the viewers—praised for their/our (potential) enthusiasm in enjoying our-/themselves and Coca-Cola. The music continues as the visuals change from the diner setting to a nondiegetic red background with written text: “irresistible for over 100 years.” The dominant reading of “you” now inclines toward the bottle, as the remaining lyrics are synchronized with an animation of a drawn bottle: The red background turns out to represent a red bottle as the camera seems to zoom out while the bottle rotates toward the center of the screen. Here, it visually merges with two other bottles, as the two campaign statements (see Table 19.1) conclude the commercial. At this point, further modifications of the potentials of signification emerge, as the “I”—that is, the agent who identifies a “you”—is “set free” from the diegesis and characters of the previous episode. Yates now represents the only textually salient human being in the commercial and is thereby made “available” as a “you”-identifying agent. Arguably, by extension, the viewer is positioned as an identifier of “you” as well. Reinforced by the direct, imperative address included in the slogan (“Open . . .”), viewers seem encouraged to engage and partake in singing (or thinking) along to the alluring lyrics of the chorus. During this process, the lyrics and the slogan tap further into the aforementioned anthropomorphization, as the bottle is ascribed

406   Graakjær human behaviors and is implied to be able to “walk,” “move,” and “talk” while embodying “happiness.” To examine in further detail the functions of the sounds, the following sections will consider the sounds and the music from the perspective of sound branding.

“Pssft!”: A Case of Nonmusical Sound Branding Nonmusical sound branding generally refers to the use of verbal or nonverbal sounds during processes of branding. Connections between sound and brand objects or products can be established and performed in two ways. First, the connection includes sounds that are intrinsic to the brand object in the sense that the sound embodies—that is, is property of and emanates from—the brand object (see, e.g., Pasnau, 1999, p. 317; Susini, Houix, & Misdariis, 2014). In other words, the connection includes the sound of the object, and the connection resides at what could be termed the primary level of sound branding. In another way, the connection includes sounds that are extrinsic to the brand object. Because the sound exists “on behalf of ” the brand object—it concerns the sound for the brand object—this type of connection resides at a secondary level of sound branding. For example, whereas the “pssft” sound presents a case of primary sound branding, the name of Coca-Cola, which expresses a specific sound quality through the deployment of alliteration and assonance (see, e.g., Danesi, 2006, p. 38; Klink, 2000), presents a case of secondary sound branding. Other examples of secondary sound branding include slogans and (nonmusical) sonic logos, and such sounds principally serve to represent and authenticate the brand object. Basically, the sounds of primary sound branding are generic in the sense that the sounds appear similar across the whole product category. For example, the sounds of cornflakes, motorcycles, and the opening of carbonated, cap-bottled beverages produce different kinds of sounds; however, within the given product category the sounds are rather similar. On the face of it, the “pssft” sound that accompanies the opening of a bottle of Coca-Cola does not differ significantly from the “pssft” sound from the opening of a bottle of Pepsi Cola, or even Carlsberg beer. So, generally, such sounds are “unrestrained” and unconnected to any brand in particular, and the process of sound branding is hence aimed at establishing such a connection. The connection can be produced by either (1) a persistent and significant alignment of the sound in question with visual and/or verbal brand indicators in promotional texts or (2) designing a distinctive and possibly rights-protected variant of the sound in question. The latter appeal is exemplified by the crunching sound of Kellogg’s cornflakes (Lindström,  2005, p. 16) and the engine roar of the Harley Davidson motorcycle (Sapherstein, 1998). The former appeal is arguably exemplified by the “pssft” sound of Coca-Cola and the chosen commercial. This appeal does not—and should not, from a market perspective—result in consumers be(com)ing able to “hear” Coca-Cola because of a significant difference in sounding as aimed for by Kellogg’s and Harley Davidson.

The Sounds of Coca-Cola   407 Instead, the appeal makes consumers prone to associate an otherwise, hitherto generic sound—whether produced by a bottle of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, or Carlsberg—with CocaCola precisely because of a sameness of sounding. Significantly, throughout commercials for Coca-Cola, the “pssft” sound seems to have appeared in numerous ways in terms of its specific cotextualization and function. Thereby, the promotion or “mediated experience” of the sound resembles the variations of the appearance of the sound during “lived experience” (Underwood, 2003). The possible association of the “pssft” sound with Coca-Cola indicates that the sound can also, in addition to the aforementioned indexical and iconic modes, be considered from the perspective of the symbolic mode. By way of established convention (based on extensive promotion), listeners are “trained” so that the sound gains the potential to signify not only a particular aspect (the opening of a bottle) of something unspecific (the generic category) but also, and perhaps predominantly, various aspects (the different positions and functions of the sound in commercials for Coca-Cola) of something specific (Coca-Cola). The sound thus contributes significantly to the (re)production of that richness of thoughts and feelings that characterizes the brand of Coca-Cola (Danesi, 2006, p. 56). In the chosen commercial and during the related campaigns, the sound is associated particularly with “happiness,” which is underlined by the metaphorical substitution—“Happiness” for “bottle”—included in the slogan (Oswald,  2015, p. 199; see also p. 73). The sounds play a pivotal role in this respect: The “pssft” sound heralds “happiness,” which subsequently “flows” from the bottle and is expressed in music through the excerpt of the Yates track.

“Nobody Like You”: A Case of Musical Sound Branding Musical branding basically refers to the inclusion of music as a part of the process of branding. During this process, music can play the role as:





1. a promoted object (brand and product) available as a self-contained object outside the realm of the commercial—this type is the musical equivalent to the primary level of sound branding mentioned earlier, and examples include commercials for new music releases and concerts; 2. a promoted object not available as a self-contained product outside the realm of the commercial—this type is the musical equivalent to the secondary level of sound branding, and examples include musical signatures such as the one launched in 1994 (and operating for more than 30 years) for the brand Intel Inside (see Graakjær, 2015, p. 50, for more on this particular case); or 3. a hybrid or partial overlap between (1) and (2), in which the music promotes a nonmusical object while available as a self-contained object outside the realm of the commercial.

408   Graakjær The Coca-Cola ad examined here illustrates the third type, which could be termed a music-brand partnership or cross-promotion. In this setting, the values and characteristics of both the music and the nonmusical product are concurrently produced and promoted, which is what basically characterizes the “partnership” or “cross” element during an otherwise variable promotional process. The process can include a wide variety of platforms and activities in addition to the commercial as indicated by the live performance by Yates. Also, the process can include music and artists of different “standings” with regard to their prior distribution and popularity. For example, until the 1980s, it was not unusual for commentators to characterize music in commercials as “pale, watereddown derivations of hit records” (Taylor, 2012, p. 172). Beginning in the 1980s, however, the licensing of pre-existing music or “real songs” became “increasingly common” (Taylor, 2012, p. 144; see also Karmen, 2005; Wallis & Malm, 1988). During that period, it seemed reasonable to suggest that today’s hit music presents tomorrow’s advertising music. Arguably, Pepsi’s “Choice of a New Generation” campaign, launched in 1984 and initially including an appearance and music by Michael Jackson, inspired a promotional practice of musical “top performers singing new and current hit songs to endorse their recordings alongside corporate products” (Love, 2015, p. 199). With this practice, the time difference between the release of music and its inclusion in commercials is narrowed down, so that music in today’s advertising can indeed present the hit music of tomorrow. Thus, a process of synchronization manifests not only at a textual level—synchronization has been defined as “a license to use music in timed synchronization with visual images” (Allan, 2015, p. xiii, italics in original)—but also at the level of distribution. While the present case is illustrative of such double synchronization, it also exemplifies the inclusion of an unknown artist—unknown at least to the majority of the targeted audience. This is indicative of a more recent trend as “creative agencies now use music from the distant past, from obscure genres, and from independent bands that are known to only a few thousand fans” (Holt, 2004, p. 86). For example, a number of placements of tracks in commercials for Apple during the 2000s have aptly demonstrated how unknown artists have occasionally benefited promotionally. Although such effects are not guaranteed and are typically short-lived when they occur (Graakjær, 2014), recent changes regarding the industrial, distributional, and technological contexts of music seem to have fostered a situation where artists seek to “attach themselves to brands for qualities they desire instead of the other way around” (Taylor, 2012, p. 228). In such a context, rather than implicating a “sell-out” of artistic integrity, artists’ association with brands is habitually considered a possibly career-advancing “buy-in”—exemplified by the self-celebrative comments to Yates’s partnership with Coca-Cola. Although every placement of music that exists outside the realm of the commercial presents a version and hence production of that particular music, the inclusion of unknown tracks and artists seems to accentuate how commercials can indeed act as a setting for music production. Basically, the commercial produces (the possibility of) awareness of the existence of the track and artist. Furthermore, at the same time as the music produces potentials of signification in the commercial (as examined earlier), the signifying potentials of the music heard outside the setting of the commercial are being produced.

The Sounds of Coca-Cola   409

Conclusions—“Cola-nizing” Sounds As brands contribute to the more or less transitory popularization of specific bands and genres, they also conceivably influence production prior to the process in which music is placed in a commercial. For example, demands for “appropriate placement music” have been made obvious; for example, “in demand, often requested synch-friendly music has lot of edit points, good breaks” (Reinboth in Graakjær, 2015, p. 48). Also, as indicated by the Yates track, lyrics that do not signify anything in particular (e.g., specific persons, periods of time, places, or events) seem ripe for brands to (re)articulate. The commercial examined here illustrates a particular variant of brand influence, as the track functions in different ways in and out of the commercial. In the commercial, the excerpt of the track could appear like a piece of “appropriate placement music.” However, outside the commercial, the track bears recognizable auditory imprints of Coca-Cola, even though the brand name is in fact not included (for studies on the placement of brand names in popular music, see Craig, Flynn, & Holody, 2017; Gregorio & Sung, 2009; Lehu, 2007). Consequently, the track presents a sort of crossbreed between original music and pre-existing music. The track is neither entirely original nor preexisting, as the commercial offers a “de-coked” version of the track: Whereas the track’s association with Coca-Cola is stimulated in the commercial via the visual integration, the association is encouraged via nonverbal musical structures when the track is heard in its entirety outside the realm of the commercial. Leaving aside the matter of the sequence of distribution, the textual relation is inverted relative to one of the most significant uses of music in the history of Coca-Cola. When the track “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” (1971) was produced and widely distributed as a self-contained track (in two versions, one by the Hillside Singers and one by the New Seekers), it represented a “de-coked” version of an original commercial track, which included the hook line “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” Arguably, the “pssft” sound and its relation to the music embody the core of the possible “colonization” and “cultivation” of the generic emotional category of happiness. First, the sound embodies a possible colonization of the signifying potentials of a generic sound. Second, the sound plays a pivotal role as an episode marker in the commercial, as it announces the imminent flow of Coca-Cola and the following situation and music vested with “happiness.” Third, the sound emerges, more discreetly, as part of the track approached in its entirety outside the commercial. Among other product sounds and the five-note signature, the sound here assists in producing associations between the track and Coca-Cola as it adds background dashes of vivacity throughout the track. Incidentally, in other commercials from Coca-Cola, the sound performs even more distinct musical functions. For example, in the commercial named “3/37 Degrees,” the sound emerges significantly at the end of the commercial on the downbeat of the last bar, and the sound hereby seems to mimic or echo the resembling sound produced until then by the tracks’ open (for approximately an eighth note) hi-hat backbeats.

410   Graakjær The use of an unknown musical track and artist could be considered as an example of how brands increasingly seek to operate as trendsetters rather than merely trend followers. From this perspective, the specific audiovisual presentation and interpretation of the Yates track produces musical signifying potentials that gravitates toward hipness, everyday joyfulness, and wittiness, all of which are simultaneously associated with Coca-Cola. However, the audiovisual integration of the “pssft” sound additionally suggests a more fundamental level of production, as this promotional feature arguably operates irrespective of trends and relates to already existing, generic sound territories. The suggestive placement and “musicalization” of the sound can potentially function to “cola-nize” the sound from the opening of the carbonated, bottled beverage—if not exactly the musical structure of open hi-hats. The sound comes to function as a musical announcer, a musical ingredient, and, possibly, an indicator of Coca-Cola and happiness. I will leave open the questions of whether such promotional features are commendable or deplorable (from whatever perspective), the result of what sort of productional process, and how the sounds might have effects on actual listeners. Instead, I have tried to demonstrate how signifying potentials can emerge and how they can be examined from the perspective of textual organization including both transtextual and cotextual perspectives as well as a focus on music in relation not only to visuals but also to other sounds. The case examination has indicated that music placement is not merely an issue of “use” of (excerpts from) a piece of existing music. The commercial setting for music placement can be considered to “colonize” and “cultivate” generic territories of music, sound, and brand image.

Recommended Readings Graakjær, N.  J. (2015). Analyzing music in advertising: Television commercials and consume choice. New York, NY: Routledge. Graakjær, N. J., & Bonde, A. (2018). Non-musical sound branding: A conceptualization and research overview. European Journal of Marketing, 52(7/8), 1505–1525. Leeuwen, T. V. (2017). Sonic logos. In S. Way and S. McKerrel (Eds.), Music as multimodal discourse. Semiotics, power and protest (pp. 119–134). London, UK: Bloomsbury. Tagg, P. (2013). Music’s meaning. A modern musicology for non-musos. New York, NY: MMMSP.

References Allan, D. (2015). This note’s for you: Popular music + advertising = Marketing excellence. New York, NY: Business Expert Press. Bayley, S. (2015). Kiss the past hello: 100 years of Coca Cola. New York, NY: Assouline. Bronner, K. (2009). Jingle all the way. Basics of audio branding. In K. Bronner & R. Hirt (Eds.), Audio branding. Brands, sound and communication (pp. 77–87). Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos. Butler, D., & Tischler, L. (2016). Design to grow: How Coca-Cola learned to combine scale and agility (and how you can too). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

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412   Graakjær Kilian, K. (2009). From brand identity to audio branding. In K. Bronner & R. Hirt (Eds.), Audio branding. Brands, sound and communication (pp. 35–48). Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos. Klink, R.  R. (2000). Creating brand names with meaning: The use of sound symbolism. Marketing Letters, 11(1), 5–20. Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in language: A semiotic approach to literature and art. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Lacasse, S. (2000). Intertextuality and hypertextuality in recorded popular music. In M. Talbot (Ed.), The musical work: Reality or invention (pp. 35–58). Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Laver, M. (2015). Jazz sells. Music, marketing, and meaning. New York, NY: Routledge. Leeuwen, T. V. (1999). Speech, music, sound. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lehu, J.-M. (2007). Branded entertainment: Product placement and brand strategy in the entertainment business. London, UK: Kogan Page. Lindström, M. (2005). Brand sense. Sensory secrets behind the stuff we buy. New York, NY: Free Press. Love, J. (2015). From cautionary chart-topper to friendly beverage anthem: Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Pepsi’s “Choice of a New Generation” television campaign. Journal of the Society for American Music, 9(2), 178–203. Mark, J. (2015, March 3). Tapped by Coca-Cola, Francesco Yates celebrates an icon’s 100th anniversary with “Nobody Like You.” Nest2shine. Retrieved October 22, 2019, from http:// next2shine.com/tapped-by-coca-cola-francesco-yates-celebrates-an-icons-100th-anniversarywith-nobody-like-you Moore, A. (2012). Song means: Analysing and interpreting recorded popular song. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Moye, J. (2013, July 15). 5 facts about Coke’s 5 note melody. Coca-Cola Journey. Retrieved October 22, 2019, from: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/5-facts-about-cokes5-note-melody Oswald, L. R. (2015). Creating value. The theory and practice of marketing semiotic research. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Pasnau, R. (1999). What is sound? Philosophical Quarterly, 49(196), 309–324. Pendergrast, M. (2013). The God, country & Coca-Cola. The definitive history of the great American soft drink and the company that makes it (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Basic books. Rodman, R. (2010). Tuning in. American narrative television music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Sapherstein, M. B. (1998). The trademark registrability of the Harley-Davidson roar: A multimedia analysis. Intellectual Property & Technology Forum. Boston College Law School. Schulz, E. J. (2015, February 26). See the spots: Preview Coke’s big new global bottle campaign. Advertising Age. Retrieved October 22, 2019, from http://adage.com/article/see-the-spot/ watch-ads-coke-s-big-global-bottle-campaign/297325/ Spence, C. (2012). Auditory contributions to flavour perception and feeding behaviour. Physiology & Behavior, 107(4), 505–515. Susini, P., Houix, O., & Misdariis, N. (2014). Sound design: An applied, experimental framework to study the perception of everyday sounds. New Soundtrack, 4(2), 103–121. Tagg, P. (2013). Music’s meaning. A modern musicology for non-musos. New York, NY: MMMSP. Taylor, T. D. (2007). The changing shape of the culture industry; or, how did electronica music get into television commercials? Television and New Media, 8(3), 235–258.

The Sounds of Coca-Cola   413 Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism. Advertising, music, and the conquest for culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Underwood, R. L. (2003). The communicative power of product packaging: Creating brand identity via lived and mediated experience. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 11(1), 62–76. Wallis, R., & Malm, K. (1988). Push-pull for the video clip: A systems approach to the relationship between the phonogram/videogram industry and music television. Popular Music, 7(3), 267–284. Winkle, G.  V. (2015, March 25). Lillian Nordica. Coca-Cola Journey. Retrieved October 22, 2019, from http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/lillian-nordica Yates, F. (2015, February 25). Francesco Yates—Nobody like you. Retrieved October 22, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21_Qw0cbbcU Yorkston, E. (2010). Auxiliary auditory ambitions: Assessing ancillary and ambient sounds. In A. Krishna (Ed.), Sensory marketing: Research on the sensuality of products (pp. 157–167). New York, NY: Routledge.

chapter 20

The Persistence of M emory Structural Functions of Music in Commercial Jingles Ron Rodman

Popular Advertising/Popular Music We tend to think of commercials, whether on television, radio, or the internet, as texts that are separate from the main body of our viewing or listening experience. Commercials are often annoying interruptions to our music listening on radio or audio streaming, or our viewing of a television program (which is one reason that iPods and DVRs have become so popular—they either obliterate commercials altogether or at least have the technology to “skip over” them by pushing a “fast forward” button). But commercial advertising in the electronic media is not a distraction, but rather a system of embedded texts that have a long and ensconced history in American (and other countries’) broadcasting practices and shows no sign of abating. In fact, advertising is finding new ways to insert itself into television, movies (through “product placement”), and the internet, with an increasing presence on social media, video games, and streaming formats like Facebook, YouTube, and others. The perception that advertising on television, radio, and other media is becoming more and more prevalent, even excessive, is not imagined. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the United States has supervised several moves for deregulating the amount of airtime that radio and television networks may devote to advertising. The landmark deregulatory move came during the Reagan administration in the United States, where in 1985 FCC Chairman Mark Fowler agreed to loosen regulations on how much advertising could be carried by radio and television stations, resulting in more and more commercials, and greater fragmentation of television and radio programs

The Persistence of Memory   415 (Sterling, n.d.). The ubiquity of advertising is not limited to these media but has also found a home on the internet and even movie trailers. For viewers and listeners not to skip over a commercial, broadcasters and advertisers alike have sought strategies to keep audiences watching or listening. Traditional television and radio are systems of continuous broadcasting practices that Raymond Williams (1974/2003) has called “flow,” that is, the practice of having media texts run from one to another in broadcast time, leaving no (intentional) gaps or dead spaces. Flow has created unique forms of storytelling and broadcast strategies: For television, writers have created a unique form of narrative where a seven-minute segment of story time ends with a “stage wait,” or some sort of cliffhanger plot device to keep audiences in suspense, as the program flows into a commercial break. In music radio, the technique is often to have several songs played, one after another, with a set of ads played during the hour, along with a little DJ banter cueing the audience in on what songs will be coming up in the next set. Advertisers have also developed techniques to keep audiences engaged. Advertisers continuously try to tap into pleasure zones of consumers to keep them listening to/ watching their ads. One way to keep viewers engaged is to make commercials similar to the television narratives that they are interrupting. Television commercials are often little “slice of life” vignettes, mini-narratives, or even mini-musicals.1 Commercials have also used music to great effect, and often ad producers use music that sounds like the music that their consumers listen to while away from the television. Historically, the trend in advertising has been to move from originally composed jingles that sound like popular music of the time to actual popular songs, and this trend has been well documented (see Rodman, 1997, 2010). Numerous authors have studied music and its effects on viewers with approaches ranging from music’s effect on the sensory stimuli of its audience to music’s ability to “affiliate” viewers of different cultural constituencies in society. Of the former, empirical tests were done in laboratory settings by Simpkins and Smith (1974), Gorn (1982), Kellaris and Cox (1989), Park and Young (1986), and others to test responses to simulated ads with music. Of the latter approach, Linda Scott (1990) was among early scholars to report on the cognitive effects of music in advertising on memory and culture. She sums up her approach as follows: First, it means that communication of meaning through music is based on systems of cultural conventions and, thus, interpretations are not idiosyncratic but largely shared. Second, it means that each musical communication is framed by the sum of the listener’s past listening experience. The phrase “past experience” includes the immediate temporal experience of the particular stimulus (i.e., the message syntax) as well as the more remote, yet ever-present, past experience of similar musical stimuli and similar musical situations in other works, including other ads. (Scott, 1990, p. 227) 1  For a taxonomy of musical commercials, see Rodman (2010, Chapters 3 and 7).

416   Rodman Music has been able to resonate with audiences due to composers’ ability to tap into the shared musical competence of the audience, or their “musical culture capital,” to paraphrase Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986) term. Music is a source of “metacommunication,” a term borrowed from Goldman and Papson to describe television advertising of the late 20th century, referring to the shared, but usually unstated, taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of communication itself. They define metacommunication as the level of communication where the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers, rather than the exchange of information (Goldman & Papson, 1998, p. 33). Using an ad for Nike athletic clothing as an example, they assert that “ads greet us as individual viewers with what seems to be our own ‘alreadyness’—our own ideological assumptions and personalities” (p. 35). The type or style of music used in effective advertisements is that which is familiar with a particular audience, that which the audience has internalized (or wishes to internalize) as its own “alreadyness.” From the very first adoption of music, advertisers have drawn upon the styles and structures of popular music not really to sell a product, but more to tap into the cultural milieu, the “alreadyness,” of the audience. Advertisers sought out musical texts that appropriated the music styles familiar to a segment of the audience to establish an affiliation of product to consumer. As Goldman and Papson state: “Appropriation is the bread and butter of advertising. . . . [It] hails viewers as hip, savvy, and media literate and so it draws on texts that signify these qualities (p. 27). Music in commercials relies on an audience’s knowledge of pop music’s style and structure, as well as the back stories of the artists who perform. As Richard Middleton states: “All texts make sense only through their relationships, explicit or implicit, with other texts” (2000, p. 61). This chapter seeks to describe the historical affiliation of the jingle with popular music. To illustrate structural and functional similarities between jingles and pop tunes, I draw upon the work of Allen Forte’s (1995) work with the 20th-century American popular ballad and John Covach’s (2005) work with rock and pop songs. Both of these authors use Schenkerian-like linear graphs for musical analysis to show pitch relations and well-formed structures in each song. Using these same tools, I present analyses of samples of jingles from radio and television of the 1950s to the present to demonstrate the completeness of their structures, similar to those pop songs. Notably, embedded in these linear graphs are illustrations of functions of musical beginnings, middles, and endings, enumerated by writers on classical repertoires such as William Caplin (1998) and Kofi Agawu (1991), and jazz and popular music repertoires such as Steve Larson (2009) and Walter Everett (1999, 2001). The challenge with the jingle is/was how to make it sound popular and catchy, without going over time in a short ad. Indeed, jingles may be the shortest complete musical structures, sometimes consisting of only a few measures, but, to be a piece of music, must contain all the necessary ingredients for a complete musical tonal structure, that is, a musical beginning, middle, and end. The completeness or incompleteness of these structural functions complements Scott’s notion that ad music draws upon the cultural memory of popular music to produce meaningful and memorable texts for audiences.

The Persistence of Memory   417

The Jingle and How It Functions Jingles are defined as brief, catchy tunes, accompanied by lyrics that persist in the memory of an audience. This persistence of memory is accomplished by a “hook,” that is, a blend of linguistic slogan matched with an especially memorable musical motif. Hooks (sometimes called “tags”) are played repeatedly to ingrain themselves in the listener’s memory. Jingles contain a dual function, both as a form of musical communication with the listener and as a form of musical branding of a product, creating a feeling or attitude about a product. Timothy Taylor states that music in early commercials was “pale watered-down derivations of hit records,” and for jingles in particular: “If you heard a jingle, you wouldn’t mistake it for any other kind of music. People talked about the ‘Madison Avenue choir,’ the sound of lots of voices singing together in praise of something and a soft jazz or light orchestral background” (Taylor, 2012, p. 172). However, many early jingles were, in fact, snippets of popular songs, where the lyrics were modified to appropriately advertise the product or service. For example, the first jingle that was widely broadcast, the 1939 jingle “Pepsi Cola Hits the Spot,” was a contrafactum of the English folk tune “D’ye Ken, John Peel.” Ten years after the Pepsi ad hit the radio airwaves, media professionals began to analyze musical advertising to see how music could help reach a larger audience, retain the idea of the product in the audience’s memory, and maximize profits. In a 1949 article in Modern Radio Advertising, Charles Hull Wolfe observed that jingles fell into several categories based on their length. First, prerecorded jingles could be 15 or 20 seconds in duration; other types could be whittled down to a mere five seconds, serving as tags during announcements. Live jingles included local program themes and brief musical identifications; usually 15- to 20-second jingles were inserted between announcements, and longer jingles of up to 70 seconds were standalone songs. Besides length, Wolfe goes on to describe jingle lyrics as follows: (1) “you appeal” that sings directly to the listener; (2) emotional appeal that talks to the heart rather than to the mind; (3) the testimonial, used largely in the “I” or “we” form by singers; and (4) exactness, that is, detailed information about a product (Taylor, 2012, pp. 95–96). Taylor described these early jingles as “relentlessly upbeat songs for adults, or relentlessly upbeat children’s ditties for everyone” (p. 74). With the advent of television, Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates Advertising Agency realized the benefit of making ads that were simple, direct, and focused around the repetition the Unified Selling Proposition (USP). Reeves believed that television ads had to state one primary reason that a particular product should be bought or was better than its competitors and that these reasons should take the form of slogans (AdAge, 2018). Many of his slogans enjoyed great longevity, such as the one for M&M (Mars) candies, “Melt in your mouth, not in your hand.”

418   Rodman Reeves also believed that advertising slogans gained even more power when set to music, as in a jingle. In an intraoffice memo published on September 11, 1950, Reeves described 10 traits of the musical jingle:

1. The length of the jingle must not exceed 13 seconds. 2. The jingle must carry the whole USP (unique selling position). 3. The jingle must carry the name of the product. 4. In cases of a new product, the jingle must carry “new product identification,” that is, identify what the product is. 5. The lyric must be set to a melody. 6. This melody must be a new melody. 7. This new melody must be singable. 8. This new singable melody must be written so that it is singable by one voice. 9. A musical gimmick is often effective, like repetition of words, or extension of words (“Good, Good, Good” and “So-o-o-o-o-o-o-o Good”). 10. No fake scansion—that is, words must fit music following proper, natural accents.

In 1963, Reeves hired composer Harry Sosnik to help compose music for clients at Bates. Sosnik had just retired as music director at the ABC television network that same year and wrote an unpublished article describing the process of jingle composing, adapting many of Reeves’s ideas of simplicity and efficacy of the lyrics. Sosnik states that the first part of the process is laying out the lyrics so that the product’s name appears first. The jingle should be in popular song form, or “AABA” form; that is, the song has four phrases where the first, second, and fourth are similar, and the third is a contrast. Not coincidentally, this AABA form is the same form as most Tin Pan Alley, or “stand­ard,” choruses of music at the time, as well as many older, traditional American popular song forms. Sosnik maintained that this was a preferred form so that the name of the product would be heard three times within the “A” section. The title and the remainder of the lyrics should be laid out to form the USP. The composer then should align the music with the lyrics to find a clear scansion. Sosnik also describes the process of choosing an appropriate style of music in which to set the commercial. He wrote: “There are any number of styles from which the professional musician must decide to use one. To illustrate, his choice might be a march form, childlike, swing, blues, sweet ballad, strong masculine, pretty feminine as well as many other styles” (Sosnik, 1963, p. 1, emphasis in the original). This off-the-cuff list of style topics was intended to correlate with the musical tastes of a 1960s television audience.2 Like Reeves, Sosnik believed that the scansion of words and music is of paramount importance: “When the music is heard, it automatically brings to mind the words . . . and vice versa.” Sosnik’s ultimate goal is to have a jingle that is a hit like a popular song—only in advertising, a “hit” is one where the music plays a memorable USP that sticks in the collective mind of the audience.

2  See Magarotto (2015) for an explanation of topic theory.

The Persistence of Memory   419

The “Hook” Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, jingles were a major force in advertising on TV and radio. In a retrospective of his own career as the self-professed “King of Jingles,” composer Steve Karmen (1989, 2005) lists “five types of musical commercials,” all of which boil down to a taxonomy of jingles similar to those described by Wolfe: (1) the jingle, (2) the tag or hook, (3) the logo, (4) background scores, and (5) the donut. These categories are actually subcategories of the jingle itself, with Karmen referring to various musical procedures of manipulating the main idea. The jingle itself is the complete song (albeit brief) with the union of music and lyrics. The tag, or hook, is the key line of the jingle, often used at the beginning and/or the end of the jingle, and is what Karmen has called “the sponsor’s audio banner.” The tag/hook should be the most memorable words/tune of the jingle that sum up a campaign, which the viewer (hopefully) remembers. The logo is the hook without the lyrics, but also is sometimes a newly created tune that provides (through repetition) a mnemonic of a product. Finally, the donut is a jingle with a “hole” left in the middle of the spot for a voiceover description of the product. Usually, background music based on the jingle continues through the voiceover segment as underscore, and then the jingle with lyrics sounds again as the voiceover concludes. Often this process is repeated with multiple voiceovers, creating double or even triple donuts (Karmen, 1989 p. 57). Karmen refers to the hook or tag as the short, “catchy” part of the jingle. Here, Karmen borrows the idea of the hook from popular songs. In fact, the hook has been defined for popular songs in general, with writers noting the commercial advantages of composing hooks in popular songs. In particular, Gary Burns (1987) enumerates the many types of hooks found in popular songs on records. His typology extends not only through catchy melodies and rhythms, but he cites examples of hooks in songs created by harmonic progressions, instrumentation, tempo, and even production values such as mixing, editing, and so forth. These same traits can be found in jingles. Commercial jingles strive to achieve the exact same results as popular songs, that is, spur memorability by the listener. Just as popular songs use hooks as mnemonic devices, jingles use hooks in the same way, only to link the tune with the product being advertised, rather than selling the song itself. Burns even cites Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn’s quotes on popular tunes: “[Hooks are] the foundation of commercial songwriting, particularly, hit-single writing. [Hooks may involve repetition of] one note or a series of notes . . . or of a lyric phrase, full lines or an entire verse. [The hook is] ‘what you’re selling’ ” (Burns, 1987, p. 1, emphasis mine).

Musical Structure of Jingles Early conceptions of jingles were derived from the structure of popular song form of American ballads. Jingle composers may compose an entire jingle consisting of the popular AABA form; however, these are often fragmented when only the hook or tag is

420   Rodman played in an ad. These hooks and tags are often significant parts of the overall jingle, usually the beginning or the end of the whole piece. As shown later, the hook in early jingles served as beginning structures of the overall jingle, while jingles of the later period tended to put the hook at the end. This structural function of the hook runs parallel with the formal archetypes of popular songs of each period, where AABA form ballads repeated the A phrase, and later the verse-chorus rock ballad repeated the refrain of verse-refrain forms. Recent work by several music theorists have postulated theories of musical structure based on a musical event’s placement within the overall form of a piece. Drawing upon the works of Arnold Schoenberg and Hugo Riemann, William Caplin (1998) has summarized structural functions for music of 18th-century European composers. Caplin articulates an elaborate taxonomy of formal functions largely based on the presentation of thematic ideas: initial functions (main theme; beginning), transition (second theme), medial functions (development), and ending functions (recapitulation), along with framing functions of prebeginning (introduction) and postending (codetta, and others) (Caplin, 1998, p. 27). Kofi Agawu (1991) also constructs a “beginning–middle–ending” paradigm for music. Agawu draws upon the 18th-century theories of Johann Mattheson for a rhetorical model (Exordium–Narratio–Propositio–Confutatio–Peroratio) that follows stand­ ard rhetorical practice of that time. Agawu then ties these principles to the contrapuntal theory of Henrich Schenker, using the Schenkerian Ursatz as a simplified musico­rhetorical model of “beginning–middle–end.” These functions are tied to the establishment of the tonic chord at the beginning of a piece and the return to tonic at the end. The middle has a dual function of both undermining and prolonging the beginning by departing from the tonic to other key areas: “It undermines the beginning by departing from it, generating tension in the middle” (Agawu, 1991, p. 54). In his study of the American popular song ballad of the mid-20th century, Allen Forte extrapolates that the form of most pop ballads contains a “verse,” often consisting of two periods of four measures, and a chorus, consisting of two more periods of eight measures, a “bridge” of another eight measures, and a repetition of one period of the chorus, completing a 32-measure form for the chorus. It is this “32-bar song form” that is usually the most memorable part of these ballads. Like Caplin’s observations on 18th-century music, Forte postulates that American ballads have a somewhat hierarchical formal function, where the chorus is the more memorable part of the song, and is itself structured with its own beginning, middle, and end. In fact, the form of ballad choruses is most often the familiar AABA song form. The A sections contain a defining melodic motif with a harmonic structure in the tonic harmony.3 The B section contains a contrasting melodic motif and movement away from

3  For those readers not familiar with the term tonic, it refers to the key note of the piece. For example, if a song is in the key of D major, then the “D” would be the tonic note, the chord based on D would be the tonic chord, etc.

The Persistence of Memory   421 tonic harmony. The final A section rehashes the original motif and returns to the tonic harmony. One trait of the pop-ballad chorus is that it may not always begin on the tonic harmony. Forte illustrates the Cole Porter song “How Could We Be Wrong?” in which the chorus begins with an ii7 chord (a D-minor seventh chord in the key of C major). Other songs where the chorus begins on harmonies other than tonic include Berlin’s “Isn’t This a Lovely Day” and “They Say It’s Wonderful,” Gershwin’s “How Long Has This Been Going On?,” and Rodger’s “Thou Swell,” among others. One can also think of songs from earlier eras, such as Stephen Foster’s “O Susannah!” composed in the 19th century, where the chorus begins on a subdominant harmony. This avoidance of tonic at the beginning of these sections would seem to exacerbate the “beginning” function of Caplan and Agawu, but in Tin Pan Alley ballads, the audience might assume the beginning function from a reimagined remembrance of the entire song—in their musical “alreadyness.” This reimagining of musical beginnings—or as is shown later, other functions—comes in handy in advertising jingles.

“See the USA . . .” Radio and television jingles in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s mirrored the structures of the standard popular ballads of the time and adapted them. There are many examples, but one of the most memorable is “See the USA in Your Chevrolet,” composed in 1950 by Leon Carr and Leo Corday, a songwriting team of popular tunes and Broadway shows. “See the USA” was popularized by Dinah Shore, who hosted the Dinah Shore Chevy Show from 1956 to 1963. Chevrolet was the sole sponsor of the variety series, following the single-sponsor tradition of television programs in the 1950s. However, as the new “magazine concept” of advertising developed later in the decade, commercials were shortened to one minute or 30 seconds, and jingles followed suit. Jingles were either cut to feature just the hook (“See the USA in your Chevrolet”) or composed in very short AABA pop song forms. Like popular ballads of the time, “See the USA” is in AABA form, with the hook in the first phrase (“See the USA in your Chevrolet, America is asking you to call . . .”). While the song also has a verse (which Shore sang every week), it is the AABA form of the chorus that was most performed for the TV audience. The lyrics of the A sections contain the hook “See the USA in your Chevrolet” and also links American patriotism to the car (“America’s the greatest land of all”). The B section appeals to the consumer’s enjoyment of driving a Chevy: “performance is sweeter . . . life is completer in a Chevy.” The final A section prompts the consumer to action: “So make a date today, to see the USA . . . .” The chorus is 37 bars long, replicating the 32-bar song form with an extension of the B phrase—in order to get the USP about the car in the song. Linear diagrams of the song appear in Figures 20.1a and 20.1b. Figure 20.1a is a foreground diagram outlining the form of the song. The diagram illustrates that the song contains an “interrupted” form overlaid on the AABA form, with the

422   Rodman

Figure 20.1a  Linear diagram of “See the U.S.A.” jingle, foreground.

Figure 20.1b  Linear diagram of “See the U.S.A.” jingle, middleground.

The Persistence of Memory   423

Figure 20.1c  Linear diagram of “See the U.S.A.” jingle, background.

first three phrases before the interruption and the last phrase the resumption of the tonic prolongation.4 The diagram also shows that the song begins on a C chord (with A as an added sixth), then a C augmented seventh chord, before moving to the tonic, F major in the second bar. The first phrase ends with a half cadence on C, approached by an A-minor and A-flat diminished chord. The second A phrase moves from C back to F. The B phrase features a circle of fifth progression, ending with a chromatic motion from D minor to D-flat seventh, a standard tritone substitution,5 resolving to the dominant C-major chord. The fundamental structure resumes with a recurrence of F major, the phrase also featuring another circle of fifth progression resolving to tonic at the end (A-D-G-C-F). All of these chord progressions are standard progressions in the Tin Pan Alley style. Figure  20.1b is a middle-ground graph highlighting the two motives in the song, shown in brackets on the graph. The “a” motif consists of a chromatic lower neighbor motion. This neighbor-note motion is actually a frustrated descent, as the melody keeps returning to its point of origin. However, the motive “resolves” just before the end of the song, in that it transforms into a three-note descending chromatic motif (labeled a', see mm. 30–31 on the figure). The “b” motif is the descending perfect fourth–major second motif that recurs throughout the song. This motive follows the “a” motive and also “resolves” at the end of the song. The leap of a descending fourth interval followed by a whole step serves as the “hook” of the song. The gap of the fourth is memorable and is recognizable to the listener. However, this gap is “filled in” at the very end of the song, with the stepwise motion from C down to F in mm. 32–33 (shown as b'), serving as a resolution to the recurring gapped motif. Figure 20.1c shows a background graph of the fundamental structure of the song. 4  “Interruption” is a structural characteristic of Schenkerian analysis, which I am borrowing here. In Schenkerian theory, the structural delineating characteristic of a piece of music is the motion from tonic to the dominant harmonies, with a descending line of the upper voice from a member of the tonic triad to tonic. Interruption means that this motion is “interrupted” by a pause on the dominant (the dominant divider), but the structure resumes with the fundamental structure “starting over again,” driving the piece to its conclusion. 5  A tritone substitution is a technique used in jazz music to (as the term refers) substitute a chord a tritone (i.e., augmented fourth or diminished fifth) away from a chord that is expected within a progression. So, in C major, a tritone sub for a V chord on G would be to substitute a D-flat chord. This creates smooth chromatic voice-leading, usually found in “turnarounds,” that is, short transition sections at the end of a musical section.

424   Rodman The hook of the Chevy jingle is at the beginning of the song and repeated with all the A phrases. Coincidentally, the name “Chevrolet” appears in all of the A phrases, following the Reeves/Sosnik conception of an effective ad. In this regard, the Chevy jingle followed many other jingles of the time by featuring the hook at the beginning of the song.

“Winston Tastes Good . . .” With the advent of the “magazine” style of advertising on television, advertising had to conform to 30- and 60-second commercial time slots. Commercials that utilized the musical jingle no longer had long time spans for complete song forms to be sung. So, commercials could either feature the jingle hooks only or shorten complete jingles to fit into the more restricted time slots. An example of an abbreviated song form from the 1950s is the “Winston Tastes Good, Like a Cigarette Should” jingle. The jingle was part of a long-standing campaign in the 1950s and 1960s by the RJ Reynolds tobacco company that began in 1954. The company’s president, Bowman Gray Jr., hired the William Esty Company to manage the advertising campaign. An earlier version of the Winston campaign was a jingle sung to the tune of “Skip to My Lou.” This campaign was replaced in 1954 by the “Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should” campaign. The new jingle was composed by Margaret Johnson, a singer, model, and pianist, who actually ghostwrote the jingle, giving the writing credit to Esty executive Wendell Adams. The song was recorded with Margaret and her husband, Travis, with their singing group, the Song Spinners (WikiVisually, n.d.). The campaign was so successful that it aired until 1972.6 Johnson’s “Winston Tastes Good” jingle illustrates the practice of adapting the AABA form of Tin Pan Alley song forms, as the hook is sung immediately at the beginning, and throughout the A sections. The chorus is identified as the starting point here, as the chorus begins with harmonies other than tonic (as noted previously). The entire jingle is actually an abbreviated song form (ABA, with the USP sung twice in the A section), with the eightbar periods noted by Forte shortened to four-bar phrases. The notable aspect of the jingle is that it is a sort of “inverted” song form, with the chorus beginning the piece, with the verse to follow. In Agawu’s terms, we begin with the “middle,” a tonally dynamic portion of the song, while the more stable verse—the “beginning” of the song—is now in the “middle.” The Winston jingle follows Rosser Reeves’s (as well as Sosnik’s) prescription for jingle writing closely. The song mentions the product and the USP right at the beginning and repeats each of these twice. The middle section goes a bit deeper to describe the favorable attributes of the product before repeating the USP one last time. Many other jingles of the 1960s and 1970s followed Chevrolet’s and Winston’s lead by placing the hook at the beginning of the jingle, in these cases, the beginning representing the beginning of the chorus of a standard AABA song form. Notable among these are 6  These commercials can be seen on the following weblinks: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=apD9_hLxqE0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV8qFSRin_8

The Persistence of Memory   425 many of the soft drink jingles such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola, and the pasta dish Rice-aRoni, whose jingle was adapted from Billy Rose and Con Conrad’s 1923 song, “Barney Google,” by Charles Foll, vice president of McCann-Erickson, in 1961. A later example is the “classic” American version of the “Gimme a Break” tune, Nestlé’s Kit Kat candy bar jingle, also in AABA form, with the A sections featuring the hook with product name (“Gimme a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar”). The jingle has been in use in the United States since 1986 and was written by Ken Shuldman (lyrics) and Michael A. Levine (music) for the DDB Advertising Agency. Versions of the original have been covered by Carrie Underwood, Shawn Colvin, and many other popular singers, including the latest version by Chance the Rapper.

“Snap, Crackle, Pop!” As rock and pop music replaced jazz standards as the most popular form of music in the United States in the 1960s, jingle composing followed suit. John Covach (2005) has written on the various forms of rock music and has distilled four different musical structures used by classic rock musicians. These are the 12-bar blues; the AABA song form (derived from the American ballad repertoire discussed earlier); the verse-chorus form; and “compound forms,” which are a mixture of forms, usually an AABA song form embedded within a verse-chorus form. One early example of the new verse-chorus jingle was the “Snap, Crackle, Pop!” campaign for Rice Krispies, a breakfast cereal manufactured by the Kellogg Company in Battle Creek, Michigan. The ad campaign began in 1966, and TV commercials featured both a “straight” version and a “swing” version of the tune. The jingle was composed by N. B. Winkless Jr., the creative director of the Chicago-based Leo Burnett Agency. The jingle features three verses with the Snap, Crackle, and Pop cartoon characters each extolling the virtues of their own sound that the cereal makes when milk is poured on it. Each verse ends with a brief refrain: “Snap, Crackle, Pop, Rice Krispies!,” which is the hook of the jingle. The final verse is a combination of all three previous verses in a threepart contrapuntal tour de force.

The Persistence of Memory: Three Insurance Jingles Liberty Mutual Insurance With the deregulation of advertising in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, commercials have become more numerous, but also more brief. This condensation of timespans has affected the jingle. In most cases, the jingle has disappeared altogether. But in some cases, advertisers have recycled and condensed jingles from the past.

426   Rodman

Figure 20.2  Linear diagram of “Liberty Mutual” jingle.

If jingles are used at all in contemporary ads, often they are very brief. Musical brevity begs the question: How brief can a piece of music be and still be a complete piece of music, with a beginning, middle, and end? One boundary for commercials is the distinction between jingle and “logo.” Logos have served the same function as jingles in 21st-century commercials in branding the product and providing a mnemonic for the viewer. The Intel computer logo (with notes C-F-C-G) is one notable example. However, while logos have musical durations that are recognizable to consumers, they really are not fully formed musical pieces, as they do not have functional beginnings, middles, and endings. But how brief can a piece of music be and still be a piece of music? One of the shortest jingles currently is the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company commercial that is airing at the time of this writing. Liberty’s ad campaign has been airing since 2014 and consists of characters airing their grievances against the practices of other insurance companies and extolling the viewer—you—to switch to Liberty Mutual Insurance.7 These ads appear to be filmed in Lower Manhattan, with the Statue of Liberty (the company’s visual logo) in the background (although the orientation to the statue has been altered for sight lines). In 2018, the ads added a little jingle at the end (see Figure 20.2). The jingle is about four seconds long and consists of three measures of simple duple meter. Despite its brevity, it has everything necessary to make it a complete musical piece—that is, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning is an arpeggiation of the tonic triad (through scale degrees 1-3-5), establishing D as tonic. The middle is the descent from 5 to 3-2-1, and the end repeats the 3-2-1 motion. The jingle is sung in unison with no harmonies, but the listener can imagine the I-V-I harmonic motion accompanying the 3-2-1 motif at the end. The brevity and simplicity of the Liberty Mutual jingle makes it memorable. It also hearkens back to the 1960s and 1970s, an era when jingles were prevalent on TV and radio. Two other insurance companies have worked with their old jingles in new ways, spurring a new kind of memorability for their products while reminiscing on the old jingles of the 1970s.

7  In 2019, this campaign was slowly being replaced by the “Limu Emu” campaign that features a fictitious detective and his “sidekick,” an actual emu that is dressed in a yellow Liberty Mutual T-shirt.

The Persistence of Memory   427

“Like a Good Neighbor . . .” One of the famous songwriters to begin a career as a jingle composer is Barry Manilow, who composed dozens of commercial jingles early in his career. Manilow composed ads for Dr. Pepper, MacDonald’s hamburgers, and other products, but perhaps is most famous for his long-standing jingle for State Farm Insurance. The “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There” campaign was initiated in 1971 by the Needham, Harper & Steers (now DDB Chicago) advertising firm. Lyrics were composed by jingle house lyricists Jerry Gavin and Keith Reinhard and sung early on by Leslie (aka Lesley) Miller, a demo singer who worked with artists such as Steely Dan; James Brown; Frank Sinatra; Blood, Sweat & Tears; and Burt Bacharach. Manilow’s jingle has endured and remains a “part of (the company’s) DNA,” according to Beth Ward, assistant vice president of marketing for Bloomington, Illinois-based State Farm (Nagle, 2016). Manilow composed a full-blown verse-chorus-style pop song, but in recent years, the jingle was reduced to just the refrain: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” Manilow’s jingle reflects his ambitions as a songwriter, as the jingle is a sort of miniballad, structured in “composite” form (à la Covach): a combination of verse-chorus pop song and a mini-ballad in AABA form. Unlike Forte’s 32-bar song form, however, Manilow’s jingle has an asymmetrical phrase structure of three/four/three/four measures respectively. (The melody could easily be smoothed out to the standard 32-bar song form with four-bar phrases by lengthening the half note in mm. 2 and 9 from half to whole notes). Perhaps the existing asymmetry is intentional, or Manilow compressed these phrases to get the song into a 30-second commercial spot. A linear graph of Manilow’s song is shown in Figure 20.3a. Unlike the Chevy and Winston jingles, Manilow places the hook of the jingle at the very end of each verse, as a sort of refrain. While still in a sort of AABA form, the form begins to look more like a verse-chorus form of modern pop/rock songs. Figure 20.3b is a middle-ground reduction of the song. Like Forte’s ballads, the song does not begin on the tonic chord but rather on an enharmonically respelled B-diminished chord in second inversion. When the tonic harmony is reached in m. 4, it is in second inversion, thus weakening its effect as “home base.” The upper voice of the melody is marked by a beginning note on B3, ascending to G4, and ending the song on B4, resulting in a long-range octave transfer. Manilow’s jingle was so popular that it had a long life in the media and aired throughout the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. The jingle got a new lease on life when the rock band Weezer covered the tune on their 2010 album, Death to False Metal. This album coincided with a new State Farm television advertising campaign, called “Get to a Higher State,” in which characters in mini-narrative commercials were characterized as in a predicament, such as a car accident. A character would then sing the hook, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” and a State Farm insurance agent would magically appear to remedy the situation. These characters were not singers and usually shouted or sang the hook badly out of tune.

428   Rodman Not only are the jingles out of tune or badly sung, but also only the hook is sung. Figure 20.3c is a diagram of the hook portion of the jingle: It begins with an outline of a C-major chord (the subdominant chord), followed by a melody that harmonizes with the dominant chord and finally, the tonic chord (ending in an imperfect authentic cadence). Here, the “beginning” function must be reimagined by the audience (as Forte points out in many standard ballads). By the time these commercials aired in the 2010s,

Figure 20.3a  Linear diagram of “Like a Good Neighbor” jingle, foreground.

Figure 20.3b  Linear diagram of “Like a Good Neighbor” jingle, middleground.

The Persistence of Memory   429

Figure 20.3c  Linear diagram of “Like a Good Neighbor” jingle, “hook.”

the TV audience was familiar enough with the jingle’s hook to recognize the outline of the melody and its musical function, however out of tune it was rendered. The jingle was embedded in the audience’s collective memory—its “alreadyness.”

“Nationwide Is on Your Side” Another insurance company that has relied heavily on their jingle is Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company of Columbus, Ohio. The jingle for the company was composed by Steve Karmen in 1969. As mentioned previously, Karmen was perhaps the most prolific of all jingle composers during their heyday in the 1970s. He was also one of the most articulate advocates for the form, having authored several books and articles, both advocating and later bemoaning the demise of the jingle in the late 20th century.8 His “Nationwide” jingle was composed relatively early in his career and spanned the airwaves for over 12 years. Like Manilow’s “State Farm” jingle, Karmen placed the hook at the very end of the jingle in a sort of mini-refrain: “Nationwide is on your side.” The hook is a simple melody of four notes in a pentatonic pattern: E descending to G, then rising to A, and ending on C, implying a I-IV-I progression, a progression common to pop songs of the 1960s and beyond. Nationwide has recently resurrected the jingle, first by an unlikely musical advocate—professional NFL football player Peyton Manning, who intones the hook with altered lyrics in several spots.9 Later, Nationwide used a campaign with three contemporary music artists: country music star Brad Paisley, ballad singer Tori Kelly, and Broadway and television singer/actor Leslie Odom Jr., who both composed different renditions of a jingle and retained the “Nationwide is on your side” hook at the end. Paisley’s song comes across as an intimate country ballad with a (rather disjointed) verse. Where we might expect couplets, or coupled phrases, as in a country ballad, Paisley composes in an almost through-composed arrangement of phrases: ABB’CD 8  See his The Jingle Jungle and Who Killed the Jingle? 9  See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUdLlhTmenc and https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wU8E-qU1TK8, among others.

430   Rodman (refrain), where the first line seems disjointed and disconnected from the rest of the song. Kelly’s renditions are similar, with her singing and strumming her guitar. Odom actually composed several versions of the ad, all in a smooth jazz style. Odom’s renditions are freely composed mostly in couplets, like many contemporary pop tunes. Like the State Farm jingle, the Nationwide hook has the audience only remembering the musical beginning and middle by hearing only the ending hook. Yet, the audience can hear the jingle as a complete song by assuming these functions.

Conclusions In his 2014 article, Nicolai Graakjær shows how popular songs are abbreviated in commercials, with much of the songs’ structures rearranged or omitted altogether. The present chapter is meant to complement Graakjær’s work by showing how the musical structure plays out in these abbreviations. Musical styles are conglomerates of musical structures and are defined by the types of melodies, chord progressions, instrumentation, and deployment of these parameters through musical forms. Jingles tap into contemporaneous popular musical styles, only usually in a more cursory manner than their pop-tune cousins.10 In the 21st century, abbreviation has been the norm for jingles, as shown in the Liberty, Nationwide, and State Farm campaigns, where only the hooks of the jingle remain in the latter two cases, and the jingle is extremely brief in the first. These two campaigns have practically kept the jingle alive (at least for national advertising campaigns) by reinvigorating the hooks with new performances, exemplified by Weezer for the State Farm campaign and through new songs composed by Brad Paisley, Tori Kelly, and Leslie Odom for Nationwide. Through performances by these artists, jingles become transmedial pop songs in themselves; in fact, Odom states that making the Nationwide ads was “like making another album” (Nationwide, 2016). But it is not just performances by well-known pop artists that have made these jingles persist. They have persisted through their kinship with the grammar, syntax, and structure of the American popular song. As shown previously, jingles stayed abreast of popular song forms of the time, as AABA song forms, such as the Chevy ad, were used for jingles when the 32-bar song form was popular in American popular songs, then evolved to verse-chorus forms as that form became predominant for popular songs. At the same time, the hooks of the jingles migrated from the beginnings of these song forms to the ends as the styles changed. These ending formulas for the hooks allowed for increased fragmentation of the jingle, as the end of the jingle moved to a concluding cadence on 10  This is not a new phenomenon. Schenker recognized the structural incompleteness of Chopin preludes, but still valued such pieces very highly. Despite missing elements of his fundamental structure, he saw these pieces as tonally coherent, just as I see coherence in these jingles. See London and Rodman (1998).

The Persistence of Memory   431 tonic. Audiences could accommodate this fragmentation as long as a tonal resolution could be detected. Now, in the 21st century, jingles are again adapting to the even more fragmented popular music scene. The hooks of the jingles are largely all that is left of many jingles, and lately, these hooks are performed in a variety of ways, including badly out of tune. In television, a musical “beginning–middle–ending” paradigm is obscured by the continuous nature of television broadcasting. While individual television texts are essentially discrete, the “flow” of texts through time exacerbates the beginnings and endings of these texts. Commercials flow into narrative programs, programs into other commercials, and commercials into station identification logos, public service announcements, promos for other programs, and back to narrative programs in a seemingly endless progression. This flow is further mitigated by a viewer who “channel surfs,” interrupting a specific text by changing to another one. A viewer might move from the middle of one text to the beginning (or end, or middle) of another text on another channel. To gain and retain the viewer’s attention, commercials must employ structures that make them stand out and deliver their information quickly. And quite often the ad must have the look—and sound—of either the beginning or ending of a significant new text. The fragmentation of jingles in current advertising demands that audiences draw upon their memory of the complete jingle heard in past commercials. Both the repetition of ads on TV and the audience’s ability to recognize the tonal structure of a structurally incomplete jingle fosters the memory of the audience to create complete musical structures from these fragments. It is the persistence of this collective memory—the “alreadyness” of the audience—that has kept the jingle alive, if not vibrant, in the 21st century.

Recommended Readings Huron, D. (1989). Music in advertising: An analytic paradigm. Musical Quarterly, 73, 557–574. Graakjær, N. J. (2014). The bonding of a band and a brand: On music placement in television commercials from a text analytical perspective. Popular Music and Society, 37(5), 517–537. Karmen, S. (1989). Through the jingle jungle. New York, NY: Billboard Books. Rodman, R. (1997). And now an ideology from our sponsor: Musical style and semiosis in American television commercials. College Music Symposium, 37, 29–48. Rodman, R. (2009). Strategies of imbuement in television advertising music. In G. Harper, R. Doughty, & J. Eisentrut (Eds.), Sound and music in film and visual media (pp. 617–634). London, UK: Continuum.

References AdAge. (2018). Rosser Reeves. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/ reeves-rosser-1910-1984/98848/ Agawu, K. (1991). Playing with signs: A semiotic interpretation of classic music. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

432   Rodman Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J.  Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Westport, CT: Greenwood. Burns, G. (1987). A typology of “hooks” in popular records. Popular Music, 6(1), 1–20. Caplin, W. (1998). Classical form: A theory of formal functions for the instrumental music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Covach, J. (2005). Form in rock music: A primer. In D. Stein (Ed.), Engaging music: Essays in music analysis (pp. 65–76). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Everett, W. (1999). The Beatles as musicians: Revolver through the Anthology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Everett, W. (2001). The Beatles as musicians: The Quarrymen through Rubber Soul. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Forte, A. (1995). The American popular ballad of the golden era, 1924–1950. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Goldman, R., & Papson, S. (1998). Nike culture: The sign of the swoosh. London, UK: SAGE. Gorn, G. (1982). The effects of advertising on choice behavior: A classical conditioning approach. Journal of Marketing, 46(1), 94–101. Graakjær, N. (2014). The bonding of a band and a brand: On music placement in television commercials from a text analytical perspective. Popular Music and Society, 37(5), 517–537. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2013.861242 Larson, S. (2009). Analyzing jazz: A Schenkerian approach. New York, NY: Pendragon Press. London, J., & Rodman, R. (1998). Musical genre and Schenkerian analysis. Journal of Music Theory, 34(1), 101–124. Karmen, S. (1989). Through the jingle jungle: The art and business of making music in commercials. New York, NY: Bpi Communications. Karmen, S. (2005). Who killed the jingle? How a unique American art form disappeared. Bluemound, WI: Hall Leonard. Kellaris, J. J., & Cox, A. D. (1989). The effects of background music in advertising: A reassessment. Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 113–118. Magarotto, M. (2015). Review of the Oxford handbook of topic theory. Project Muse, 72(2), 384–388. Middleton, R. (2000). Reading pop: Approaches to textual analysis in popular music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Nagle, M. (2016, June 3). State Farm moving away from good neighbor. Herald and Review. Retrieved from https://herald-review.com/business/local/state-farm-moving-away-fromgood-neighbor/article_13498161-2294-5583-a9d9-1fb83d762751.html Park, C. W., & Young, S. M. (1986). Consumer response to television commercials: The impact of involvement and background music on brand attitude formation. Journal of Marketing Research, 23, 11–24. Reeves, R. (1950). Memorandum. Retrieved from Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater. n.p. Rodman, R. (1997). And now an ideology from our sponsor: Musical style and semiosis in American television commercials. College Music Symposium, 37. Rodman, R. (2010). Tuning in: American narrative television music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Scott, L. (1990). Understanding jingles and needledrop: A rhetorical approach to music in advertising. Journal of Consumer Research, 17(2), 223–236. Simpkins, J.  D., & Smith, J.  A. (1974). Effects of music on source evaluations. Journal of Broadcasting, 18(3), 361–367.

The Persistence of Memory   433 Sosnik, H. (1963). Songwriting. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Institute for Film and Television. Sterling, C.  H. (n.d.). Deregulation. Retrieved from http://www.museum.tv/eotv/deregulation.htm Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. WikiVisually. (n.d.). Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. Retrieved from https:// wikivisually.com/wiki/Winston_tastes_good_like_a_cigarette_should Williams, R. (2003). Television: Technology and cultural form. New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1974) Wolfe, C. H. (1949). Modern radio advertising. New York, NY: Printer’s Ink.

Videos 360MusicWorX. (2017, September 23). Behind the songs with Leslie Odom Jr Nationwide songs for all your sides [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=jRk4f5YAPm4 amrevolutions. (2011, April 19). State Farm commercial “magic jingle buffalo” [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jYnFxZ6X1c Cass, R. (2014, November 14). Snap, crackle, pop, Rice Krispies [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwO5W-VNVTM Edwards, E. (2013, March 2). Camille Chen State Farm commercial [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isqYaFRQaLs Embezz. (2006, April 19). Snap, crackle, pop, old Rice Krispies commercial [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6TIsxTdrCU Gregs Automotive. (2009, June 22). See the USA in your Chevrolet—Dinah Shore 1952 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5tKh0aBDc Larry  E.  Crum & Associates. (2018, July 30). Leslie Odom Jr: Nationwide is on your side [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF-_rIuYfu8 Nationwide. (2016, August 4). Songs for all your sides: Brad Paisley for Nationwide [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USny2lbvrkI Nationwide. (2018, January 6). Songs for all your sides: Behind the songs with Tori Kelly [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDImkgxtSZg Smith, M. F. (2014, January 16). Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDg5iwqqbO0 Throwback. (2009, October 15). Winston cigarettes commercial [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apD9_hLxqE0

Musical Genres and Advertising

chapter 21

Popu l a r M usic, A dv ertisi ng, a n d “Sel li ng Ou t” Bethany Klein

The use of popular music in advertising has in recent decades been promoted by music and advertising industry insiders as a salve for problems faced by the music industries, including barriers to radio play and decreasing music sales. In the mid1990s, media deregulation, enacted through legislation like the Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the United States, allowed large corporations to dominate the radio industry and led to low-risk and standardized playlists (Klein, 2008a; Taylor, 2007). Television advertising, considered previously by many musicians to be an unsavory setting for their work, began to look like a legitimate avenue for wide exposure: ­supporters celebrated advertising as the “new radio” (“Ad Syncs,” 2013; Barnhard & Rutledge, 2009; Klein, 2008a). Advertising also offered a potential revenue stream, with advertisers paying the copyright holder for a music synchronization, or sync, license, which allows copyrighted music to be used in visual media. Tentative musicians were further persuaded to license to advertisers when digital music met the internet and spawned numerous platforms for acquiring music immediately and free of charge. While legitimate streaming sites and services have replaced the peer-topeer platforms that first raised the alarm, earnings (and, importantly, the cut that makes it to an artist) will never return to predigital levels. As a result, copyright exploitation, including sync licensing to advertisers, has become a central revenue stream for the music industries. In the past, popular music in advertising attracted the scorn of critics and fans concerned with artists “selling out”; now it is a standard practice and rarely registers as controversial. This chapter explores how selling out has been claimed, challenged, debated, and tamed in the context of popular music in advertising, and considers how the normalization of the practice shapes popular music culture more generally.

Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out”   437

Studying Popular Music in Advertising While much of the earlier defining contributions to the study of music in advertising focused on composed and/or classical music used in television commercials (see, e.g., Cook, 1994; Huron, 1989; Tota, 2001), the growth of popular music placement around the turn of the 21st century encouraged a focus on popular genres that had previously made only rare appearances in advertising, from pop and rock (Allan,  2008; Klein, 2008b) to world music (Taylor, 2000) and electronica (Klein, 2008a; Taylor, 2007). Monographs have explored the economic and cultural context of the practice (Klein, 2009), the history of popular music’s relationship with advertising (Taylor, 2012), and the textual structure of ads themselves (Graakjær, 2015). These contributions to the literature on popular music in advertising reflect the interests of different fields (marketing and advertising; popular music studies and musicology; media, communication, and cultural studies) and different approaches in both method (textual, production studies, historical) and orientation (instrumental, interpretive, critical). While earlier scholarship on the use of popular music in advertising typically acknowledged debates about selling out, recent publications suggest that the use of popular music in advertising is no longer infused with tension. Music is still an important dimension of advertising from a marketing point of view (Cartwright, McCormick, & Warnaby, 2016), but its movement from “ultimate sellout” to “one of the best opportunities for many musicians to gain access to mainstream markets” (Eckhardt & Bradshaw, 2014, p. 167) means that concerns about artistic integrity or commercialism may not even figure into current research. Could we be witnessing a happy marriage between popular music and advertising? A confident bridging of the historically uneasy gap between culture and commerce? Echoing Taylor’s assessments that “there is no longer a meaningful distinction to be made between ‘popular music’ and ‘advertising music’ ” and “selling out is no longer an issue” (2012, p. 229), Graakjær writes that “accusations of ‘selling out’ have lost significance and have become increasingly rare” (2014, p. 519), and Eckhardt and Bradshaw assert that “although music and commerce have always been in bed together, they now truly seem to be in love” (2014, p. 181). Rather than conclude with the observation that selling out is no longer a relevant concept for understanding the use of music in advertising, I choose to take this shift in attitude as a starting point. What does the use of popular music in advertising, and its changing relationship to selling out, tell us about promotional culture more generally and the role of branding in society? Practices that seem to blend culture and commerce, or art and business, can help us better understand the centrality of promotion to cultural production: what Powers (2013) describes as a “ ‘state’ of promotion” for popular music, why Meier (2016) explores popular music as promotion, and how Carah (2010) considers musicians as cocreators in experiential branding. Banet-Weiser’s work on branded creativity reminds us, however, that even blurred boundaries are meaningful. As she

438   Klein describes, “The authentic has never accurately defined the relationship of art and commerce” since “artists have always been involved in collaborations with those industries and organizations that finance, distribute, and sell their work” (Banet-Weiser,  2012, p. 99). At the same time, “the idea that commercialization corrupts the authenticity of art appears to continue to structure tastes, policy decisions about funding federal artwork, and cultural boundaries” (Banet-Weiser, 2012, p. 99). Studying the use of popular music in advertising can reveal new practices in the advertising and music industries, but it can also provide rich examples to explore and debate tensions between culture and commerce. In the next section, I examine how the concept of selling out operates in popular music culture and why it found particular traction with the use of popular music in television commercials.

Selling Out and Popular Music The phrase selling out describes the act of abandoning “previously held political and aesthetic commitments for financial gain” (Hesmondhalgh,  1999, p. 36). While popular music may be the setting in which the phrase has been most commonly applied, the Oxford English Dictionary dates the usage of “sell-out” as “a sacrifice of principle or betrayal” to the 1860s, with examples hailing from the political arena. Art and, later, popular music required certain conditions rooted in Romanticism (the embedding of notions of autonomy and individual genius) and capitalism (the replacement of a patronage system with a market, and the linking of creators and products through copyright) to be met to earn a seat at the selling-out table. The phrase eventually became such an ordinary part of popular music debates that we may be inclined to dismiss it as a cliché, but this would be a mistake: What can seem like a cliché to an academic scholar also functions for music fans as an important means for making sense of the world; better to inquire as to what is at stake to make such ideas attractive and important than to dismiss them forthwith. From there we can begin to understand the cultural tensions informing the selling out argument: because it matters.  (Pillsbury, 2006, p. 136)

The inclination to wave away selling out as a fan construction that fails to capture the complex reality of the music industries ignores the value of the phrase in communicating how we experience the world, including the boundaries we hold up as meaningful. It also leaves unexplored the role the idea plays in policing and maintaining the line, however permeable, between culture and commerce in popular music culture. While recognizing the many different ways of delineating “popular music” as an object of study, following Shuker, I use the term popular music to include “the diverse range of popular music genres produced in commodity form, largely, but no longer exclusively for a youth market, primarily Anglo-American in origin (or imitative of its forms), since the

Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out”   439 early 1950s, and now global in scope” (Shuker, 2016, p. 6). The activities of popular musicians have been scrutinized by fans and critics for signs of “going commercial” even before Beatlemania revealed avenues of capitalizing on success previously unimagined (perhaps best captured by the empty cans of “Beatle Breath” sold to fans). Various dimensions of music-making, from the sound of the music itself to a musician’s association with a commercial company, are vulnerable to perceived transgressions. The most common dimension to attract charges of selling out in popular music is the sound of the music itself. In such cases, artists who are perceived to have changed their sound or musical style to achieve commercial success are viewed as having sold out. The change may involve straying from the conventions of a genre, using different instruments or using instruments differently, or breaking with musical principles associated with a particular music tradition. Frith offers a useful interpretation of this version of selling out when he asks, “Why Does Music Make People So Cross?” (2004). As he notes, the pursuit of “crowd-pleasing” can provoke anger that “performers or composers are betraying their talent,” and the “most familiar version of this argument is the rock cultural concept of ‘selling out’ ” (Frith, 2004, p. 66, emphasis in original). Anger directed toward the music itself may stand in for anger about a perceived “betrayal of identity,” especially for fans who view musical taste as differentiating them from mainstream consumers (Frith, 2004, p. 67). Accusations of selling out are often expressed with reference to the music, even if used as an indicator of other transgressions or to express the concern that commercialization drains subculture of its power (Moore, 2005). Musicians who adopt a more commercial sound may attract mainstream and larger audiences but risk alienating early fans. Choices that are perceived to have been cynically made with the goal of reaching as wide an audience as possible are open to charges of selling out: the Rolling Stones and Blondie were among those groups on the receiving end of such accusations when they flirted with disco at the height of the style’s popularity. While the adoption of commercially friendly elements—from trendy instrumentation or more polished production to more mainstream content or delivery of lyrics (e.g., in language or accent)—is often the focus, it is not music alone that is under the microscope. Nonmusical choices, including appearance (John Lennon described the Beatles’ adoption of mohair suits as selling out), stage show, and collaborations (from tour mate to producer), can similarly be scrutinized for signs of compromise for financial gain. Of course, such examples rely on a certain amount of mind-reading to support an interpretation of “selling out” or “going commercial,” with artists able to justify their choices as driven by and part of an artistic vision, rather than monetary gain. Moving outside the content of music and performance to the context of making and promoting music, artists must confront another set of choices and possible missteps in the form of the companies with which they associate. Selling-out debates in the 1980s and 1990s often revolved around independent bands “signing” to major labels: the mainstream success of bands like Green Day and Nirvana led to an explosion of independent bands being offered major label contracts, and to cries of “sell-out” when they accepted (see accounts in Azerrad,  2001; O’Connor,  2008). Whether an artist is

440   Klein ­erceived to maintain creative control can mitigate the charges, while excessive p ­merchandising, exorbitant ticket prices, and a too-cozy relationship with the press can aggravate them. Even television appearances have been deemed too commercial for some: the Clash and Arctic Monkeys are among those who refused to appear on Top of the Pops, and others have declined, at least temporarily, to make or appear in music videos (e.g., George Michael for Listen Without Prejudice, Volume 1; Radiohead for Kid A; and Pearl Jam at the peak of their success with Ten). Across the range of activities, selling out in popular music is a charge leveled when an artist is perceived as pursuing commercial gain at the expense of cultural autonomy. The phrase cultural autonomy is used here “to capture activities that may be understood as creative and/or artistic, and that likely relate to economic security, but also activities that do not clearly fit these categories, including choices of distribution or affiliation informed by ethos or ethics” (Klein, Meier, & Powers, 2017, p. 222). The use of music in advertising represents an example of commercial affiliation and has served as an illustration of the culture/commerce tension in action. Criticism of artists who have partnered with corporate brands is not new: in 1988, Neil Young’s “This Note’s for You” satirized the growing trend of corporate sponsorship and advertising featuring popular music and musicians. However, by the turn of the 21st century, with the indie-versusmajor argument essentially exhausted through co-optation of indie by the mainstream (Hesmondhalgh & Meier,  2014), the use of popular music in advertising became a prominent focus of selling-out debates. While the categories discussed previously may assume compromise or the abandonment of values, the use of popular music in advertising is perhaps the most blatant and public example of acquiescence to commercialism and consumerism that fans encounter. The aim is necessarily commercial for artist and advertiser, the advertiser has the final say, and the song is there to serve the advertisement, not the other way around. In the following section, I revisit how artists have assessed placement opportunities (Klein, 2009) and consider the influence of recent developments on the trajectory of the practice.

To License or Not to License Some of the most controversial cases of popular music in advertising have incited an additional layer of outrage because the artist in question did not control the rights or approve of the usage. The use of the Beatles’ “Revolution” in a 1987 Nike ad is the classic example: the living Beatles objected to the use of the song to hawk sneakers but did not own or control the rights (see Klein, 2009). For many music fans, this example proved a lesson in copyright and an opportunity to consider the moral dimensions of music licensing. Why does the use of music in advertising sometimes feel like a degradation of the song? Shouldn’t the artist have a say over its use, whatever the technical status of copyright? For advertisers, the debate that followed Nike’s use of the Beatles song

Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out”   441 s­ uggested a cautious and considerate approach to music licensing, though subsequent cases with similar circumstances have sometimes revived the discussion: in 2001 Wrangler used Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” as a patriotic anthem to promote their jeans, despite the topical mismatch (it’s a powerful anti-war song) and the songwriter’s opposition to the use (John Fogerty did not control the rights). For musicians, these scandals offered a lesson, and few artists today would concede their publishing rights completely. The strength of feeling expressed by music fans gave musicians an additional lesson: artists should wield their rights carefully. All of the potential rights holders have reason to tread carefully when it comes to licensing to advertising. Publishers (who are often assigned copyright to license the work and collect royalties on behalf of the artist) and record companies (who typically own the rights to the “master” recording) need to consider a composition’s future value since overuse or a use that prompts a negative response may limit future licensing opportunities. Musicians can add to this concern the worry that their artistic integrity will be questioned: that they may be accused of selling out. Artists must balance such concerns with the reality that there is more pressure than ever to agree to licensing offers. To do so, artists consider the fit of the song with the product, service, or company; the artistry of the commercial; and the various benefits and risks of licensing (or not).

Brand Alignment When musicians discuss licensing a song for use in a commercial, the alignment of the music or artist with the product or service is often at the heart of the decision-making process. Musicians are more likely to be open to a licensing opportunity when the product advertised is felt to be a “match” with the image or values of the artist (Klein, 2009; Meier, 2016). Whether the image of the advertised product shares characteristics with the image of the artist is often considered as a justification for licensing. In 2006, the rock group the Donnas, who have licensed to commercials for brands including Target, Budweiser, and Nissan, identified the then holy grail of spots: “Why can’t we get that iPod spot? Those spots are like having a video on MTV” (quoted in Paoletta, 2006, p. 22). The combination of a music-related product with a “cool” brand is about as safe a choice as an artist might hope to make. And the Donnas know about selling out: It’s funny, Robertson says. “Some of our fans thought we were selling out when we were on an indie label. So, when we signed with Atlantic, they thought we were complete sellouts.” Toss several music licenses into the mix and the band is, for many, a poster child for selling out. “But if you’re not in a band, you don’t know what it’s like,” Robertson adds. “We shop at Target. We like the Olympics. We love Budweiser.”  (Paoletta, 2006, p. 22)

442   Klein Like the Donnas, many artists cite their own use of a product or company to explain why they agreed to license a song when they have declined other opportunities. Relatedly, artists evaluate the ethical fit of the advertiser against their own values. For example, Welsh rock band the Super Furry Animals rejected a seven-figure offer from Coca-Cola, citing the company’s treatment of its workers. Few artists rule out future opportunities entirely, however. Even John Densmore, who has been vocal in his disapproval of the practice and who has prevented the use of the music of the Doors in advertising, has commented, “There’s a possibility if something came along that’s very ‘green’ that agreed with where we’re at, then maybe” (quoted in Newman, 2006, p. 24). Being a user of a product or service, or sharing the values of a company, offers a more genuine connection than the arbitrary link typically forged by music placement. If an artist already supports an advertiser through custom or shared values, music placement can be viewed as simply extending that support. Bob Seger, for example, agreed to license “Like a Rock” to Chevrolet, despite turning down offers from many other advertisers, because he was from the Detroit area, had worked for General Motors, and wanted to support the company (Diamond,  2016). The inverse is also true: when a company is already seen to care about popular music culture, a placement can be viewed as another vehicle through which the company can offer support to artists. DJ Steve Aoki saves his endorsements for brands that “care about the culture” of electronic dance music (EDM): to gain approval, companies “really do have to support [EDM] from the ground up. You have to help build the culture. You can’t go in and buy the culture” (Hall, 2015). Ultimately, both artist and advertiser seek a music placement that scans as authentic. As one branded entertainment executive puts it, the content of the advertisement must be perceived by the target audience as “authentic to the brand” (Elliott, 2009, p. B6). Of course, contributing to popular music culture is neither altruistic nor anonymous. Brands may sponsor tours, provide free products to musicians, or host competitions for musicians, but their contributions are invariably a part of a company’s marketing strategy. The concept of authenticity may be too slippery to ever successfully pin down, but the perception of authenticity can make all the difference to the success of an advertising campaign and to the likelihood of selling-out accusations.

Creativity in Advertising At the extreme ends, what advertising often represents (commercialism and consumerism) is at odds with what music can represent (an important source of human expression and connection). In reality, popular music can be unapologetically commercial and advertising can embody genuine creativity. A spot with artistic aspirations can offer a more comfortable home for licensed music. Artists who evaluate the creativity of a commercial as part of the decision-making process are still seeking an alignment between song and spot, though focused on the fit between sound and visual rather than artist and company values. Advertising spots

Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out”   443 described as “creative” and “artistic” may feel like a more natural fit for popular music and can allay concerns about affiliation with the advertiser. Jim James from indie rock group My Morning Jacket, whose song “Mahgeetah” was used in a Coors Aspen Edge beer commercial in 2004, recognizes the creative possibilities of advertising as part of a broader rationale for licensing music: It’s a difficult thing, because I grew up coming from a school of music being used in commercials is an evil thing. It’s a really confusing time to be a musician, because it’s so hard to make your living and so hard to get your music out there. Sometimes you see music used in creative ways in advertising, and at least some kid out there watching TV is hearing a great song.  (Quoted in Cohen, 2008)

With award-winning ad campaigns offering “proof that the final ad can be every bit as creative as the music which soundtracks it, acts are finding it harder than ever to say no to the right offer” (“Pure Genius,”  1999, p. 24). Advertising’s validation as a creative medium is promoted through industry awards, like the American Advertising Awards and the Clio Awards, and affirmed by the involvement of film, television, and music video directors. Directors including Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Michel Gondry, and David Fincher have all lent their talents to TV commercials, and musicians are understandably persuaded by the artistic treatment that is likely to result with a film director at the helm. More significantly, the acceptance of advertising as an art form has been both affirmed and deepened by the involvement of artists of all kinds. Many advertising creatives, including music supervisors, bring art and music backgrounds to the practice via formal study or practical experience (Klein, 2009, pp. 48–52). As the head of a sync agency explains: Most artists these days are OK with sync as long as their music is used in a creative way and with an ethical company. I do admire artists such as David Byrne and Tom Waits who have a blanket “No” on all advertisements as that is what they truly believe in, but it would be interesting to see if they would have the same view now if they were just starting out.  (Quoted in Goldie, 2008, p. 8)

For musicians fortunate enough to be offered a placement for a commercial whose product and creativity assuage concerns of selling out, the decision may be easy. For most, the exposure and income that come with music licensing are enough to take the risk of raising the ire of critics.

Benefits and Risks The exploitation of copyright, including licensing music for use in commercials, has become central to the business of making music and making money from music. The use of popular music in advertising is ubiquitous and normal. For musicians, the key

444   Klein benefits claimed include exposure, which may lead to radio play and record sales, and income. In this section, I explore how the assumed benefits to artists have been celebrated and challenged by both variable practices and changing perceptions. Lou Reed’s defense of licensing “Walk on the Wild Side” for a 1984 Honda scooter commercial in which he also appears—“for money and to try to sell my records” (quoted in Fong-Torres, 1986)—has been echoed by many artists since. As noted earlier, in the late 1990s and in the wake of deregulatory measures in the United States, which tightened the control of a small number of large corporations over radio markets, the licensing of music for use in commercials was heralded as the “new radio.” Unlike the increasingly conservative approach of commercial radio, advertisers were willing to take a chance on unknown bands, independent labels, and sounds that stand out from chart music. Perhaps the best-known and most often cited case relates to Moby’s 1999 album Play. The mainstream success of the album is credited to the licensing of every track across a range of media, including many television commercials, effectively opening a space for the promotion of EDM at a time when radio was unlikely to add EDM artists to their playlists (Klein, 2009; Taylor, 2007). Placement in an ad, it seemed, could lead to an enormous spike in record sales and radio play. In the years that followed, the story of bands breaking through as a result of music placement was a regular feature in the music and advertising press: Feist, the Walkmen, Jet, and the late Nick Drake are among the artists who feature in this narrative. Singer-songwriter Aimee Mann described why some musicians may be attracted to licensing opportunities in light of the state of radio: It might be the only airplay they get. I’ve become totally disillusioned with mainstream radio. I hate the music they play. What’s amazing is that the music you hear on the radio sounds like jingles, but the music you hear in commercials is cool. I’d rather hear a Moby song in a commercial than a Britney Spears song on the radio.  (Quoted in “Shabby Genesis,” 2002, p. J06)

However, the positive outcomes of placement in an advertisement risk overstatement. The so-called Apple bump—used to describe the sales increase that results from placement in an Apple advertisement—has always been variable (Bruno, 2009, p. 14), and the benefit of exposure through advertising has arguably become less reliable over time. While commercials continue to feature popular music, including artists that could benefit from the exposure, the excitement surrounding the “new radio” has diminished and the sort of success stories that were commonplace 15 years ago are now rare. (Name the last band you recall as achieving success via a television commercial.) At one time popular music was used to break through the clutter of advertising that confronted would-be consumers across a growing number of media spaces. But advertising needs new and different techniques to stand out, and while an especially imaginative use of music might highlight a particular spot, the use of popular music in advertising has become ordinary. For every spot that allows an advertising creative with great taste to tip us off to a new or independent artist, there are many more that simply

Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out”   445 use popular music as another obligatory apparatus in a promotional machine. Furthermore, even if a song does break through the clutter, attracting audience and radio attention, record sales are unlikely to follow. Revenues from physical formats fell from over $25 billion in 1999 to $5.2 billion in 2017 (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry [IFPI], 2018), and the yearly increase in digital revenues (up to $9.4 billion in 2017) barely begins to make up the difference, particularly for artists, whose streaming royalties remain scant. Income through exposure, radio play, and record sales is, at best, an erratic outcome. Musicians are, however, guaranteed income in the fee earned through the licensing agreement, typically split between the record label (for the master use rights), the composer (for the publishing rights), and the publisher (if the composer has a publishing deal). A single sync agreement can make an enormous difference to an artist. Many artists describe how a sync fee has supported their music-making either directly, by paying for recording or touring, or indirectly, by providing an income that obviates the need for a more traditional “day job.” As Meric Long of indie rock duo the Dodos puts it, “I’ve been able to experience, for the first time in my life, getting paid to play music and nothing but” (quoted in Pequeno, 2009). For artists who do not need the money, the opportunity to donate the fee can be motivation to agree to a sync license, even with a distasteful advertiser. In 2017, Grace Slick allowed fast food chain Chick-Fil-A to use Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” “specifically so she could use her payment to fund causes to which the chain’s management is opposed” (“Grace Slick,” 2017). The chain’s owners have drawn criticism for their open support of anti-LGBTQ organizations and legislation: Slick donated the fee to Lambda Legal, which provides legal support to LGBTQ people. It is an approach used previously by artists including Moby (James, 2001) and Chumbawamba, who donated fees earned for licensing to car commercials to “environmental, alternative energy, and animal rights organizations” (“Moby Song,” 1996) and “anti-corporate activist groups” (McAvoy, 2002), respectively. Whether the value of redirecting the fee to relevant charities offsets the cultural value an advertiser gains through the implied endorsement of music placement is surely a question that weighs heavily on artists. Still, the possibility of donating the fee to charity (or, in some cases, the advertiser promising a donation to charity) represents an additional justification for licensing. Sync fees have always varied considerably, and it has typically been the case that those musicians who could benefit the most (small, independent artists) often receive the least, while megastar, millionaire artists can be offered seven-figure fees. Today, the disparity persists and the average fees have decreased from the time when music licensing was first hailed as a panacea for the ailing music industries. As music supervisor P. J. Bloom describes: If you expect nothing, then you’ll probably be very pleased. If you expect to get one of those $50,000 sync fees then you’re probably going to be quite disappointed. There was a good moment 7–10 years ago when the retail record business was starting to fail and sync was starting to take over in a lot of ways. We were spending a lot

446   Klein of money: our budgets were higher, the notion of licensing music had much more value so the fees were much higher. Fees have systematically gone down and down over the years and that’s going to continue to happen.  (Quoted in Pakinkis, 2013)

As the practice of licensing music to commercials has become more ordinary, the stigma once attached to it and the fees once expected for it have decreased in tandem. It is a result that could have been predicted when the same effect was witnessed for particular brands: a decade ago, Apple used its “leverage in breaking artists” and the fact that artists “want to be associated with a hip, cool brand like Apple” to justify a much smallerthan-average fee for master and sync rights combined (Moran, 2008). The suggestion that labels should be paying for music placement, rather than advertisers paying copyright holders, is shared half-jokingly by music supervisors. With an abundance of artists looking for a break through placement in a commercial, it’s no surprise that sync companies operating a “pay to play”–style system have emerged (Klein & Meier, 2017). For artists signed to a major label, successful negotiation of a high sync fee may be overshadowed by the unfavorable terms of so-called 360 deals, contracts that allocate a greater proportion of an increasing number of revenue streams, including copyright, to record companies (Marshall, 2013; Stahl & Meier, 2012). Regardless of contract (or lack thereof), while one placement can be a significant boon for an artist, “most musicians earn a relatively small portion of their revenue from sources directly related to copyright” (Dicola, 2013, p. 339). Ultimately, there is a lot of competition for what translates into a comparatively modest amount: while sync income has risen steadily, it still accounts for only 2 percent of global music industry revenues (IFPI, 2018). The presumed benefits of licensing popular music to advertising have been challenged by the ubiquity of the practice and the decreasing stigma attached to it, reason enough to be cautious of overly celebratory attitudes toward music licensing. A linked consequence of the pervasive and celebrated use of popular music in advertising is the obsolescence of selling out and the values that underpin it.

No Such Thing as Selling Out A growing chorus of voices within the advertising and music industries has proclaimed in recent years that there is “no such thing as selling out” or that selling out “no longer exists.” The view that selling out no longer has a role in debates about the use of music in advertising has attracted the attention of scholars and music journalists alike. As highlighted earlier, Taylor’s claim that “selling out is no longer an issue” (2012, p. 229) has resonated with other scholars of popular music in advertising. Music journalists have similarly explored changing perspectives among musicians and how and whether selling out continues to hold relevance for the use of popular music in advertising (see, e.g., Berkmann, 2010; Hopper, 2013; Molotkow, 2012). In an excellent piece that ties together many of the issues that have prompted and challenged the utility of the

Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out”   447 selling-out concept within popular music culture, music journalist Dorian Lynskey questions whether “the old tyranny of the purist” has “given way to the tyranny of the realist,” and whether we are “seeing the last days of the sellout” (Lynskey, 2011). In fact, the concept’s irrelevance to popular music has been declared in every decade since it entered the popular music lexicon: songs and albums have parodied the concept (we witnessed the Who Sell Out in 1967 and Supergrass were In It for the Money 30 years later in 1997); music journalists and musicians have challenged the tendency of some accusers to equate commercial success with selling out; and artists have provocatively and enthusiastically embraced activities critiqued as selling out. At the same time, selling out has been regularly invoked in heated debates about artists developing more commercial sounds, independent bands signing to major labels, and the use of popular music in advertising. What is different now is that charges of selling out are rare sightings and reports of the demise of selling out are almost blasé. Justin Lewis links the loss of the phrase with the triumph of consumerism: “At one time we associated the idea of ‘selling out’ with ­artists—writers, actors, musicians and so on—who compromised their craft for commercial ends. The triumph of consumerism is such that the phrase is rarely used anymore. As George Gerbner observed, our culture is manifestly about selling, if not selling out” (2013, p. 69). Changes to the shape and structure of the music industries resulting from digitalization have occurred alongside an unprecedented growth in promotional culture (Klein, Meier, & Powers,  2017) and the evolution of advertising into the dominant cultural industry (Lewis, 2013). If decreasing record sales have provided a practical rationale for the use of popular music in advertising, then the omnipresence of marketing and branding for all communicative practices has provided the cultural rationale. Together the forces of digitalization and promotion normalize practices that join culture and commerce through activities that purport to overcome barriers of clutter and inattention, and that benefit both parties. The reality is more complicated. The reliance of artists on corporate patrons opens the door to greater corporate influence, giving corporations the power to censor artists or control the distribution of music (a DJ fears, for example, a festival sponsor dictating the lineup; Hall, 2015). Advertising does not offer a space for all sounds and messages, and can be a tempestuous champion. Advertiser tastes and demands change over time and vary by target audience. As one music publisher described in 2008, “Folky music had become the new advert music, but now commercial briefs are saying that they specifically don’t want that sound” (quoted in Goldie, 2008, p. 8). The portrayal of advertising as a radio replacement may lead to the neglect of other, less commercial, spaces and opportunities. Operating in a challenging environment for public media, independent music venues, and state funding of music (where it exists at all), musicians are encouraged to position themselves as brands and entrepreneurs, prepared to adapt to commercial offers. Policing the boundary between culture and commerce is important, and the use of popular music in advertising previously offered an outlet for debates about capitalism

448   Klein and commercialism. For music to fulfill its potential to enrich the lives of individuals and communities, and to foster human flourishing (Hesmondhalgh, 2013), we cannot afford for critical debates about the contexts in which music is made and experienced— where selling out plays a leading role—to be silenced. As Lynskey writes, “In the past, the idea of selling out could be too unyielding and punitive. But if we say that there is no room for it any more then we’re also saying there is no dignity in saying no, and no principle more powerful than the logic of the market” (Lynskey, 2011). It’s a sentiment that could equally apply to activities beyond popular music, in sectors that range from politics to education, underscoring the high stakes of monitoring commercial influence and power. The sheer abundance of promotional messages surrounding us, combined with the ability of media consumers to mute, skip, or block advertisements, presents a challenge to advertisers. To reach consumers and retain their attention, advertisers rely on all techniques that offer a potential advantage: popular music has proven itself as an important tool in the advertising arsenal. When done well, the use of popular music in advertising can be creative, funny, and beautiful. Artists may consider the product being advertised, the creativity of the spot, and the benefits and risks involved, but many musicians cannot afford the luxury to discriminate, as licensing opportunities are sought to make up for the loss of record sales. Paradoxically, the ubiquity of music licensing has made the benefits (exposure and income) less reliable, and the protective values attached to the concept of selling out less relevant. We are at a crossroads, where selling out can be viewed as the preserve of unrealistic purists who don’t understand how the music business works, or it can be viewed as a tool for upholding values that seek to protect cultural autonomy and that demand popular music be treated respectfully, through careful use and fair payment. Debates about the use of popular music in advertising have been peppered with reductive claims that favor the former view. One claim is that capitalism is capitalism, and making, selling, or buying music is equivalent to making, selling, or buying any other consumer product. But our experience of cultural products like popular music tells us this is not the case, and the argument for “why music matters” (Hesmondhalgh, 2013) points to popular music’s potential to aid human flourishing. Another claim is that the relationship between popular music and advertising is mutually beneficial. In an ideal scenario, music placement benefits the artist, though I make the case above for why this outcome cannot be relied upon. Moreover, advertisers are looking out for the interests of advertisers, not music-makers: the relationship to music is “more parasitic than philanthropic” (Klein, 2009, p. 20). Both claims drive the belief that the loss of the concept of selling out is a sign of progress, that capitalism has united the goals of advertising and popular music, with music licensing an exemplar of the successful alliance. On the contrary, the loss of selling out in popular music culture is a sign of submission, and the consequences may be severe. The standardization of advertising’s role in popular music culture increases the power of marketers as gatekeepers, directly and indirectly privileging advertising-friendly sounds and messages. It also normalizes the influence of commerce in other areas of

Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out”   449 culture for which autonomy has figured as a key value, and where the stakes may be even higher (e.g., journalism or education). It is crucial that we reframe the conversation about selling out to capture the cultural value of autonomy that the concept has sought to protect and to ensure meaningful support for popular music culture outside the world of advertising.

Recommended Readings Klein, B. (2009). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Klein, B., Meier, L. M., & Powers, D. (2017). Selling out: Musicians, autonomy, and compromise in the digital age. Popular Music and Society, 40(2), 222–238. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080 /03007766.2015.1120101 Meier, L.  M. (2016). Popular music as promotion: Music and branding in the digital age. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

References Ad syncs: Are television commercials the new radio? (2013, May 10). Music Week, p. 25. Allan, D. (2008). A content analysis of music placement in prime-time television advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 48(3), 404–417. Azerrad, M. (2001). Our band could be your life: Scenes from the American indie underground 1981–1991. New York, NY: Bay Back Books. Banet-Weiser, S. (2012). Authentic: The politics of ambivalence in a brand culture. New York, NY: New York University Press. Barnhard, R., & Rutledge, J. (2009, June 4). Music + ads: Advertising is the new radio. Adweek. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/music-ads-advertising-newradio-99496/ Berkmann, M. (2010, October 21). No such thing as selling out. Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/marcus-berkmann-no-such-thingas-selling-out-2112070.html Bruno, A. (2009, September 26). Synch placement in a TV ad for Apple: Spots still deliver boost, but to fewer songs. Billboard, p. 14. Carah, N. (2010). Pop brands: Branding, popular music, and young people. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Cartwright, J., McCormick, H., & Warnaby, G. (2016). Consumers’ emotional responses to the Christmas TV advertising of four retail brands. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 29, 82–91. Cohen, J. (2008, May 17). Morning glory: My Morning Jacket. Billboard. Retrieved from http:// www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1308180/morning-glory-my-morning-jacket Cook, N. (1994). Music and meaning in the commercials. Popular Music, 13(1), 27–40. Diamond, J. (2016, September 6). How Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” defined a generation of American sports. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from https://www.rollingstone.com/sports/ bob-segers-like-a-rock-commercial-and-american-sports-w438146 Dicola, P. (2013). Money from music: Survey evidence on musicians’ revenue and lessons about copyright incentives. Arizona Law Journal, 55, 301–370.

450   Klein Eckhardt, G. M., & Bradshaw, A. (2014). The erasure of antagonisms between popular music and advertising. Marketing Theory, 14(2), 167–183. Elliott, S. (2009, February 6). Commercials and musicians share the need to be heard. New York Times, p. B6. Fong-Torres, B. (1986, September). Lou Reed: The prince of darkness lightens up. GQ. Retrieved from http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/lou-reed-the-prince-ofdarkness-lightens-up Frith, S. (2004). Why does music make people so cross? Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 13(1), 64–69. Goldie, A. (2008, May 10). A new syncing feeling. Music Week, p. 8. Graakjær, N. J. (2014). The bonding of a band and a brand: On music placement in television commercials from a text analytical perspective. Popular Music and Society, 37(5), 517–537. Graakjær, N. J. (2015). Analyzing music in advertising: Television commercials and consumer choice. New York, NY: Routledge. Grace Slick takes fast food company’s money to fund causes it opposes. (2017, February 23). Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/feb/23/grace-slickmoney-chick-fil-a-starship-nothings-gonna-stop-us-now-lgbtq-causes Hall, J. (2015, December 28). And the brands played on: How EDM can sell almost anything. Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/28/how-edmcan-sell-almost-anything-brands-marketing Hesmondhalgh, D. (1999). Indie: The institutional politics and aesthetics of a popular music genre. Cultural Studies, 13(1), 34–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095023899335365 Hesmondhalgh, D. (2013). Why music matters. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Hesmondhalgh, D., & Meier, L. M. (2014). Popular music, independence and the concept of the alternative in contemporary capitalism. In J. Bennett & N. Strange (Eds.), Media independence: Working with freedom or working for free? (pp. 94–116). New York, NY: Routledge. Hopper, J. (2013, November 10). How selling out saved indie rock. Buzzfeed. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicahopper/how-selling-out-saved-indie-rock Huron, D. (1989). Music in advertising: An analytic paradigm. Musical Quarterly, 73(4), 557–574. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). (2018). Global music report 2018: Annual state of the industry. Retrieved from http://www.ifpi.org/downloads/GMR2018.pdf James, M. (2001). Moby: Replay—his life and times. Chicago, IL: Olmstead Press. Klein, B. (2008a). “The new radio”: Music licensing as a response to industry woe. Media, Culture & Society, 30(4), 463–478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443708091177 Klein, B. (2008b). In perfect harmony: Popular music and cola advertising. Popular Music and Society, 31(1), 1–20. Klein, B. (2009). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Klein, B., & Meier, L. M. (2017). In sync? Music supervisors, music placement practices, and industrial change. In M. Mera, R. Sadoff, & B. Winters (Eds.), The Routledge companion to screen music and sound (pp. 281–290). New York, NY: Routledge. Klein, B., Meier, L. M., & Powers, D. (2017). Selling out: Musicians, autonomy, and compromise in the digital age. Popular Music and Society, 40(2), 222–238. Lewis, J. (2013). Beyond consumer capitalism: Media and the limits to imagination. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Lynskey, D. (2011, June 30). The great rock’n’roll sellout. Guardian. Retrieved from https:// www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/30/rocknroll-sellout

Popular Music, Advertising, and “Selling Out”   451 Marshall, L. (2013). The 360 deal and the “new” music industry. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(1), 77–99. McAvoy, L. (2002, April 27). Auto ads: Are musicians selling out or cashing in? Toronto Star, p. G25. Meier, L.  M. (2016). Popular music as promotion: Music and branding in the digital age. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Moby song in car commercial for good cause. (1996, March 26). MTV. Retrieved from http:// www.mtv.com/news/507274/moby-song-in-car-commercial-for-good-cause/ Molotkow, A. (2012, April 8). There is no longer any honor in musical obscurity. New York Times Magazine, p. 52. Moore, R. (2005). Alternative to what? Subcultural capital and the commercialization of a music scene. Deviant Behavior, 26(3), 229–252. Moran, C. (2008, March 10). Indie act seeks backup brand: In today’s world, ‘selling out’ is the only way to cash in. Advertising Age, p. 3. Newman, M. (2006, April 15). Doors songs in ads? Well, maybe . . . . Billboard, p. 24. O’Connor, A. (2008). Punk record labels and the struggle for autonomy: The emergence of DIY. Lanham, MD: Lexington. Pakinkis, T. (2013, March 21). PJ Bloom on changing sync revenues and opportunities for rights-holders. Music Week. Retrieved from http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/ pj-bloom-on-changing-sync-revenues-and-opportunities-for-rights-holders/054069 Paoletta, M. (2006, May 6). Inside pitch: Ad agency opens its doors to recording artists—with results. Billboard, pp. 20–22. Pequeno, Z. (2009, November 29). Selling out to survive. Pop Matters. Retrieved from http:// www.popmatters.com/feature/116256-selling-out-to-survive/P1/ Pillsbury, G. T. (2006). Damage incorporated: Metallica and the production of musical identity. New York, NY: Routledge. Powers, D. (2013). Now hear this: The state of promotion and popular music. In M. P. McAllister & E. West (Eds.), Routledge companion to advertising and promotional culture (pp. 313–325). New York, NY: Routledge. Pure genius as Leftfield opt for Guinness ad. (1999, June 5). Music Week, p. 24. Shabby genesis: Conceived for jingle hell. (2002, November 9). Toronto Star, p. J06. Shuker, R. (2016). Understanding popular music culture (5th ed.). London, UK: Routledge. Stahl, M., & Meier, L. M. (2012). The firm foundation of organizational flexibility: The 360 contract in the digitalizing music industry. Canadian Journal of Communication, 37(3), 441–458. Taylor, T. D. (2000). World music in television ads. American Music, 18(2), 162–192. Taylor, T. D. (2007). The changing shape of the culture industry; or, how did electronica music get into television commercials? Television & New Media, 8(3), 235–258. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tota, A. L. (2001). “When Orff meets Guinness”: Music in advertising as a form of cultural hybrid. Poetics, 29, 109–123.

chapter 22

“Sea rch a n d De stroy ” Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture Jay Beck

Punk rock, as a movement within popular music, sought to differentiate itself from prior forms of commercial rock in both sound and attitude. Anti-corporate and anticonsumerist in orientation, punk’s guiding maxim of “do it yourself ” was about taking control of the means of production and shifting the musical form outside of the nexus of capitalism. While charming in theory, the reality of the punk movement is that many of the first-wave British punk bands were signed to major record labels and only by the end of the 1970s did the anti-corporate ideology take hold. Embedded within the punk movement is a paradoxical opposition between a subculture that defined itself in opposition to mainstream consumer culture and a musical form that was rapidly co-opted by the major labels as the next big cultural movement.

Punk as Branded Identity versus Do-It-Yourself Bricolage For the purpose of this chapter I define punk inclusively, stretching from proto-punk bands the Velvet Underground, the MC5, and the Stooges, to punk as it emerged in both the United States and the United Kingdom, through the postpunk wave that came after the dissolution of the Sex Pistols in January 1978. As a musical form, the prehistory of punk dates back to the American garage bands of the 1960s and the small independent labels that popped up across the United States. In the wake of the British Invasion, groups started to form across the country, and 1964–1968 saw the rise of hundreds of bands recording and releasing independent singles. Even though the scene itself was fragmented, these garage bands planted the seeds for punk’s arrival in the late 1970s. Another main influence on punk was the music industry’s occasional willingness to

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   453 support experimental artists in the late 1960s. The Velvet Underground was the brainchild of guitarist/vocalist and songwriter Lou Reed, and the explicit lyrical content of their first two albums became a template for many of the shock effects associated with punk. In Detroit, the aggressive rock of the Stooges with their lead singer, Iggy Pop, and the political activism of the MC5 grounded both bands in their experience growing up in the Motor City. Punk developed in the United States first with its origins in New York–based groups the New York Dolls and Wayne County and the Back Street Boys. Both combined the heavy rock sound of the Stooges and MC5 with transgressive fashion style, and each was strongly influential on the punk movement as it emerged in New York. Coalescing around the clubs CBGB and Max’s Kansas City were a heterogenous collective of bands that included the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, the Heartbreakers, Suicide, and the Patti Smith Group. The scene received its name in 1975 with the creation of Punk Magazine—founded by John Holstrom and Legs McNeil—despite the reluctance of many of the bands to be associated with punk as a label. After U.K. tours from Patti Smith, the Ramones, and the Heartbreakers in 1976, punk was transplanted to the United Kingdom, where it took on a much more homogenous meaning in relation to musical style and a branded identity. Any discussion of punk rock will inevitably come up against two defining and countervailing tendencies: the first, an oppositional stance to mainstream society as expressed by the Sex Pistols’ debut single “Anarchy in the U.K.” and their motto “Cash from Chaos”; the second, a long-standing resistance on the part of punk groups to the corporate music industry and an embrace of a do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos. Even though many punk bands from 1976–1977 and most of the subsequent postpunk bands upheld the latter ideology, the association of punk with the Sex Pistols’ anti-establishment view was hard to shake. As a result, the tenets of authenticity and DIY anti-commercialism undergirded the punk movement during the 1970s. Yet as the music aged, the cultural currency of punk changed from an anti-authoritarian resistance to the system to a nostalgia consumed via reunion tours, best-of compilations, and the use of punk music in commercial advertisements. Dick Hebdige (1979) described punk in the United Kingdom as a subcultural formation grounded in a sense of community based around music, fashion, and lifestyle choices. One difficulty in analyzing punk as a movement is that these three elements were intertwined and often the contradictions between the elements created a distorted sense of punk’s ideology. Even though it was derived from earlier forms of rock music, punk sought to disrupt the music industry by remaining outside of the commercial mainstream. According to Simon Frith, “Punk opposed commercial music in two ways. First, it denounced multinational record companies with a version of the assertion that ‘small is beautiful’—punk music was, authentically, the product of small-scale, in­de­pend­ent record and distribution companies. Second, punk demystified the production process itself—its message was that anyone could do it” (Frith, 1981, p. 159). While this concept of DIY was at the heart of punk in the United

454   Beck Kingdom as a musical form, its identity as a subculture—particularly its flamboyant visual style—was amplified by the media. Dave Laing explained, “The unity of punk rock as a phenomenon lay in this external relation to pre-existing popular music, and in the shock tactics with which its exponents went about their work. Internally, however, punk rock was intensely contradictory, a fact masked by the eagerness with which the media and the music industry presented it as the latest musical craze” (Laing, 1978, p. 123). As fashion, punk rapidly was packaged and sold as a form of branded identity through shops such as Sex, run by designer Vivienne Westwood and the Sex Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren, and its style was adopted by many mainstream designers. More than just a band, McLaren “often talked of initially seeing the Pistols as in large part a vehicle for selling the clothes he and partner Vivienne Westwood made and sold via their King’s Road boutique Sex (the group’s very name was a kind of advert for the shop)” (Reynolds, 2007, p. 89). From their inception, the identity of the Sex Pistols as the poster boys for punk was tied to their association with McLaren. “Malcolm McLaren didn’t invent punk,” noted Paul Taylor. “All he did was envisage it, design it, clothe it, publicize it and sell it” (Taylor, 1988, p. 12). Punk songs often functioned as “identity anthems” for the subculture, valorizing authenticity and resisting selling out to the commercial music industry. This stance, heard in songs like “Garageland” by the Clash, was easily lampooned by the earliest postpunk songs like “Part-Time Punks” by Television Personalities. This contradiction arose between the punk populists, the very first wave of punk bands who were signed by major labels or found their music distributed by the majors, and the punk vanguard who appeared in late 1977 and 1978 (Frith, 1981, p. 160). As Dave Laing observed, the posturing of the punk populists occasionally revealed that “frequently, both progressive and reactionary elements appear in the work of the same musician, sometimes in the same song” (Laing, 1978, p. 123). Conversely, the punk vanguard “sought to undermine the populist assumptions of transparency and subcultural identity, to mock the idea of a direct line from social experience to musical form, to expose the subjective claims deeply embedded in all rock music” (Frith, 1981, p. 160). As punk evolved, the gap widened between the homogenous identity of the punk populists and the punk vanguard’s explosion of creativity. Much of the DIY legacy we associate with punk is connected to the punk vanguard in the postpunk period, while many punk populist bands from 1976–1977 gave way to a commercialization of their music. This idea of “selling out” could take the form of a metaphorical capitulation of the band’s original values, a musical metamorphosis into a pop style that was distinctly not punk, or the wholesale embrace of the mainstream music industry. In the latter case, most of the punk populist groups were either courted by the major labels or signed to them early in their career. During that initial rush to acquire punk bands, the major labels were responsible for having a profound effect on bands such as the Clash, Buzzcocks, the Stranglers, Talking Heads, Blondie, and the Ramones. In ­particular, Generation X and Adam and the Ants were groomed by their record labels for pop ­ stardom and their lead vocalists—Billy Idol and Adam Ant,

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   455 respectively—distanced themselves from their original punk stand and sound. As Dave Laing explained: During the early stages of punk’s brief history there was an attempt to rechristen the genre “new wave” and thus make it more assimilable to the pre-existing popular music structures. The term was appropriate to a few groups whose style was predominantly a return to the “youth revolt” mode of the 1960s (e.g. The Jam), but it obscured the hostility to the status quo which fuelled the major part of punk rock.   (Laing, 1978, p. 124)

Revolt into Style—Lou Reed and Malcolm McLaren, Progenitors of Punk Advertising As punk matured, its oppositional stance quickly was co-opted by the culture industry at large. Even though advertisers steered clear of punk music in television advertisements in the 1980s, they were still interested in capitalizing on punk’s cultural cachet. Much of the aesthetic surrounding the debut of MTV in August 1981 was around repackaging the fashion and residual cultural image of punk by rebranding it “new wave” and divorcing it from the subculture of punk. With MTV appearing as a commercial platform for a younger audience than mainstream media, it is not surprising that television commercials changed to cater to this new demographic. The first series of commercials to feature icons of the punk movement was made in 1983 to launch the Honda Scooter in the United States. Created by the Portland, Oregon-based Wieden & Kennedy ad agency, the commercials featured a number of iconoclastic musical celebrities including Miles Davis, Devo, Grace Jones with Adam Ant, and Lou Reed (Springer, 2013). The Devo and Jones/Ant commercials featured the musicians extolling the nonconformist value of owning a Honda Scooter set against a background of generic synthesizer music. In the 15-second Miles Davis spot, the trumpeter says, “I’ll play first, then I’ll tell you about it later,” yet he does neither as the commercial features no music. But it was the 1984 Lou Reed commercial for Honda that set the tone for several to follow, by both casting a punk celebrity and repurposing a well-known proto-punk song. Unlike the slick, studio style of most early 1980s commercials, the spot was shot on grainy 16-mm film on the rain-slicked streets of midtown Manhattan. Interspersed with images of traffic, Times Square movie houses, and a homeless person sleeping on a park bench are a wall covered in posters for “Lou Reed Live” and the unmistakable silhouette of Reed leaning against a building entrance. Reed’s 1972 single “Walk on the Wild Side,” identified by its saxophone solo and “doot-do-doo” backup voices, plays underneath the images but neither lyrics nor Reed singing is heard. Instead, the spot ends with Reed astride his Honda Scooter outside of Greenwich Village club the Bottom Line saying, “Hey—don’t settle for walkin’.”

456   Beck Relying on the chic of pregentrification New York and Lou Reed’s iconicity, the commercial aired regularly on mainstream networks and MTV. For Reed’s fans, the musical break from “Walk on the Wild Side” was instantly recognizable; and even if the vocals were not included, the music evoked the countercultural imagery of the lyrics. Drawn from Reed’s association with Andy Warhol, the lyrics reference several individuals from Warhol’s studio, the Factory, and their connections with transsexuality, prostitution, and drug use. On closer inspection, the commercial provided visual analogs for the absent lyrical content as images of red stiletto heels in close-up, furtive assignations on street corners, and punks gathered outside a hair salon that features “Unisex Haircuts” hint at the themes in the song. Only after looking carefully does the viewer notice that parked on the street near a gaggle of punks are two new Honda Scooters. Even though “Walk on the Wild Side” and Lou Reed were unusual choices for a commercial, its creator, Jim Riswold of Wieden & Kennedy, defended the decision, saying: Advertisers didn’t put people in commercials who had a long history of drug addiction, and of course . . . he wasn’t your typical spokesman. But if you looked at who we were trying to sell scooters to, it was natural. Actually, when you look back at that commercial it seems pretty damn tame today.  (Wall, 2013, p. 190)

For 1984, casting a countercultural icon and using his controversial signature song was progressive. Indeed, it may have proven too tendentious for advertisers because there were few attempts to use either punk music or punk-associated stars during the 1980s. After the Honda Scooter commercials, advertising agencies started looking for new sonic palettes. Tellingly, Malcolm McLaren was one of the first members of the punk movement wholeheartedly to embrace marketing his music for use in advertisements. His composition “Aria on Air,” a reworking of “The Flower Duet” by Delibes, was selected as the theme for British Airways’ 1989 “Face” commercial, which won a Gold Lion award at the Cannes International Advertising Film Festival. Musically, the piece was a million miles away from punk, yet the song’s bricolage approach to sampling the duet from the opera Lakmé was entirely in keeping with the spirit of the movement. Following the success of the British Airways spot, McLaren moved to Los Angeles in 1990 to create music for ad campaigns for Minute Maid, Nike, and Visa International. The Minute Maid spot featured an Olympic hopeful rising early and trekking across industrial Los Angeles to train as a diver. “ ‘I don’t think [the commercial] sells Minute Maid in any way, shape or form,’ Mr. McLaren said. He believes his rap and rhythm & blues-inspired music, combined with documentary-style film, ‘provokes people’s attention to the fact that there’s more soul behind the story line and the picture’ ” (Lafayette, 1990, p. 51). In addition to creating the music for the advertisement, McLaren pitched the “To be or not to be” chorus to Lowe & Partners of New York as the tagline for the commercial. “ ‘They wanted something noble,’ he said. ‘Being English, I came up with the idea of Hamlet and his noble quest, and that that was something everyone could relate to’ ” (Lafayette, 1990, p. 51).

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   457

Punk in the 1990s: The Rise of Punk Nostalgia Even though Reed and McLaren were the first individuals associated with the punk movement to capitalize on the use of punk in advertising, it wasn’t until the 1990s that punk music made its first appearance in ads. The first television commercial to use a song from a punk band was in 1991, when the former members of the Clash licensed “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” a single from their 1982 album Combat Rock, for use in a Levi’s 501 jeans commercial. By 1991, the Clash no longer existed, with guitarist/ vocalist Mick Jones forming Big Audio Dynamite and lead singer Joe Strummer working as an actor and composer for Alex Cox, Marisa Silver, and Aki Kaurismäki. The use of “Should I Stay or Should I Go” was part of a larger campaign by Levi’s to include a range of popular musical selections to promote their 501 brand of jeans, with commercials featuring music from Muddy Waters, Marvin Gaye, Ben E. King, Percy Sledge, Eddie Cochrane, and the Steve Miller Band, among others. Perhaps the best-known commercial from the campaign was based around T-Rex’s “20th Century Boy” and starred Brad Pitt, but it was the use of a Clash song in the Levi’s campaign that stirred up the most controversy. Set in a billiard hall, the commercial featured a young man challenging the resident pool shark to a game. In the absence of money for a bet, they compete for the novice’s jeans. The commercial’s stylistic details evoked Tom Cruise’s bravura trick shooting in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986), and the editing and framing choreographed the pool game to the opening instrumental passage and first verse of the Clash song. Instead of continuing to the second verse and the chorus, the song loops back to the instrumental introduction and extends it an extra measure to fit the one-minute running time. While audience recognition of the song was perhaps the impetus for its selection, editing the song to fit the form of the commercial hints at a decontextualization of the music in order to recontextualize it with the images. This seems to match the use of other pre-existing songs in the Levi’s commercials, all from male vocalists, to associate the music with the male character in the commercials’ narratives. Whereas television viewers may have been familiar with Percy Sledge and Ben E. King from oldies radio stations or the use of their songs in The Big Chill (1983) and Stand by Me (1986), “Should I Stay or Should I Go” was recent enough for it to reconnect with a young, popular audience. Its use in the commercial led to renewed airplay in the United States and the United Kingdom, which distanced the song from its association with punk and recast it as a pop tune. Columbia Records reissued the song in early 1991, and thanks to the heavy rotation of the commercial and the subsequent uptick in radio play, the rereleased single topped the U.K. charts that March, giving the Clash their first No. 1 eight years after the original group broke up. In the process, the band found numerous new fans and a resurgence of interest in their back catalog, which led to several “best of ” albums and the reissue of their 1979 song, “Train in Vain.” The long-standing

458   Beck ­ opularity of “Should I Stay or Should I Go” led to it being used in several motion picp ture soundtracks, including 28 Days (2000), Rugrats Go Wild (2003), Iron Man 2 (2010), and, most recently, as a major plot point in season one of Stranger Things (2016–2017). All of this is to say that the continuing commercial success of the Clash and the canonization of its most popular songs did not occur just through the standard cycle of record releases, radio and video play, and commercial sales. Instead, the band found themselves at a crossroad where sustained commercial success was achieved through the sale of synchronization (“sync”) rights for the use of their songs in television commercials and films.1 Even though sync rights were common in motion pictures since the 1970s and in television commercials since the 1980s, the use of punk music in films and television came with the risk of a loss of authenticity. While Prévot and Sinclair (2017) have shown that the Clash did not always live up to the working-class doctrines embodied in their lyrics, there was a sense that the self-proclaimed “only band that matters” were trading their credibility as punk’s elder statesmen. Of course, many within the punk movement were critical of any sense of authenticity when applied to the commercialization of punk music. David Thomas, from the Cleveland-based punk band Pere Ubu, said the following in the early 2000s: “The notion of street credibility is a recent aberration. It’s all designed to create commercial niche markets. Since punk this compartmentalization has been designed to aid advertising executives target their products at the market. . . . From the beginning punk rock was designed as a commercial exercise to create a market” (Reynolds, 2009, p. 64). After the success of the “Should I Stay or Should I Go” spot, the 1990s witnessed a steady increase in the use of punk or punk-related songs in commercials. Dunlop Tires hired director Tony Kaye (American History X) to create a truly bizarre ad featuring “Venus in Furs” by the Velvet Underground, a song that borrows its title from SacherMasoch’s novella and explores the book’s themes. Unlike the Honda Scooter commercial, which traded on the chorus hook and Lou Reed’s street cred rather than the song’s lyrics, the 1993 Dunlop commercial reimagined the sadomasochistic content of “Venus in Furs” with surreal images of cars dodging grand pianos, fireballs, sparkle-painted pensioners, and a nipple-clamped homunculus. Furthering the incongruity of ­sadomasochism-themed lyrics used to sell auto tires, Volkswagen licensed “Roman P.” by postpunk group Psychic TV as part of their 1995 “Drivers Wanted” campaign created by Boston-based agency Arnold Communications (Elliott, 1998). Musically, the song is a driving pop tune with Beach Boys–style vocal harmonies (it was the B-side to Psychic TV’s 1986 cover of “Good Vibrations”) over an extended chorus of “Are you free, are you really free?”—a far cry from the band’s origins in the punk-noise collective Throbbing Gristle. The catchy chorus connected with brief slogans stating, “It’s about having kids” and “Not becoming your parents” intercut with rambunctious children in the back seat and montages of Volkswagens speeding across urban streets and scenic rural vistas. 1  Sync rights refer to when a music copyright owner provides a license to a producer “granting the right to synchronize the musical composition in timed relation with audio-visual images on film or videotape” (BMI, 2019).

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   459 Yet, unbeknown to most viewers, the song was not a paean to “Farfvenugen”; it was a commentary on film director Roman Polanski and his 1978 flight from the United States after being convicted for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. If there is a common trope in the way punk music has been used in television commercials, it is a decontextualization of the music from its origin and an abstraction of the lyrical content. Whereas many punk songs sought to shock their audience through audacious lyrics and themes, nearly every use of punk music in advertising involved a sanitizing of the song for mass audiences. Often only the chorus was used to monopolize on its musical familiarity and easily digestible lyrical fragments. This allowed advertisers to set up a system of allusion in the commercials, where viewers unfamiliar with the song would hear a catchy musical passage and turn of phrase, but audiences familiar with the song could appreciate it on a different level. This concept of allusion was first developed by Nöel Carroll in relation to American cinema in the 1970s, where he noted that many films referenced earlier films from classical Hollywood through “quotations, the memorialization of past genres, the reworking of past genres, homages, and the recreation of ‘classic’ scenes, shots, plot motifs, lines of dialogue, themes, gestures” (Carroll, 1982, p. 52). In the case of television commercials, advertisers recontextualized punk as popular music by emphasizing catchy passages and lyrics, while distancing the music from its anti-establishment roots. Ironically, this served as a form of nostalgia for those who knew the songs from their original context in the late 1970s. After an initial resistance to using punk music in advertisements, the culture industry found a new value in the growing nostalgia for punk 20 years after its birth. Not only were punk songs more prevalent in motion pictures—music supervisors discovered how a carefully placed punk song could set a film in its historical context—but also they took on new meanings in advertisements. The use of punk songs in advertising resulted in a frisson between the products being promoted and the way in which the music activated a memory of the original context for fans. A Mountain Dew commercial from March 1996 can be seen as inaugurating the punk nostalgia in advertising. The spot featured the unmistakable voice of John Lydon—the former Johnny Rotten, lead singer for the Sex Pistols—who lent his vocals to a punk-style cover of Bobby Troup’s composition “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66.” Not only did the backing band give the song a turbocharged update, but also the song’s lyrics extended beyond North America to an improbable road trip to “Roma and Verona, and don’t forget Sahara, London, Glasgow, San Bernardino.” The song accompanied images of street lugers zipping passed the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China, and pausing only momentarily to crack open a can of Diet Mountain Dew. The commercial relied on the semantic qualities of the music— the distorted guitars playing a simple, three-chord melody with Lydon imitating the shouted vocal style of the Sex Pistols—to signify a sense of “punk-ness” and connect the music to the extreme sport of street luge. The irony is that the audience who heard this as a nostalgic throwback to the punk populist Sex Pistols likely would not know that the song was written in 1946 and made popular by Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and the Andrews Sisters long before its association with Chuck Berry and rock “n” roll. Asked

460   Beck why Lydon chose to lend his vocals to the song, his manager, Ophire Finkenthal, said, “It was good fun . . . [a]nd a ton of money” (Hochman, 1996). Coincident with the Mountain Dew commercial was the debut of Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, which used Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” to great effect in its spirited opening montage. In the years after recording the David Bowie–produced Raw Power in 1973, Pop wrestled with drug abuse and mental health issues before reconnecting with Bowie in 1976. The collaboration resulted in Pop’s two 1977 comeback albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life, and a newfound respect as the “godfather of punk” (Abrams,  2019). Trainspotting was not the first film to use “Lust for Life,” though it was the first time that Pop’s music was valued for its pounding energy and complex lyrics as a way to augment the film’s narrative. The most immediate effect of Pop’s resurgence in relation to the film’s soundtrack was that Nike licensed the 1973 Iggy and the Stooges song “Search and Destroy” for a commercial that aired during the 1996 summer Olympic Games. Uncharacteristically, the advertisement prominently featured Pop’s vocals and the lyrics with only slight edits to make the music fit the 60-second spot. The opening guitar salvo was truncated so the song led directly into the verse, and the power of the music was preserved as the song accompanied images of aggressive sports competition. But the focal point of the commercial was neither the images nor the music, but Pop’s bellicose lyrics that link his sexual predation (“I’m a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm, I’m a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb, I am the world’s forgotten boy, the one who searches and destroys”) to the terminologies of warfare that entered the American vernacular after Vietnam. In the commercial, however, the implied violence of the lyrics was associated with competitive sports and detached from the song’s context and the singer’s sexual prowess. Unlike the commercials discussed previously, the Nike Air spot was shown to a wide national audience during the Olympic broadcasts and it played numerous times over the three weeks of the events. This opened the door to punk songs from other artists being used in commercials. McEwan’s Lager had been at the forefront of using popular music in creative advertisements with their “Alive and Kicking” campaign in the 1980s, and in February 1997 they launched the “It’s What We Stand For” ad campaign showcasing the 1977 song “Do Anything You Wanna Do” by Eddie and the Hot Rods. The series of commercials directed by Simon Cellan Jones borrowed heavily from the audiovisual style of Trainspotting—the voiceover musings of Scottish actor John Hannah on the concept of “stand” are suspiciously similar to the film’s opening—and the use of a 1977 punk song to accompany the images makes it explicit. Unlike the repeated lyrical hook of “Lust for Life” ironically underpinning the characters’ heroin addictions in Boyle’s film, the chorus of “Do Anything You Wanna Do” lauded the commercial’s “fine upstanding citizens” as they calmly order another round at their local pub. The emphasis on the sanguine sentiment of the chorus created an ironic distance from the rest of the song’s lyrics, which speak of breaking out of the city and boring jobs to recontextualize the song as an anthem to friendship and brand loyalty. Shortly after the Nike and McEwan’s spots, two Iggy Pop songs from 1977 appeared in commercials and set the template for many to follow. In 1998, “The Passenger” was used

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   461 in a spot for the Toyota Avensis and “Lust for Life” promoted the Mitsubishi Galant. The Avensis spot followed a rather literal interpretation of the song’s lyrics (“Get into the car, We’ll be the passenger”) as the putative “passenger” emerged from an office building and sat in the back of a driverless Avensis, which magically chauffeured him around the city. Distorted images of pedestrians and construction workers stared at the car as it passed (“We’ll ride through the city tonight, See the city’s ripped backsides”) and a female voiceover assured the viewer that “When you’re driving the new Toyota Avensis, you can sit back and enjoy the ride.” While the visual elements of the commercial followed the song’s lyrics, the images were disquieting and the driverless car made the spot feel oneiric (as well as blatant false advertising). Despite the incongruous relationship between the song and the car being promoted, the presence of “The Passenger” on national television sets was persuasive enough to return the song to No. 22 in the U.K. singles charts, 21 years after its original release. And it was Mitsubishi’s “Lust for Life” spot that solidified the effectiveness of Iggy Pop’s music in commercials. Mitsubishi partnered with the Deutsch agency of Marina del Rey, California, to launch their offbeat “Wake Up and Drive” marketing campaign (Parpis, 1998). Vinny Picardi, vice president and associate creative director of Deutsch LA, “knew his company did not want to make just another car commercial. ‘People hate commercials,’ he said. ‘We wanted to make little pieces of entertainment’ ” (Scott, 2002). In keeping with this idea, the commercial included the opening drum break and instrumental guitar from “Lust for Life” but none of the vocals. By decontextualizing the songs, both commercials demonstrated the efficacy of using punk music in future car commercials (Reilly, 1998, p. B1). In 1999, two automobile manufacturers licensed songs from the punk band Buzzcocks for use in commercials. First, Rover chose “Ever Fallen in Love . . . (with Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” to launch their 400 sedan. In the spot, the music plays over stereotypical images of a couple running across a rainy heath only to encounter the car on a hilltop where they kiss passionately inside it. Playing on the theme of romance, the commercial started with the second half of the song’s first verse (“And if I start a commotion, I run the risk of losing you, And that’s worse”) and continued to the chorus, but in the process it elided the song’s opening lines (“You spurn my natural emotions. You make me feel like dirt, and I’m hurt”) as well as the inversion of the song’s subtitle. Through these redactions the commercial recast the music as a love song rather than an anti–love song as originally written, yet viewers familiar with the song could understand the ironic detournement of the commercial’s romantic clichés in relation to the complete lyrics. Similarly, Toyota used “What Do I Get” to accompany a fast-motion camping excursion in their Rav4. The frantic pace and energy of the music motivates the brief narrative of a young man arriving at a campsite and swiftly disgorging a tent, cooler, and two chairs from the back of the SUV. While the intention may have been to demonstrate the storage capacity of the Rav4, the overall tone of the commercial is to construct the young man as nonconformist in opposition to the traditional family seen in their canoe wearing life preservers. Here, not only did the use of punk music signal that countercultural difference, but also the brisk tempo of the music matched the fast motion of the driver and his vehicle. Lyrically, the first verse of

462   Beck “I just want a lover like any other, what do I get? I only want a friend who will stay to the end, what do I get?” was corroborated when the daughter of the traditional family is seen sharing a beer with the young man at the end of the commercial. Similar to Leo Burnett’s popular but ill-fated 1988 “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile” campaign, the association of cars with punk nostalgia let customers have it both ways—they could remain punks at heart while buying into consumer culture.

Punk Advertisements in the 2000s: Deconstructing Punk After the turn of the millennium, there was a veritable deluge of punk songs used in commercials to promote a range of products. Several of these played on familiarity with the original song or its use in previous commercials, though several new songs from the punk and postpunk era were introduced (Bukszpan, 2015). New entries in 2000 included the proto-punk New York Dolls’ “Personality Crisis” in a commercial for Citroën and punk populist anthems “Hersham Boys” and “If the Kids Are United” by Sham 69 used to sell Physio Sport and McDonald’s hamburgers, respectively. This marked a trend of using popular radio hits from the punk era in U.K. commercials to capitalize on their familiarity to middle-aged viewers. Irish punk-popsters the Undertones licensed their songs “Here Comes the Summer” to Impulse body spray and “Teenage Kicks” to New York Bagels. After Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” was used to promote Sony’s new PC-7 Handycam in 1997 (“Perfect for things like weddings”) (Hall, 1997), his “Rebel Yell” sold KP Nuts and Adam and the Ants’ 1980 anthem “Kings of the Wild Frontier” accompanied Mitsubishi’s third-generation Shogun SUV. If 2000 marked the first significant use of punk music in advertisements, 2001 opened the floodgates with one campaign in particular: Royal Caribbean cruise line and their use of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life.” The song had been used in commercials before, but the breadth of the campaign made it ubiquitous throughout the first half of the decade. Created by Arnold Communications, pioneers in using punk songs since 1995, the “Get Out There” campaign featured a series of commercials promoting Royal Caribbean and their new website, all accompanied by “Lust for Life” (Gianatasio, 2001). After previously investing $30 million in advertising in 2000, Royal Caribbean committed $70 million toward the “Get Out There” campaign in 2001, which accounted for 28 percent of the total advertising expenditure for the top eight cruise lines (Griswold, 2001). Whereas the commercials all featured the extremely catchy opening drum beats and instrumental break from “Lust for Life,” the song was edited to deconstruct the lyrics. Heard in the 2001 commercials are the buoyantly optimistic phrases: “Here comes Johnny Yen again, a lust for life, I got a lust for life. Well I’m just a modern guy, of course I’ve had it in the ear before, ’cause of a lust for life.” Listeners familiar with the song would no doubt recognize the elision of key passages and how this radically changed its meaning.

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   463 In As Heard on TV, Bethany Klein extensively examined the use of “Lust for Life” in the commercials and conversely their effect on the perceived meaning of the song. Klein pointed out that the song served as documentation of the singer’s own publicly acknowledged struggle with heroin, [and] “Lust for Life” opens with a verse relating the lure of destructive behavior: “Here comes Johnny Yen again/With the liquor and drugs/And a flesh machine/He’s gonna do another strip tease.” Amidst the references to drug abuse and the struggle of recovery, the chorus—“I got a lust for life/Oh, a lust for life”—takes on an ironic tone, but does not present, on the surface, an internal mismatch in message. In addition, the track’s unrelentingly bouncy beat provides a strange home for the decidedly bleak lyrics.  (Klein, 2010, p. 102)

Its use in the commercial produced an ironic effect that can be attributed to Carroll’s notion of allusion and how a double layer of meaning is evoked. On the one level, reducing the song to its chorus let it match the images of exuberant cruise passengers engaging in myriad physical activities. “We were using a portion of the song that musically and lyrically fit with what we were doing,” said Arnold Creative Director Jay Williams. “The energy, enthusiasm and raw feel was right.” Yet Williams pointed out that the use of the music without reference to Iggy Pop or his image was a conscious choice, because “Iggy wasn’t someone we were going to put out in front” (Ives, 2002, p. C3). The selection of “Lust for Life” was hugely successful and it continued to be used for several years, firmly cementing its association with Royal Caribbean. When the cruise line launched their “Nation of Why Not?” campaign in late 2008, they stopped using “Lust for Life,” only to have multiple fans petition to bring back the song (MrPete, 2010). On a secondary level, however, the use of “Lust for Life” in the commercial connected it not only to the punk movement but also to its presence in a range of media forms including other commercials and movie soundtracks. Indeed, the song had traveled a great distance from its origin and accrued new meanings along the way. Those familiar with the original version and its lyrics were able to take ironic pleasure in a song about heroin addiction being marketed to cruise passengers, while others could hear the permutation of the song and changes in its meaning from Trainspotting to Royal Caribbean. As Klein elaborated: In using music, advertisers do what all listeners do: they poach and make do with the text, interpreting the meaning in the way that best suits them. Of course, the difference between an advertiser as a listener and most other listeners is that advertisers can disseminate the products of their interpretations to larger audiences than ordinary listeners can. Advertisers have the financial means and access to media that recontextualize music for a wide-reaching audience; the ability to create and distribute interpretations is not shared equally among all potential bricoleurs.  (Klein, 2010, p. 115)

Klein’s argument aligns with the bricolage spirit of punk and how it selected and cultivated elements of music, fashion, and lifestyle choices to suit the subculture. At the end

464   Beck of the song’s tenure with Royal Caribbean, in 2007 only the instrumental break and one verse of the chorus were being used, further distancing the song from its origins and concretizing its association with the cruise line instead of punk. Commenting on this second level of meaning, Rolling Stone Senior Editor Jason Fine said, “If it’s a good riff [in a commercial], people are going to listen to it. It doesn’t particularly bother me or steal the song’s meaning from me. I know a lot of people feel that way, but that’s become an outdated way of thinking” (Ives, 2002, p. C3). In the wake of Royal Caribbean’s success with “Lust for Life,” there were exponentially more commercials that used punk and punk-related music to reach a broadening demographic of viewers. No longer was the music limited to a generation who grew up in the 1970s and the 1980s, but punk was discovered by younger listeners through its use in films, television shows, and commercials. Auto manufacturers plumbed the depths of punk and postpunk for suitably catchy (and inexpensive) songs to promote their products. Shambolic icons of the DIY sound Swell Maps found their 1979 song “Blam!” used in a 2001 Rav4 commercial, with their bouncy, repetitive drum and bass groove picking up where “Ever Fallen in Love . . .” left off. Similar noise merchants the Fall licensed one of their poppier tunes, “Touch Sensitive,” to Vauxhall in 2002 as the theme music for their supermini Corsa. And the use of the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking with You” to promote Hyundai’s five-year warranty in the United Kingdom won “best pop song” at the first Music in Advertising Awards held by the Music Publishers Association (“Sticky Song,” 2003). All the same, the continued use of punk songs in advertisements polarized fans of the music, and the commercial that seemed to irritate fans the most used “London Calling” by the Clash as part of Jaguar’s 2002 North American campaign. The backlash is encapsulated in Marc Vallen’s article on the commercial: Today we are witnessing the best of rock music being transformed into a tidal wave of advertising jingles. Now comes the latest outrage. . . . Jaguar Motors is using a CLASH song to promote their new line of luxury cars. Unbelievable but true. Jaguar, in using The Clash song “London Calling” as an advertising jingle for their latest automotive line, obviously means to appeal to the people who grew up in the 1980’s. My girlfriend asked me sarcastically, “does it give you a warm and fuzzy feeling to know you are part of a target audience?” I answered, “No, but I get a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing I’m a target.”  (Vallen, 2002, p. 14)

Advertising agency Young & Rubicam suggested using the Clash song to Simon Sproule, vice president of communications for Jaguar. Mark Scarpato, retail communication manager at Jaguar, was concerned that the lyrics might not be entirely appropriate for the commercial. “Skilled editing, however, transformed it from apocalyptic to energetic, helping Jaguar project a hip image. ‘It’s a fairly dark song when you listen to it, but we used it in a positive way,’ Mr. Scarpato said” (Ives, 2002, p. C3). When asked by Boston Globe journalist Rob Walker, “Wasn’t there any concern about a song whose words and music both evoke tension and doom, and seem to be warning of some vague class warfare or

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   465 other apocalyptic calamity?,” Sproule responded, “'The lyrics are strong . . . [b]ut they’re not offensive to anybody. They’re strong and angry” (Walker, 2002). It is precisely the strength and anger conveyed by the song that may be responsible for its effectiveness. Jaguar was not trying to sell class warfare with the use of the song. Rather, they were selling an association, not with “Britishness,” but with rebellion. As Walker elaborated, “They tried it out on focus groups, and got a positive response: Apparently the tune, a seductively energetic number that is among the best The Clash recorded, sparked positive memories for many” (Walker, 2002). Hence, Marc Vallen’s comment about “knowing I’m a target” implied that in the absence of a punk subculture, the use of punk songs in advertisements activated connections with that subculture and kept its memory alive. Even in its most incongruous uses in commercials, the association of punk music with consumer products created a strong memory of a lived youth experience. After the Jaguar campaign, the Clash continued to license their songs for other commercials: “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now” was recycled by Stolichnaya Citrona (2002), their cover of “I Fought the Law” sold Sony Erickson Walkman phones (2005), and in turn Cingular Wireless used “Rock the Casbah” (2006), Nissan promoted their Rogue SUV with “Pressure Drop” (2008), British Airways used “London Calling” to promote cheap flights to the United Kingdom (2012), and Choice Hotels built their 2015–2016 ad campaign around the chorus of “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” The Ramones were one of the earliest punk bands to cash in on the trend, licensing their cover of “Baby I Love You” to the Yellow Pages in 1997, but it was the eminently catchy “Hey, ho, let’s go” tag line from “Blitzkrieg Bop” that sold Diet Pepsi (2005), Guinness (2005), Cartoon Network (2009), Coppertone (2013), Taco Bell (2015), GoPro (2016), and Peloton (2017). Lou Reed drew a substantial paycheck from the use of “Perfect Day,” first by AT&T (2010) and then in a broadly feted ad campaign for PlayStation 4 (2013), and “Walk on the Wild Side” continued to be used by Levi’s (2011), Hewlett Packard (2011), Subaru (2016), and Google Pixel (2016). Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” and “The Passenger” continued to be used in commercials for Opodo (2003) and Fiat (2004), respectively, and the Undertones’ “Here Comes the Summer” cropped up again in spots for T-Mobile (2003), Irn-Bru (2007), Kodak (2011), DFS (2013), Aldi (2015), and JD Williams (2016). In 2013, Buzzcocks continued their association with ads with their song “Boredom”— one of the earliest singles from the punk movement and its first truly DIY release— selling Sainsbury’s Bumper Book of Summer (“full of boredom-busting ideas”), while the rhetorical question of “What Do I Get?” was answered in 2016 by McDonald’s’ Big Flavour Wraps. Most tellingly, their 1979 song “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” was used by AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) in a 2007 recruitment commercial. “The commercial depicted energetic people of various ages at a birthday party, with a tag line that read, ‘An organization for people who have birthdays.’ Since it opened up its membership to anyone over 50, retired or not, the song may have been used as a gambit to disabuse people of the notion that it’s an organization for mildewed pensioners” (Bukszpan, 2015). As Gary Moskowitz noted, “Since punk has

466   Beck been around since the 70s, it’s likely that punk rockers are turning 50 and potentially joining a group like the AARP. The AARP knows this, and they’re revamping their image to attract a new generation of folks who used to pogo at punk shows but who now can benefit from health tips and tax-filing advice” (Moskowitz, 2007). Fittingly, two years later “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” was used in the United Kingdom to sell Aviva Pension Insurance. Even though Buzzcocks, the Ramones, and the Clash are close runners up, the punk band that wins the award for the most songs licensed to advertisers is the Stranglers. Formed in 1974, the band predated the punk movement yet became closely associated with it after the release of their albums Rattus Norvegicus and No More Heroes in 1977. Like their contemporaries, the Stranglers first started licensing their songs to motion pictures before allowing them to be used in commercials. Several of their early songs are notable for their catchy musical hooks and decidedly non-PC lyrics. Foremost was their second single, “Peaches”—an extended monologue on girl-watching at the beach— which was used in the opening scene of Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000). In the years following, “Peaches” was heard in commercials for Adidas (2002), HSBC (2003), Tesco’s BBQ Chicken Drumsticks (2013), and JBL Bluetooth Speakers (2015), while their 1977 song “Hanging Around” was used quite tastelessly to promote Wonderbra in France (2002). The bubbling keyboard introduction for “Waltzinblack” was familiar to TV viewers as the theme for celebrity chef Keith Floyd’s BBC TV travel series from 1992 to 1994 before being repurposed by Vodaphone in 2003 and Carphone Warehouse in 2011. The Stranglers’ 1982 single “Golden Brown” promoted Ore-Ida French Fries in the United States (2004) before being selected by Waitrose supermarkets for their 2008 holiday ad campaign. “Although it’s one of the band’s gentler tracks, it’s a hymn to drug use—a fact that Stranglers bassist and ‘Golden Brown’ co-writer JJ Burnel feels may have escaped Waitrose. ‘When our manager told us, I thought it was very funny,’ he says with a laugh. ‘My first reaction was: “Are they advertising Christmas heroin or something?” I’d have thought everyone had guessed by now [what the song’s about] but maybe not’ ” (Sutherland, 2009, p. 27). The case of the Stranglers is telling because it hints at an underlying economic logic behind the use of punk music in advertisements. Not only were corporations creating associations with a target demographic and a bygone youth culture, but also the bands themselves benefited from a new revenue source long after music sales revenue had disappeared. Whereas most punk bands did not control the mechanical license to their music, either because those rights were sold to larger record companies or never reverted to the bands after smaller record labels went out of business, band members could still benefit from publishing rights and royalties from sync licenses. The Stranglers were paid a “five-figure” sum for the use of “Golden Brown” in the Waitrose commercials, and as bassist Burnell clarified, “It was just a business decision made on our behalf and in our interests—I don’t think it has any association with the Stranglers other than they used a recording made by us 30 years ago” (Sutherland, 2009, p. 27). Indeed, sync licenses provided a secondary revenue stream for many punk bands whose mechanical royalties had long since dried up. As Alan Vega, lead singer for New

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   467 York proto-punk band Suicide, explained it, “We didn’t make much money for the first ten years or so. But Suicide, which they say is totally non-commercial music, we’ve been . . . making money off of this thing. We got a Tia Maria commercial in Europe off the weirdest song: a basement two-track recording from 1975 called ‘Amen.’ It’s an outtake from the second Suicide albums sessions” (Reynolds, 2009, p. 37). Most recently, their 1979 single “Dream Baby Dream” was used in 2017 by decidedly upscale Marc Jacobs to launch their new fragrance, Daisy. In his 2009 article “God Save the Brand” for Billboard magazine, Marc Sutherland reflected, “So will other old punks now climb on the bandwagon? Will the Buzzcocks advertise baked beans or Sham 69 turn up flogging fish fingers? ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if more brands looking to get cut-through go for rebellious figures,’ [Snowy] Everitt [director of London-based marketing agency Espionage] says. ‘If it works, why not try it?’ ” (Sutherland, 2009, p. 27).

Iggy Pop: The Last King of Punk Advertising More than 40 years after its inaugural moment, punk music continues to have a prodigious afterlife on the small screen. Where possible, punk songs are licensed and programmed into commercials to activate an association with their original context and the punk subculture. From major artists like Talking Heads, whose “This Must Be the Place” advertised Facebook (2015), and Blondie licensing “Rapture” as the backing for a spectacular Busby Berkley–style choregraphed ad from Baileys Irish Cream (2012), to lesserknown punk bands the Only Ones selling Vodaphone (2006) and Wreckless Eric promoting McDonald’s (2012), punk music and artists have found a welcome partner in the advertising industry. Even punk singers have become celebrities in their own right. In 2008, John Lydon starred in a series of commercials in the United Kingdom for Country Life butter (Sweney,  2008). “Dressed in country gent tweeds, the one-time scourge of polite society is seen watching traditional English folk dancers, running from cows and declaring, ‘It’s not about Great Britain—it’s about great butter!’ with the gusto he once reserved for sneering ‘I am an anti-Christ/I am an anarchist’ ” (Sutherland, 2009, p. 27). According to Daniel Bukszpan, “Apparently, it was good business—Country Life’s parent company, Dairy Crest, reported that Lydon’s advertisement had helped sales increase by 85 percent in just one quarter” (Bukszpan, 2015). In 2006, Iggy Pop recorded vocals for the song “Punkrocker” by Swedish electro-pop band Teddybears. In his trademark deadpan, Pop asserted that three decades after the birth of punk he was still a punk rocker. The music video, however, showed a different vision with Pop, dressed in a suit, chauffeured around Times Square in the back of a driverless Cadillac. The video is a mise-en-abyme of the Toyota Avensis commercial that featured his song “The Passenger,” yet in the music video, Pop is the passenger, sealed off from the world outside. Concurrent with the release of the Teddybears’ single

468   Beck was a Cadillac commercial showing the evolution of the brand, from the 1902 Runabout through the 2007 XLR, accompanied by “Punkrocker.” While the music remains the same as the single, the ad agency deftly shuffled Pop’s vocals to replace the line “The cops are comin’,” presumably an image Cadillac didn’t want associated with their brand, with the more innocuous (and incongruous) “You wish that you were deep,” followed by the chorus, “’Cause I’m a punkrocker, yes I am.” While sincere in the song, “yes I am” in the commercial comes across like Pop trying to convince himself of his own statement. Unsurprisingly, that same year Pop licensed his 1977 song “Here Comes Success” to Cadillac for its new CTS model. The association of veteran rocker Iggy Pop with Cadillac was not a large leap, and in 2009 he was cast in a commercial in the United Kingdom for Swiftcover Car Insurance. Unlike the previous commercials that featured his music, the spot stars a shirtless Pop breathlessly exhorting insurance buyers to use Swiftcover’s online service, ending with the reverse pitch, “You think I’m selling car insurance? I’m not—I’m selling time!” Its purpose, according to Swiftcover’s marketing director, Tina Shortle, was to “stand out in a cluttered market. We weren’t too worried if the target audience didn’t recognize Iggy as a celebrity. . . . We just wanted someone renowned for having fun and enjoying life” (Sutherland,  2009, p. 27). Despite the absence of his music in the commercial, the 62-year-old Iggy did stand out. Marketing Week’s Iain Murray described his first encounter with the television spot, saying: “One moment all was relatively normal, the next I was witness to the writhing and grimacing of a semi-naked creature who looked as though he (for male it was) had been dredged from the depths of a primeval swamp” (Murray, 2009, p. 31). But it wasn’t the incongruous appearance of Iggy Pop selling auto insurance that ultimately led to the cancellation of the campaign; it was the fact that the commercial was deemed misleading by the U.K.  Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Despite Pop’s claim of “I got Swiftcovered,” it turns out that the company’s website specified that they did not cover drivers working part or full time in entertainment. Ironically, “rock stars could not take out a car insurance policy with the firm” and the commercial was banned by the ASA (Wallop, 2009). Most recently, shifting brand alliance, Pop lent his image to promote the Chrysler 300C John Varvatos Limited Edition. The 2013 spot shows a semitruck delivering a new Chrysler 300 to the curb at 315 Bowery in Manhattan. Waiting to receive it, in front of the shop bearing his name, is clothing designer and entrepreneur John Varvatos. As Varvatos enters via the driver’s side door, stroking the leather seats, a conspicuously silent Iggy Pop stands by the passenger door, nodding approvingly. The commercial ends with the tag line “Imported from Detroit,” playing on both Pop’s and Varvatos’s upbringing in the Motor City. Only after the end of the ad do you realize that they never actually drive anywhere in the car, the pulsating electronic beat underscoring the spot is not Iggy Pop’s music, and neither Pop nor Varvatos narrates the commercial. But the final ironic revelation is the most troubling. For punk fans, 315 Bowery was punk rock ground zero, the home of CBGB from 1973 until it closed in 2006. Seven years later, there is no trace of punk rock on the Bowery, just Iggy Pop as the passenger in another car commercial.

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   469

Recommended Readings Bukszpan, D. (2015, June 14). Weird ways Diet Pepsi, Nike, AARP used punk rock in ads. Fortune.com. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2015/06/14/punk-rock-ads-sex-pistolmarketing/ Klein, B. (2010). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Sutherland, M. (2009, June 6). God save the brand? Punks sing for butter-and insurance. Billboard, 121(22), 27. Vallen, M. (2002, Fall). Selling out the legacy of punk: The Clash’s “London Calling”: soundtrack for Jaguar luxury car commercial. Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Activism, Research and Education, 15(3), 14. Walker, R. (2002, September 15). Brand new Jag. Boston Globe. Retrieved from http://web .archive.org/web/20021004114045/http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/258/focus/Brand_ new_Jag+.shtml

References Abrams, S. (2019, March 15). Iggy Pop is fine with being the Godfather of Punk. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/arts/television/iggy-pop-punkepix.html BMI. (2019). Types of copyright. Retrieved from https://www.bmi.com/licensing/entry/ types_of_copyrights Bukszpan, D. (2015, June 14). Weird ways Diet Pepsi, Nike, AARP used punk rock in ads. Fortune.com. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2015/06/14/punk-rock-ads-sex-pistolmarketing/ Carroll, N. (1982, Spring). The future of allusion: Hollywood in the seventies (and beyond). October, 20, 51–81. Elliott, S. (1998, March 13). Volkswagen and Arnold Communications pitch a Beetle with “more power” and “less flower.” New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes .com/1998/03/13/business/media-business-advertising-volkswagen-arnold-communicationspitch-beetle-with.html Frith, S. (1981). Sound effects: Youth, leisure, and the politics of rock “n” roll. New York, NY: Parthenon Books. Gianatasio, D. (2001, January 2). Arnold promotes Royal Caribbean website. AdWeek. Retrievedfromhttps://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/arnold-promotes-royal-caribbeanweb-site-37143/ Griswold, A. (2001, November 4). Carnival Cruise Lines beef up campaign buy. AdWeek. Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/carnival-cruise-lines-beefscampaign-buy-59707/ Hall, E. (1997, June 6). BMP enacts thrills and spills for Sony. Campaign. Retrieved from https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/bmp-enacts-thrills-spills-sony/19675 Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: The meaning of style. London, UK: Routledge. Hochman, S. (1996, March 17). Rotten dew. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www .latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-03-17-ca-47887-story.html Ives, N. (2002, November 6). The media business: Advertising: The odd embrace of marketing and anti-establishment music. New York Times, p. C3.

470   Beck Klein, B. (2010). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Lafayette, J. (1990, November 19). Punk producer pumps up TV spots. Advertising Age, p. 51. Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/api/version1/getDocCui?lni=3SJ4G310-000S-84JG&csi=8093&hl=t&hv=t&hnsd=f&hns=t&hgn=t&oc=00240&perma=true Laing, D. (1978, April). Interpreting punk rock. Marxism Today, pp. 123–128. Moskowitz, G. (2007, February 23). What’s next, mosh pit cruise packages? The Riff, Mother Jones. Retrieved from http://www.motherjones.com/riff/2007/02/whats-next-moshpit-cru MrPete. (2010, October 27). Isn’t it time to bring back Lust for Life? CruiseCritic. Retrieved from https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/1239285-isnt-it-time-to-bring-back-lust-for-life/ Murray, I. (2009, February 26). Iggy pop culture fails to appreciate commercial realities of punk rock. Marketing Week, 32(9), 31. Parpis, E., with McCarthy, M., & Warner, J. (1998, August 24). Creative analysis: Too close for comfort? AdWeek. Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/ creative-analysis-too-close-comfort-29267/ Prévot, N., & Sinclair, G. (2017). The Clash sell out: Negotiating space in the ideological superstructure. In S.  Cohen & J.  Peacock (Eds.), The Clash takes on the world: Transnational perspectives on the only band that matters (pp. 81–94). New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic. Reilly, P. M. (1998, October 9). TV commercials turn obscure songs into radio hits. Wall Street Journal, pp. B1, B9. Reynolds, S. (2007). Ono, Eno, Arto: Non-musicians and the emergence of “concept rock.” In D. Molon (Ed.), Sympathy for the devil: Art and rock and roll since 1967 (pp. 80–91). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Reynolds, S. (2009). Totally wired: Post-punk interviews and overviews. London, UK: Faber and Faber. Scott, T. L. (2002, June 9). Music highlights Mitsubishi TV ads. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/tv/2002/06/09/music-highlightsmitsubishi-tv-ads/741b2107-3ce1-437a-9a24-93c0111c5c4f/?utm_term=.12fe604fd40a Springer, M. (2013, July 11). Selling cool: Lou Reed’s classic Honda Scooter commercial, 1984. Open Culture. Retrieved from http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/selling-cool-loureeds-classic-honda-scooter-commercial-1984.html Sticky song named to TV ad track. (2003, October 31). BBC News. Retrieved from http://news .bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3231347.stm Sutherland, M. (2009, June 6). God save the brand? Punks sing for butter—and insurance. Billboard, 121(22), 27. Sweney, M. (2008, October 1). Sex Pistols singer John Lydon flies the flag for butter in TV ad. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/oct/01/advertising.television. Taylor, P. (1988). The Impresario of Do-It-Yourself. In P.  Taylor (Ed.), Impresario: Malcolm McLaren and the British New Wave (pp. 12–30). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vallen, M. (2002, Fall). Selling out the legacy of punk: The Clash’s “London Calling”: soundtrack for Jaguar luxury car commercial. Turning the Tide: Journal of Anti-Racist Activism, Research and Education, 15(3), 14. Walker, R. (2002, September 15). Brand new Jag. Boston Globe. Retrieved from http://web .archive.org/web/20021004114045/http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/258/focus/Brand_ new_Jag+.shtml Wall, M. (2013). Lou Reed: The life. Sydney, Australia: Hachette Australia.

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   471 Wallop, H. (2009, April 29). Iggy Pop advert banned because rock star would not be covered. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/ insurance/motorinsurance/5236374/Iggy-Pop-advert-banned-because-rock-star-wouldnot-be-covered.html

Chronological List of Television Advertisements Cited Lou Reed—“Walk on the Wild Side” (1984, Honda Scooters) Malcolm McLaren—“Aria” (1990, British Airways, “Face”) Malcolm McLaren with Monalisa Young—“To Be or Not to Be” (1990, Minute Maid) The Clash—“Should I Stay or Should I Go” (1991, Levi’s 501s) T. Rex—“20th Century Boy” (1991, Levi’s) The Velvet Underground—“Venus in Furs” (1993, Dunlop Tires) Psychic TV—“Roman P” (1995, Volkswagen) John Lydon—“Route 66” (1996, Mountain Dew) Iggy and the Stooges—“Search and Destroy” (1996, Nike Air [Olympics]) Eddie and the Hot Rods—“Do Anything You Wanna Do” (1996, McEwans Lager) The Ramones—“Baby I Love You” (1997, Yellow Pages) Billy Idol—“White Wedding” (1997, Sony PC-7 Handycam) Iggy Pop—“The Passenger” (1998, Toyota Avensis) Iggy Pop—“Lust for Life” (1998, Mitsubishi Galant) Buzzcocks—“What Do I Get” (1999, Toyota Rav4) Buzzcocks—“Ever Fallen in Love” (1999, Rover 400) Sham 69—“Hersham Boys” (1999, Physio Sport) Sham 69—“If the Kids Are United” (2000, McDonald’s) New York Dolls—“Personality Crisis” (2000, Citroen) The Undertones—“Here Comes the Summer” (2000, Impulse) The Undertones—“Teenage Kicks” (2000, New York Bagels) Billy Idol—“Rebel Yell” (2000, KP Nuts) Iggy Pop—“Lust for Life” (2001–2007, Royal Caribbean) Adam and the Ants—“Kings of the Wild Frontier” (2001, Mitsubishi Shogun) Swell Maps—“Blam!” (2001, Toyota Rav4) Suicide—“A-Men” (2001, Tia Maria) The Fall—“Touch Sensitive” (2002, Vauxhall Corsa) The Velvet Underground—“I’m Sticking with You” (2002, Hyundai) The Clash—“London Calling” (2002, Jaguar) The Clash—“Should I Stay or Should I Go” (2002, Stolichnaya Citrona) The Stranglers—“Peaches” (2002, Adidas ClimaCool, Netherlands) The Stranglers—“Hanging Around” (2002, Wonderbra) The Undertones—“Here Comes the Summer” (2003, T-Mobile) The Stranglers—“Peaches” (2003, HSBC)

472   Beck The Stranglers—“Waltzinblack” (2003, Vodafone Cheap Seats) Iggy Pop—“Lust for Life” (2003, Opodo) The Undertones—“Here Comes the Summer” (2003, T-Mobile) Iggy Pop—“The Passenger” (2004, Fiat Idea) The Stranglers—“Golden Brown” (2004, Ore-Ida French Fries) The Clash—“I Fought the Law” (2005, Sony Ericsson Walkman) Ramones—“Blitzkrieg Bop” (2005, Guinness) Ramones—“Blitzkrieg Bop” (2005, Diet Pepsi) The Clash—“Rock the Casbah” (2006, Cingular Wireless SYNC) Ramones—“Baby I Love You” (2006, KFC Favorite Buckets) The Teddybears (feat. Iggy Pop)—“Punk Rocker” (2006, Cadillac XLR-V) Iggy Pop—“Here Comes Success” (2006, Cadillac CTS) The Only Ones—“Another Girl, Another Planet” (2006, Vodafone) The Clash—“Pressure Drop” (2007, Nissan Rogue) The Undertones—“Here Comes the Summer” (2007, Irn-Bru) Buzzcocks—“Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” (2007, AARP) John Lydon (2008, Country Life Butter, 2nd version) The Stranglers—“Golden Brown” (2008, Waitrose Supermarkets) Ramones—“Blitzkrieg Bop” (2009, Cartoon Network) Buzzcocks—“Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” (2009, Aviva Pension Insurance) Iggy Pop (2009, Swiftcover Car Insurance) Lou Reed—“Perfect Day” (2010, AT&T) Lou Reed—“Walk on the Wild Side” (2011, Levi’s Red Tab) Lou Reed, rap over backing track—“Walk on the Wild Side” (2011, HP) The Undertones—“Here Comes the Summer” (2011, Kodak Ink Jet Printers) The Stranglers—“Waltzinblack” (2011, Carphone Warehouse) The Clash—“London Calling” (2012, British Airways) Blondie—“Rapture” (2012, Baileys) Wreckless Eric—“Whole Wide World” (2012, McDonald’s) Buzzcocks—“Boredom” (2013, Sainsbury’s Bumper Book of Summer) Ramones—“Blitzkrieg Bop” (2013, Coppertone Sports Pro) Lou Reed cover—“Perfect Day” (2013, PlayStation 4) The Undertones—“Here Comes the Summer” (2013, DFS) The Stranglers—“Peaches” (2013, Tesco BBQ Chicken Drumsticks) Iggy Pop (2013, John Varvatos Ltd. Ed Chrysler 300C) Ramones—“Blitzkrieg Bop” (2015, Taco Bell) The Undertones—“Here Comes the Summer” (2015, Aldi) The Stranglers—“Peaches” (2015, JBL Bluetooth Speakers) Talking Heads—“This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” (2015, Facebook) The Clash—“Should I Stay or Should I Go” (2015–2016, Choice Hotels “Wedding Season,” “Stay or Go,” “Booking for Business,” “Reunion,” “Travel Season”) The Undertones—“Here Comes the Summer” (2016, JD Williams)

Punk in Advertising and Selling a Subculture   473 Ramones—“Blitzkrieg Bop” (2016, Go Pro) Buzzcocks—“What Do I Get” (2016, McDonald’s Big Flavour Wraps) Lou Reed—“Walk on the Wild Side” (2016, Google Pixel) Lou Reed cover—“Walk on the Wild Side” (2016, Subaru Forester) The Ramones—“Blitzkrieg Bop” (2017, Peloton) Suicide—“Dream Baby Dream” (2017, Daisy, Marc Jacobs)

chapter 23

Sel li ng “Dav id Bow ie” Commercial Appearances and the Developing Bowie Star Image Katherine Reed

In his 1987 advertisement for Pepsi entitled “Creation,” David Bowie alters the lyrics of his hit song “Modern Love,” inserting the words “Now I know the choice is mine” into the chorus. The change clearly echoes Pepsi’s own “Choice of a New Generation” tagline, but it also illustrates an important aspect of Bowie’s more aggressive move into commercials in the mid-1980s. At this time, Bowie was wildly popular and financially successful on a scale he had not achieved before, thanks to the success of hits Let’s Dance (1983) and Tonight (1984); this high-profile advertising work was a strategic choice rather than a strict necessity. Indeed, Bethany Klein pegs this choice as strikingly odd: “David Bowie’s involvement does stand out against the usual music selection of the colas, which tends towards more ‘commercial’ artists, or those for whom commercial affiliation has less of a stigma attached” (2009, p. 87). Klein fails to note, though, that Bowie had appeared in television ads from the late 1960s onward and had embraced the “commercial” label with gusto in the mid-1980s; indeed, he was rebranding himself as commercial. This personal branding strategy becomes apparent in the congruence between these ads and Bowie’s use of his image in his music videos. Commercials, like music videos, costumes, and interviews, served Bowie as a vehicle for reinforcing his star image on a very public, almost ubiquitous, stage. Only allowing the use of specific (not always brand-new) songs and styling himself in specific ways, Bowie co-opted advertising as another tool for the definition of his public self. Many corporations and ad campaigns were similarly only too happy to more clearly define Bowie’s iconoclastic image while aligning themselves with it. Though many, including Philip Auslander, have studied Bowie’s changing personae, his commercial spots have received comparatively little attention (Auslander,  2006). Bowie’s involvement in advertising took many forms, from early visual work in the

Selling “David Bowie”   475 1960s, to playing an ad man in the 1986 film Absolute Beginners, to his own appearances in commercials. Of those early years in advertising, Bowie stated in a Cameron Crowe (1976) interview: “I went into advertising and it was awful. That was the worst. I got out of that and tried rock & roll because it seemed like an enjoyable way of making my money and taking four or five years to decide what I really wanted to do.” What he “really wanted to do,” it seemed, was a long and complex musical and actorly career, which would circle back around to include advertising as one of its many facets. In ads from 1968 to 2013, Bowie used his likeness and music as a means of dual promotion: self and product. Though this approach is not unique, Bowie’s overt construction of his own star image makes his utilization of advertising particularly striking. In interviews, he is clear about his goals, making his partnerships a bit different than the presentation of many advertising deals. Well before the ubiquity of pop star advertising, Bowie made use of the platform for his own purposes of self-definition. The songs Bowie chose to license for these ads and the acting and styling choices he shows provide insight into the manipulation of a constructed “David Bowie” for that particular moment in time. This chapter will analyze his 1987 Pepsi spot (“Creation”), 2003 Vittel ad (“Never Get Old”), and 2013 Louis Vuitton short (“L’Invitation au Voyage”) to illustrate the consistent shaping of the public image Bowie executed through advertising. In these ads, Bowie’s iconicity as a performer is manipulated to effectively and immediately communicate not only Bowieness but also the timeless coolness of each brand through the invocation of specific images. This use of musical identity to build brand identity has reached a point of saturation in recent years, earning Leslie  M.  Meier’s (2011) label of “promotional ubiquitous music.” Such an identity strategy is not unique but is very closely aligned with Bowie’s careful crafting of his star image, which stretches back decades. Meier sees music as useful in rendering authenticity for the consumer, though “authenticity” is anathema to much of Bowie’s work. Meier writes, “Not only is music useful for breaking through promotional clutter, but it can also speak to identity and signify (even if problematically) a sense of ‘realness’ amid experiences constructed by the brands” (Meier, 2011, p. 412). For Bowie, any sense of realness was always already constructed, and quite consciously so. The extensive use of his constructed personae in clearly unreal environments is at the center of each of the ads analyzed here. In contrast to the “typical” artist/ brand relationship, Bowie’s advertising forays show an idea of identity as not inherent, but chosen. Bowie himself chooses a variety of different identities throughout his public career, most of which are referenced in these three commercials. Perhaps, then, Bowie’s value to these brands lies not only in his ability to create a more “real,” personal connection with the audience but also in his ability to show the power of choice in selfdefinition through the invocation of many of his own iconic iterations. The Pepsi, Vittel, and Louis Vuitton spots show a clear distillation of artist as image that mimics Bowie’s own use of his iconicity. Beyond this, Vittel and Louis Vuitton actively invite audiences to borrow Bowie’s approach, creating themselves through Bowie’s image and the products it supports.

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Bowie’s Masks: Developing Personae From the very beginning of his music career, David Bowie adopted different mantles, meant to align with the tenor of his work at any given time. The idea of the pop star as actor was not new; as Simon Frith writes, “A pop star is like a film star, taking on many parts” (1996, p. 199). Bowie took this part-playing to heart, though, making it central to his approach to music. Among his most famous are Ziggy Stardust, the titular alien of Bowie’s smash album—a glam rock alien god come to “let all the children boogie”—and the Thin White Duke of the mid-1970s, a drugged-out, nihilist European aristocrat, dancing as the world falls down. Each of these persona changes seems a bit like method acting, as Bowie inhabited the characters both on- and offstage. In fact, in a 2002 Terry Gross interview, the artist acknowledges Ziggy as an all-consuming role, and one that he would have liked to have given life beyond his own incarnation. Ideally, he “would love to have handed it on to somebody else . . . put the wig on and send him out to do the gigs, you know” (Gross, 2002). Though this hand-off never came to fruition, Bowie’s comment shows an innate understanding of the power of the persona: Rather than gaining his potency from a closeness to the “authentic” David Bowie, Ziggy drew recognition and definition from a few clear iconic costume choices and mannerisms. This understanding permeated Bowie’s performance of character, whether he was overtly playing a named alter ego or simply defining the public’s star image of David Bowie. Publicly, Bowie’s appearance and interviews would align with each musical persona shift. Everything from wardrobe to professed influences would be altered to match the latest iteration of the Bowie character, showing clearly in Bowie’s pronouncements throughout the 1970s. In the Diamond Dogs era, his most frequently cited influences included the Beat poets and George Orwell (Copetas, 1974). (Christopher Isherwood would replace them in only two years.) As Ziggy Stardust, he espoused a bisexuality that he would hedge in later interviews (Watts, 1972). Most notably, Bowie landed in hot water over the controversial pronouncements of his Thin White Duke character. Playing the disaffected Weimar-era aristocrat in 1976, Bowie told interviewers that he could have been the Adolf Hitler England needed (Crowe, 1976). Most transformations did not include such overt fascism but did necessitate changes of wardrobe, physical appearance (in makeup and hair), and mannerisms. With each change came new, clear icons of the current persona: a shock of red hair, an eyepatch, a stark black-and-white wardrobe. Working with specific photographers at the beginning of his career (and strictly controlling access and published images), Bowie and his management were able to craft a very specific and clear public image. In 1974, Steve Turner wrote of the “making of David Bowie” into a “cult figure”; his choice of words was apt. Bowie had indeed been made, crafted into a specific image that was quite separate from his earlier public appearances (the shaggy pseudo-hippie of “Space Oddity”). Manager Tony DeFries set careful limits on still and moving images of Bowie in concert, ­ hotographs of Mick outlawing all but MainMan management–authorized photos. The p

Selling “David Bowie”   477 Rock, in particular, have indelibly imprinted a consistent image of the Ziggy Stardust era. In these photographs, Bowie is seen in costume, with hair and makeup styled. He is shown at a remove—not laughing with fans and bandmates, but an aloof rock god in the mode of Ziggy himself.1 As Turner wrote, “No photographer was going to catch our David with his frail humanity exposed” (Turner, 1974, p. 20). Authenticity and humanity were not the purview of this rock god. Rather, the artifice was clear and embraced, and all the more powerful for it. This alignment of character and person was consistent throughout Bowie’s career. Indeed, when the final Ziggy Stardust show ended at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973, Bowie told the audience it was the “last show we’ll ever do.” In D. A. Pennebaker’s concert film of that night, the audience’s shock at the pronouncement is palpable—but Bowie only meant that this was the last appearance for the Ziggy character. For the audience, this performance of a character had become real, and David Jones, David Bowie, and Ziggy Stardust elided. Such clear crafting of style and persona would continue for years in the performer’s public life. In his personal appearance and stage dress, Bowie carefully constructed each persona with a clear look, meant to immediately evoke that character and the sound of their world and work. While control of still images whetted the public’s appetite for more of this mysterious, changeable Bowie, video was also harnessed in the service of image craft. An early adopter of the music video format, Bowie dabbled in promotional videos from the late 1960s onward. It is his collaborations with photographer Mick Rock, though, that solidified the idea of moving images as central to Bowie’s persona, and that produced looks and moments that would follow him throughout his career. The “Life on Mars?” video is perhaps the clearest example. Shot in 1973 to promote a song from 1971’s Hunky Dory, the video features Bowie alone on a completely white backdrop. Clad in a Freddie Burretti suit, the performer’s shock of red hair and dramatic makeup stand out starkly. Rock’s decision to wash out the color of the video helps to intensify the impression of Bowie’s constituent parts: A red crop, eyes with uneven pupils, and a trim, powder blue figure dominate the short film. The look would become so iconic that, even in the 2000s, magazine spreads of Tilda Swinton and Kate Moss would mimic it. The clear honing of image shown in these early videos provides the lexicon from which Bowie, his management, and advertisers would draw for years to come. From mime to stage acting to producing others’ albums to appearing in commercials, all aspects of Bowie’s public persona can be analyzed as facets of this unified expression of Bowieness, tied together by the way each iteration exploits specific imagery for iconic impact. Bowie stated that he and other rock stars were really actors, drawn to the medium of rock as a point of entry, despite working in a variety of fields (Crowe, 1976). His commercials from the 1980s onward show that actorly impulse and unified 1  The release of Mick Rock’s Taschen photo book in 2016 marked the first widespread public viewing of many of his Bowie photos from this era. It’s notable that the photos that did not fit the company line were only released after Bowie’s death.

478   Reed ­ ultimedia approach very clearly. These commercials, of course, serve the dual brandm ing desires of Bowie and the corporation that has hired him, but they also show a distillation of visual and musical language on an even more concentrated scale than the music video, which is ultimately instructive for us in studying Bowie’s definition of self and persona. Each of these three commercials turns to specific strategies also present in Bowie’s music videos. As authors like Joanna Love (2012,  2015) have shown, commercials present an interesting and fruitful nexus of the many forces active in shaping a performer’s public persona. Richard Dyer’s (1979) analyses of classic Hollywood press coverage and product endorsements point to the same idea, but it is in commercials, particularly of the 1980s and beyond, that we begin to see musicians incorporating their own music and specific aspects of their image into the marketing of a product. As in Love’s analyses of Michael Jackson and Madonna’s Pepsi ads, I will concentrate on two main aspects of Bowie’s commercial work: the incorporation and alteration of his original music, and the relation of his styling in the commercials to his current public persona. The eras of these particular commercials present interesting moments in Bowie’s evolution, when his persona was either under recent revision or out of the public eye entirely. As such, these commercial spots shed important light on the conception of “David Bowie” in these moments and the tools for altering that conception. Their use of a consistent visual language that references specific Bowie videos is instructive.

“Creation”: Let’s Dance With Bowie’s Masks With his 1987 Pepsi commercial, Bowie and the PepsiCo corporation sought to capitalize on the artist’s hugely popular work of the early 1980s. The spot features “Modern Love,” a hit single from Let’s Dance, released in 1983. Though the choice of a four-yearold song for a new ad campaign is not in keeping with Pepsi’s strategy with artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna, it makes sense for this stage of Bowie’s career. Let’s Dance and its sound were a departure for Bowie, a gamble that paid great financial dividends. Bowie’s late 1970s had been artistically successful but commercially difficult. Following the critical acclaim of his Berlin trilogy (consisting of Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger) in the late 1970s, Bowie turned to a more salable sound in the mid-1980s. Working with producer and guitarist Nile Rodgers of Chic, he sought commercial success, and achieved it. With hits like “Let’s Dance,” “China Girl,” and “Modern Love,” Bowie became more of a mainstream success than ever before. His Serious Moonlight tour in support of the album was an international success and was aired as a television special on HBO in February 1984. His subsequent albums, Tonight and Never Let Me Down, sold well but did not achieve the same level of ubiquity that Let’s Dance enjoyed.

Selling “David Bowie”   479 For Pepsi, a slightly older song with immediate recognition power seems an easy choice for an ad campaign. At the same time, Bowie’s mainstream visibility extended beyond his musical career. A serious acting career, begun in earnest with Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), gained steam in the 1980s, with roles in The Hunger (1983); Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983); Labyrinth (1986); and Absolute Beginners (1986). Featured in periodicals like People and Time in 1986, Bowie was present in the average American home in a way he had never achieved before. This peak moment was ideal for his continued involvement in advertising, which moved to a more prominent level with the “Creation” Pepsi campaign. That deal involved a TV spot with Tina Turner, with whom Bowie had recently recorded, and Pepsi sponsorship of both of their tours (Glass Spider and Break Every Rule, respectively). In keeping with Pepsi’s musician collaborations of the time, “Creation” tells a vignette of a story that centers on Bowie and Turner’s interaction. Unlike ads like Jackson’s “The Concert,” though, this spot is not longform, not part of a series, and was not premiered with the ballyhoo accompanying Jackson’s. In the commercial, Bowie plays the role of a geek who is building his ideal woman with the help of a computer, Weird Science style. He tears images from magazines and art history books and inputs them, waggling his eyebrows as he inexplicably tries to scan a sexy ankle boot. As the computer goes to work, Bowie kicks back—and knocks over his Pepsi onto the computer. The creation kicks into hyperdrive and Tina Turner emerges, her appearance blasting off all vestiges of geekdom from Bowie and leading to their Pepsi-infused strut in front of the “Pepsi Diner,” which features a Pepsi vending machine (lovingly caressed by Turner) near its entrance. This dance is set to the new “Modern Love” lyrics “now I know the choice is mine.” This lyrical rewrite is, of course, a nod to the “Choice of a New Generation” tagline, and links Bowie and Turner’s ad to earlier installments from Michael Jackson and others. The connection to Michael Jackson is particularly telling, as Bowie’s iconicity is exploited here in much the same way Jackson’s was in his ads. As Joanna Love has shown, Jackson’s “The Concert” spot manages to evoke the performer without making much use of his highly recognizable face. Jackson had set limits on face time, and Pepsi was able to make that absence almost invisible, through evocation of iconic Jackson imagery. A glittery glove, white socks, and dancing feet stand in for Jackson’s face (Love, 2015). In much the same way, Bowie’s 1980s hits and persona are evoked. Though his face is visible throughout, it is in details and close-ups that Pepsi’s strategy is clear. First, during the opening “construction” section, we’re given multiple close-ups of Bowie’s face. Importantly, these clarify his presence (despite his geeky disguise) but also draw attention to the features he had emphasized for years. For example, we’re given a facial close-up shortly after Bowie scans a photo of a set of eyes, serving to highlight his own mismatched eye colors, perhaps his most recognizable feature, and one that is emphasized in videos like “Life on Mars?” (1973). After his transformation from geek to debonair dancer, Bowie and Turner strut, he wearing his “red shoes,” an allusion to the lyrics of “Let’s Dance.” Subtly, Pepsi points to the height of Bowie’s popularity, even though that is not the most recent Bowie iteration. Beyond that, there’s

480   Reed Bowie’s dual roles as geek and sexy love interest, reminiscent of the video for “Blue Jean” from 1984. In the Julien Temple–directed longform music video, Bowie plays both the dashing “Screamin’ Lord Byron” character and a geeky, gawky audience member incapable of successfully making a move on a girl. Both directly and indirectly, “Creation” seeks to invoke the Bowie of Let’s Dance, allowing both Pepsi and Bowie to continue to capitalize on it. Musically, the “Creation” version of “Modern Love” is quite similar to the album version. Alterations are largely in the service of including Turner and adding Pepsi’s tagline. Unlike in Pepsi’s reworking of “Billie Jean,” most musical structures remain the same. Love has pointed out that many of the songs offered for Pepsi campaigns by Jackson and Madonna were “anything but the benign pop songs that littered top 40 radio” (2012, p. 207). In fact, Bowie’s “Modern Love” fits the bill quite nicely, veering away from more controversial topics and presenting a musically catchy and lyrically clean vehicle. Differences in “Creation” tend to be omissions of sections to fit the time restrictions of the minute-long ad, rather than changes in harmonic function. For example, the song’s guitar riff intro is omitted in “Creation,” as is Bowie’s spoken word section in the postchorus that follows. The first verse is also left out. The resulting structure is simplified from the single version. It consists of postchorus, verse two, prechorus, and a truncated iteration of the chorus. Apart from this, some of the ambiguous or dark aspects of this song’s lyrics are changed in the duet version. For example, in verse two, “But I never wave bye-bye” is changed to “But I always wave goodbye.” More substantially, the chorus lyrics are altered to include Turner in a sort of call and response, while also highlighting key Pepsi terms (notably, “choice” and “satisfies”). In all, the changes for the ad version are relatively minor, preserving the identifiable features of Bowie’s single and distilling it into a more potent vehicle for Pepsi’s “Choice of a New Generation” campaign. Unfortunately, where the Michael Jackson and Madonna campaigns feature multiple installments that show a developing style, we can only speculate on the large-scale strategy that would have been employed in a long-standing Bowie partnership with Pepsi. The deal would reach a rocky end for him with the emergence of sexual assault allegations in 1987. Stemming from an appearance in Dallas earlier that year, Bowie faced litigation alleging that he had sexually assaulted a fan and infected her with HIV. It does not seem that these allegations received wide exposure beyond the Dallas market (accounts appeared in the Dallas Morning News and Dallas Times Herald on October 30, with the Washington Post running a brief account of Bowie’s agreement to an AIDS test early in November), and a grand jury did not decide to indict him on the charges. The woman, Wanda Nichols, did not receive a settlement from Bowie, but the possibility of such action was enough to end his endorsement deal. As such, the only existing Bowie/Pepsi ad is “Creation,” providing a window into the way that Pepsi’s existing marketing strategies would have been tailored to their application in Bowie’s case. Aaron Walton, who was present on the Glass Spider tour as Pepsi’s representative, later described his approach to music and advertising as “using music, celebrity, and pop-culture to amplify brand messages and connect with consumers

Selling “David Bowie”   481 e­ xperientially” (Hope,  2018, emphasis added). This experiential focus appears in the “Creation” ad through its emphasis on Bowie’s construction of self through familiar, iconic images. Throughout, we can see an attention to iconicity, as well as a strategy for musical alterations that refocuses the song’s content for maximum positivity and Pepsi references. For what it is worth, Tina Turner’s Pepsi partnership continued; in ad spots like “We’ve Got the Taste,” a similar visual approach is used, focusing on Turner’s iconic hair and legs before launching into her performance. Whether subsequent Bowie commercials would have continued to reach into the artist’s back catalog and identifiable visuals is unclear, but later endorsement deals would certainly return to the artist’s most iconic, consciously constructed moments.

“Never Get Old”: History Repeating As Bowie himself once said, “I’m really just my own little corporation of characters” (Crowe, 1976). In the two later commercials that I address, Vittel and Louis Vuitton take this strategy and expand upon it, incorporating it into their own campaigns. Rather than pointing to a Bowie who is a few years out of date, these ads seek to invoke an entire history, and to capitalize on that history and its scope. Manipulating Bowie’s iconicity, these ads link their brands, and Bowie himself, to a timelessness and pop culture currency connected to these images. Their use of current Bowie compositions helps to make those personae and images more contemporary. Indeed, Vittel’s 2003 ad is a veritable iconography of David Bowie. The Ogilvy and Mather Paris spot plays on the idea of Vittel’s bottled water as the source of new life— such a powerful source that Bowie’s many personae spring to independent life and populate his house, as contemporary Bowie walks among them. The commercial is set to “Never Get Old,” a somewhat tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of his aging rock star status. The song comes from Bowie’s Reality album, released in the same year as the ad, 2003. Chris O’Leary (2019) sees humor in Bowie’s irreverent approach to the aging rock star image in this song. One of rock’s remaining superstars, Bowie could pillory the seemingly unending energy, youth, and vitality he and his contemporaries were expected to project. Bowie, in his song, and Vittel, in this commercial, do just that. The music eschews any of the odder Bowie trappings: No literary references litter its lyrics, and the production and instrumentation are typical of guitardriven rock. Musically, relatively little is surprising and nothing is altered from the album version, allowing the visuals to take the lead and capitalize on Bowie’s iconicity and legacy. Bowie’s past is evoked with laser precision throughout. It is easy to imagine such an ad playing on past Bowie roles in broad strokes, but here the man himself and impersonator David Brighton recreate specific and iconic images in great detail. The ad begins with Bowie seeing his current reflection paired with that of his Ziggy era. This shot is a re-creation of images from a 1972 Mick Rock session shot at Bowie’s home,

482   Reed Haddon Hall, later to be featured on the cover of the retrospective collection Nothing Has Changed (2015). The cover images of The Man Who Sold the World (1970), Diamond Dogs (1974), Low (1977), and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) also make appearances. A custom Alexander McQueen Union Jack frock coat, made for the cover of 1997’s Earthling, hangs by the brownstone’s door. Icons of David Bowie live everywhere in this house and this commercial. Beyond these image recreations, there’s the connection of this ad, with its mirrored, younger Bowies, to the “Thursday’s Child” (1999) video, which features Bowie watching a younger version of himself through the frame of a mirror. Much like the Vittel ad, the visuals play with concepts of age, persona, and continuity in interesting ways. This image precision is noteworthy as it shows a further step in the exploitation of Bowie’s iconic past. More than the oblique references of “Creation,” here the specific instance is key, and our memory of that instance aids in the efficacy of the spot. One can easily watch and understand the main conceit of the ad without specialized Bowie knowledge, but with the added specificity of the images, Vittel and Bowie play with identifiable history in a way that adds punch to that conceit. Bowie can jokingly sing that he’s “never ever gonna get old,” but there’s a kernel of truth to that—not, of course, because he stays hydrated with Vittel, but because we, in our memory and consumption of him, will never allow him to age. As consumers and fans, we hold these previous iterations of Bowie in our memory and in our record collections. We consume these variations on the Bowie star image long after their expiration dates, and much of the work they continue to do is in definition, both of Bowie and ourselves. Bowie long recognized the importance of image for defining “David Bowie” to the public, but in creating this character, he also created a mode for fans to do the same. Our appreciation for and celebration of various eras of Bowie’s work help to show the world who we are and what we value. Similarly, access to the shibboleth of these Bowie images and personae allows the target audience to take part in the ad and see themselves within it. The target audience for this ad, with their knowledge of Bowie stretching back to 1970, is likely much the same as the audience for that 1986 Pepsi spot. This generational group, with buying power to spare, has been highlighted by Taylor and others as a variation on the “new petit bourgeoisie,” who have imported their popular music into advertising not only because it is what speaks to them but also because it represents a counter to the previous generation’s focus on educated, trained classical musicians (2012, p. 233). Such an impulse, Taylor argues, led to the popular music wave of the cola wars but changes here as that same generation, now older and more established, affects advertising in different arenas and works with younger boomers. The idea of marketing as not presenting information, but “being invited to participate, to join the hip club” speaks directly to Vittel’s approach to Bowie (Taylor, 2012, p. 236). Now, this group is aging, and the revitalized images of their rock icon allow them to see themselves in his past and in his healthy vigor. By directly recalling memorative images and experiences, Vittel’s manipulation of the Bowie star image implicates viewers, giving them the same potential for revitalization as Bowie: they too are “never ever gonna get old.” That same focus on Bowie’s past, and explicitly our consumption of and identification with that past, is present in his next major campaign, for Louis Vuitton in 2013.

Selling “David Bowie”   483

Fantastic Voyage Through the Past: “L’Invitation au Voyage” Bowie is present within commercial spaces, apart from these advertisements. The fashion industry in particular has aligned itself closely with Bowie through use of his music, invocation of his personae, and more. In a role spoofed by his Zoolander cameo, Bowie was something of a fashion elder statesman, married to supermodel Iman and attending such fashion events as the CFDA Awards and the Met Costume Institute Gala. His likeness is invoked in runway shows such as Diane von Furstenberg’s autumn/winter 2013 collection, among many more. Even though Bowie did not appear in campaigns for them, his close collaboration with designers like Freddie Burretti, Kansai Yamamoto, Alexander McQueen, and Dior Homme’s Hedi Slimane helped to define Bowie’s career as well as those of his designers. That he should align his image with fashion label Louis Vuitton in 2013 is not surprising. “I’d Rather Be High,” or “L’Invitation au Voyage,” a Louis Vuitton advert from November 2013, comes at a moment of resurgence for Bowie. In March of that year, he released The Next Day with very little advance notice: The video for the lead single, “Where Are We Now?,” appeared on the internet in January, well before any news of the album had broken to the public at large. This represented the first album from Bowie in the decade since Reality, and since his health issues had precipitated the early end of the tour in support of that album. With The Next Day, Bowie showed himself to be a stillvital and -vibrant musical force—and importantly, one concerned with his own history. The album’s artwork plays on the artist’s iconography. Designed by Barnbrook, the immediately recognizable “Heroes” (1977) cover image is repurposed, its central portion obliterated by a blank square and the austere font of the title The Next Day. The cover itself directly invokes the past while also recasting it. In fact, Barnbrook also designed a viral campaign that used this template as the basis for a meme, including text variants like “Your Idea of David Bowie Here.” This rewriting of the past is a favorite gambit of Bowie’s, and one that surfaces in his advertisement appearances of this era as well. The ad’s invocation of audience participation in reclaiming the past is a bit less overt than Barnbrook’s campaign. Directed by Romain Gavras, the short finds model Arizona Muse arriving at a masquerade, serenaded by Bowie at the harpsichord. Guests dance around them, with costumes and masks loosely evocative of Bowie’s earlier guises. Muse finds her way to the harpsichord bench and listens as Bowie performs “I’d Rather Be High.” The model is quite literally transported by the experience, clutching her Louis Vuitton bag and closing her eyes in a reverie—until she awakens again in modern-day Venice, a sheet of music the only evidence of her voyage to this alternate world. Visual references abound, most notably to the Rothschilds’ Surrealist Ball of 1972 and, of course, the “As the World Falls Down” ballroom sequence of Labyrinth. Here again we find Bowie as the impresario of a fantastical ball, potentially engaged in an ­age-­inappropriate flirtation with our female protagonist. He is, of course, not styled as Jareth the Goblin King, but in much more appropriate Louis Vuitton menswear and accessories.

484   Reed It is worth noting, though, that hints of more outré Bowie incarnations pop up in shots of the masquerade guests. We find a bearded attendee whose eye patch and bright red beard connect him to the Diamond Dogs–era Bowie seen in television performances from 1974. Later in the spot, we’re given a brief shot of a reveler showing a Bowie-favored hand sign. (It was originally made popular with the Junior Birdman scouts and their song, and photographs of Bowie using this configuration span the years from 1972 to the early 2000s.) Neither of these visual references is given extended screen time, but they do not need it. The ad is saturated with such details. In the one-and-a-half-minute runtime of the extended ad, references accumulate to form an avalanche of Bowie personae and material. In the grand scheme of things, these images do little to overtly sell Louis Vuitton luxury items. However, for the ad’s ideal viewer (to borrow a construction from Umberto Eco, 1979), these references do carry meaning. They link to a long, shared history with Bowie and, indeed, manage to bring the consumer closer to the product and the endorser. As in the Vittel ad, these references serve not as a vital endorsement of the advertiser’s product, but as a way of creating shared experience with the viewer. Throughout, we’re reminded of Bowie’s iconic, timeless rock star status—a timelessness we could partake in, the ad would have us infer, with the purchase of Louis Vuitton accessories. Indeed, such a purchase could operate in the same way that Bowie’s use of iconic visuals helped to form public perception and understanding of him throughout his career. The music seems similarly unmoored from a specific time or place. The song presented here is a dis/reassembly of “I’d Rather Be High”—but it is an altered version of an alternate mix, dubbed the “Venetian Mix” on the extended album. Absent from the original album version, the harpsichord is featured prominently in that bonus mix, along with the traditional rock band accompaniment of bass, guitars, and drum set. The “Venetian Mix” moves the song’s center of gravity from the bass end to the treble, expanding and enriching the song’s sonic palette. In the ad, the harpsichord is isolated with the voice for the first 20 seconds, giving it much more prominence. The ad’s remix removes the song’s intro, instead giving a short harpsichord pickup into the first section of the first verse, where we hear the seemingly diegetic performance of these lines as Bowie accompanies himself on the harpsichord onscreen. From there, the second verse phrase is eliminated, taking us directly into the chorus as the (nondiegetic) backing band lushly swells, finally introducing the full orchestration of the “Venetian Mix.” Though the visual and referential links may be appropriate for Louis Vuitton and its product, the lyrics of ”I’d Rather Be High” are decidedly less so. Some lyrical sections are skipped, but no words are changed. Unlike in Pepsi’s strategy, Bowie was not asked to reshape his original words to align with the ad campaign. Steeped in Evelyn Waugh and World War I references (not to mention a vocally reinforced shout of “teenage sex” a bit later in the song), “I’d Rather Be High” does not seem like a ready fit for luxury goods. Given the abundance of Bowie-related visual information and the prominence of his face throughout the spot, we might assume that his persona, and not the music itself, is intended to be the focus and link, a strategy that differentiates Louis Vuitton’s approach from Pepsi.

Selling “David Bowie”   485 Though no record of the music played in Louis Vuitton brick-and-mortar stores in 2013 is currently accessible, it would not be much of a stretch to imagine Bowie’s The Next Day having a presence there. Indeed, the synergistic use of music in commercial spaces is well documented (see Sterne, 1997). Recently, LVMH (Louis Vuitton’s parent company) named a music director for its menswear division, which is currently helmed by designer Virgil Abloh. Benji B (Benjamin Benstead) had a history of radio DJing and involvement with fashion events but is now on the Louis Vuitton roster as the official creator and curator of the Louis Vuitton menswear soundscape. In a recent interview, Benji referred to his work as “about understanding context and how to create moments by adding emotion and atmosphere” (Soar, 2018). This perspective on music’s importance for the curation of a brand identity is undoubtedly at the heart of earlier Louis Vuitton work as well. By invoking Bowie in sound and image, BETC Paris’s ad for Louis Vuitton invokes the “emotion and atmosphere” linked to Bowie. Its target audience would bring with that sound and image an important memorative mark, and perhaps a link to the construction of their own identities. Again, it would not be illogical to assume that the intended audience for all three of these commercials is the same: In their younger years, their interest in pop music would lead them to be prime targets for Pepsi’s new strategy. As they reach middle age, those same consumers would be Vittel’s audience. In their peak earning years, Louis Vuitton’s handbags and luggage would appeal. Given this continuity, it is no surprise that the strategies employed by each corporation (and indeed, by Bowie himself) are so similar and seek to capitalize on Bowie’s nostalgic importance for this audience. LVHM’s curation of soundscape in both runway presentation and commercial spaces shows a clear continuation of this strategy, seeking to appeal to and build community through a consistent, ubiquitous musical (and ­musicianly) identity for the brand. What is most striking about the ad is the way its visuals play into the latest Bowie guise. In press coverage and his own music videos supporting The Next Day as in the Louis Vuitton ad, Bowie’s ghosts are never too far away. The album saw Bowie reunited with long-time friend and producer Tony Visconti, and many popular press reactions to the work explicitly tied it to their history and Bowie’s past. Cast as a return to form after a long absence (and, though this remained largely unspoken, after the critically unappreciated albums of the 1990s), The Next Day was both a new start and an invocation of past work. Simon Reynolds’s review touches on both points, labeling the 1990s works as “running close to empty,” and The Next Day a “twilight masterpiece” that explores Bowie’s recurring themes, masks, and locales (Reynolds, 2013). “Where Are We Now?,” the album’s first single, addresses Bowie’s time in Berlin through its lyrics. Images of Berlin street scenes and interiors also populate the video, accompanied by Bowie’s face projected on a Tony Oursler puppet. We can see an alignment of Bowie’s commercial work and his own promotion via album art and music videos; both seek to capitalize on the iconicity of David Bowie. Bowie’s current persona and value lies, here, in his history.

486   Reed

Conclusions These commercials elucidate a common thread among Bowie’s various uses of the moving image: In each medium, he seeks to foreground images both recognizable and malleable, able to be reconfigured for a new setting. This eye toward the possibilities of image was present from his earliest appearances and is deeply informed by his work on the stage and as a visual artist. In Bowie’s later commercials, we can see a savvy move. The artist transplants his image campaign from the more traditional (his music videos) into the media currently most accessible to him (commercial videos aiming to exploit his iconicity). While MTV was, in 2003, less likely to give extensive airtime to the latest video from such an established and older musician, companies were still likely to want the endorsement of the rock superstar David Bowie. Indeed, he recognized this potential even earlier. During his more experimental late 1970s, Bowie’s celebrated Berlin Trilogy albums (Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger) were a tough sell to radio stations. Undeterred, Bowie appeared in a number of ads for Crystal Jun Rock, which he admitted were useful for the paycheck and also for the increased exposure, hard to come by after his less mainstream experiments with Brian Eno (O’Leary,  2019). By aligning his goals with those of corporations eager to cash in on his fame, Bowie employed another prong in his strategy of self-promotion and definition. While his appearances share much in common with, for example, Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking Pepsi spots of the 1980s, Bowie’s engagement with advertising was both more complete and, in some ways, less guarded. Like Jackson and Madonna, Bowie capitalized on the iconic aspects of his performance persona, but unlike the others, he used advertisements not only for increased exposure of new works and a paycheck but also to refine and re-present his public construction of self. While Michael Jackson, in particular, is depicted through his current iconic attributes, Bowie’s strategy relies on a consciously anachronistic use of iconic imagery. He is not reflecting the present, but reshaping himself through the past. Later ads show this potential even more, perhaps reflecting the increased cultural capital and power that Bowie held. As an elder statesman of rock, he did not retreat from advertising as some indication of “selling out,” but rather embraced its potential in the sphere of public opinion.

Recommended Readings Auslander, P. (2006). Performing glam rock: Gender and theatricality in popular music. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Brooker, W. (2015). Time again: The David Bowie chronotope. In T.  Cinque, C.  Moore, & S.  Redmond (Eds.), Enchanting David Bowie: Space/time/body/memory (pp. 87–101). London, UK: Bloomsbury. Dyer, R. (1979). Stars. London, UK: BFI Press.

Selling “David Bowie”   487 Lobalzo Wright, J. (2017). The boy kept swinging: David Bowie, music video, and the star image. In G.  Arnold, D.  Cookney, K.  Fairclough, & M.  Goddard (Eds), Music/video: Histories, aesthetics, media (pp. 67–78). London, UK: Bloomsbury.

References Auslander, P. (2006). Performing glam rock: Gender and theatricality in popular music. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Copetas, C. (1974, February 28). Beat godfather meets glitter MainMan: William Burroughs interviews David Bowie. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from https://www.rollingstone.com/ music/music-news/beat-godfather-meets-glitter-mainman-william-burroughs-interviewsdavid-bowie-92508/ Crowe, C. (1976, February 12). David Bowie: Ground control to Davy Jones. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-bowie-groundcontrol-to-davy-jones-77059/ Eco, U. (1979). The role of the reader. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Frith, S. (1996). Performing rites: On the value of popular music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gross, T. (2002). David Bowie on the Ziggy Stardust years: “We were creating the 21st century in 1971.” NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2016/01/11/462653510/david-bowie-onthe-ziggy-stardust-years-we-were-creating-the-21st-century-in-197 Hope, E. (2018). Aaron Walton, founding partner, Walton Isaacson. ThinkLA. Retrieved from https://www.thinkla.org/blogpost/1230000/305282/Aaron-Walton-Founding-PartnerWalton-Isaacson Klein, B. (2009). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Love, J. (2012). “Choice of a New Generation”: “Pop” music, advertising, and meaning in the MTV era and beyond (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database (3509455) Love, J. (2015). From cautionary chart-topper to friendly beverage anthem: Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Pepsi’s “Choice of a New Generation” television campaign. Journal of the Society for American Music, 9(2), 178–203. Meier, L. M. (2011). Promotional ubiquitous musics: Recording artists, brands, and rendering authenticity. Popular Music and Society, 34(4), 399–415. O’Leary, C. (2019). Ashes to ashes: The songs of David Bowie, 1976–2016. New York, NY: Repeater. Reynolds, S. (2013, March 10). The singer who fell to earth. New York Times, p. AR1. Soar, S. (2018). How I became . . . music director for Louis Vuitton menswear. Business of Fashion. Retrieved from https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/careers/how-ibecame-music-director-for-louis-vuitton-menswear Sterne, J. (1997). Sounds like the Mall of America: Programmed music and the architecture of commercial space. Ethnomusicology, 41(1), 22–50. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Turner, S. (1974). How to become a cult figure in only two years: The making of David Bowie. In B. Hoskyns (Ed.), The sound and the fury: Rock’s back pages reader (pp. 15–26). London, UK: Bloomsbury. Watts, M. (1972, January 22). Oh you pretty thing. Melody Maker, p. 19.

chapter 24

M edieva lism G oes Com m erci a l The Epic as Register in Contemporary Media David Clem

Television advertising is one of the most compact forms of audiovisual communication. Companies have to capture the viewers’ attention and convey their message in a short time span (usually one minute or less), and often are paying a substantial fee to do so. While music, especially in the form of jingles, has been a staple of advertising since radio’s golden age, the body of research into the impact of music done by the ad industry has only begun to amass over the last 40 years. In his 1990 study “Music, Mood, and Marketing,” Gordon C. Bruner II opines: Despite being a prominent promotional tool, music is not well understood or controlled by marketers. Consequently, marketers are precariously dependent on musicians for their insight into the selection or composition of the “right” music for particular situations.  (Bruner, 1990, p. 94)

Bruner summarizes and synthesizes a number of studies relating music, mood, and purchase intent, and suggests that “Music is likely to have its greatest effect when consumers have high affective and/or low cognitive involvement with the product” (Bruner, 1990, p. 101). This tracks with a mode of thinking about music in advertising that seems to trace back to Gorn’s much-debated study “The Effects of Music in Advertising on Choice Behavior: A Classical Conditioning Approach” (Gorn, 1982) and work inspired by it, such as “Affective Responses Mediating Acceptance of Advertising” (Batra & Ray, 1986). Only in slightly later studies does the focus expand to include ideas about rhetorical intent (Scott, 1990) and message congruence (Kellaris, Cox, & Cox, 1993). Yet, the notion that music is part of an overall rhetorical approach in advertising seems to be foundational to academic scholarship on music in advertising. David Huron asserts that “Advertising . . . differs substantially from persuasive conversation insofar as it relies

Medievalism Goes Commercial   489 entirely on mass media, and consequently on widespread social meanings rather than personal or idiosyncratic motivations for purchasing” (Huron,  1989, p. 557). Huron ­posits that entertainment, structure/continuity, memorability, lyrical language, targeting, and authority establishment are “six basic ways . . . in which music can contribute to an effective broadcast advertisement” (Huron, 1989, p. 560). Nicholas Cook operates on similar assumptions when he states: “Composing with styles and genres is one of the most basic musical techniques found in television commercials” (Cook, 1998, p. 16).1 In his book, Cook nuances basic conceptions of message congruence or incongruence (referred to in early film music literature in terms of the synchronization/counterpoint binary) to offer conformance, complementation, and contest as three different models for the relationship between music and visuals in multimedia objects (Cook,  1998). While Huron focuses on the ways in which musical properties can support the message of an ad, and Cook abstracts the idea of message congruence into a usable theory for analyzing multimedia objects, both focus their theories to benefit the analysis of individual multimedia objects. Implicit in their work, however, is the idea that ads rely on the cultural competency of the audience to communicate their message. That is to say, “composing in styles and genres” only works if the audience understands enough about the cultural connotations of these styles and genres to grasp how they play into the message of the advertisement. This chapter focuses on how those “widespread social meanings” might themselves be analyzed. To that end, I treat television advertisements as inherently intertextual objects that are designed to communicate a message (usually in the form of a short narrative) by using what Michael Long termed the “expressive vernacular” (Long, 2008). As a case study, I will examine a selection of commercials that musically evoke the cultural concept of epic. I will draw freely from linguistic semiotics and cognitive pragmatics to explore how the musical selections came to be associated with the epic and what the advertisements might gain by evoking the concept. In the process, I will also examine how Long’s application of register theory offers a meta-conceptual discursive space that is useful in offering a more comprehensive view of the implementation and understanding of the “widespread social meanings” evoked by Huron.

“O Fortuna” and the Epic The association of “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff ’s Carmina Burana with the epic in popular culture is so common that TVtropes.org refers to the piece as “one of the most overused trailer songs in history, a Standard Snippet for whenever we want to suggest an Epic Movie” (Carmina Burana, n.d.-a). Originally composed to bookend Orff ’s cantata, 1  For those interested in establishing a timeline, it should be noted that the “introduction” to his book Analysing Musical Multimedia (Cook, 1998), which I quote here, was initially published in 1994 as an article in Popular Music called “Music and Meaning in Commercials” (Cook, 1994).

490   Clem which premiered in Frankfurt in 1937, “O Fortuna” musically depicts the medieval icon known as the Rota Fortunae. In the fourth volume of Carl Orff und sein Werk, Orff explains how he was inspired by the icon, which appears at the beginning of the Codex Buranas just above the text for “O Fortuna” (Orff & Thomas, 1979, pp. 38–42). The text bemoans the oppressive cycle of fate perpetuated by the fickle goddess Fortuna and her ever-spinning wheel, the motion of which is echoed by the cyclical repetition of the musical accompaniment. After a grandiose introduction, the music builds slowly, shifting unexpectedly on the last syllable of the text from a disconsolate D minor to an ecstatic cadence in D major.2 Taken together, the music and text represent the human struggle against fate; perhaps; the music signifies the upturn of Fortune’s wheel, while the text represents the downturn. Either way, the song is well suited to signify, more broadly, the concept of an epic struggle. Yet, as its recent use in an Applebee’s restaurant ad demonstrates, our current cultural understanding of “O Fortuna” as signifier of epic does not require the original text, nor does it imply a struggle. This ad, aired in early 2018, opens on the Applebee’s logo fading away to reveal a tuxedoed conductor, followed quickly by a reverse shot that closes on and then pans across a robed choir (Carmina Burana, n.d.-b). While the music is from “O Fortuna,” the text, displayed handily across the bottom of the screen and highlighted in sing-a-long style, is: Riblets, Tenders! Tenders, Riblets! Riblets, Tenders, thennnn Riblets! It’s Applebee’s! ALL YOU CAN EAT! With mountains of French fries! $12.99 All you can eat at Applebeeeeeeeeeeees!

Shots of the choir singing are intercut with close-ups on the relevant food items, until in the penultimate shot the choir is suddenly shown standing along both sides of a table, ready to sit down and dig in as soon as they finish singing. The ad closes on a shot of a table set with a plate of riblets and a plate of chicken tenders, both angled toward a pedestaled storybook in the center, displaying the text “All you can eat riblets and tenders $12.99” before the page flips to reveal the tagline “Eatin’ Good in the Neighborhood” as the music comes to a cadence. The first three lines of the text are set to one of the phrases heard near the beginning of “O Fortuna” in which the sopranos and altos begin on the F above middle C with the tenors and basses doubling them an octave lower. For the next three lines of text, the music is drawn from one of the phrases near the end of “O Fortuna” with the sopranos singing in thirds starting on a high A and F, doubled an octave below by the tenors, while the altos and basses double each other starting on A (above middle C for the altos, below it for the basses). This creates the effect of an audio jump cut from a simple choral unison to a thick texture with the sopranos and tenors 2  For a more detailed explanation of this analysis, see my chapter called “Hope Against Fate or Fata Morgana? Music and Mythopoiesis in Boorman’s Excalibur” in the Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism (Clem, 2019).

Medievalism Goes Commercial   491 singing near the top of their normal choral range, which emphasizes the words “It’s Applebee’s.” The final line of text is set to the last line of the final phrase of “O Fortuna” and leads into the instrumental D major cadence. This spliced-together 30-second version of the song musically highlights the food, the place, and the low price. The repetitive nature of the text ensures the memorability of important information, while the choir adds entertainment value to the ad. But the choir does more than just entertain— they perform. The visual of the choir singing about this deal that has been chronicled in the storybook seen at the end of the ad combines with the music of “O Fortuna” to create the idea that this is an epic deal. In semiotic parlance, one might say that in this context, Orff ’s “O Fortuna” serves as an indexical referent to the concept of epic or, in other terms, that the song is used as an expression of epic in the vernacular of musical multimedia. Michael Long, in his book Beautiful Monsters: Imagining the Classic in Musical Media, elaborates the concept of the expressive vernacular, appropriating the term register from mid-20th-century sociolinguistics. Long sees register theory as useful for “concretizing the human need for particular modes of expression” (Long, 2008, p. 2). He explains that register studies deal with the fluid, communicative aspects of contextual conversation. For example, in different social settings, we choose vocabulary based on what is deemed appropriate by societal norms. Long correlates this concept to the use of genre conventions in musical discourse. He writes: Register, particularly in its expressive function . . . is related to the broader fields of acculturated styles and genres in which it functions as a signal and marker and thus may be . . . expanded . . . to a system of classification based on words, syntax, form, and sounds; it often serves in place of more general notions of, for example, tenor, tone, and style.  (Long, 2008, p. 12)

Long further explains that register operates both on a meta- and micro-level. On the micro-level, an object can communicate in multiple registers at the same time, while on a meta-level, the application of the term register opens up a discursive space in film music studies for genre conventions, intertextual networks, and semiotic networks to interplay with each other in a dynamic relationship. In the Applebee’s ad under discussion, then, we might say that “O Fortuna” evokes the register of epic in the vernacular of contemporary multimedia. Yet if “O Fortuna” operates within the register of epic in this ad, it is important to note that its use here also demonstrates the interchangeability of the text. Experienced in this context, the original conceptualization of a musical depiction of mankind’s epic struggle against fate no longer applies. It has been replaced by a more generic sense of the epic. This shift from specific to generic meaning occurs frequently with tunes that have been in cultural circulation for a long time, aided, of course, by numerous recontextualizations that occur as they are used in advertisements, television shows, and movies. Long

492   Clem

Generic Space

Excalibur Epic Adventure Myth

O Fortuna Fatalistic Dramatic Destiny

O Fortuna as Representation of Epic

Figure 24.1  Conceptual integrated networks (CIN) showing the mapping of epic onto “O Fortuna.”

notes how these associations are often made, stating: “Indeed, once they [that is, general notions of tenor, tone, and style] have been sufficiently registered (or registrated) as normative practice, sounds in general may be expressive in this sense with no textual linkage” (Long, 2008, p. 12). This description of expressive register is similar to the idea of conceptual blending, which Lawrence Zbikowski put forth in his book Conceptualizing Music (Zbikowski, 2002). Zbikowski borrows Fauconnier and Turner’s use of “conceptual integration networks,” or CINs, which would diagram the mapping of epic onto “O Fortuna” as seen in Figure 24.1. Regarding when this mapping occurred, that is trickier to answer, but I believe it likely that “O Fortuna” entered the vernacular as an expression of epic with the trailer for John Boorman’s 1981 movie Excalibur.3 The trailer serves as a kind of monument to all that is great and terrible in the “Sword and Sorcery” genre, highlighting the love stories, wars, intrigue, and magic of Boorman’s telling of Arthurian legend (Boorman, J., 1981). It is accompanied by “O Fortuna” in its entirety. The pairing of this trailer with “O Fortuna” arguably helped to cement the indexical linkage between “O Fortuna” and epic as there seems to be a noticeable increase in the appearance of the song in trailers and media during the 1980s and 1990s, as can be seen in Table 24.1. To express this in terms of a CIN, the Excalibur trailer would be a catalyst that helped move a conceptual blend of “ ‘O Fortuna’ as epic” into circulation as general cultural knowledge. In Long’s terms, this would be a moment of registration, wherein “O Fortuna,” while still able to communicate in its original context, can now also serve as a generic vernacular expression of the epic. 3  Prior to this, there is one earlier use I have found in an Old Spice commercial that aired in the United Kingdom. during the 1970s. While the ad fits the idea of epic explored in this chapter, the movie Excalibur and its trailer circulated to broader audiences, which is why I am inclined to think of that as the catalyst for a broader cultural conceptualizing of “O Fortuna” as a signifier of the epic.

Medievalism Goes Commercial   493 Table 24.1  Sampling of uses of “O Fortuna” in multimedia Year(s) 1970–1979

TV Ads

TV Shows

1

 1

Movie Trailers

Movies

1980–1989

 1

 3

 4

1990–1999

10

13

 7

2000–2009

1

11

 8

13

2010–2018

9

12

 1

 3

This shift from specific contextualized meaning to broader, more generalized meaning is mirrored in our use of the word epic as well. In its original context, the term epic can be understood as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED’s) first definition, where we find that epic, drawn from the Latin epicus, is “a poem, typically derived from ancient oral tradition, which celebrates in the form of a continuous narrative the achievements of one or more heroic characters of history or legend” (“Epic,” 2018). The OED further notes that the term is used colloquially, particularly in the United States, and it has a separate entry for “epic fail.” This colloquial (or, one might say, vernacular) use of epic seems to refer to something large in scope or grand in stature (like an epic fail or an epic party), drawing on this concept of epic scale as one of the generic properties of epic legends. As with the music of “O Fortuna,” the colloquial use of the word epic occurs in a culture that is still familiar with the original meaning of the term. The coincidence of both uses allows for a conceptual incongruity, wherein our understanding that the term epic party can be perceived as ironic results because the gravitas of the original meaning of epic is mismatched with the current colloquial application of the term. It is unsurprising, then, that the wiki-like online Urban Dictionary defines epic as “the most overused word ever, next to fail.” It proceeds to provide multiple sarcastic examples of this use. But it is interesting that both TVtropes.org and urbandictionary.com tell us that epic is overused. It would seem that both the concept of epic and “O Fortuna” as its signifier are perceived, at least by some, as tired clichés. Yet this clichéd status can be useful for advertising. In the case of the Applebee’s ad, it allows the assumption of a knowing audience. David Amante asserts that “all ironic speech acts are affective speech acts,” arguing that they blend “elements of illocutionary and perlocutionary effects” (Amante, 1981, p. 77). As Amante rightly claims, audiences are intended to see beyond the “superficial deception” of ironic speech acts, while the opposition of two elements necessary to create the irony also allows for the possibility of layered meanings (Amante, 1981). As an ironic speech act, the Applebee’s ad expects the audience not only to grasp the irony but also to appreciate its entertainment value. In a way, this inverts the humble facade of Socratic irony, going instead for ostentatious, if not gaudy, showmanship. A knowing audience perceives the cliché as excessively affective, and the ad is banking on this understanding to make the content both entertaining and memorable. Other companies achieve this approach by acknowledging and mocking

494   Clem the cliché. Take, for example, the 2005 Australian ad for Carlton Beer called “Big Ad,” in which hundreds of robed extras converge like armies on a battlefield, but rather than clashing in combat, aerial shots reveal that one group is marching in formation and clad to look like a pint of beer as they rush toward a larger group arranged in the shape of a body with hand extended and mouth open (Carmina Burana, n.d.-b). As the aerial shot zooms out, the yellow clad extras rush out of the “glass,” into the “mouth,” and down the “esophagus” to the “stomach” of the body formation. This is all accompanied, of course, by the extras singing “O Fortuna” with rewritten lyrics. They begin in the lower octave with: “It’s a big ad,/very big ad/It’s a big ad, we’re in. It’s a big ad,/my god it’s big!/Can’t believe how big it is.”

At this point, as the extras begin to run, the singing jumps up the octave with the lyrics: “It’s a big ad,/for Carlton Draught,/it’s just so freaking Huge! It’s a big ad!/Expensive ad!/This ad better sell some bloody beer.”

The last line of text is stretched out over the ending of the melody, and we see a close-up of the yellow robed extras (beer) cheering as they rush down the “esophagus” accompanied by the celebratory D-major ending of “O Fortuna.” The ad ends on a close shot of the Carlton Draught logo on one of the glasses that all of the extras suddenly have, as the tagline “Made from Beer” appears across the screen. The ad simultaneously parodies the idea of “epic” ads and beer ads. It has all the classic elements of a beer ad—a person enjoying the draught being advertised, and a claim about the brewing process that makes the product unique. The message here is akin to the 2018–2019 series of ads for Bud Light that have popularized the exclamation “Dilly Dilly!”—that these beers are made for common people. While this is demonstrated through humorous narratives in the Bud Light ads, the unpretentious parody of the Carlton Draught ad sends the same message in a slightly different way. They demonstrate that they are not trying to sell you an epic experience by mocking the companies that do. The Applebee’s ad, on the other hand, uses an unsubtle irony that assumes the audience will appreciate being let in on the joke, as if to say, “We know you know we’re trying to sell you, but come enjoy a good deal on our food anyway.” The use of ironic speech to generate a feeling of inclusivity—being culturally competent enough to get the joke—effectively disarms the clichéd elements of the ad by allowing the cynical or ironic viewing subject to project his or her own astuteness onto a larger group of similar subjects, thereby creating a pleasurable entertainment out of the act of identifying the cliché.4 At the same time, it is important to note that the idea of “O Fortuna” as a serious piece of music must still be present for ironic discourse in such an ad to exist at all. That is to say, the audience must be able to perceive the incongruence between the seriousness of the epic registration of “O Fortuna” on the one hand and products it is being used to hock in the advertisements in order for them to interpret said ads as ironic speech acts. 4  This point ties into broader cultural and political trends observed by Slavoj Zizek in many of his writings. For more on how it relates to various constructions of postmodern subjectivity, see Behler (1990).

Medievalism Goes Commercial   495 The continued performance of the song in its original context, bookending Orff ’s ­cantata, obviously contributes to the preservation of its more serious meaning. The continued circulation of “O Fortuna” both as a signifier of the epic and as a cliché to be used for ironic humor is evidenced by its use in various trailer remixes on YouTube. In this phenomenon, fans edit together scenes from their favorite films to create a trailer and match it with music of their choice. “O Fortuna” often comes up as a favorite, especially for action movies. A quick search for “ ‘O Fortuna’ Trailers” on YouTube reveals both congruous and incongruous (often ironic) uses of the music. For example, the pairing of films like 300 (Nunnari, G., Canton, M., Goldman, B., & Silver, J., 2006) and Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Osborne, B.M., Walsh, F., & Jackson, P, 2002) map nicely onto a more traditional concept of epic, while pairing “O Fortuna” with Disney’s Frozen (Del Vecho, P., 2013) or The Simpsons Movie (Brooks, J.L., Groening, M., Jean, A., Scully, M., & Sakai, R., 2007) creates a humorously ironic evocation of the epic. We might further explore this ironic use of “O Fortuna” by examining a Domino’s ad. Domino’s Pizza, in an attempt to boost sales of non-pizza menu items while simultaneously rebranding their business, decided to drop the word Pizza from their name in 2012. Apparently frustrated by the slow response of franchises to adopt this policy, they advertised their name change with a 30-second spot titled “Signs of Change” aired during Super Bowl XLIX on February 1, 2015 (Carmina Burana, n.d.-b). The ad opens with a close shot of a Domino’s Pizza storefront sign and the opening chords of “O Fortuna.” As the song progresses, a series of explosive charges go off behind the sign, each synced with tympani strikes in the music. At the seven-second mark, the sign detaches and begins to fall, while the music cuts from the end of the first measure to the beginning of the third measure of “O Fortuna” (Orff & Thomas, 1979, p. 46). With this cut, as the camera tracks the downward trajectory of the sign, which smashes upon impact with the parking lot, we hear the text “statu variabilis” (your state varies). While those who know the Latin text might appreciate the clever alignment emphasizing the idea of change, this cut also truncates the introduction to “O Fortuna” to ensure that it ends at the 15-second mark, when the ad shifts visually to emphasize food as the audio shifts to voiceover accompanied by an upbeat dubstep-like track. The ad concludes with the hanging of a new sign, complemented by the tagline “Oh Yes We Did” spelled out in celebratory fireworks that balance out the destructive pyrotechnics at the beginning. Opening this ad with the beginning of “O Fortuna” is a definite attention-grabbing mechanism for a commercial airing during the Super Bowl. It certainly provides the traits Huron called entertainment and memorability (Huron, 1989). More importantly for this study, it imparts the status of epic to the announcement of their name change. This ad commands our attention with an epic announcement that will impact our lives, perhaps by contributing food to an epic party at which one might encounter a more epic version of the electronic dance music style hinted at by the underscore for the voiceover segment of the ad. Of course, this message is delivered with the expected tongue-in-cheek irony that reassures the audience that both parties of the vendor/emptor binary are aware of the oversell. As with the Applebee’s ad previously discussed, this evocation of epic is meant to be read as intentional hyperbole. It is similar to a teenager trying to convince people to attend his or her “epic” party. That is to say, you will miss out on a rarefied experience that

496   Clem will enrich your life if you choose to not participate, but the hyperbole provides an out if and when the product fails to deliver the scale of experience promised in the ad. Neither Applebee’s epic deal nor Domino’s epic name change constitutes an event that is truly epic in the historical sense of the term, but it is not really supposed to, and we know this because of the ironic humor created, in part, by using “O Fortuna.” This irony exists because, as I argued earlier, we recognize “O Fortuna” as bearing a certain amount of gravitas that is incongruous with the immediate context of the ads. The continued performance of the song in its original context, alongside its association with epic, which, as a word, is still used in its original and colloquial contexts, is necessary for ironic uses to make sense. In other words, something of the original context must remain in the cultural consciousness for the requisite irony-producing incongruity to be understood. While this might seem obvious, it demonstrates the idea that it is not just scope or scale that is evoked by epic, but also the notion of historical significance, without which the element of irony would be lost. The idea of historical significance, referenced tangentially by the ironic humor of the ads discussed thus far, raises an interesting question. Is it possible to have an epic experience in late capitalist Western society? I doubt most “epic fails” and “epic parties” will truly be recorded by contemporary culture’s equivalent of Homer or Herodotus, what or whomever that may be; but the idea of an “epic” experience is interesting. Perhaps uncertain of the veracity of the conceptualization that modern existence in late capitalist society, no matter how mundane or isolated it can be, can have epic moments, we undercut the severity of the question with ironic humor. But there are times when it is not just ironic humor, but nostalgia too that comes into play. That is to say, the notion of epic moments can play off of a long-extant nostalgia for the “good old days.” Harkening back, on the one hand, to the epic adventures had by heroes of old, the evocation of epic also offers hope that human existence can draw meaning via impact on the future. Employing the concept of epic, then, might tap into long-lived cultural utopias that an advertisement does not have time to fully construct on its own.5 To explore how an ad might tap into utopian constructions, I refer to a 2014 ad campaign for Hershey’s Spreads that, I will argue, uses the conceptual blend of “ ‘O Fortuna’ as epic” to tap into that nostalgia. The Hershey’s Spreads TV spot takes an interesting narrative approach (Carmina Burana, n.d.-b). It does not tell a linear story, but rather a circuitous one. The Hershey’s ad employs a split screen for the first 25 seconds of its 30-second spot. The split screen (cleverly divided by a thick, chocolate-brown line) is used to create a bit of temporal ambiguity. The left half of the screen has close-ups of the faces of different consumers, while the right half shows their hands using utensils to deploy the chocolate spread on their favorite snack. It begins with a woman whose facial expression might be interpreted as a wry smile, suggesting, perhaps, a child-like delight at indulging herself, since we see her twist open the Hershey’s Spread with one hand (suggesting ease of access) in the split frame. It then cuts to her smiling mouth opening 5  See Flinn (1992) for a thorough exploration of how music can play with cultural utopias in multimedia.

Medievalism Goes Commercial   497 wide to bite into a piece of toast, her eyes (perhaps aided by her sense of smell) anticipating the delightful taste she is about to experience, while we see, simultaneously, her hand using a butter knife spreading the chocolate over the toast. Is she preparing, on the right side of the screen, what she is about to eat on the left? Perhaps, but in a culture where reading left to right is the norm, perhaps she enjoyed the first piece so much she is going back for seconds. At the seven-second mark in the ad, her face suddenly disappears as we cut to a close shot on a young girl enjoying an apple slice with chocolate spread, which we see her simultaneously preparing on the other side of the screen. Her eyes open wide in delight at the taste, which, combined with the smaller snack size, might lend credence to the idea that we are observing the preparation of a second morsel. At the 10-second mark it cuts to a close shot of a young boy biting into a section of waffle covered in chocolate spread, and, like the girl, his eyebrows raise as his eyes expand with delight at the taste as he bites into the waffle that we see him preparing on the other half of the split screen. At the 13-second mark, the left-screen image cuts to a grown man biting into a pretzel dipped in the chocolate spread—the alternative manner of application, as the others used a knife, made apparent by the right half of the screen. The next two images show us a young woman, perhaps college aged, enjoying a strawberry dipped in chocolate, which cuts in at the 16-second mark, followed by a young man of about the same age enjoying celery with the chocolate spread over it, which cuts in at the 19-second mark. This parade of characters, each clad in brown, each with a different shade of brown hair, all look down at the food, then up into the camera, and all have a similar expression of delight at the taste of their snack choice. The first and last people wear the darkest color brown, aesthetically matching the chocolate spread container seen continuously on the right side of the split screen, and we see them slightly longer than the others (seven and six seconds, respectively). This frames the split-screen segment with more stability, while the four characters in the middle each appear for only three seconds, each corresponding roughly to a new line of the voiceover, which begins around the three-second mark of the ad. While the temporal ambiguity of the split screen subverts a straightforward linear narrative, it supports the message of the ad. The voiceover asserts: New Hershey’s Spreads, bring the delicious taste of/Hershey’s chocolate, to anything/everything . . ./you can imagine;/explore the endless possibilities of the /delicious chocolate taste, that only Hershey’s can deliver;/with new Hershey’s Spreads, the possibilities are delicious. (N.B. The commas, semicolons, and ellipses attempt to capture various lengths of pauses, while the slashes indicate changes of image.)

The one element that is consistently placed in the ad, appearing unchanging in comparison to the consumers, who vary in age, snack choice, and application method, is the container of Hershey’s Chocolate Spread. This setup tells us the product can be equally enjoyed by people of all ages, and with any variety of foods, from breakfast items, like toast and waffles; to healthy snacks, like apples, strawberries, and celery; to salty ­favorites like pretzels. The voiceover is perfectly synced to reinforce the visual message,

498   Clem and the cyclic nature of the narrative creates an enclosed space—an epic moment of chocolaty bliss, epic not because of the visuals, or the voiceover, but because the ad is underscored with “O Fortuna.” “O Fortuna” reinforces the message of the ad on a number of levels. On the surface, one could note that the circuity of the music, intended by Orff to represent Fortune’s ever-spinning wheel, makes a logical connection to the temporal loop implied by the split-screen images. One could also observe the ease with which “O Fortuna” can be edited down from its original two- or three-minute runtime to fit a 30-second (or later 15-second) ad slot without losing continuity, due largely to that same circular repetition. What I want to draw attention to, however, is the choice of the end of the song, with its built-in crescendo to a brilliant D-major cadence. This corresponds with the voiceover message that culminates with the tagline “With Hershey’s Spreads, the possibilities are . . . delicious.” The subversion of expectation by verbally substituting “delicious” for “limitless,” combined with the insular circuity of the narrative action and strength of the musical cadence, renders the ad a monument to the epic moment one can obtain by indulging in the chocolaty bliss of Hershey’s Spreads. The ironic humor in this ad effectively allows the utopian message discussed previously to be read as a type of Bakhtinian double-voiced discourse6 (Bakhtin, 1984). The ad is not just selling us Hershey’s Chocolate Spread, but the possibility for an epic moment that can be accessed through consumption of their product. Yet the conceptual incongruity necessary for the irony to exist allows the advertisement to call itself out, diffusing the gravitas of the utopian nostalgia tapped into without necessarily undercutting the message. “O Fortuna” also contributes to this sense of doubleness. Not only does it occupy the register of epic, but also, in this instance, it occupies another register that overlaps with the epic in the manner of a Venn diagram.7 This second register brings with it a nostalgia that is not always noticeably present in the register of epic. Further, the nostalgia referenced by the blended concept of “ ‘O Fortuna’ as epic” is deep-seated in Western modernity’s engagement with medievalism. This register, which I will call the mythic medieval, functions like a meta-conceptual repository that can be, and has been, filled with multiple mythical versions of the Middle Ages that meet certain cultural needs of the age in which they are cast. John Haines explores the idea of the Middle Ages as fantasy in depth in his book Music in Films on the Middle Ages: Authenticity vs. Fantasy, wherein he names six moods (pace Rapée, 1925) that represent different stereotypes of the Middle Ages (Haines, 2014). After a detailed analysis of different cinematic musical tropes that he argues represent different elements of a fantastical, rather than authentic, Middle Ages, he reasserts that the 16th century witnessed the making of what would later be called “the Middle Ages”: “a medieval antiquity or good old days (‘bon vieux temps’) peopled by minstrels, knights and enchanters singing their rustic songs and chant” (Haines, 2014, p. 154).

6  For more on the idea of double discourse, see Harris (1990). 7  For more on how registers might behave in this way, see Long (2008, p. 22).

Medievalism Goes Commercial   499 For Haines, it seems, the Middle Ages, almost from the moment it was conceived of as an era by modernity, has been a fantastic realm, allowing each modern age to construct its own image of the bon vieux temps in the guise of medievalism. Orff ’s Carmina Burana grew out of the German manifestation of this concept that is described in detail in Daniel Leech-Wilkinson’s Modern Invention of Medieval Music (LeechWilkinson, 2002). Boorman creates his own version of Arthurian lore, engaging the mythic medieval head on, as it were, in Excalibur. Since this concept looms in the background of both the creation of “O Fortuna” and the moment it seems to be mapped onto a more generic concept of epic, it is unsurprising that “O Fortuna” can help an ad tap into the nostalgia inherent in the register of the mythic medieval.

Also Sprach Zarathustra and the Epic The introduction or “Sunrise” section of Richard Strauss’s tone poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra, is also used frequently in advertising to convey a sense of epic. Musically, the piece has similarities with “O Fortuna.” Both build intensity with orchestrated crescendos, thickening the texture from unison to fuller harmonies as they head for a triumphant cadence. However, the pieces differ in terms of extramusical associations. “Sunrise” is inspired by “Zarathustra’s Prologue” from Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra. The tone poem as a whole, in accordance with Strauss’s interpretation of Nietzsche, attempts to musically trace the evolution of humanity as it moves toward realizing the potential expressed in Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch (Daverio, 1993, pp. 209–228). The opening movement is intended to musically represent the movingly poetic passage that Daverio terms Zarathustra’s “invocation to the sun” (Daverio, 1993, p. 212). This passage represents a moment of awakening that serves as a reflective call to action for Zarathustra, inspiring him to attempt to bring revelation to humanity the same way the sun brings the light of dawn (Nietzsche, 1974, pp. 37–52). So where “O Fortuna” looks back toward the mythic medieval, Strauss’s interpretation of Nietzsche in “Sunrise” connects to another of modernity’s founding myths—that of human progress, and in a more optimistic way than Nietzsche intended. This association is bolstered by Kubrick’s use of “Sunrise” in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It can be heard three times during the movie. It accompanies the stunning visuals of the opening credit sequence (Kubrick, 1968, 00:03:93–00:05:14), it is heard again shortly thereafter during the “Dawn of Man” sequence (Kubrick,  1968, 00:11:40–00:13:10), and it is heard again near the end of the film, when the astronaut David Bowman becomes a “Star Child” (Kubrick, 1968, 02:11:28–02:12:96). The latter two scenes connect to different moments in the human evolutionary chain—the discovery of weapons/tools by apes and the beginning of modern humanity’s transformation into star children—each of which seems to be catalyzed by the alien monoliths. The narrative parallels are striking, and the connection between “Sunrise” and human progress is firmly established. As Christine Lee Gengaro notes, “Once one has seen the movie, it is difficult to hear this work (‘Sunrise’) without thinking of the Dawn of Man

500   Clem sequence or the striking visual tableau . . . of the opening” (Gengaro,  2013, p. 89). Gengaro goes on to mention the frequency with which the movement is used in popular culture. In fact, it is so common that TVTropes.org opines: “The ‘Sunrise’ movement is undeniably epic, complete with a spectacular use of Dramatic Timpani, so it’s a perfect way to tell the audience, ‘This is where you’re supposed to be impressed’ ” (Also Sprach Zarathustra, n.d.-a). But it is not just about impressing the audience; it is about impressing them with the technological progress or innovative aspects of the product. Consider, for example, an ad for the 1978 Ford Futura (BionicDisco.com, 2016, April 30). It opens with a background visual that looks like outer space, and we hear the opening arpeggio of “Sunrise” as the word “Futura” floats in from the top center of the screen. The voiceover announces, “Ford introduces the new Futura.” There is a pause after the word “Futura,” punctuated by the first cadence of “Sunrise” as the visuals cut to the second shot of the ad—revealing the car, poised on the surface of a planet with a spaceship in the background. This shot sets up the re-entrance of the voiceover with the line “a dramatic combination of styling and technology for 1978 . . . and beyond.” We then see a sequence that shows the car driving on a barely visible road, making it seem as though the car is traveling in space. The voiceover continues, informing us that “Futura, its striking design is the result of computer modeling and aerodynamic testing.” As the ad continues, we are told about the “light weight metals” that help give it “excellent fuel economy” and the “newly created advanced front suspension system” that provides a smooth ride. As the car comes to rest on the planet surface again, the voiceover adds, “Futura, in a world where cars are looking more and more alike, it represents a change,” before repeating the line “a dramatic combination of styling and technology for 1978 . . . and beyond.” The final two words “and beyond” are synced with a spaceship flying off, followed by the statement: “Realistically affordable for today” as the price, $4,267, appears, sitting where the spaceship was located earlier in the ad. Then the frame of the shot recedes to fill the top half of the screen as we are given information about a local Ford dealer to contact for a test drive. The minute-long ad uses almost the entirety of the “Sunrise” movement sped up to fit the length and cut short just before the ascent to the final cadence. The fantasy setting of the ad, showing a car driving through space and the space station visible on screen left as the driving sequence begins, combine with the music as if in homage to Kubrick’s film. This intertextual reference augments the idea of technological innovation already present in the voiceover, not to mention the name of the car. While emphasizing the innovative technology of a car is common in car ads, the music and visuals in this ad do so in a unique way. The Futura, says the ad, is not just a new car with the latest technology; it is the car of the future, available to you today (if you lived in 1978). While more recent ads using “Sunrise” are, perhaps, subtler with their visual references to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the message that the product being sold is the latest and greatest of its kind is a constant. Sometimes the visual references are as simple as flashes of light against a dark background, playing off both the title of the piece and the stunning visual opening of 2001. For example, a series of 2017 ads for sales on home ­remodeling packages run by Empire Today all begin with a little flash of light on a darker

Medievalism Goes Commercial   501 background, like the glimmer of a sunrise on the horizon. Similarly, the 2017 Verizon ads “Game On” and “Root Metrics” use dark-light contrasts synced with the music of “Sunrise” to promote their cellular network. Sometimes the visual reference is more obvious, as in the slow descent of a bottle of grape soda onto a stainless-steel counter, like a spaceship landing on the surface of a planet (in an ad for Henry’s Hard Grape Soda that aired in 2017), or the occasional inclusion of monolith-like objects, as seen in the 2016 Truck Hero commercial titled “Epically Easy.” This ad features men dressed in work clothes, singing the opening of “Sunrise” as a man unrolls his truck cover so a biker can land a jump in the bed of the pickup. Centered behind the truck, with men scattered around it, is a cylindrical railroad water tower—a clever reference to the mysterious monoliths in the Kubrick film. The ad closes with the voiceover: “Fold ‘em, Roll ‘em, Slide ‘em, Lock ‘em, epically easy truck bed covers,” followed by the intoned identifier “Truck Hero.” The sung, rather than instrumental, version of “Sunrise” fits nicely with the intoned branding, giving the ad a sense of aural unity. It also creates the same type of double discourse with irony discussed earlier. Workmen singing a Strauss tone poem communicates a sense of cultural awareness—maybe this is the working man’s version of epic, or maybe it just tells the audience that the company is in on the joke. Like the ads that use “O Fortuna,” these ads that use “Sunrise” are all selling an epic experience, but it is not connected to the nostalgic yearning for the premodern past. Instead, “Sunrise” evokes an epic future that can be grasped in the present by the latest innovation to the product featured in the ad.8 This holds true even for some of the ads that seem to focus more on an epic moment than a given product. For example, a 2016 Walgreen’s ad entitled “Great Minds” uses “Sunrise” to underscore an epic moment (Also Sprach Zarathustra,  n.d.-b). The ad opens with the voiceover “Walgreen’s presents: A holiday mini-miracle,” immediately followed by the entrance of the ascending arpeggio from the opening of Also Sprach Zarathustra. As the scene unfolds, the first C-minor chord is synced with an exchange of gifts between coworkers, but both women are clearly reluctant to let go of the gift they are giving. As the scene progresses, the music (already at a faster-than-normal tempo to fit the ad) skips to the arpeggio that leads to the F-major chord that progresses on to the climax of the “Sunrise” movement. The arrival of the F major is synced with their joyful exclamations as they open the gifts and realize they gave each other the same thing. This is followed by the voiceover: Getting the gift you almost kept for yourself— now that’s a holiday mini-miracle. And it’s easy to create your own, With 50% off the gifts of the week just around the corner.

The underscore for this segment is shortened and altered to be less rhythmically active, creating a smoother ascent to the final cadence so it does not detract from the voiceover. 8  All of the ads discussed in this paragraph can be found on the ispottv website (Also Sprach Zarathustra, n.d.-b).

502   Clem The climactic cadence arrives just before we hear the tagline, “Walgreen’s at the corner of happy and healthy.” The message is clear: shopping at Walgreen’s might lead to your own personal holiday mini-miracle, or “epic moment.” However, if “O Fortuna” had been used in the Walgreen’s ad, there is a distinct possibility that our focus would have been drawn to the conflict over not wanting to give the gifts. “O Fortuna” still carries the connotation of epic struggle, as demonstrated previously, so that the epic moments it alludes to are often ones of rupture—breaks from the struggles of daily life. “Sunrise,” on the other hand, looks forward to a future resolution, rather than nostalgically gazing back in time. As a result, the epic moment offered by Walgreen’s is not a respite from life, but a moment that allows for forward progress by resolving tensions—a message reinforced by the triumphant rising cadence and tagline at the end of the ad. The epic moment proffered by the “O Fortuna” ads is a moment of pastoral respite from modern life, while “Sunrise” is used to allude to an epic moment created by bringing a little piece of a utopian future to the present.

Conclusions Both “O Fortuna” and “Sunrise” fall within the register of epic. However, each piece also evokes other registers. Consider the diagram shown in Figure 24.2. Each circle represents a different register, and each register can encompass countless vernacular expressions besides the ones discussed here. Further, each of these vernacular expressions could consist of anything from simple musical gestures to entire pieces of music. There might even be other overlapping circles representing different registers that can be added to the diagram. The application of register theory, therefore, creates a dynamic theoretical space in which to engage with the fluid use of music in the expressive vernacular of contemporary culture. This seems particularly useful when engaging with pre-existing music used in multimedia objects. As seen earlier, it allows for an analytical process that can rely on various extant theories, such as semiotics or cognitive pragmatics, to explain various operations of musical meaning. At the same time, it creates a discursive space wherein we can make connections between these various theoretical approaches. In this space, one can delineate specific musical properties that constitute the contemporary usage of pieces like “O Fortuna” and “Sunrise” as concepts

Mythic Medieval

Epic

Future Utopia

Figure 24.2  Venn diagram of overlapping registers.

Medievalism Goes Commercial   503 blended with “epic” (using Zbikowski’s theory). This discussion can then expand to include how “O Fortuna”–like or “Sunrise”-like compositions might be used to communicate similar things, without imposing limitations on the function of those ­compositions in their specific contexts. On the meta-level, one can also offer an ethical or sociological critique of the construction and use of the registers themselves. In short, register theory creates a way of approaching the complex issue of meaning when dealing with pre-existing music in media that creates a discursive space for the interplay of various extant theories while allowing us to talk about this interplay with greater specificity.

Recommended Readings Daverio, J. (1993). Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra and the “union” of poetry and philosophy. In Nineteenth-century music and the German Romantic ideology (pp. 209–223). New York, NY: Schirmer. Long, M. (2008). Beautiful monsters: Imagining the classic in musical media. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Powrie, P., & Stilwell, R. (2006). Changing tunes: The use of pre-existing music in film. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Schäfer, W. E. (1960). Carl Orff: A report in words and pictures (2nd ed.). Mainz, Germany: Schott. Zbikowski, L.  M. (2002). Conceptualizing music: Cognitive structure, theory, and analysis. New  York, NY: New York University Press.

References Also Sprach Zarathustra. (n.d.-a). Music. Retrieved from https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/ pmwiki.php/Music/AlsoSprachZarathustra Also Sprach Zarathustra. (n.d.-b). Op. 30: Introduction. Retrieved from https://www.ispot.tv/ search?term=Also Sprach Zarathustra, op. 30: introduction Amante, D. J. (1981). The theory of ironic speech acts. Poetics Today, 2(2), 77–96. Bakhtin, M. (1984). Problems in Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Batra, R., & Ray, M. L. (1986). Affective responses mediating acceptance of advertising. Journal of Consumer Research, 13(2), 234–249. Behler, E. (1990). Irony and the discourse of modernity. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. BionicDisco.com. (2016, April 30). ’78 Ford Futura “Sci Fi” Commercial (1977). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lugi7poB4fs Boorman, J. (Producer), & Boorman, J. (Director). (1981). Excalibur [Motion picture on DVD]. United States: Warner/Orion. Brooks, J.L., Groening, M., Jean, A., Scully, M., & Sakai, R. (Producers), & Silverman, D. (Director). (2007). The Simpsons Movie [Motion Picture]. United States: Twentieth Century Fox. Bruner, G. C., II. (1990). Music, mood, and marketing. Journal of Marketing, 54(4), 94–104. Carmina Burana. (n.d.-a). Music. Retrieved from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ Music/CarminaBurana

504   Clem Carmina Burana. (n.d.-b). O Fortuna. Retrieved from https://www.ispot.tv/search?term=Carmina Burana—O Fortuna Clem, D. (2019). “Hope Against Fate or Fata Morgana? Music and Mythopoiesis in Boorman’s Excalibur.” In Meyer, S.G., & Yri, K. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism (pp. 662-689). New York: Oxford University Press. Cook, N. (1998). Analysing musical multimedia. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Cook, N. (1994). Music and meaning in the commercials. Popular Music, 13(1), 27–40. Daverio, J. (1993). Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra and the “union” of poetry and philosophy. In Nineteenth-century music and the German Romantic ideology (pp. 209–223). New York, NY: Schirmer. Del Vecho, P. (Producer), & Buck, C. & Lee, J. (Directors). (2013). Frozen [Motion Picture]. United States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Epic. (2018, March). n. and adj. OED Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from https:// www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=epicepic Flinn, C. (1992). Strains of utopia: Gender nostalgia and Hollywood film music. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gengaro, C.  L. (2013). Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The music in his films. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gorn, G. J. (1982). The effects of music in advertising on choice behavior: A classical conditioning approach. Journal of Marketing, 46(1), 94–101. Haines, J. D. (2014). Music in films on the Middle Ages: Authenticity vs. fantasy. New York, NY: Routledge. Harris, W. V. (1990). Bakhtinian double voicing in Dickens and Eliot. English Literary History, 57(2), 445–458. Huron, D. (1989). Music in advertising: An analytic paradigm. Musical Quarterly, 73(4), 557–574. Kellaris, J. J., Cox, A. D., & Cox, D. (1993). The effect of background music on ad processing: A contingency explanation. Journal of Marketing, 57(4), 114–125. Kubrick, S. (Producer), & Kubrick, S. (Director). (1968). 2001: A Space Odyssey [Motion Picture]. United States: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Leech-Wilkinson, D. (2002). The modern invention of medieval music: Scholarship, ideology, performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Long, M. (2008). Beautiful monsters: Imagining the classic in musical media. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Nietzsche, F. (1974). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. (Penguin Classics) (R.  J.  Hollingdale, Trans.). London: Penguin. Nunnari, G., Canton, M., Goldman, B., & Silver, J. (Producers), & Snyder, Z. (Director). (2006). 300 [Motion Picture]. United States: Warner Bros. Orff, C., & Thomas, W. (1979). Carl Orff und sein Werk: Dokumentation (Vol. 4). Tutzing, Germany: Schneider. Osborne, B.M., Walsh, Fran, & Jackson, P. (Producers), & Jackson, P. (Director). (2002). The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers [Motion Picture]. United States: New Line Cinema. Rapée, E. (1925). Encyclopaedia of music for pictures : as essential as the picture, in one volume. Belwin. Scott, L. M. (1990). Understanding jingles and needledrop: A rhetorical approach to music in advertising. Journal of Consumer Research, 17(2), 223–236. Zbikowski, L. M. (2002). Conceptualizing music: Cognitive structure, theory, and analysis. New York, NY: New York University Press.

chapter 25

“Pushi n ’ It” Sounding Difference Through Humor in Geico’s 2014 Salt-N-Pepa Spot Joanna Love

The Geico Insurance Company has used humor to gain an unprecedented amount of public and industry notoriety since 2000, when its animated talking gecko initiated what would become a $3.4 billion industry-wide increase in auto insurance advertising spending through the century’s first decade. Among its famous 21st-century campaigns, the brand’s “It’s What You Do” series has become a crowd favorite. Spearheaded by the now-famous Martin Agency, these commercials feature content and storylines that bare no relation to the advertised services and strive for memorability through the deployment of various modes of humor, including parody and satire. Since its 2014 inception, each commercial in the series has followed the same basic structure: Marketers place an icon of American popular culture into an absurd scenario that proves so ridiculous that it calls attention to the spot as an advertisement. All commercials end with a similar unique selling proposition (USP) that equates the consumer’s desire to save money with the silly and often rhetorical actions of the icons onscreen. Marketers rely heavily on viewers’ familiarity with the chosen cultural references, or at the very least, their ability to decipher and eventually reconcile the represented signifiers. “It’s What You Do” therefore proves typical of advertising trends that favor entertainment—that is, the spots are “light” on specifics and make the product a secondary focus (Hiltbrand, 2012). The campaign’s ultimate goal, then, according to Advertising Age Editor Brian Steinberg, is to create brand awareness and to encourage people to go online and find out more about Geico’s discounted rates (Hiltbrand, 2012). One of the most memorable of these commercials is the second spot in the series titled “Push It: It’s What You Do.” The 2014 spot mixes the visual and musical iconography of the 1980s hip-hop crew Salt-N-Pepa (Cheryl James and Sandra Denton) and DJ Spinderella (Deidra Roper) with their performance of snippets from their late 1980s hit single “Push It” (Salt-N-Pepa, 1987). The commercial’s narrative relies heavily on Salt-N-Pepa’s diegetic

506   Love performance of selections from their famous track. In fact, the pre-existing song does not merely support the actions onscreen; it dictates them. Geico’s commercial aims for humor by literally reinterpreting the single’s hook as an anthem for cheering unsuspecting, 21stcentury suburbanites through mundane tasks that require them to “push” various objects, including office doors, elevator buttons, Lamaze breaths, football dummies, and even a lawn mower. The USP assures viewers: “If you’re Salt-N-Pepa you tell people to ‘Push It.’ / It’s what you do. / If you want to save fifteen percent or more on car insurance, you switch to Geico. / It’s what you do” (braaaksma, 2015). “Push It: It’s What You Do” was an instant sensation. Audiences and industry insiders praised its ability to expose new generations to the group’s music through the deployment of humor and nostalgia (Boardman,  2014; Catapano,  2015; Frisby,  2015; Stanley, 2015a). The spot became so popular that although it had already been in circulation for a few months, Geico paid an additional $4.5 million to air it during the 2015 Super Bowl (Hiltbrand, 2012). Members of the group expressed similar enthusiasm for the commercial, saying that they immediately recognized its humor and brilliance from reading the script (Stanley,  2015a, para. 2). Viewers obviously agreed as numerous reports confirmed that the exposure hyped Salt-N-Pepa’s upcoming summer concert appearances and led to a spike in record sales (“3 to See,” 2015; Bream, 2015; Bream, Reimenschneider, Blain, & Robson,  2015; Chareunsy,  2015; Stanley,  2015b; “Stay in Tune,” 2015). Billboard in fact reported that “Push It” garnered 50,000 sales and 3.8 million streams from November 2014 through February 2015 (Stanley, 2015b, para. 7). According to Mickey Hess (2007), Loren Kajikawa (2015), and Charles Hiroshi Garrett (2015), humor has proved integral to hip-hop performances since the genre’s 1970s beginnings. These scholars have illustrated the many ways that its tropes have been conscientiously employed by artists like the Beastie Boys, Eminem, and Missy Elliott as a means to mark their racialized and gendered differences. Garrett, in particular, has noticed that these tropes have crossed over into 21st-century advertising practices, noting that the industry has “begun to mine the comic marketing potential of hip-hop parodies, capitalizing on humor as difference and simultaneously drawing on rap parody as an increasingly common subgenre” (Garrett, 2015, p. 334). As this chapter demonstrates, “Push It: It’s What You Do” offers an extreme example of this practice as it deploys humor through the explicit and diegetic parodying of a wellknown crew, song, and music video. The complicit participation of the crew further allows the commercial to position familiar signifiers from the golden age of hip-hop— its edgy fashion, choreography, and sounds of the genre’s mainstream 1980s success— against the bland, pristine, and arguably hegemonic, contemporary scenarios onscreen. This spot thus proves compelling in its ability to downplay Salt-N-Pepa’s pioneering legacy with a mundane reinterpretation of the crew’s message of Black female empowerment, while still proving effective in appellating new audiences and long-time hip-hop fans. Geico’s successful satirizing of Salt-N-Pepa thus raises following questions: How are Salt-N-Pepa’s once-hip, politically charged musical signifiers convincingly reworked and appropriated into Geico’s commercial? What roles do the crew and its music play in constructing humor in this spot? What does the humor here communicate? To what

“Pushin’ It”   507 and whose values does it appeal? And what are the potential consequences of the ways in which the visual and musical texts are positioned here? American poet, novelist, and activist Langston Hughes writes about humor and the Black experience (1966), revealing its complexities as a cultural construct and demonstrating how it often stems from awkward moments that come at a personal expense. He suggests that its true subject and objectives can be difficult to interpret, at least at first: “Humor is when the joke is on you but hits the other fellow first—before it boomerangs” (1966, p. vii, emphasis mine). Hughes continues, saying that when this happens you sometimes “wish in your secret heart [it is] not funny, but it is, and you must laugh” (1966, p. vii). He then calls humor an “unconscious therapy,” acknowledging that there are times when the catharsis it promises actually usurps the desire to question the (often harsh) realities it communicates (1966, p. vii). His words resonate especially well when considering humor that is rooted in deeply ingrained beliefs and structures of power. As a contemporary example of how humor can both convey and conceal complex social and cultural ideals, this chapter uses Geico’s Salt-N-Pepa spot to investigate the extent to which popular music texts—even those that are especially powerful and beloved—can be appropriated in ways that not only support the capitalist agendas of a brand but also propagate the persistent and often harmful social ideologies that advertising scholars like Judith Williamson (1978) and Sut Jhally (2006) have long critiqued. The pages that follow unite musicological inquiry with cultural studies of hip-hop, hipness, advertising, and humor to investigate how and why Geico’s marketers relied on Salt-N-Pepa’s iconic musical texts to create the spot’s unexpected comedy—humor that I argue is ultimately crafted out of clashing cultural aesthetics, bodies, and values. More specifically, the pages that follow demonstrate the process by which Salt-N-Pepa’s music and images are reduced to select signifiers that marketers place in opposition to the residents onscreen in ways that reaffirm social hierarchies of race, gender, and class. I therefore bridge ideas from Tricia Rose (1994, 2004), Robin James (2009, 2010, 2011), Loren Kajikawa (2015), and others, who have extended foundational scholarship on diaspora and colonialism to relevant discussions about music, appropriation, and intersectional markers of race, class, and gender. When placed in dialogue with work hip-hop and humor by Mickey Hess (2007) and Charles Garrett (2015), as well as historical definitions of “whiteness” by Richard Dyer (1997) and Woody Doane (2003), this chapter unpacks how and why Salt-N-Pepa’s musical and visual signifiers were distinguished from the spot’s onscreen environment. These analyses are further supported by literature on the deployment of humor in advertising by Fred K. Beard (2008) and studies on humor’s historical practice by, and projection onto, Black female communities as documented by Nancy A. Walker (1988) and Patricia Hill Collins (2004). By bridging these diverse perspectives, this chapter reveals the complicated ways that Salt-N-Pepa’s musical performances foster comedy in the commercial. This chapter therefore contributes to existing discourses about the ways that advertising—and specifically the use of popular music (in this case, hip-hop) in advertising—continues to reproduce real-world tensions, thereby reinforcing the exclusion and oppression of marginalized communities while simultaneously affirming the industry’s position as an institution of privilege.

508   Love This chapter’s close examination of Geico’s hip-hop commercial shows how, in late capitalism, music from marginalized groups continues to be used in subtle yet powerful ways to magnify cultural differences and reaffirm dominant values.

“Push It” Origins The Martin Agency likely chose to feature “Push It” due to the popularity that the track had amassed 26 years prior when the group emerged onto the hip-hop scene from Queens, New York. The single originally appeared on their 1986 debut album Hot, Cool and Vicious, which reached double platinum sales—an unprecedented number for a rap album at the time—and attested to the market potential for hip-hop music in the mainstream (Rose, 1994, p. 154). The single itself received the most attention when it was remixed in 1988, becoming one of the first rap singles to top the dance singles charts and to garner a Grammy Award nomination (Elafros, 2007, p. 199; Huey, n.d.). Salt-N-Pepa’s success as hip-hop artists therefore opened a space in the industry for other women whose rapping and DJing skills had gone largely unrecognized and unappreciated up to that point. Sociologist Athena Elafros ascribes the song’s popularity to its “unrelenting dance beat” and “bold, sexy attitude” (2013, para. 2). Although the crew insists the song is about the dance floor and not sexual exploits (Elafros, 2007, p. 199), the track and its iconic music video hint at double entendre through suggestive and commanding lyrics, whispered and sighing vocal delivery (“Ah. / Push It”), and thrusting choreography. The song can therefore be interpreted as a celebration of women’s physical enjoyment, both sexually and on the dance floor. In this way, “Push It” upholds recurring themes that appear throughout Salt-N-Pepa’s albums—namely their “correction to the masculine biases of rap music” and modeling of Black female empowerment, which includes a celebratory stance toward female sexuality (Elafros,  2007, pp. 199, 201). “Push It” thus not only helped to drive the genre into the mainstream but also became a beacon for African American female audiences. One of the most distinguishing musical features of the song’s well-known 1988 remix is its synthesized, A-minor melodic hook. Equally as recognizable is the song’s introduction, which (as outlined in Table 25.1) relies on the intertexuality of throwbacks to multiple sampled funk and soul lyrics by James Brown, Coal Kitchen, and The Time (“Push It, Salt-N-Pepa” n.d.). Continuing the long tradition of “signifyin(g)” in African American music (Gates, 1988), these sampled lines pay homage to these (mostly) Black male artists who inspired Salt-N-Pepa and their producer/manager at the time, Hurby “Love Bug” Azor. Moreover, as Tricia Rose points out, women rappers often also used samples to foster a “dialogue” with the industry and to define themselves within it (1994, p. 161). “Push It” therefore includes other sonic tropes to reappropriate these samples into the group’s expression of young African American female subjectivity that scholars have identified in their music (Collins, 2004, p. 133; Elafros, 2007, pp. 199, 201;

“Pushin’ It”   509 Table 25.1  “Push It,” sampled lyrics Source

Lyric Throwback

Performer

Coal Kitchen: “Keep on Pushin’ ” “Ahh. Push It.” (1977)

Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor

James Brown: “I’m a Greedy Man” (1972)

“Pick up on this.”

Salt-N-Pepa

James Brown: “There it Is” (1972)

“Ow! There it is.”

Salt-N-Pepa

The Time: “The Bird” (1984)

“This dance ain’t for everybody, / only the sexy people.”

Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor

The Kinks: “You Really Got Me” (1964)

“You really got me goin, / you got me so I don’t know what I’m doin’.”

Salt-N-Pepa

Rose, 1994, p. 182). This is most evident in characteristics that make the song poppy and danceable—traits that according to musicologist Susan McClary focus on the body and are historically coded as feminine (1991, pp. 151–152). “Push It” thus includes an upbeat and danceable tempo, a bouncy hook and groove, and references to the Kinks’ simple yet catchy 1964 pop-rock hit, “You Really Got Me.” Throughout the song’s verses, Salt-N-Pepa express their confident and empowered stances through rapped lyrics that invite female participation (“C’mon girls, / let’s go show the guys that we know, / how to become number one, in a hot party show”) and phrases that reverse male voyeurism by instructing the men around them (“Come here, gimme a kiss! / Better make it fast, / or else I’m gonna get pissed. / Can’t you hear the music’s pumpin’ hard, / like I wish you would? / Now push it.”). Indeed, Elafros notes that the lyrics might be understood to portray “women as the subjects of their own sexuality” as they command men to participate (2007, p. 199). Elafros’s observations build on work from Patricia Hill Collins, who reads these themes into other tracks and videos, including “Tramp” (another song on Hot, Cool, and Vicious), documenting Salt-N-Pepa’s ability to “depict themselves as independent, strong, and self-reliant agents of their own desire” (2004, p. 133). Tricia Rose further notes that the group’s performances “affirm Black female popular pleasure . . . by privileging black female subjectivity and black female experiences in the public sphere” (1994, p. 182). Sonically speaking, their direct calls to and engagement with their audiences further work to blur the boundaries between the recording and the liveness of their style—a practice that harkens back both to the soul and funk performers from which they sample (especially James Brown; Brackett, 1992, p. 312) and to hip-hop’s own origins in live performance. The crew’s New York borough accents and rapped delivery further act as aural reminders of the marginalized groups they represent—namely the ethnically diverse and economically oppressed communities who first practiced hip-hop (Rose, 2004). Therefore, just as Kajikawa (2015) demonstrates that audiences could hear racialized markers of time, place, and space in early rap songs, as part of this era “Push It” too

510   Love s­ onically locates Salt-N-Pepa within their cultural moment by placing their sound and technology squarely in 1980s New York City boroughs. In conjunction with their message of female agency, Salt-N-Pepa’s track thus calls attention not only to their racialized, classed, and gendered bodies but also to their particular region and era (the golden age of hip-hop). These signifiers are further amplified during the rapped sections of the music video, where the camera focuses on their high-energy movements around the stage as well as their emphasis on sexually suggestive choreography (SaltNPepaVEVO,  2009). Their gold chains, large hoop earrings, Black body suits, oversized “S” and “P” lettermen’s jackets, and bright red boots prove typical of the flashy fashion donned by contemporary hip-hop crews. This visually captivating attire and dancing stands out against the dimly lit audience and Black-clad male back-up dancers who blend into the stage’s dark and foggy atmosphere. The live performance aesthetic established by the single is further validated by glimpses of Azor playing the Casio synthesizer and DJ Spinderella (who by then had replaced the DJ who performed on the original single, Pamela Latoya Greene) operating the turntables. The video’s iconography thus confirmed Salt-N-Pepa’s status as empowered pioneers of mainstream hip-hop and made it one of the bestremembered rap videos of the era.

Geico’s Hip-Hop Humor Fast forward 26 years, and Geico’s spot preserves the live performance aesthetic imperative to the single. In fact, the diegetic performance of “Push It” (or at least the suggestion of it) helps to set up its humor while select signifiers from the original track and video work at specific points to reinforce the commercial’s aim for comedy. Visually, the trio is dressed almost identically to their iconic video. Accompanied by DJ Spinderella’s turntables and mixer, their gold chains and oversized lettermen’s jackets stand out against the spot’s contemporary scenes—settings that evoke suburban and gentrified city centers with pristine backdrops, sparkling office buildings, lush landscapes, and the dominance of white and ethnically ambiguous characters. The spot’s humor is therefore established by the crew’s surprising and awkward inclusion in each setting. In its juxtaposition of contemporary “real life” situations with unanticipated pop cultural references, this spot aligns with the others created for the Martin Agency’s “It’s What You Do” series by fostering what Fred K. Beard has labeled “incongruency resolution humor” (an extension of the Platonic theory of humor), which occurs when multiple incongruent signifiers overlap in meaning or have various possible interpretations (Beard,  2008, p. 40). Much of the spot’s comedy therefore depends on the juxtaposition of contrasting sights and sounds whose meanings eventually reconcile in unforeseen ways. By the end of the spot, these signifiers work to highlight an array of “unexpected” rappers and listeners—a common trope that Garrett identifies in 21st-century hip-hop-themed commercials (2015, p. 334).

“Pushin’ It”   511

Figure 25.1  Salt-N-Pepa help an unsuspecting man enter a building. Still from “Push It: It’s What You Do,” Geico, 2014.

Geico’s “Push It” commercial establishes these incongruences in the very first scene where the two MCs unexpectedly materialize to offer guidance to a professionally dressed, middle-aged man who struggles to “pull” open a door marked “push” (see Figure 25.1). The camera then cuts to an image of the trio crammed into a small elevator alongside DJ Spinderella’s turntable equipment. Here they greet a woman who, after successfully “pushing” the elevator button, becomes visibly uncomfortable by the performance that unfolds around her. A cut to a new scene captures Salt-N-Pepa as they slide in front of a pregnant woman who practices Lamaze breathing techniques. A pan to the corner of the room offers a brief glimpse of Spinderella working her turntables and a cross-cut highlights the couple’s mixed reactions: The intensely focused woman appears encouraged by the crew’s coaching, but her male partner is confused by the commotion. In the next scene, the duo performs restrained versions of their video’s thrusting choreography while standing atop football dummies being moved across a field by uniformed players. The last scenario pictures Salt-N-Pepa following a man with a push-mower while Spinderella mixes the track off to the side. In considering to whom the spot’s humor might be aimed, a surface reading might suggest that the surprise expressed by the suburban residents indicates that the joke is on them. Closer attention, however, reveals that the commercial takes place in the residents’ world, which means that it is the hip-hop crew who does not belong there. Indeed, the unexpected presence of the group within the contemporary and professional settings onscreen elicits varied responses from the residents they encounter: Some meet the crew with confusion, a few find it reassuring, and others are visibly annoyed. In all cases Salt-N-Pepa’s presence is out of place, amplifying the strangeness of the 1980s

512   Love ­ip-hop performance within the otherwise commonplace, modern-day tasks. h Consequently, it is the insertion of the aging, urban, Black trio and their outdated clothing and technology within these scenes that creates the type of incongruity humor that both Beard and Garrett describe. These visual incongruences are highlighted by the reworked musical track. As is typical of advertising’s inclusion of pre-existing music, Geico’s marketers substantially shorten and “redact”—that is, select, censor, and restructure (Love,  2019)—Salt-NPepa’s remixed record down to select signifiers to produce new meanings that support the commercial’s aims. In this case, the Martin Agency splices together the most texturally sparse and lyrically vague moments from the song’s middle bridges to guide and comment upon the spot’s visual narrative. Marketers include only a few repetitions of the synthesized A-minor riff, the trio’s anthemic iterations of “Push it real good,” the phrase “Oh baby, baby,” and the aspirated lyrical hook and heavy breathing (“Ah. Push it.”). By pairing these select moments with the routine “pushing” actions onscreen (including the recitation of “Oh baby, baby” to the couple in Lamaze class), the commercial fosters a literal and equally mundane reinterpretation of song. During the redaction process, Geico’s marketers were also careful to splice out some of the track’s most inspirational musical signifiers as well as those that made it demographically distinctive. Among the signifyin(g) samples listed in Table 25.1, only Salt-N-Pepa’s (rerecorded) version of Coal Kitchen’s “Ah. Push It”—the hook itself—is transferred into the spot. As a result, the new track loses its power to signify and to remain in dialogue with the recordings that inspired it. The most significant change to the song, however, occurs with the omission of its rapped verses. This cut eliminates the most musically and, as Kajikawa reminds us, the most racially distinctive aspect of Salt-N-Pepa’s hip-hop track. Omitting the lyrical flow thereby removes all references to the trio’s contribution to the genre and simultaneously discards the moments in which the artists identify themselves as the agents of the song and advocate for the empowerment of Black female bodies. And although eliminating the rap’s obvious potential for double entendre likely stemmed from marketers’ desire to maintain respectability politics with a more universal and family-friendly message (c.f. White,  2001, pp. 37, 112), these omissions actually redirect much more than the meaning of the song’s hook: “Push It” does not work here as a complex hip-hop anthem that celebrates Black women’s bodies and asserts Salt-N-Pepa’s rightful place within the industry; it is instead sanitized and reduced into a catchy pop hook that cheers modern (and arguably, privileged) suburbanites through daily tasks. As summarized by AdWeek, “Divorcing the song from its sexual connotations, the ladies are now here to help anyone who needs some encouragement with their pushing” (Cullers, 2014). While the song’s redirected meanings are implied throughout the spot, its new message is driven home in the final scene where the punch line is revealed. Following Geico’s well-known USP (“If you want to save 15% or more on car insurance . . .”), one last aspirated “Push It” transitions to images of Salt-N-Pepa following a middle-aged white man as he mows his sprawling lawn (see Figure 25.2). A crane shot of well-groomed foliage surrounding a large two-story house denotes his middle-class status. The sounds of the

“Pushin’ It”   513

Figure 25.2  A man reveals the punch line while mowing his lawn. Still from “Push It: It’s What You Do,” Geico, 2014.

hook’s final drum sample connect to the now-familiar sight of DJ Spinderella spinning on her turntables off to the side. But in a surprising twist, the spot’s final vocal “performance” comes not from the MC duo, but from this particular resident—the only one to speak during the commercial. As Salt-N-Pepa follow him with their iconic choreography, his deadpan voice brings the commercial to a close with an over-articulation of the hook: “I’m pushing it. / I’m pushing it. Real. Good.” This final scene certainly pokes fun at the man’s non-hip “whiteness,” but the repositioning of him as the commercial’s protagonist provides an unexpected twist that offers resolution to the incongruences set up in previous scenes—a practice that, in turn, flips the direction of the spot’s humorous gaze back onto the hip-hop crew. This man’s tongue-in-cheek performance therefore works to contrast and even mock Salt-N-Pepa’s efforts to provide guidance to him and the other residents. His actions therefore reconcile the uncomfortable reception of the trio in the preceding scenarios by placing the spot firmly into a second (and widely familiar) category of humor that is hinted at throughout—what Beard (2008) labels “disparagement.” Beard traces disparagement back to ancient times, noting that it stems from the human tendency to enjoy feeling superior to others. Disparagement therefore includes various types of ridicule that typically unfold in the form of put-downs, satire, sarcasm, or self-deprecation (Beard, 2008, pp. 47–48). It usually creates a mixture of pleasure and anxiety (i.e., guilt) that is eventually resolved through “misattribution”: a cognitive practice that liberates one from “the ethical and social consequences” of enjoying the disparagement (Beard, 2008, pp. 47–48). The rationales that drive misattribution include the belief that one is not responsible for those who are ridiculed, that others will not care if one laughs, that the person deserves the ridicule, and—as might be most fitting with the

514   Love Langston Hughes passage mentioned earlier—that it is the joke and not the ridicule itself that is funny (Beard, 2008, p. 48). As a whole, “Push It: It’s What You Do” falls easily into the category of disparagement with its discernible moments of put-down (does a grown man really need help opening a door?), satire (the critical redaction of Salt-N-Pepa’s iconic track and performance into banal humor), sarcasm (the crew’s enactment of a tongue-in-cheek performance to residents attempting ordinary tasks), and self-deprecation (heard through the final resident’s unexpected rap—i.e., his over-articulation of the hook). It is therefore easy for viewers to misattribute their laughter to the scenarios crafted within these silly contexts rather than to the performances themselves. Accordingly, once the commercial arrives at its final scene and the lawn mowing resident interjects into Salt-N-Pepa’s song, the two types of humor Beard defines—incongruity and disparagement—work together to deliver the punch line. This resident’s lines therefore redirect the moments of disparagement initiated by the crew onto the other struggling suburbanites back onto them. The spot’s punch line is therefore completed by this role reversal: Viewers’ expectations are thwarted when those who the spot seems to establish as executers of the joke—Salt-NPepa—actually become its subject. It is at this moment that Hughes would say that Geico’s joke “boomerangs” and the surprise it produces incites viewers to laugh.

Humor and Othering Although recognizing elements of disparagement and incongruence helps to explain how the spot’s humor unfolds, these ideas alone do not fully explain why the signifiers used in the commercial prove funny or why the spot’s celebrities become the target of the joke. These answers come from contextualizing the role of the crew within broader theories of advertising, hip-hop, and African American humor. Advertising scholars have long investigated the ways that marketers deploy easily discernible (stereotyped) signifiers to aid audiences in deciphering branding messages. Roland Barthes (2012), Judith Williamson (1978), Michael Schudson (1984), Raymond Williams (2000), and Sut Jhally (2006), among many others, have argued that advertising images do considerable cultural work to both reinforce and perpetuate hegemonic norms about race, class, gender, religion, etc. These scholars have cited the various ways that marketers use ster­e­ o­typed and caricatured signifiers to aid audiences in quickly deciphering a spot’s messages and to help them identify their own place as consumers in commercial contexts (Schudson, 1984, pp. 226–227; Williamson, 1978, p. 71). Linda C. L. Fu’s more recent discussions about the roles of race in advertising further confirm that “the self needs the Other in order to have meaning” (2014, p. 246). Advertising’s “self ” therefore more often than not takes on a hegemonic position, more specifically that of “whiteness”—a position that, as noted by film studies scholar Richard Dyer, is historically defined as being a subject without “properties,” one who is “unmarked, universal, and just human,” as opposed to “others” who are “particular, marked, [and] raced” (1997, p. 38). With regard

“Pushin’ It”   515 to the roles of race and parody in hip-hop, Mickey Hess acknowledges that “because hip hop is so tied to race, a successful white parody needs to be self-aware in confronting issues of racial relations in the music and culture” (2007, p. 137). Robin James further reminds us that markers of race in music do not operate alone, but rather that “discourses of music, race, and gender emerge and evolve together as varying modes of articulating the relation between the material and the social. In other words, music, race, and gender are interlocking and interdependent manifestations of the nature/­ culture problem” (2010, p. xix). Extending these ideas to Geico’s commercial illuminates the fact that the spot’s humor lies as much in the self-conscious opposing of Salt-N-Pepa’s marginalized—“particular,” “marked,” “raced,” and “gendered”—hip-hop signifiers to the other characters onscreen as in the crew’s musical performance in and of itself. This becomes most evident in the commercial’s final scene when the lawn mowing man aurally intensifies the incongruences that had already been established between the crew and the commercial’s other residents: those established through markers of place (New York Boroughs vs. suburbia) and temporality (the 1980s past vs. the 2010s present) and solidified through the intersectional signifiers of race, class, and gender. Consequently, this man’s self-deprecating yet sarcastic and deadpan delivery serves as a sonic signifier of his race, class, and gender (white, middle class, and male). This act therefore offers finality by asserting his privilege as “unmarked, universal, and just human”—signifiers that act in direct opposition to the fetishized signifiers of the crew seen and heard thus far. As instigators and provocateurs, Salt-N-Pepa’s role here further upholds persistent notions about the “non-white” as always remarkable and troublesome. According to Woody Doane, these beliefs are historically positioned against views of “whiteness” as “invisible,” “normative,” and “ideal” (2003, pp. 6–7). The crew’s “troublesome” performance therefore enacts what Nancy Walker identifies as the “humor of the ‘minority,’ ” where humor has been used by those in marginal positions to “revers[e] the balance between those in dominant and subordinate positions” (1988, pp. 115–116). Power reversals, however, do not and cannot last long in hegemonic discourses as confirmed in the commercial’s last scene. It is in fact at this moment that Salt-N-Pepa’s performance falls historically within what Walker and Collins define as familiar archetypes for African American women: Firstly, that of domestic servitude, where service to white families forces them “live in two communities” at once, knowing that they will never have equal status and privilege to the families they serve (Walker, 1988, p. 107), and secondly, that of “modern mammies,” what Collins calls a “template for middle-class Black womanhood,” where they must retain a balance between subordination and loyal service to “white/and or male authority” and their ambition for upward mobility (2004, pp. 140–141). Taken together, the spot’s fundamental humor is realized through opposition between the gendered, racialized, and classed bodies portrayed by the residents’ whitewashed and audibly middle-class, male authority, and Salt-N-Pepa’s embodied characterization of recognizable humorous yet “helpful” roles of servitude and mammy-hood. When considering the sum of its sets, actions, and character designs, it is clear that the spot perpetuates resilient ideologies about the privileged self and other: It aims for humor by

516   Love contrasting depictions of the residents’ contemporary and normalized lifestyles and aspirations with a banal version of Salt-N-Pepa’s “marked” and troublesome—dated, raced, gendered, and (at one-time lower-) classed—music and imagery. Put another way, “Push It: It’s What You Do” creates comedy through the reproduction of familiar stereotypes and archetypes of humor as well as through the momentary subversion of hegemonic power dynamics. Any discomfort created by early instances of incongruity and disparagement is resolved when the final resident’s own “performance” of the song contains Salt-N-Pepa’s threat to the proper order of things. This character not only reinforces privileged and dominant values—including ideologies about the ethics of white-collar work (suggested early on with images of office buildings) and ambitions that include the nuclear family (especially, sex confined within the duties of marriage and reproduction as pictured in the Lamaze class) and homeownership (implied by the last scene)—but also makes it clear that Salt-N-Pepa and their 1980s hip-hop personas are outsiders in the commercial’s contemporary and aspirational spaces. By foregrounding the crew’s “otherness,” the spot works to reaffirm viewers’ positioning as either members of the “unmarked” and “universalized” residents onscreen or mere spectators to the comedy, or both. Indeed, this is where Geico’s consumers can identify themselves from within the privileged space of the brand and against the oppositional signifiers of the crew.

Hip-Hop but Not Hip Geico’s use of Salt-N-Pepa and their music subverts prevailing conversations about cultural appropriation and “hipness” as well as those that examine hip-hop’s early roles in advertising. Indeed, foundational studies largely understand cultural appropriation as borrowing elements of assumed hipness from marginalized groups to extract their value (i.e., cultural capital). Formative scholarship on musical appropriation has therefore tended to focus on how dominant groups or institutions have borrowed subaltern musical forms, especially those coded as “masculine” and “Black” like jazz and hip-hop, to elevate “white hipness” (hooks, 1992; Monson, 1995). Of course, as Phil Ford points out, applications of presumed hipness prove ideologically complicated and ultimately work to reinforce hierarchies of power. Building on Roland Barthes’s concept of “exnomination,” Ford (like Dyer and Doane) explains that the racial identity of the white or privileged authorial voice (in this case the brand) is generally considered normal or universal, where Blackness—and the notions of hipness associated with it—must be defined against it (Barthes, 2012, p. 250; Ford, 2013, p. 163). He thus confirms that efforts to sustain white privilege depend on defining itself against markers of Blackness, even as it strives to appropriate the latter’s traits. James takes these ideas further, and as confirmed by the above analysis, she argues that “ ‘cultural appropriation’ is never merely the appropriation of culture, but also of gender, sexuality, class, and the like” (2011, para. 2). In advertising circles, Timothy Taylor (2012) builds on Thomas Frank’s (1997) discussion of “hipness” and the associative concept of “cool” to unpack how marketers have

“Pushin’ It”   517 continued since the mid-20th century to target specific audiences with youthful musical styles. More specifically, Taylor outlines how American advertising began to use hiphop’s musical and visual signifiers in the 1980s to target what marketers called “urban” youth—mainly those who identified as African American and Latino (2012, p. 191). Taylor extends work by Dan Charnas (2010) to further explain the degree to which the mainstream success of hip-hop artists increased the number of commercials featuring the genre: By the early 2000s, brands like Sprite, Pepsi, and McDonald’s had aimed countless marketing campaigns directly to urban demographics (Charnas,  2010, pp. 491–495; Taylor, 2012, p. 191). These brands and others therefore attempted to appropriate signifiers based on what marketers understood to be at the core of the genre’s hipness in the hopes that mapping these “marked” and “particular” sights and sounds onto their products would attract young Black and Latino, lower- to middle-class audiences. So, much like the other youthful genres that advertisers had borrowed for decades (rock, soul, pop, etc.), hip-hop has become another powerful tool for singling out specific groups of people—or as marketers would say, segmenting markets—to sell goods. It makes sense that Geico would attempt to use hip-hop to attract marginalized and especially African American audiences since their economic spend had increased to 9 cents out of every consumer dollar by 2014 and was projected to increase to $1.1 trillion (Wilson, Gutiérrez, & Chao, 2013, p. 172). But instead of following the trends of hip ideology once used specifically to target youth markets (including those for soft drinks and clothing), Geico’s auto insurance services, and therefore their ads, used the more modern tactic of humor to cater to a wider audience. Rather than using signifiers of young trendy (or male) hip-hop artists to attract youthful audiences or appropriating hip-hop’s signifiers to venerate “white hipness,” “Push It: It’s What You Do” uses Salt-N-Pepa to create a vague picture of the musical “past” and relies on well-worn humorous devices to cater to the insurance company’s larger target audience: most obviously those who might remember the crew in their prime (Generation Xers and possibly baby boomers); young millennial drivers; and really anyone who owns a car, has access to the internet, and finds the time and incentive to shop around for better rates. In striving to attract a wide range of ages and backgrounds, Geico’s marketers were therefore careful to hint at the sights and sounds of old-school hip-hop but also keen to neutralize any potentially off-putting or indecipherable content by removing its key samples and rapped flow. Moreover, to keep the spot’s references broad enough to appeal to a variety of demographic groups, the commercial redirected the track’s meanings and amplified the group’s awkward presence to align with the brand’s reputation for humorous advertising. The spot thus used familiar comedic archetypes—those of incongruity, disparagement, domestic servitude, and modern mammies—to support Salt-N-Pepa’s stripped-down track and make a joke for those who knew what the song was really about while still offering a laugh for those who did not. “Push It: It’s What You Do” therefore confirms that marketing works much like the examples of appropriation that James outlines in her work (2009): As a hegemonic ­discourse, advertising too reveals itself as an institution for privilege in its ability to select specific signifiers from marginalized groups and to discard others in a way that reaffirms its insider status in dominant culture. Returning to Hughes’s often-quoted

518   Love passage about humor’s contradictory power, his words help to illuminate the curious outcomes of Geico’s spot: Even though the joke was on them, Salt-N-Pepa and their fans recognized that the commercial’s content, while exaggerated, was so aptly familiar and ideologically truthful that they could not help but laugh.

No Laughing Matter Geico’s unusual branding strategies and enormous increase in ad spend have made the company a hot topic in the advertising, insurance, and financial worlds. Marketing experts in particular have been surprised by the way that its seemingly unending cash flow has permitted the brand to experiment with a variety of characters, narratives, and approaches—practices that break the fundamental rules of marketing (Pilcher, 2010). This is due in large part to its significant increase in television advertising spending in 2000 when it sought to bypass agents and sell policies directly to consumers (Hiltbrand, 2012). The unprecedented cash flow has not only increased the level of competition between insurers but also (as shown previously) significantly amplified the creative potential for its commercials. Indeed, in the years since Salt-N-Pepa’s cameo performance, Geico has employed other musical celebrities, including the rock band Europe and the R&B singing sensation Boyz II Men (Janoff, 2017; Stanley, 2015b). However, when considering Geico’s aggressive advertising approaches among the larger implications of its business model, it turns out that the real joke may be on its employees and its customers. While the company claims that cutting out agents saves money for consumers, it also conveniently cuts costs for the insurer by reducing the need for staffing at brick-and-mortar locations (Tzanetos,  2017). Equally troubling, experts at the Consumer Federation of America claim that the company’s ad expenditures actually hurt its customers as each dollar is factored back into its premiums and into the brand’s lobbying and other anti-consumer expenses (Tzanetos, 2017). Geico’s continual hikes in advertising spending has also forced its competitors to do the same, thereby driving up rates for everyone (Tzanetos, 2017). Finally, while Geico advertises low costs, it makes no promises about the quality of its services. In fact, although its consumer base has grown significantly in recent years, its auto claims satisfaction ranking for 2016 fell below the industry average (“Use of Digital Channels Increases,” 2016). In the end, it seems that only Geico may be laughing—all the way to the bank.

Closing Thoughts In her 2009 book on popular music in television advertising, Bethany Klein expressed concern over the fact that audiences would fail to police advertisers who go too far in using popular music for their aims. A little more than a decade later, it seems that

“Pushin’ It”   519 Klein’s fears have come to fruition as audiences rarely think twice about the fact that preexisting music has become a “ubiquitous” tool for countless arenas of marketing and promotion (Kassabian,  2013; Meier,  2017). Moreover, the fact that licensing revenue has become essential to artists’ survival has made it increasingly difficult to offer critiques without coming across as out of touch with the realities of the 21st-century music industry. Yet at the same time, the proliferation of social media and the heightened political tensions it evinces have created unprecedented momentum for national discussions about the roles that race, class, sexuality, and gender biases play in our everyday lives. In an era of #blacklivesmatter and #metoo, it has become nearly impossible not to consider how structures of power dictate how Americans see themselves and treat one another. As decades of interdisciplinary scholarship on the advertising industry confirm, a close look at the institution’s practices offers a revealing and sometimes sobering view of the ways that persistent dogmas continue to manifest themselves within commercial contexts— even when, as Joanne Gilbert argues, marginalized people are often strategic in their participation and “call attention to their subordinate status” by “commodify[ing]” their performances to “ensure that dominant culture literally pays” for their disparity (2004, p. xi). While we might read these efforts into Salt-N-Pepa’s agreement to participate in Geico’s commercial, this chapter demonstrates that there are often unsavory implications when advertising relies on marginalized musics and performers to deliver a branded punch line. The previous pages therefore seek to extend these conversations, not by critiquing musicians for partaking in co-branding ventures, but instead by offering further perspective on how these deals have the potential to perpetuate stereotypes and inequalities—inequalities that advertising can reinforce in its appropriation of the very cultural texts that work to liberate marginalized populations from oppressive norms.

Recommended Readings Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York, NY: Routledge. Kajikawa, L. (2015). Sounding race in rap songs. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

References 3 to See; Schedule your season—with our help. (2015, May 28). Palm Beach Post, p. 1D. Retrieved from LexisNexis Academic Database. Barthes, R. (2012). Mythologies (A. Lavers, Ed. & Trans.). New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Beard, F. K. (2008). Humor in the advertising business: Theory, practice, and wit. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Boardman, M. (2014, November 26). Salt-N-Pepa perform “Push It” for hilarious New Geico commercial: Watch. US Weekly. Retrieved from http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/ news/salt-n-pepa-perform-push-it-for-hilarious-new-geico-commercial-clip-20,142,611

520   Love Braaaksma, Z. (2015, June 18). GEICO Push It commercial 2014 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wuk8OKgeXk Brackett, D. (1992, October). James Brown’s “Superbad” and the double-voiced utterance. Popular Music, 11(3), 309–324. Bream, J. (2015, April 13). Zoo music sounds familiar. Star Tribune, p. 8E. Retrieved from LexisNexis Academic Database. Bream, J., Riemenschneider, C., Blain, T., & Robson, B. (2015, July 3). The big gigs. Star Tribune, p. 4E. Retrieved from LexisNexis Academic Database. Catapano, P. (2015, February 6). 10 Grammy Awards categories we’d like see. amNewYork. Retrieved from http://www.amny.com/entertainment/grammy-awards-categories-10-wed-like-to-see-1.9912863 Chareunsy, D. (2015, May 15). Whatta legacy: Salt-N-Pepa anniversary tour coming to CdA Casino. Spokesman Review, p. C3. Retrieved from LexisNexis Academic Database. Charnas, D. (2010). The big payback: The history of the business of hip hop. New York, NY: New American Library. Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York, NY: Routledge. Cullers, R. (2014, December 8). Salt-N-Pepa tell football players and pregnant ladies to push it for Geico: Push it real good. AdWeek. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/creativity/ salt-n-pepa-tell-football-players-and-pregnant-ladies-push-it-geico-161,823/ Doane, A. W. (2003). Rethinking whiteness studies. In A. W. Doane & E. Bonilla-Silva (Eds.), White out: The continuing significance of racism (pp. 3–20). London, UK: Routledge. Dyer, R. (1997). White. London, UK: Routledge. Elafros, A. (2007). Salt-N-Pepa. In M.  Hess (Ed.), Icons of hip hop: An encyclopedia of the movement, music, and culture (Vol. 1, pp. 198–200). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Elafros, A. (2013). Salt-N-Pepa. In C. H. Garrett (Ed.), The Grove dictionary of American music (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com.newman.richmond.edu:2048/view/10.1093/acref/9780195314281.001.0001/ acref-9,780,195,314,281-e-7309?rskey=WqhuNV&result=1 Ford, P. (2013). Dig: Sound and music in hip culture. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Frank, T. (1997). The conquest of cool: Business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Frisby, M. M. (2015, March 19). DJ Spinderella speaks. Philadelphia Inquirer, p. C02. Fu, L. C. L. (2014). Advertising and race: Global phenomenon, historical challenges, and visual strategies. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Garrett, C. H. (2015). “Pranksta rap”: Humor as difference in hip hop. In O. Bloechl, M. Lowe, & J.  Kallberg (Eds.), Rethinking difference in music scholarship (pp. 315–337). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gates, H. L., Jr. (1988). The signifying monkey: A theory of African-American literary criticism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Gilbert, J. R. (2004). Performing marginality: Humor, gender, and cultural critique. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Hess, M. (2007). Is hip hop dead? The past, present, and future of America’s most wanted music. Westport, CT: Praeger. Hiltbrand, D. (2012, February 16). So, what’s with all those car-insurance commercials on TV? Philadelphia Inquirer, p. A-11. Retrieved from LexisNexis Academic Database. Hooks, B. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.

“Pushin’ It”   521 Huey, S. (n.d.) Salt-N-Pepa: Hot, cool, and vicious. Allmusic.com. Retrieved from http://www .allmusic.com/album/hot-cool-amp-vicious-mw0000651492 Hughes, L. (1966). The book of negro humor. New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Company. James, R. (2009). In but not of, of but not in: On taste, hipness, and white embodiment. Contemporary Aesthetics, 2. Retrieved from http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/ pages/article.php?articleID=549 James, R. (2010). The conjectural body: Gender, race, and the philosophy of music. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. James, R. (2011). On intersectionality and cultural appropriation: The case of postmillennial Black hipness. Journal of Black Masculinity, 1(2). Retrieved from https://philpapers.org/rec/ JAMOIA Janoff, B. (2017, June 13). For Geico, Boyz II Men make nausea, sweaty eyelids sound good. MediaPost Communications. Retrieved from https://www.mediapost.com/publications/ article/302752/for-geico-boyz-ii-men-make-nausea-sweaty-eyelids.html Jhally, S. (2006). The spectacle of accumulation: Essays in culture, media, & politics. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing. Kajikawa, L. (2015). Sounding race in rap songs. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kassabian, A. (2013). Ubiquitous listening: Affect, attention and distributed subjectivity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Klein, B. (2009). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Love, J. K. (2019). Soda goes pop: Pepsi-Cola advertising and popular music. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. McClary, S. (1991). Feminine endings: Music, gender, and sexuality. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Meier, L.  M. (2017). Popular music as promotion: Music and branding in the digital age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Monson, I. (1995, Autumn). The problem with white hipness: Race, gender, and cultural conceptions in jazz historical discourse. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 48(3), 396–422. Pilcher, J. (2010). Geico’s crazy ad strategy breaks the rules. Financial Brand. Retrieved from https://thefinancialbrand.com/9663/geico-gecko-caveman-kash-tv-commercials/ “Push It, Salt-N-Pepa.” (n.d.). Who sampled: Exploring the DNA of music. Retrieved from http://www.whosampled.com/Salt-N-Pepa/Push-It/ Rose, T. (1994). Black noise: Rap music and Black culture in contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Rose, T. (2004). A style nobody can deal with. Politics, style and the postindustrial city in hip hop. In S.  Frith (Ed.), Popular music: Critical concepts in media and cultural studies (pp. 341–359). London, UK: Routledge. Salt-N-Pepa. (1987). Hot, cool, and vicious. Next Plateau Records Inc. (Remixed, 1988). SaltNPepaVEVO. (2009, October 6). Salt-N-Pepa—Push It. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCadcBR95oU Schudson, M. (1984). Advertising, the uneasy persuasion: Its dubious impact on American society. New York, NY: Basic Books. Stanley, T.  L. (2015a, February 23). Salt-N-Pepa finds a whole new generation of fans: ‘90s icons talk about how an ad put them back in the Zeitgeist. Adweek. Retrieved from http:// www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/salt-n-pepa-finds-whole-new-generationfans-163092/

522   Love Stanley, T. L. (2015b, October 29). The Geico effect: How the goofy ads led to a big payday for Europe and Salt-N-Pepa. Billboard. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/ news/6745969/geico-effect-ads-europe-salt-n-pepa-commercials-song-sales Stay in Tune: Musgraves tickets on sale Friday, Jack Hanna time change, Bad Religion coming to EP. (2015, February 6). El Paso Times. Retrieved from LexisNexis Academic Database. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tzanetos, G. (2017). A look at Geico’s marketing strategy. Investopedia. Retrieved from https:// www.investopedia.com/articles/insurance/020117/look-geicos-marketing-strategy .asp?lgl=af-top-textlink-in-content Use of digital channels increases, but technology can’t fully replace human connections during auto insurance claims process, J.D. Power finds. (2016, October 25). J.D. Power. Retrieved from http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2016-us-auto-claims-satisfaction-study Walker, N. A. (1988). A very serious thing: Women’s humor and American culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. White, F. E. (2001). Dark continent of our bodies: Black feminism & politics of respectability. Philadelphia: Temple Press. Williams, R. (2000). Advertising: The magic system. In P. Marris & S. Thornham (Eds.), Media studies: A reader (pp. 704–709). New York, NY: New York University Press. Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding advertisements: Ideology and meaning in advertisements. London, UK: Boyars. Wilson, C. C., II, Gutiérrez, F., & Chao, L. M. (2013). Racism, sexism and the media: Multicultural issues into the new communications age. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.

Music and Advertising Genres

chapter 26

“Once You H e a r This, Act Fast” Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements, 1950–1970 Reba A. Wissner

From the mid-1940s through the 1980s, the Cold War and the potential for nuclear attack were pervasive in American life. As part of its mission to educate the public and limit casualties in the event of the detonation of a nuclear bomb (hereafter referred to as the bomb), the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) established civil defense protocols to help people to preserve life and limb and resume normal life as quickly as possible after an attack. The FCDA, in cooperation with the Advertising Council (or Ad Council) and other agencies, featured short public service announcements (PSAs) as 15-minute films that educated the public about these protocols. The films were intended to sell the importance of civil defense to an American public that was mostly apathetic about whether or not they should attempt to survive a nuclear attack because the Cold War was a “seemingly permanent war for national survival” (Stole, 2012). Those that felt they could survive built bomb shelters. Those that did not ignored all government warnings, in print, or on the radio or television. While the images presented on the television screen portrayed the effects of the bomb, music conveyed this information in a more explicit, dramatic manner. This chapter focuses on the televised civil defense advertisements about potential nuclear bombing from 1950 to 1970 and how musical style played a role in portraying meaning in those ads. Given the gravity of the advertisements, the music of these ads is distinctly different from what was normally heard on television at the time, often featuring distinct moments of experimentalism and atonality along with musical representations of the United States and the Soviet Union through the use of American political songs in juxtaposition with distinctly Soviet-style music. This juxtaposition of musical styles was meant to imply the origin of the threat without directly naming it. Music also

Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements   525 depicts both the chaos after the detonation of the bomb and the sense of American unity that results from properly handling civil defense protocols as a community. These highly descriptive musical representations were used to persuade the public to pay attention to the important message on the screen, which underscored the destructive power of the bomb and relayed the significance of following civil defense protocols to save as many lives as possible.

Television and Early Advertising The ways that television dealt with the bomb were ultimately dictated by The Television Code of the National Association of Broadcasters, first released in 1952 and updated approximately biennially. The code’s preamble stated: Television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American ­public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the program materials chosen, for decency and decorum in production, and for propriety in advertising.  (National Association of Broadcasters, 1959, p. 1)

Television was considered an important tool for education, especially for Cold War issues. The code stipulates that “Commercial television provides a valuable means of augmenting the educational and cultural influences of schools, institutions of higher learning, the home, the church, museums, foundations, and other institutions devoted to education and culture” (National Association of Broadcasters, 1959, p. 2). Later, in the same section, it specifies that the television educational campaign should inform individuals such that they can easily make an informed adjustment to society (National Association of Broadcasters, 1959). This rule was followed in PSAs just as it was in fictional television shows. The code stipulated further that program materials had a fourfold responsibility: to “enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has towards his society” (National Association of Broadcasters, 1959, p. 2). Nowhere is this sense of social responsibility more crucial than in civil defense advertisements.  Until the 1980s, it was standard practice for television networks to prove that  they operated in the public’s interest when renewing their licenses. Often, they  did this by airing PSAs and educational films such as those for civil defense (Melillo, 2013). In the 1950s, the new medium of television adopted the advertising practices of its parent medium, radio, and extended these in the “magazine” concept of advertising, where sponsorship of entire programs was replaced by short ads by many different companies. Various guides were published in the 1950s and 1960s about how to effectively

526   Wissner use television in advertising. The majority of these guides were geared toward retailers, but many of the general approaches to using television—and music—were appropriate for civil defense advertising. Using television for advertising purposes was new and often people wrote about how to capitalize on it. One book, Successful Television and Radio Advertising, illustrated 10 reasons that television advertising worked better than print or radio advertising, noting especially that “television offers immediacy and timeliness” and that it “approximates face-to-face salesmanship, combining sight (sometimes color), sound, and motion” (Seehafer & Laemmar, 1959, p. 18). Another guide, this one by the National Retail Merchants Association, outlined nine reasons that retailers can use television for advertising, and notably, seven of these reasons could easily prove effective for civil defense advertising: television’s far reach and influence, creating a sense of immediacy, repetition, the power to demonstrate, the ability to combine with print advertisements to reinforce messages, timeliness, and rapid promotion of and changes to services (Sales Promotion Division of the National Retail Merchants Association, 1961). Most importantly, the guide illustrated the proper use of background music in advertisements, stating that it “should be used whenever feasible to augment [the] dramatic and sympathetic effect of [the] commercial” (Sales Promotion Division of the National Retail Merchants Association, 1961, p. 50).

Civil Defense Protocols and Propaganda The United States Civil Defense (National Security Resources Board,  1950) manual, known colloquially as the Blue Book due to the color of its cover, defined civil defense as “the protection of the home front by civilians acting under civil authority to minimize casualties and war damage and preserve maximum civilian support of the war effort” (p. 3). President Harry S. Truman’s signing of the Federal Civil Defense Act established a plan of action in case of a potential attack on American cities. According to Truman (1950) , the purpose of the act was to “afford[s] the basic framework for preparations to minimize the effects of an attack on our civilian population, and to deal with the immediate emergency conditions which such an attack would create.” This plan, he said, would serve as a blueprint for the protection of Americans’ lives and property (Truman, 1951). Part of this blueprint regarded the establishment of home shelter systems. While civil defense was not limited to nuclear attack (it also concentrated on preparedness for natural disasters), during the 1950s and 1960s, it focused mainly on the preparedness for nuclear attacks. Civil defense existed at the intersection between the military and the civilian, essentially functioning as a paramilitary program (McEnaney, 2000). There were also a large number of trade paperbacks, interviews, and periodical articles that discussed the necessity—and sometimes futility—of having a national civil

Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements   527 defense system in place. These documents also served as instructional tools for everything from how to build a fallout shelter to plans for dispersal to household sanitation within the shelter. To demonstrate their wide reach, in 1951, the FCDA ran a 12-part series about civil defense in 2,168 newspapers nationwide (McEnaney,  2000). Civil defense posters and pamphlets were distributed in post offices and through the mail, while handbooks for surviving disaster were often sold in drug stores and card shops. People were encouraged to volunteer for their local civil defense corps. Radio dramas, which at this point were slowly dying as a medium, also began to feature stories dedicated to civil defense, such as the radio serial This Is Civil Defense (1956), specifically the episode “Listen Carefully.” Some of these pamphlets were transformed into eponymous civil defense films that were broadcast on television as specials, similar to the televised atomic bomb tests in Nevada during the 1950s. One such film, Facts about Fallout (1955), even used illustrations from the original booklet. The crux of the film was to educate the public about what fallout was and how to protect one’s family from its harmful effects. At the time in which this film was released, very little was known about the effects of fallout, only that it could be dangerous. The film encouraged families to build underground fallout shelters in their backyards (later known as bunkers), surrounded by at least three feet of dirt, for optimal fallout protection. The goal of civil defense was to assure Americans that if the proper protocols were followed, a nuclear attack could be survivable. While the physical devastation of a nuclear attack could not be prevented, the FCDA purported that by heeding the appropriate warnings and being good citizens, the psychological and emotional damage could be minimized. As such, civil defense pamphlets were often void of any politics and focused on the joint efforts of all Americans in overcoming an attack (Jacobs, 2007). From this idea grew the FCDA’s slogan, “Alert today, Alive tomorrow,” which found its way onto almost all of their advertising, including that of the cartoon civil defense officer created by cartoonist Al Capp named Mr. Civil Defense. However, there was a fine line between educating and panicking those whom civil defense purported to protect, frequently crossing that line (Henriksen, 1997). Americans still had to face the reality that despite their best efforts, it was more than likely that, as atomic bomb testing has shown, no one in the immediate vicinity of a detonation would be spared, and if they were, they would be subject to radiation poisoning that may lead to eventual death (Matthews, 2011). Part of this attempt to publicize civil defense protocols occurred in consultation with the Ad Council, which advised the FCDA to continue the advertising aesthetics that they used during World War II to engage and interest the public in civil defense (Grossman, 2001). The Ad Council, originally called the War Advertising Council, was established during World War II both for propaganda purposes and to help with commerce during the war (Henthorn, 2006). The advertising formulas used during World War II were transferred to Cold War advertising for both propaganda and educational purposes. The Ad Council was a quasi-private company (it received some federal funds) that served as the intermediary between various media outlets and other organizations, so it was only natural that they would be asked to collaborate with the FCDA to help

528   Wissner publicize civil defense efforts. They worked with the FCDA in its publication efforts ­gratis and began their collaboration in March 1951 (Margolies, 2012; Van Meter, 2008). The FCDA and the Ad Council mass-marketed their Cold War plans to the entire nation through posters, pamphlets, television spots, PSAs, and short films (Grossman, 2001). The FCDA believed that these films were powerful educational tools not only for nuclear attack but also for biological or chemical attack (Butcher, 1951). The most famous civil defense collaboration between the two agencies was the “Duck and Cover” campaign that consisted of a film that was used in schools and generated a spin-off comic book (Roberts, 2013). Not only did the Ad Council aid in the FCDA’s advertising plan, but also they were responsible for their traveling civil defense exhibits, Alert America and Operation Alert (DeGroot, 2005; Grossman, 2001). The advertisements for Alert America touted the exhibit as an unforgettable experience and the descriptions were akin to talking about a live stage show or new film (Advertising Council, 1952). The Ad Council also had a specific view on the use of advertising for the public good. When they became involved in civil defense advertising, they released the following statement with their promotional materials: “The Advertising Council believes that the task of alerting Americans to the imperative need for Civil Defense and of informing them of the simple things they can do now to prepare for any eventuality is one of the most pressing and important services that can be performed today in the public interest” (Gerbic, 1953). They included a letter in the materials distributed to publishers for another set of their print civil defense ads, telling them about their new campaign. In the letter, Nelson Bond (1953) of the Ad Council’s Business Paper Advisory Committee remarked that this new campaign would be a collaboration with the FCDA and “is being conducted in the belief that the task of informing the American people and the American industry of the great need for adequate preparedness is one of the major public services that could be performed by advertising today.” Thus, the Ad Council and the FCDA both agreed that the use of media to provide information to Americans was important.

Children’s Public Service Announcements and the Bomb During the 1950s and 1960s, it was typical for schools to educate children about what to do during attack. There were a multitude of instructional manuals that were sent to schools, from elementary schools to colleges, to instruct teachers and administrators how to teach students about the bomb. Often this came in the form of civil defense films that were adapted from instructional booklets in an age-appropriate manner. Many school administrators saw themselves as intermediaries between children and their frightened parents. The films served not only to educate children about what to do but also for them to educate their own parents. Some adults even considered civil defense

Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements   529 drills as children’s games that were not to be taken seriously; these films persuaded children to tell their parents that civil defense was a serious matter. To be sure, the inculcation of children into atomic warfare consciousness through the use of civil defense instructional material served as thinly veiled propaganda and the use of civil defense films was the “primary conduit of ideological management” (Hope, 2001, p. 9). The government, therefore, believed that if children believed in the importance of civil defense, they would persuade their parents to do the same. The ultimate goal of these films was to prepare them for what to do if a Bomb was dropped, either with or without warning. The drill used most often taught was for students to hide under their school desks. The use of these films in the classroom appealed to children, since the children were likely drawn to the images and sounds present in them (Hope, 2001). These instructional films became part of the standard school curriculum and “were often misleading as they took on the appearance of objective information rather than propaganda” (Hope, 2001, p. 11). As such, they were targeted toward eliciting a very specific response from children, that of initial fear and preparedness (Hope, 2001). The hope was that the children would be afraid enough of the bomb that they would heed the government’s warnings and, eventually, persuade their parents to also listen and abide by them. It is no wonder, then, that this message continued to be spread through Saturday morning children’s television shows. After their initial showings in schools, these films would then move to television. However, compared to the number of films targeted toward adults, there were considerably fewer for children. In fact, there were only two children’s films: Atomic Alert (1951, which had two versions for children and one for adults) and Duck and Cover (1952). Other films that were used in the classroom were more focused on the power of the atom generally speaking; for example, Atomic City: The Magic of the Atom (1950) and A is for Atom (1953). Atomic Alert had three forms: the version produced originally for adults, a version toned down for elementary school students, and one for older students. The role of music in the children’s films is slightly different than those for the adults. Any music that is used is either a jingle, meant to attract the attention of younger viewers, or Americana style, similar to the music of Aaron Copland, that serves to glorify the United States. Unlike the adult version, there was no Soviet-style music in the children’s versions, as an understanding of the implications of using Soviet-style music would have likely been beyond the capability for even the older children and teenagers to grasp. In the elementary school version of Atomic Alert, the opening titles featured Coplandesque music replete with wide intervals and upper register flutes that gave the impression of the wide-open spaces, similar to the effect found in Appalachian Spring, for example. This music accompanied an extreme close-up of an eye with the atomic symbol in the middle, illustrating American atomic supremacy. There is no music in the film again until the end (10:29) when the opening music returns. We see the eye again, but this time no atomic whirl appears, only the seal of the production company. The most famous of the children’s films was Duck and Cover. The film was initially shown to the public as part of the Alert America convoy—a national civil defense

530   Wissner

Figure 26.1  “Duck and Cover” melody.

c­ ampaign and exposition—and then to children in schools to prepare for civil defense drills. The film was first broadcast on television on CBS on February 23, 1952 (at 6 p.m. EST) and was so important that on April 13, 1952, it won the first award for the nationwide classification for a children’s program (what they called the Children’s Out-ofSchool Listening category) from the 16th American Exhibition of Educational Radio-Television Programs of the Institute for Education by Radio-Television of Ohio State University. The most recognizable aspect of Duck and Cover is the title jingle called “Bert, the Turtle (The Duck and Cover Song)” composed by Leon Carr, Leo Corday, and Leo Langlois (see Figure 26.1) that told children that Bert the Turtle, the film’s star, would always be safe because he knew what to do: take cover in his shell. The message in the song, and subsequently the film itself, was that if children (and adults) followed Bert’s lead, they too would be safe. Musically, the “Duck and Cover” part of the song would be repeated at several points such that students would remember, at the very minimum, what they should do. The rhythm of the melody is even evoked in the film when the music is not present, so that the action is rhythmically evoked in the minds of the children. The film switched back and forth between animation and live action. The script outlined the ways in which the creators conceived of the role of the music in the film. The first musical instruction was that the music should be “suitable to the mood,” directing that there should be Mickey-Mousing with the animals marching across the screen; this became the title song (Mauer, 1952, p. 1). However, the only animal to appear aside from a monkey hanging from a tree is Bert, who forms the central character of the film. This initial animation was an afterthought, which allowed for a song to be used in the opening and closing of the film, and it was composed after Mauer wrote the script (Mauer, 2003). As with Atomic Alert, the title song bookended the film, but no other music appeared in it. Given that these films were also meant to be used in schools, this could be why the music was composed and used in the way that it was.

Civil Defense Advertising for Adults Some of the civil defense films were distributed to television stations in target cities that were considered particularly vulnerable to atomic attack, given their location or particular assets such as a government center or strategic factory (Butcher, 1951). These programs were touted as educational tools for instructing Americans on self-preservation with the ultimate goal of increasing survival should an enemy attack occur (Azine, 1951). In one letter, Nathan P. Colwell (1957) of the Radio Television Branch of the FCDA

Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements   531 wrote that the current campaign was “the most ambitious educational campaign ever conducted in the history of the world” meant to educate Americans about how to survive man-made or nuclear disasters (Colwell, 1957). Before the release of their civil defense advertisements, the Ad Council mounted two related campaigns: one on atomic energy and one on preventing Communist infiltration. Neither of these campaigns was particularly successful, both because of the limited actions that Americans could take and given that the Ad Council’s strategy was to focus on individual actions that the public could undertake to eliminate societal problems (Melillo, 2013). Civil defense advertising came in the form of short dramatic films that functioned as PSAs. These films are mostly dramatized stories that provide “a slice of life” and “show believable people in believable, everyday situations”; their “most essential ingredient is credibility” (Seehafer & Laemmar, 1959, p. 206). The use of music in these short films contributed to their credibility as “music in film is one of the most powerful illusory persuaders that what we are watching is, in fact, yet rather paradoxically, as real as possible” (Rogers, 2014, p. 3). Although there was a desire to reach the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time possible, these films were often shown only once, partially due to the labor agreement with the American Federation of Musicians, which dictated the pay scale and frequency of use of the material recorded by its musicians (Azine, 1951). Many of these restrictions were that the films could only be shown on television and only once every 60 days (Wadsworth, 1952). One campaign that accomplished the FCDA’s desire for a wide distribution was a series, entitled Survival, that was shown 392 times: at least once in every television-serviced city in the country except one unnamed locale (Wadsworth, 1952). The series was thus shown in each locale once every 60 days, so once every two months in New York City, once every two months in Chicago, etc. Often, the FCDA (and later the Office of Civil and Defense Management, or OCDM) would cosponsor these programs and the organization producing the film. For example, for a film dubbed “The OCDM-Red Cross Project,” the director of the OCDM’s Audio-Visual Office wrote in a letter that any admission fee or sponsor would be forbidden since the material presented “is stark, life-or-death information critically important to every American” (Linden, 1959). He stated the importance of having the films shown in all possible venues, including in schools, on television, in theaters, to civil groups, and to fraternal organizations (Linden, 1959).

Music and Adult-Oriented Public Service Announcements As the FCDA noted in their 1956 annual report, television and radio were the “most effective means of getting a message to a large number of people in the shortest possible time” (FCDA, 1956a). They indicated that one of the most successful ways to do this was “by

532   Wissner providing specially prepared spots, films, and programs to stations throughout the country to keep reminders of civil defense constantly before the public” (FCDA, 1956b, p. 57). The FCDA films of this era employed music that set up a dichotomy of Americansounding music versus music that sounds Soviet. The American music borrows heavily from the musical language of Aaron Copland with its wide-open intervals evoking the expansiveness of America. This music often plays in scenes situated in suburban neighborhoods, with upper woodwind (flutes) and violin timbres, highly syncopated rhythms, and rhythmically active motifs. The Soviet music, in contrast, often consists of brass and percussion, playing heavy marches in minor keys. These minor-mode melodies, with emphasis on the interval of a minor third, were a recognizable moniker for Russian music, specifically that of Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov (Maes, 2006). In the ads, both of these musical styles appear at their appropriate moments, implying either American know-how or Soviet sabotage. These films functioned as part propaganda, part PSA. Some of these films, such as The House in the Middle (1953), which was produced by the National Clean Up—Paint Up— Fix Up Bureau in cooperation with the FCDA, warned of the danger of keeping a cluttered home or a home that has a shabbily painted exterior because it could easily ignite after a Bomb blast, even in a nearby city. The film opens up with a color film of Operation Doorstep, an atomic bomb test that occurred at the Nevada Proving Ground in 1953 and tested the viability of houses under atomic attack situations. After the countdown, with an overlay of the title and production information over an image of the mushroom cloud, we hear dramatic orchestral music of the kind that we might hear underscoring a biblical epic film, brass heavy with march topics and parallel chords (Meyer, 2014). The use of music in this way is standard practice in documentaries given that it “focus[es] attention on one thing to the exclusion of others” (Rogers, 2014, p. 7). As the dramatic portion of the film opens, the camera pans over a town and the music changes to suburban Americana music in the style of Aaron Copland. The narrator draws the viewer’s attention to an American town, which from the air looks like any other and contains a series of rundown houses that could prove dangerous to the rest of the town in an atomic attack. Once we see the rundown house (1:08), the music begins to contain notes that seem out of place, moving into more chromaticism, intimating that this house does not fit in and could easily disturb the tranquility of the rest of the town. Like many newsreels, the music here depicts setting, in this case a local neighborhood, but also a duality of American versus Soviet geography (Lerner, 1997). The film returns to the Nevada Proving Ground where the test houses are depicted (1:52). Here, the tranquil oboe melody soon fades into more chaotic and minor-key music, with clarinet and timpani added as the bomb tests are described. Once the test concludes, the calm music returns. This pattern occurs repeatedly, first with the test on the fences (2:10), then with the miniature frame houses (3:18). When the house detonation is replayed in stop motion, Soviet-style march music in a minor key is played, complete with a melody in the Russian folk style played by the brass (4:37), implying that the Soviets are responsible for this destruction. It was not uncommon during the 1960s to use Soviet or Soviet-style music in television news documentaries that overtly depicted

Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements   533 the Russians, so the use of music to imply their responsibility for destruction would have been easily identifiable to television audiences (Roust, 2011). However, the Soviet-style music here quickly fades (4:54) into the Coplandesque style music once more, which shows that with the proper protocols followed, the enemy would not succeed. The narrator comments that the clean house survived, and his commentary is accompanied by the Americana-style music. However, when he remarks that the unkempt test house was completely obliterated (5:16), the Soviet music returns, albeit subtly. The facile way that the music moves in and out of the Soviet style sends a subliminal message about how easy it would be for the enemy to succeed but that American know-how could do the same just as easily. Throughout the rest of the film, the interval of a descending minor third becomes a motive for the unkempt houses in and out of the testing site. But, when the clean and freshly painted test house in the middle is shown as only narrowly charred on the outside, victory music that is evocative of World War II newsreels plays (9:33), illustrating that American know-how could prevent disaster despite the enemy’s best efforts. This music continues but morphs into American-style march music as the narrator tells the audience that American neighborhoods are banding together to organize clean-up, paint-up, and fix-up campaigns (10:20). Another one of these pro–civil defense films, Rescue Street (1954), featured images from the Civil Defense Rescue School in Olney, Maryland. This film was a collaboration between the FCDA and the R.E.O.  Motor Company (1954). The premise is that two neighbors in Detroit, the unnamed narrator and Charlie Hopkins, are always trying to upstage one another with lawnmowers, children, and new cars, until the narrator brings in a civil defense rescue truck called Calamity Jane that he was issued after going to civil defense training. He shows his neighbors the home movie that he took during training to illustrate the importance of civil defense. The film’s opening is underscored by a lively piccolo melody with triplets that are punctuated by wood blocks that sound decidedly American. This music accompanies a flashing light and the title card before moving on to the suburban neighborhood in which the film is set. When the narrator begins to show the neighbors, the tools inside of Calamity Jane, a Soviet-style orchestral scherzo, begins to play (4:49). The music continues as the narrator leads the neighbors into his house to show them his home movie, which we see, with the opening scene consisting of shots of smoldering ruins, which he says could be either Paris or Berlin (5:26). Although the narrator only uses the term enemy attack, the musical style used in this film gives the audience insight into who is responsible for the damage: the Soviet Union. The scherzo then becomes a waltz (5:40) and returns (6:39) as the film shows people in training trying to rescue those from the ruins. It begins in minor, but as they soon take a chainsaw to rescue the people inside a bombed-out building, the music modulates to major, and the piccolo that was so prominent in the opening music returns. The music now sounds less Soviet, representing that American know-how can avert complete disaster and save lives. This same pattern emerges as the narrator explains the challenges of removing a casualty on a stretcher from the roof of a building (9:08).

534   Wissner However, once Calamity Jane emerges and the volunteers move into a simulated disaster area, complete with smoldering rubble, the Soviet-style scherzo and waltz both resurface (8:40). At the end, as the neighbors sit around the living room and contemplate volunteering for the local civil defense agency, a rousing orchestral “My Country Tis of Thee” plays, featuring emphatic brass that gives the viewer a sense of jubilation and impending victory (13:22). In Seehafer and Laemmar’s (1959) advertising handbook, they note that every advertisement should stress one major point with other points that support it. In films such as this one, the music reinforces that main point; the use of “My Country Tis of Thee” in Rescue Street occurs at the moment when the neighbors discuss joining the civil defense corps, underscoring that that is the patriotic thing to do. This use of a popular patriotic song in a new arrangement, as Colin Roust (2010) illustrates in the news documentary, serves to aid in the program’s accessibility to viewers. It is also unsurprising given the musical kinship of these films with newsreels, which used brass bands to convey military topics. The use of the patriotic tune here is even more powerful given its recognizability (Deaville, 2014). Fallout and bomb shelters were often touted as serving double duty as shelter from both nuclear attack and natural disasters; this film illustrates this double function. There were various civil defense films that aired on television throughout the 1950s that depicted nuclear annihilation. One, Time of Disaster (FCDA, 1954), does not reveal the identity of the nation that had bombed the town being shown, but the music tells us all that we need to know, featuring a Soviet-style orchestral march from its very opening. The first words that the narrator utters as the camera pans around a destroyed city accompanied by the march are “The moment when disaster struck” (0:19). As the film moves forward and the images reveal other disasters such as a fire (0:40), a dam caving in (0:44), or a hurricane (0:55), the music no longer sounds decidedly Soviet, further demarcating natural disasters from those that are caused by the enemy. While having a musical referent to a specific country is not typical in these films, not mentioning the name of the country was. Doing so could be dangerous even though the identity of the enemy was common knowledge. Almost midway through the film (3:03), it delivers its main message: that civil defense can save lives and all Americans should volunteer for it. The music that underscores the images of both the town and the civil defense office is decidedly Americana in sound. However, the main section of the film (3:49) proves confusing. There is an image of a swirling tornado, but the people are shown running into air raid shelters and school­ child­ren are ducking and covering under their desks, just as they were shown to do in the event of an atomic bomb attack. The music is decidedly heroic in the Copland Americana style as the civil defense volunteers try to save those after the disaster and we see that the disaster inflicted on the town at the opening may just have been from a tornado and not a Bomb. The music illustrates that by following the proper protocols, Americans can survive anything. Given the times and the music, it is easy to equate complete destruction with the bomb and not natural disasters. However, the issue of wartime disaster is soon addressed (7:39) when we hear electronic music, culminating in the explosion of a Bomb punctuated by a cymbal crash. Once the bomb explodes, the orchestral music returns.

Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements   535 The opening scenes return as a bookend to the episode, complete with Soviet-style music (8:27), reminding the audience of the initial premise of the episode. Another goal of these films was to convince American audiences that other countries were prepared for civil defense and America should follow suit. In The New Family in Town (FCDA, 1956b), a family from England named the Trombleys have just moved to a town called Pleasant Valley, 12 miles away from an unnamed city. They convince others in their new neighborhood to build bomb shelters by telling them that the British government has prepared their citizens to know what to do in the event of attack and that Americans would be wise to do the same. The film’s opening credit sequence contains jaunty, syncopated music that features an upper-register bassoon and English horn melody. As the film begins (0:32), the music has a calm, suburban sound using simple, lyrical melodies, sounding similar to the classical music of Leonard Bernstein, featuring the flute, and the focus is on the neighbors’ sense of community. Soon, the new family arrives and there is widespread suspicion of them, noting that “they are foreigners from the looks of them.” The music, complete with downward trombone glissandi, mocks the new arrivals and shows that given their image, they do not fit in with the rest of the neighborhood (1:42). This widespread paranoia of foreign nationals was typical of the era and many films and television shows exploited this topic. The music continues to mock the family with flute fluttering and violin and trombone glissandi as the narrator notes that they kept to themselves and felt they were stuck up. The neighbors’ suspicion only intensifies as Mr. Trombley is constantly seen digging in his backyard. One of the neighbors finally confronts Mr. Trombley, and Trombley tells the neighbor that he is building a bomb shelter. Mr. Trombley convinces the neighbors to obtain plans from their local civil defense directors to build their own shelters. In a later scene when all of the neighbors are building their own shelters, the mocking tone of the music ceases, replaced by friendly, quick string music (7:56). The music for the film represents a simple, suburban community amplified by a rapid, fluttering flute melody that returns from the opening of the film at the end (11:37). Finally, the neighbors decide that the Trombleys “are perfectly swell people, despite their different accent.” Bomb-testing documentaries were not the only things to appear on the television screen during this period. Dramatized civil defense drills like the Alert America convoy and Operation Alert were popular during the Cold War, both as part of real-life dramatized drills and on television. In 1957, CBS presented a half-hour-long televised dramatized evacuation of Portland, Oregon, called A Day Called X to show the difference that proper civil defense protocols could make in the survival of a major city (FCDA, 1957). In it, the music becomes more frantic as the presentation continues, reaching fever pitch when they anticipate that the enemy bombers are overhead. This occurs after a long silence during which the camera pans to all of the men’s faces in the bunker before the closing narration. As with other televised dramatized attacks, a screen overlay made it very clear at several points that there was no real attack taking place. The opening, accompanied by Glenn Ford’s narration, provides an aerial view of the city of Portland, Oregon, with a calm, suburban-style melody played by violins, which soon switches to flute and harp.

536   Wissner Suburban music contains a lyrical melody in the upper winds that is primarily stepwise. The scene shifts to the inside of a house (2:05) in which we see a typical suburban home (read: white, middle-class family) with a mother and her children, accompanied by diegetic jazz. Then, after we see a mother giving birth in the hospital, the scene shifts to the inside of a church where we hear the congregation singing diegetic hymns (3:42). The scene then moves to scenes depicting men at work in industry, with music that sounds as if it is straight out of an epic film with sweeping melodic lines and composed mainly of brass and strings (3:55). The film finally approaches the moment in which an enemy attack is imminent. When the mayor announces that they will all assemble at the emergency operation center (6:42), determined march music plays very briefly. The camera pans inside the school as the air raid siren sounds and we see close-ups of the faces of the children and teacher (8:17) and hear four minor chords played by brass that repeats twice followed by the pulsation of a timpani and a diminished chord. Soon, we see people calmly moving around the city to various types of shelters and here, the music, though colored by a tinge of uneasiness through string pizzicatos and low wind melodies that increasingly become chromatic and contain horn ostinati, mirrors the calmness of the citizens (9:18). Then, we hear music evocative of the victory music played in World War II newsreels (10:31) as people continue to follow the civil defense protocols. The use of this style of music is especially common in documentaries because they provide an “impression of authenticity” through the use of historical referents (Rogers, 2014, p. 3). However, each time there is a challenge, such as traffic bottlenecks (15:21), the music once again becomes uneasy. But each time these challenges are overcome through American action, we hear triumphant American march music.

Conclusions As the Cold War approached its midpoint, the mushroom cloud and the bomb were used on television to represent danger in the context of another danger. The most famous example of this is the “Daisy Girl” commercial (1964) that the Lyndon B. Johnson campaign used to alert the public of Barry Goldwater’s predilection for aggressive military action, not precluding starting a nuclear war. This commercial did not use any music but in this case, the visual and sound effects of the mushroom cloud conveyed the message successfully without using any music. There was one notable commercial that did use music: a 1969 PSA created by the Ad Council featuring Smokey the Bear called “Bomb in the Forest” (Advertising Council, 1969). It used historical film footage of an atomic bomb detonation to illustrate that forest fires could be as damaging as the bomb, but its goal was not to educate the public about the dangers of the bomb. Rather, it aimed to prevent forest fires. The commercial’s music features gong crashes and a prepared piano playing a minor third with reverberation as an image of the bomb detonates repeatedly on a loop. Each time the

Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements   537 bomb detonates, the first note of the descending minor third on the piano plays sforzando, simultaneous with the gong crash, and the second note is then played softly. Eventually, this pattern is repeated with the image of a forest fire. After the first time that this melody is associated with forest fires, the camera pans and we hear the gong crash and the first note of the descending minor third played with the same rhythm, but without the resolution. Although not technically a civil defense advertisement, the bomb here is musically depicted as a great danger, even more so than the forest fire. Cold War PSAs and documentaries, as Oline Eaton illustrates, “encouraged a state of perpetual preparedness, a constant awareness of nuclear threat bound to result in an elevated state of fear and anxiety” (Eaton, 2017, p. 69). We know that people’s perceptions change after watching a television show, fictional or otherwise (Lichter, Lichter, & Rothman, 1994). As we have seen, many of these films and spots were originally aired in theaters, public spaces, and/or schools but eventually aired on television to obtain a wider reach. Some only saw the film when it was broadcast on television and not during its original run. The role that music plays in adult PSAs and films served as thinly veiled messages about American power and Soviet danger. The use of specific musical styles at critical points in these films highlights the visual and the message through the aural. The contrast of sound between American and non-American and calm and anxious reflected the juxtaposition of emotions that were all too common in the United States during the Cold War. Thus, although some of the messages in these films, documentaries, and PSAs were thinly veiled, the music was not, revealing a message that could not be verbally acknowledged onscreen and therefore functioned as a tool of propaganda. The Soviet versus American music trope, therefore, was common in these civil defense films. It is also unsurprising that the American sound often borrows from the victory music of postwar newsreels that depict American triumph. For the children’s PSAs and documentaries, the music is lighthearted and only appears at the beginning and the end of the film. The reason for this is twofold: first, to not frighten the children, but second, so that the children would not be distracted from the important message by the music, especially that with text. A careful examination of the music in these PSAs allows us to obtain a glimpse into the ways in which nuclear anxiety sounded as well as looked.

Recommended Readings Brown, J. (1988). “A is for atom, B is for bomb”: Civil defense in American public education 1948–1963. Journal of American History, 75(1), 68–90. Darowski, J.  J. (2016). Propaganda and the atomic age: The adventures of television. In L. Maguire (Ed.), The Cold War and entertainment television (pp. 167–179). Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Eaton, O. (2017). “We must be ready every day, all the time”: Mid-twentieth-century nuclear anxiety and fear of death in American life. Journal of American Culture, 40(1), 66–75. Scheibach, M. (2003). Atomic narratives and American youth: Coming of age with the atom, 1945–1955. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co.

538   Wissner

References Advertising Council. (1952). Alert America Promotional Materials. Letter to newspapers. The Advertising Council Archives, File number 1302207_132. University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, Urbana, IL. Advertising Council. (1969). Bomb in the forest [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=0YWUpYiBmN8 Azine, G. (1951, August 7). Letter to George Heller. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Series II, Box 26, Folder 28. New York University, Wagner Labor Archives, New York, NY. Bond, N. (1953, December). Letter to publishers. The Advertising Council Archives, File number 1302207_011. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Butcher, J. (1951, August 13). Letter to George Heller. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Series II, Box 26, Folder 28. New York University Wagner Labor Archives, New York, NY. Colwell, N. P. (1957, March 21). Letter to Donald F. Conway. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Series II, Box 26, Folder 28. New York University, Wagner Labor Archives, New York, NY. Deaville, J. (2014). Sounding the world: The role of music and sound in early “talking” newsreels. In H. Rogers (Ed.), Music and sound in documentary film (pp. 41–55). New York, NY: Routledge. DeGroot, G. (2005). The bomb: A life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Eaton, O. (2017). We must be ready every day, all the time: Mid-twentieth-century nuclear anxiety and fear of American life. Journal of American Culture, 40(1), 66–75. Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA). (1951). Atomic alert—Elementary version [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4k2skbJDm8 Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA). (1954). Time of disaster [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4frGCoTuPLw Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA). (1956a). Alert today—Alive tomorrow [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3ZnNsVyWMA&t=1s Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA). (1956b). New family in town [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZbraaqBwtc&t=2s Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA). (1957). A day called X [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueEl7A7KaHA&t=947s Federal Civil Defense Administration. (1965). Your family survival plan [Video file]. Rural civil defense spots. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y18jtNyXJcs Federal Civil Defense Administration and R.E.O. Motor Company. (1954). Rescue street [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zprct2QmRgw Gerbic, E. G. (1953). Letter to publishers. The Advertising Council, File number 1302207_012. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. Grossman, A. (2001). Neither dead nor read: Civilian defense and American political development during the early Cold War. New York, NY, and London, UK: Routledge. Henthorn, C.  L. (2006). From submarines to suburbs: Selling a better America, 1939–1959. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Henriksen, M.  A. (1997). Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and culture in the atomic age. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

Music in Civil Defense Television Advertisements   539 Hope, C. (2001). Cold War educational propaganda and instructional films, 1945–1965 (MA thesis, Virginia Commonwealth University). Jacobs, R. (2007). “There are no civilians: We are all at war”: Nuclear war shelter and survival narratives during the early Cold War. Journal of American Culture, 30(4), 401–416. Lerner, N. (1997). The classical documentary score in American films of persuasion: Contexts and case studies, 1936–1945 (PhD dissertation, Duke University). Lichter, S. R., Lichter, L. S., & Rothman, S. (1994). Prime time: How TV portrays American culture. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. Linden, N.  S. (1959, August 20). Letter to Donald  F.  Conaway. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Series II, Box 26, Folder 28. New York University, Wagner Labor Archives, New York, NY. Maes, F. (2006). A history of Russian music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (A. J. Pomerans & E. Pomerans, Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Margolies, D. (Ed.). (2012). A companion to Harry S. Truman. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Matthews, M. A. (2011). Duck and cover: Civil defense images in film and television from the Cold War to 9/11. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co. Mauer, R.  J. (1952). Civil defense for schools (Duck and cover). Script. Archer Productions Incorporated. Retrieved from https://www.scribd.com/document/45799687/Duck-andCover-Script Mauer, R. J. (2003). Ray J. Mauer Conelrad interview, March 16, 2003. Retrieved from http:// www.conelrad.com/duckandcover/cover.php?turtle=02a McEnaney, L. (2000). Civil defense begins at home: Militarization meets everyday life in the fifties. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Melillo, W. (2013). How McGruff and the Crying Indian changed America: A history of iconic Ad Council campaigns. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Meyer, S. (2014). Epic sound: Music in postwar Hollywood biblical films. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. National Association of Broadcasters. (1959). The television code of the National Association of Broadcasters (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.tvsignoffs .com/1959_NAB_Television_Code.pdf National Clean Up—Paint Up—Fix Up Bureau. (1954). The house in the middle [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGJcwaUWNZg&t=69s National Security Resources Board. (1950). United States civil defense. Washington, D.C.: National Security Resources Board. Roberts, P. S. (2013). Disasters and the state: How politicians, bureaucrats, and the public prepare for the unexpected. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rogers, H. (2014). Introduction: Music, sound and the nonfiction aesthetic. In H.  Rogers (Ed.), Music and sound in documentary film (pp. 1–19). New York, NY: Routledge. Roust, C. (2010). Music in the golden age of television news documentaries at NBC. In J.  Deaville (Ed.), Music in television: Channels of listening (pp. 103–116). New York, NY: Routledge. Sales Promotion Division of the National Retail Merchants Association in Cooperation with TvB, Television Bureau of Advertising. (1961). How to use television successfully. New York, NY: National Retail Merchants Association. Seehafer, G. F., & Laemmar, J. W. (1959). Successful television and radio advertising. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

540   Wissner Stole, I.  L. (2012). Advertising at war: Business, consumers, and government in the 1940s. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Truman, H. S. (1950, January 1). Executive Order 10186—Establishing the Federal Civil Defense Administration in the Office for Emergency Management of the Executive Office of the President. Retrieved from http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=78352 Truman, H.  S. (1951, January 12). Statement by the president upon signing the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950. Retrieved from http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=13777 Van Meter, J.  R. (2008). Tippercanoe and Tyler too: Famous slogans and catchphrases in American history. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wadsworth, J. J. (1952, September 5). Letter from J. J. Wadsworth to George Heller. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Series II, Box 26, Folder 28. New York University Wagner Labor Archives, New York, NY.

chapter 27

“Ev ery thi ng Is Not Aw esom e” Playful Adaptation and the Aurality of Ecoconscious Media in Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” Campaign1 Kate Galloway

In July 2014, Greenpeace released a new video installment of their “Save the Arctic” campaign, the YouTube short “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome,” by the Londonbased creative agency Don’t Panic. The video is a protest against the fossil fuel industry’s presence in the Arctic and meant to pressure LEGO, the world’s largest toymaker, to end their copromotion contract with Royal Dutch Shell. Since the 1960s, the toy manufacturing company has had a multi-million-dollar marketing contract with Shell, manufacturing and selling LEGO products branded with the Shell logo and its colors. LEGO has also produced figures that represent the oil industry, such as oil tankers, uniformed oil rig workers and truck drivers, gas stations, and sponsored race cars. These products were sold at Shell gas stations and in toy stores.1 “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” is one of many examples of Greenpeace’s use of audiovisual communication strategies to make the public aware of environmental issues and brand the organization as a leader in the environmental movement. Greenpeace uses these promotional films as a part of their ongoing effort to promote environmental stewardship and advertise the mission and achievements of the international nongovernmental organization (NGO) in their efforts to mitigate the varied forms of environmental violence. “LEGO: Everything Is Not Awesome” reinterprets Tegan and Sara/The Lonely Island’s exuberant anthem “Everything Is Awesome,” 1  Thank you to Josh Davidoff who first shared this video with me and our initial discussion of the YouTube short as a form of green advertising and environmental communication in my seminar “Music, Sound, and the Environment in the Anthropocene” at Wesleyan University.

542   Galloway ­ roduced by Mark Mothersbaugh for The LEGO Movie (2014), as a melancholy lament, p using musical parody to pressure the LEGO corporation to end its marketing link with Royal Dutch Shell in response to Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic. The 1-minute-and45-second video “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” features an Arctic landscape set design made up entirely of LEGO blocks, minifigures,2 and accessories, with cameo appearances by characters from The LEGO Movie, and depicts the slow violence of an oil spill decimating the Arctic ecosystem. This chapter sketches out and explores the audiovisual choices and processes of musical adaptation used by Greenpeace in their “Save the Arctic” campaign to communicate environmental risk and progressive environmental policy. Although scholars have attended to the visual rhetoric of Greenpeace’s advertising campaign to save the Arctic and mitigate climate change (DeLuca, 2009), there is less scholarship that addresses the  function of sound design and music in environmentalist advertising (Stimeling,  2014,  2015). Greenpeace strategically uses music to mobilize various discourses related to environmental degradation and resource management to create meaning—for the campaign, for the viewers, and for environmental activism. In the first part of this chapter, I give a detailed overview of the development of the “Save the Arctic” campaign and a selection of the television/online campaign videos. The next two parts of the chapter focus on the one campaign video that went viral and sparked concerted global activism on- and offline, “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome,” and the tropes of meaning at play in this “Save the Arctic” promotion. First, I address the representational politics of covering “Everything Is Awesome” in a climate change campaign advertisement. I suggest that the transmedia narrative3 adaptation of LEGO and the audiovisual choices made in the filming of this advertisement circulate a network of meanings around the song and LEGO. In the final section of the chapter, I explore the function of play and playfulness in the ecological politics of the campaign in relation to the audiovisual decisions made by Greenpeace and Don’t Panic in “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” to promote the “Save the Arctic” campaign in their targeted activism against LEGO and Shell. 2  Minifigures were first produced by LEGO in 1978. They are small plastic figurines with minimal articulated joint movement, many of which are yellow and other skin tones. While many minifigures are unnamed and given an occupation or role (such as doctor, cowboy, astronaut, and sailor) to fit within a themed boxset, many minifigures are modeled after characters from popular culture (such as Batman, the Joker, Princess Elsa from Frozen, Spiderman, and the Hulk). Minifigures are customizable. The player can mix and match different parts to create a new figure for their own imaginative play, and LEGO stores provide minifigure customization stations where you can create and purchase minifigures that resemble you, your family, and friends. 3  Transmedia narrative is the technique of telling a single story or experience across multiple formats using a variety of media technologies (e.g., film, video games, commercials, YouTube videos, Twitter, print advertising). In the case of Greenpeace this means conveying their “Save the Arctic” campaign message across print advertising, online campaign posts, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and short films distributed using YouTube. LEGO is also a transmedia phenomenon. It’s a brand experienced across various technologies (toy playsets, films, online fan videos, photography of sculptures crafted from LEGO, and Greenpeace viral online campaign materials).

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   543

LEGO Landscapes and the “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” Music Video The campaign film opens with a tight close-up shot of a mass of stacked and interlocking white LEGO bricks of different shapes and sizes. The eye cannot immediately discern what this built structure is. Upon closer examination as the camera tilts upward, it is revealed that this assemblage of white bricks is constructed to look like a floating ice mass off the shoreline of the Arctic Ocean. Accompanied by a slow piano introduction, the camera shifts between still scenes constructed from LEGO blocks: polar bears in search of sustenance, a pack of husky dogs looking out at the horizon, an Inuit man joyfully ice fishing, a group of hockey players playing a pick-up game on a homemade ice rink, a seagull perched atop a small iceberg waiting to spot a fish at the surface of the ocean, and children kicking a soccer ball back and forth to each other. The scene is an intricate Arctic ecology built entirely using LEGO pieces. At 18 seconds into the film, the lyrics of “Everything Is Awesome” first enter, and the viewer recognizes the synchronicity between the visual and aural citations made in this parody video. Sophie Blackburn sings the opening line of the song, “Everything is awesome,” as we first see the complex of skidoos, trucks, bulldozers, a pneumatic drill, oil rigs, and a laughing Shell employee standing next to his oil tanker truck marked with the Shell logo that all infringe on this Arctic ecosystem. Suddenly, the camera movement shifts from panoramic shots of the landscape to a vertical pedestal shot revealing another Shell logo. This time it’s printed on a flag declaring ownership of the oil rig and the resource extracted using it. The camera is angled down to reveal the base of the offshore fixed-platform oil rig anchored directly into the seabed. A Shell oil executive smokes his cigar in defiance, surveying his enterprise as it scars the landscape (see Figure 27.1a). It is at this point that the scene changes, and the solemn tone of the instrumentation accompanying the song’s original lyrics foreshadows that while everything might seem awesome, it will not be for long. The camera finishes its gradual vertical tilt down from the flag at the top of the offshore oil rig to the surface of the ocean. As the words “when you’re living on a dream” are sung, oil bubbles up from beneath the seabed on the word “dream,” spreading without resistance into the ocean and toward the shore (see Figure 27.1a). From the 0:34 mark until the conclusion of the film, viewers watch as the oil slowly subsumes the entire Arctic. On the words “Everything is better when we stick together,” oil spreads across the surface of the ocean toward the shoreline, with dead fish floating to the surface. The first human victim is the Inuit man ice fishing from earlier in the film, his joyful smile still painted across his face as the oil spill surrounds and submerges him. The oil spill does not discriminate as it takes out LEGO Jon Snow and Ygritte from Game of Thrones, a child clutching his teddy bear, the pack of Husky dogs, the polar bears, a brown bear

544   Galloway cub, a family and their baby, and Harry Potter’s owl, Hedwig. At the end of the verse “We’re the same unlike you, you’re like me we’re all working in harmony,” the camera rests on Emmett and Wyldstyle, a direct minifigure intertextual quotation from The LEGO Movie. Even our hero and heroine are no match for this environmental disaster. To combat future environmental harm, we must collectively act rather than relying on individual eco-heroes and -heroines to save us from ourselves. The oil continues to cover every surface and fill every crevice of this LEGO Arctic Oil Spill Playset, including Santa Claus and his elves. It’s during these scenes depicting the slow violence of the oil spill that the viewer sees that some of the minifigure faces were remixed for the purpose of the film. LEGO does not produce toys that perform the appropriate emotions that correspond with experiences of environmental duress. Their once joyful faces are replaced with terror (a terrified young family with their child), fear (an extreme close-up of a crying boy clutching his teddy bear), and sadness (the head of a young man listening to music as the oil fully submerges him). The last images the viewer is left with as the song concludes cement the destruction of the Arctic by the fossil fuel industry: A polar bear climbs to the summit to escape the oil spill only to encounter the survey flag Shell has thrust into the ice to declare ownership over this ecosystem, the last piece of white LEGO (representing an Arctic ice floe) clearly branded with the company’s logo is covered in oil, and Shell’s flag is fully unfurled as the only thing left untouched by the oil (see Figure 27.1b). From the 1:28 mark until the film concludes, the message “Shell Is Polluting Our Kids’ Imaginations” is printed on the screen, followed by the text, “TELL LEGO to End Its Partnership WITH SHELL.” Following these statements is the website address to obtain further information, “LEGOBLOCKSHELL.ORG,” superimposed over an image of the oil-slicked ocean and a silent soundtrack that has faded out. It is not until the spot ends that Greenpeace’s logo appears in very small letters at the very bottom of the screen when compared to the rest of the rest of the onscreen text. This advertisement, among others, was released in response to public protest and political controversy over the environmental and social risks associated with the oil industry. “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” is not a “Brickfilm,” a term used by fans of the popular YouTube amateur filmmaking genre to refer to LEGO animated videos that employ do-it-yourself filmmaking aesthetics and use stop-motion animation of scenes, characters, and narratives crafted from LEGO bricks. “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” is also not the first time that LEGO has been used in a professional filmmaking capacity. Inspired by the visual aesthetics and style of Brickfilms, The LEGO Movie is a remixed homage to the genre and the film was celebrated by the online Brickfilm community (Einwächter & Simon, 2017). The LEGO Movie tells the story of Emmett (Chris Pratt), an ordinary, law-abiding, average team-player LEGO minifigure who is mistakenly identified by Lucy “Wyldstyle” (Elizabeth Banks) as The Special, an extraordinary person who is destined to help her and her fellow Master Builders in their quest to take down President Business. He is tasked with saving the miniature LEGO world from the evil President Business and his henchmen who are threatening to glue the LEGO universe, a world populated by anthropomorphic minifigures, into a permanent motionless state.

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   545

Figure 27.1a  Scenes from the opening of “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” before the oil spill.

546   Galloway

Figure 27.1b  Scenes from “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” during the oil spill.

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   547 Even before the release of The LEGO Movie, LEGO was used in professional transmedia filmmaking. In 2002, The band The White Stripes released their LEGO stop motion music video directed by Michel Gondry for their single “Fell in Love with a Girl” from the American garage rock band’s third studio album White Blood Cells.4 In their original diorama build for the Greenpeace film, Don’t Panic wanted to take advantage of LEGO’s intertextuality and cultural capital, and included even more LEGO and intertextual citations from The LEGO Movie and LEGO Playsets based on popular culture. However, they scaled back these references and featured more plastic wildlife that would fall victim to their oil spill because these images of animals (minifigures) drowning in oil and melting glacial ice seemed more symbolic of climate change campaign imagery.

Green Advertising and the “Save the Arctic” Campaign Founded in 1971 by the environmental activists Irving and Dorothy Stowe, Greenpeace is an NGO dedicated to an array of international environmental issue areas, including climate and energy, oceans, forests, toxins, genetically modified organisms, and sustainable agriculture (DeLuca,  2009, p. 264). With offices located across the globe, Greenpeace is known for its visible events and campaigns that circulate in prominent places in the public eye and take full advantage of the circulatory speed, breadth, and impact of 21st-century new media and internet technology. In 2013, Greenpeace launched the “Save the Arctic” campaign to draw attention to the disastrous impact of industry in the Arctic, including oil drilling, seismic blasting, industrial fishing, and climate change, arguing for the permanent designation of the Arctic region as a protected sanctuary and Arctic-Environmental Economics Zone similar to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. The Arctic is a transnational place and unique ecosystem that includes the Arctic Ocean and adjacent water bodies and sections of the United States (Alaska), Canada (Yukon Territory, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Northern Quebec), Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Greenpeace recognized that a transnational advertising campaign that circulates on the internet is necessary to confront an issue that threatens all life on Earth. It is a place that most of the globe’s human population will never travel 4  LEGO continues to be a medium that encourages playful social commentary. In June 2016, the Tumblr page LEGO Grad Student was launched followed by LEGO Grad Student social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook. The creator of LEGO Grad Student uses LEGO and gallows humor, parody, and dark comedy to help a community of graduate students and junior scholars collectively cope with the struggles and obstacles of academic life. With LEGO and brief image captions, LEGO Grad Student crafts miniature dioramas of real-life graduate student experiences to connect with a wider community via social media and let them know that they are not alone.

548   Galloway to, and yet humanity’s environmental policies and dependency on fossil fuels shape, reshape, and degrade this remote, out-of-sight, and easily forgotten region of the world. Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign calls on the public to “Be Part of the Generation That Ends Oil” (@Greenpeace, 2016), a slogan the organization circulated via their official Twitter account. What started as a petition to gather over a million supporters transformed into a complex and layered multimedia campaign that will continue as long as necessary to end the extraction of oil in the Arctic and until energy alternatives are adopted to end our reliance on fossil fuels. The “Save the Arctic” campaign is now an ongoing initiative and one of Greenpeace’s highest profile activist efforts in recent years. The “Save the Arctic” campaign illustrates that the Arctic is fragile, and by mitigating society’s dependence on fossil fuels (like oil), the environmental damage caused by oil drilling and the slow icecap melt from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels can be abated. The campaign consists of online educational material, digital posters and flyers for sharing and circulating on social media and through email, and ongoing press releases to advertise when tangible progress has been made through their activism. Greenpeace has also crafted a series of videos that combine sound and image to powerfully communicate the politics of the “Save the Arctic” campaign and highlight the plight of the Arctic. Words, images, and sounds influence how the public views and responds to issues like climate change and the degradative effects of the fossil fuel industry. Greenpeace is renowned for its use of strategic and high-profile advertising campaigns and activist events, which participants can experience either online or in person. Environmental communication is the study and practice of individuals, institutions, societies, and cultures creating, using, and circulating information about the environment and human interactions with the environment using a variety of media—visual media such as literature and other print media, visual art, and comic art; sound media such as music and sound art; and multimedia such as films and commercials. The visuals of green advertising campaigns that target the fossil fuel industry, including those of Greenpeace and National Geographic, are stunning, appeal to the emotions of their audience, and promote conversation and debate (Doyle, 2007; Remillard, 2011). However, these promotional materials advance environmental causes not just through visuals, but through the ways the visuals operate alongside sound and music to convince viewers to take action. As Travis Stimeling (2015) argues in his work on music in green advertising in both opposition to and support of the coal industry, music and musicalized rhetoric have played a central role in connecting the local community in Appalachia to the social, economic, and environmental impact of coal extraction on the region and how their choice to either support this energy industry or instead lobby for clean energy alternatives will shape the environmental and economic futures of their friends, family, and landscape and the nonhuman environment. He calls for “a deeper interrogation of the ethical considerations that should arise when music is used in television advertisements that promote the green alleged credentials of known environmental polluters” (p. 189). Similarly, the musical choices made by environmental organizations like Greenpeace are calculated, motivated by a desire to foreground the contradictory environmental agendas of global brands like LEGO.

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   549 Some companies try to increase their profits by positioning themselves as e­ nvironmentally progressive and adopting green business practices, aligning their company with local and global environmental organizations and causes, and exaggerating their ecoconscious credentials (Frazier,  2008; Laufer,  2003; Remillard,  2011; Stimeling,  2014,  2015). This practice is referred to as “greenwashing” by Delmas and Burbano (2011) , who define it as “the intersection of two firm behaviors: poor environmental performance and positive communication about environmental performance” (p. 65). Greenwashing is widely considered a dubious business practice because contradictory environmental actions and agendas, false environmental claims, and disinformation about the company or its products mislead consumers to think the business and its operations are taking into consideration the best interests of the environment (Delmas & Burbano,  2011; Hollander & Breen,  2010; Plec & Pettenger,  2012). In an attempt to distance themselves from their alliance with Shell and rebrand themselves as an ecoconscious company actively reducing their environmental impact, LEGO rigorously promoted their switch to more environmentally friendly plastics by making ecofriendly blocks made from sugar cane bioplastic (Dovey, 2018; Sheehan, 2018). However, LEGO first announced the launch of their new Sustainable Materials Centre dedicated to finding an eco-friendly replacement for the durable ABS (acrylonitrile-butadienestyrene) plastic in 2015 when they were still in their cobranding relationship with Shell at the height of the “Save the Arctic” campaign (Palmer, 2015). Climate change is a difficult environmental issue to advertise and distill in a focused campaign given the myriad imbricated social, economic, political, and sustainability issues in play (De Luca, 2009, p. 264). Climate change is an immediate ecological concern, but its material impact on human and nonhuman life is slow, difficult to articulate using conventional representational strategies, and unsexy in comparison to catastrophic disasters (e.g., tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear reactor leaks and meltdowns). Rob Nixon (2011) defines slow violence as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all” (p. 2). Nixon’s description of slow violence inflicted upon the nonhuman environment by human actions is detected and observed using nonvisual modes of sensory perception. Environmental causes that take the form of slow violence against the nonhuman environment, or that are out of sight and not directly experienced on a daily basis by the public and policymakers, require innovative communication strategies to advertise the cause, rally supporters, and project the issue into the foreground of an already dense mediascape (Lester, 2010). For the “Save the Arctic” campaign, Greenpeace adopted an integrated new strategy that combined targeting traditional media (in-person protests) with online media (websites, digital flyers, and a YouTube channel for archiving and circulating audiovisual campaign material) and a strong social media presence (#savethearctic, #legoblockshell). This integrated environmental communication strategy resulted in what Greenpeace called a “LEGOlution” (Duff, 2014). The campaign uses iconic images such as the at-risk polar bear as well as the LEGO characters in their ads (Anderson, 2013, pp. 339–352; Remillard, 2011, pp. 127–143). But

550   Galloway the campaign’s profile also benefited from the aurality of its advertisements, notably in the use of celebrity voices, such as Jude Law, and soundtrack choices featuring popular songs such as Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” and Tegan and Sara/Lonely Island’s “Everything Is Awesome” (as noted earlier). In one “Save the Arctic” spot where Greenpeace teamed up with campaign supporters Radiohead and Jude Law,5 the viewer encounters a homeless polar bear wandering the streets of London. Sad, hungry, and displaced polar bears and melting glaciers are stock visual symbols associated with environmental degradation due to their repeat use in environmental communication. On September 2, 2015, well into the campaign, Greenpeace activists installed a giant three-ton animatronic polar bear named Aurora outside the Shell Center, Shell’s headquarters in London, England (Thompson Buchanan, 2015). Looming over all who passed by, Aurora wore only a life belt and her wet fur drenched from melting glacial ice dripped onto the pavement. Aurora, like the polar bear in Greenpeace’s promo video, is out of place and very difficult to ignore. Yet in the film everyone in downtown London goes about their daily activities (Owens,  2012). Ignored and unnoticed by everyone, the polar bear is the newest member of the growing homeless population, an ongoing crisis in urban centers, but she is homeless for a different reason: climate change. The polar bear noses through garbage and industrial waste while foraging for food across the city. She lethargically walks past an oil refinery, through graffiti-­covered alleys, to empty sports fields and a Shell petrol station, and through a traffic jam in the business district, directly inhaling the vehicles’ exhaust and finally collapsing in hunger and exhaustion beneath a tree. These affective images are paired with an excerpt of Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” from their album Kid A (2000). The film ironically reinterprets Radiohead’s lyrics because everything is obviously not in its right place when a suffering polar bear is wandering London, displaced from the Arctic Circle by climate change (Figure 27.2). Accompanied by a Prophet 5 synthesizer and drum machine, Thom Yorke’s processed vocals (manipulated by Jonny Greenwood using a digital audio effects unit, a Korg Kaoss Pad6) stutter, reverse, restart, loop, and glitch (Osborn, 2017, pp. 109–111). These “vocal deformations,” as Brad Osborn (2017) refers to them, are a recurring point of electronic 5  Commenting on the film, Jude Law said, “As the Arctic sea ice melts, polar bears are being forced to go far beyond their normal habitat to find food and look after their young. This film is a powerful expression of how our fates are intertwined, because climate change is affecting all of us no matter where we live. Right now a handful of oil companies are trying to carve up the Arctic for the sake of the next quarterly results but a global movement is growing to stop them. I stand with hundreds of thousands of others who think the area should be made into a sanctuary, protected from corporate greed for good.” And Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke said, “We have to stop the oil giants pushing into the Arctic. An oil spill in the Arctic would devastate this region of breathtaking beauty, while burning that oil will only add to the biggest problem we all face, climate change. Thats [sic] why Im [sic] backing this campaign. If you havent [sic] yet, please join our campaign too. We have to act now if we hope to save the Arctic and the polar bears that call it home.” https://www.greenpeace.org/ usa/a-homeless-polar-bear-in-london-ft-jude-law-and-radiohead/ 6  The Korg Kaoss Pad is a digital audio effects unit where, using an X/Y touchscreen, users manipulate digital audio using processes such as sampling, looping, pitch-bending, and collaging.

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   551 timbre experimentation in Radiohead’s catalog (p. 109). Yorke’s vocal failure sonically symbolizes the social and environmental failure depicted in the visual narrative of this Greenpeace film. In addition to Yorke’s processed vocals, the dissonant harmonies and unintelligible sounds provide a suitably ominous tone for this bleak depiction of 21stcentury escalating climate change. While the polar bear spins a child’s broken discarded pinwheel beneath a tree, Jude Law’s voiceover reminds audiences: “As the Arctic melts, the rush to exploit its resources is starting. Nobody will listen to her, but they’ll listen to you. Join the movement. Save the Arctic.” As Law passionately orates Greenpeace’s slogan “Join the Movement. Save the Arctic,” the polar bear collapses to the ground, exploited and displaced. It is made obvious to viewers that everything is not in its right place. One of Greenpeace’s earliest campaign videos of this kind was uploaded to the Greenpeace UK Vimeo account on June 19, 2012. This video, titled “Vicious Circle,” features another celebrity voiceover—this time, actor John Hurt. The video was shot in only 24 hours with an urgency to circulate the message that Shell was due to begin its exploratory drilling at two offshore sites in the Alaskan Arctic in a matter of weeks. Moreover, the Russian oil company Gazprom had plans to explore the offshore Arctic resource opportunities soon thereafter. John Hurt’s narration accompanies images of the Arctic landscape that Hurt warns viewers is imminently disappearing. Meanwhile, an electronic score features mechanized processed human voices drained of their humanity by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.7 The nondiegetic music repeats dark lyrics that foreshadow the planet’s demise, as the emotionless robotic voice recites, “The sun’s gone dim and the sky’s turned black ‘cause I loved her and she didn’t love back.” The composition is Jóhannsson’s “Part 5/The Sun’s Gone Dim and The Sky’s Turned Black,” originally released on the album IBM 1401, A User’s Manual (2006), and features Jóhannsson digitally processed vocals and lyrics he adapted from the poetry of Dorothy Parker. In 2015, Greenpeace released an advertisement to coincide with the Climate Change March, a series of marches organized in cities across the world prior to the COP21 United Nations climate change conference in Paris. This simple video depicts the familiar image of a Russian nesting doll; however, creator Stine Hole Mankovsky remixes this familiar image of the nesting dolls by decorating them with the iconic imagery of the North: ice-blue and white icebergs and polar bears (see Figure 27.2). Rather than focusing on halting the harmful activities of a single company, this advertisement communicates a plea for viewers to act and join forces to save an expansive mass of land and ocean from offshore oil drilling by curtailing the global fossil fuel industry. The striking im­agery of the short, animated video depicts the material nonhuman impact of climate change accompanied by the metallic tinkling melody of a music box. Like a music box, the melody continues to play from the kinetic energy of winding motion, until the 7  “Vicious Circle” borrows and remixes these images from the 2009 French documentary film Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and produced by Europacorp. Arthus-Bertrand’s film is almost entirely composed of aerial shots of landscapes from across the globe, landscapes that highlight the planet’s diversity and how the actions of humanity are threatening the ecological balances of these places and the entire planet.

552   Galloway

Figure 27.2  Stills from Greenpeace’s campaign videos.

mechanics slow and ultimately stop. This slowing melodic motion aligns with the gradual progression from the largest nesting doll down to the smallest doll, as each layer is lifted by an unidentified person’s hand. With the removal of each layer the iceberg decreases in size, and there is one less polar bear until there are none. The music box continues to play, just like climate change continues on, until time and momentum just simply run out.

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   553 These videos are shared and circulated across the internet and archived on the Greenpeace YouTube account for repeated viewing. However, it was the video “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” that went viral. Across the world, local Greenpeace offices and the general public launched their own in-person and online “Save the Arctic” events where they protested alongside (and using) LEGO minifigures (Smith, 2014). Posted to the Greenpeace Video YouTube account on July 9, 2014, “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” received massive media attention (as of this writing it has received 8,545,829 views). However, the video was briefly removed by YouTube following a copyright infringement complaint by Warner Bros., the studio of The LEGO Movie, but it was quickly reposted to Greenpeace’s YouTube and Vimeo accounts following public protest against the short’s removal (Child,  2014). The ecomedia advertisement “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” is just one pixel in the audiovisual swirl, to use the words of Carol Vernallis (2013, pp. 3–29, 127–154), in the online mediascape within which the “Save the Arctic” campaign circulates.

Covering “Everything Is Awesome:” Playfulness When Everything Is Not (Awesome) “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” is a clear and conscious musical reimagining that is in dialogue with the “original” and other existing versions; it resonates with Theodore Gracyk’s (2012/2013) definition of a “cover” as an “illocutionary act of constructing an interpretation” of a familiar original and using the song as a medium to convey a playful manipulation of context and meaning to a knowing audience (p. 24; Mosser, 2008). Cover versions are a form of interpretive intertextual play and participatory meaning (re)making. Cover versions are participatory texts because the creator of the cover enters into a dialogue with the “original” version and all other pre-existing versions, an audience participates with the cover through their shared knowledge of pre-existing versions, and the cover manipulates and plays with an audience’s emotional reactions to the text and the meaning they take away from the audiovisual experience. Don’t Panic and Greenpeace trust that their intended audience is already familiar with the original, and this recognizability of the original is a vital cog in the interpretive mechanics of the cover video’s ironic success as a form of ecoconscious media. The playfulness of both the borrowed source material and remixing it across different media makes Greenpeace’s “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” campaign video so effective and contributed to bringing together a global online and offline viewership to actively protest against Shell. Playfulness proved to be a valuable force in combating Shell Oil in this case. Miguel Sicart (2014) has commented on the cultural significance of play:

554   Galloway To play is to be in the world. Playing is a form for understanding what surrounds us and who we are, and a way of engaging with others. Play is a mode of being human. . . . We play games, but also with toys, on playgrounds, with technologies and design. . . . Instead of deriving an understanding of play from a particular object or activity, like war, ritual, or games, I see play as a portable tool for being. It is not tied to objects but brought by people to the complex interrelations with and between things that form daily life.  (pp. 1–2)

Playfulness is a way of interpreting and interacting with materials, information, and meaning as a process of understanding how they operate. Current scholarship addressing music and play highlights the interpretive and participatory acts of musicking by tinkering and playing with music, sound, lyrics, and media (Bickford, 2017; Cheng, 2014; Moseley, 2016). “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” circulates within an “ecology of playthings and play contexts” (Sicart, 2014, p. 4) and playfulness is used as a mode of expression whereby pre-existing cultural texts are remixed to convey current environmental politics. Greenpeace’s interaction with the cultural meaning of LEGO, the currency of The LEGO Movie and “Everything Is Awesome” in the mediascape, and the prominent visual and sonic tropes of environmental communication (e.g., slow and sad-sounding music, polar bears, melting ice) play with the pre-existing meanings that people associate with these cultural texts, challenging viewers to think differently about climate change and the impact of the economic industry taking place in the Arctic. Tegan and Sara/The Lonely Island’s exuberant anthem “Everything Is Awesome” from The LEGO Movie is reinterpreted by Alex Baranowski and Sophie Blackburn as a melancholy lament, using musical parody to pressure the LEGO corporation to end its marketing link with Royal Dutch Shell in response to Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic. This alternate arrangement retains the original lyrics and the female singer as the protagonist (performed by Blackburn) but provides an alternate arrangement of the instrumental accompaniment from Mark Mothersbaugh’s retro analog and digital synthesizers and circuit-bent electronic instruments to solo acoustic piano, with the tempo slowed down considerably, and a change in vocal inflection (Brown, 2014). The cover bends the genre from synth-pop anthem to singer-songwriter confessional. The lyrics, however, take on irony when juxtaposed against the tragic imagery of the campaign video. Created with the intention to appeal to an audience of LEGO fans, environmentalists, Millennials and their parents, and the YouTube generation, this cover of “Everything Is Awesome” taps into current popular culture and casts the familiar alongside the unexpected. In previous campaign videos Greenpeace relied on celebrity voice appearances in the form of voiceover narration, and for their campaign against LEGO and Shell, Greenpeace continued to use its celebrity endorsement communication tactic. They opted, however, to replace human celebrity with the celebrity of a transmedia toy brand and its many forms in current popular culture. The branding and design agency Don’t Panic specializes in making viral media that take unexpected approaches to production, often recycling and remixing pre-existing texts. As the website states: “We engaged wider support beyond Greenpeace’s core followers, by exchanging the usual tactic of

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   555 fostering outrage for a more empathy-focused approach. The campaign successfully harnessed the cultural heft of LEGO and used it in its favor to bring a giant to its knees” (Don’t Panic London, n.d.). Don’t Panic’s choice to cover The LEGO Movie theme song was an aesthetic and professionally risky move. They risked charges of copyright infringement because the audiovisual cover openly critiques LEGO and Shell. “Everything Is Awesome” is a simple, catchy song, but its lyrics are not particularly profound. Don’t Panic’s reinterpretation is unexpected. The video surprises audiences using a process Michael Rings (2013) refers to as “generic resetting” or “genre-reset” covering. These are covers that present “a song in a genre different from that of the original” (p. 55). A presumably apolitical bubblegum power-pop anthem was reinterpreted as a languid ecoconscious lament. The risks involved with using the song and lyrics were calculated. As Don’t Panic explains, “we chose to take the risk of copyright conflict because we were sure the irony wouldn’t be lost on Lego fans” (Polisano, 2014). Despite the humorous presentation of the video and the accelerated rate of consumption and circulation of Web 2.0 media, Greenpeace and Don’t Panic take a serious approach to the issue that encouraged the kind of public outrage and vocal protest that typically accompanies environmental activism. “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” elicits uncomfortable giggles and profound sadness through its satirical audiovisual combination of remixed sounds and images. Cover versions of popular songs are polyvocal texts. A cover song must have a clear intention to justify the need for yet another iteration of the original text. As George Plasketes explains, “Proponents [of cover songs] recognize redeeming qualities in recycling song, such as the historical context, apprenticeship, homage, empathy, adaptation, translation, interpretation, preservation, revitalization and the value of exposing songwriters, their songs and styles, old and new, to an audience” (2005, p. 149). Richard Middleton (2000) understands intertextuality in the context of popular music such that “all texts make sense only through their relationships, explicit or implicit, with other texts” (p. 61). The strategic choice to cover “Everything Is Awesome,” a song with a catchy tune, while manipulating the song’s intended meaning and sentiment into a form of environmental communication was an ingenious marketing tactic at the height of the “Save the Arctic” campaign. It was a time when exploratory drilling for fossil fuel resources in the Arctic was positioned to transition into a fully operational extraction enterprise. The aesthetic reworking of Tegan and Sara/The Lonely Island’s “Everything Is Awesome,” the iconic materiality and cultural significance of LEGO Playsets, and additional intertextual references to The LEGO Movie proved essential to the success of Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign against Shell. Covering a song is like discovering a toy or any other object of play. As one explores the mechanics of the song, they experiment with how it encourages creative assembly, can be reused to communicate with others, and generates alternative intertextual interpretations. It’s played with, put together, taken apart, and reassembled to create a new version. Like LEGOs themselves, the cover of the song is intended to be playful while also instructive. Like a LEGO Playset, the “bricks” of the original song are taken apart and put back together to create something new while retaining clear references to the

556   Galloway original structure. Greenpeace uses playful parody to subvert the original meaning and affective sentiment of “Everything Is Awesome,” recasting this once jubilant anthem as a satirical eco-critical dirge. The cover of “Everything Is Awesome” is effective because of the images the song is scored to. The original lyrics are challenged and politicized when listening to the cover while watching the stop frame LEGO animation storytelling. The social message of the song shifts when it scores this unexpected visual narrative. Covering is a form of adaptation. The quality of the cover is measured by the interpreter’s skill adapting the original material. This skill, Plasketes (2005) explains, “lies in how well the artist uncovers and conveys the spirit of the original, enhances the nuances of its melody, rhythm, phrasing, or structure, maybe adding a new arrangement, sense of occasion or thread of irony” (p. 150). Crafting a cover version is a process of “repossession” (pp. 151–153), of making a song your own while also allowing your cover to interact with pre-existing versions and performances, and the sentiments associated with these iterations. The lyrics in the cover version are retained from the original “Everything Is Awesome” and are unaltered, but they are recast as a commentary on environmental trauma. The song is borrowed and adapted to develop a new perspective on the implicit role that global brands play in climate change and to comment on a topical conversation in current environmental politics. The human voice plays a formative role in both the cover version of “Everything Is Awesome” and the communication of environmental social justice. The human voice— its timbral variety that conveys emotional nuance, its used as a vehicle to communicate messages of social justice, its utility for bringing individuals together as a community— is used here to voice protest, as it has been used throughout the long history of musical activism and protest culture (Bentley, 2016; Kernodle, 2008; Martin, 2004; Pedelty & Weglarz, 2013; Reed, 2005). Rather than voicing anger and outrage, the voice of protest in “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” laments the perceived loss of the Arctic ecosystem and irreversible climate change. The lyrics of “Everything Is Awesome” paired with the bleak sadness that colors Blackburn’s voice in the cover offer up an alternate narrative and play with interpretation. Blackburn sings the line “Everything is cool when you’re part of a team” that underscores the first appearance of a LEGO piece branded with the Shell logo (a minifigure Shell employee in front of his oil tanker truck) 22 seconds into the short. She sings the line later at the 1:10 mark as the last minifigure drowns in oil and the polar bear tries to climb up to the top of the last iceberg that flies the Shell flag in an impossible escape. The slogan of the “Save the Arctic” campaign, “Join the Movement, Save the Arctic,” encourages viewers to be part of the team. The narrative of the lyrics communicated at this point in the song is that only by sticking together and participating in the collective effort to engage in environmentally ethical behavior can climate change be stopped, and that LEGO, Shell, and the oil industry are not playing on team Earth. If they had played along as “part of the team,” then this oil spill would never have happened in the first place. To convey the complex environmental message taken up in “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome,” the voice is used alongside powerful imagery. The voice is used to

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   557 c­ onvey a social message and emotion, and Blackburn decided to adopt the style of confessional singer-songwriter to communicate the profound sadness viewers should feel toward the disappearing Arctic and the planet’s environmental future. In the 1970s, singer-songwriters’ confessional songs and their style of singing these songs emerged as a highly politicized form of communication (Bentley, 2016). Using vocal strategies that alter the song’s original phrase structure, melodic line, tempo, and dynamic range, Blackburn confesses to listeners the immensity of the environmental cause, the ab­surd­ity of the Lego–Shell cobranding relationship, and the stark reality that if viewers do not join Greenpeace’s campaign in “harmony” and as “part of a team,” climate change will continue. The formal structure of the original song is also altered, truncating the song and only using the opening to conform to the typical duration of a video advertisement. To cover a song is to play with creative construction, as a child plays with LEGO, transgressing the original meaning of the song and exploring potential meanings through the direct physical and sensory manipulation of a song’s parts. Materials that can be creatively manipulated by users are crucial to both cover versions and children’s learning and play. “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” is a mode of transformative play where toys, audiovisual media, environmental communication, and cover versions merge into a seamless blend of entertainment, information, play, and activism.

The “Silent” Soundscapes of the LEGO Arctic Oil Spill Playset At no point in “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” does the audience hear the diegetic soundscape of the LEGO Arctic Oil Spill Playset. While the LEGO minifigures and wildlife of the LEGO Arctic Oil Spill Playset don’t have the capacity to make sound, Don’t Panic also chose not to compose a diegetic soundscape for the mute LEGO set design of the film. The diegetic “silence” of this oil-slicked Arctic is significant. In 1962, Rachel Carson published her influential call-to-arms book, Silent Spring, in response to the environmental effects stemming from the misuse and overuse of synthetic chemical pesticides, like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), following World War II (Carson, 1962/2002; Lytle, 2007). Carson instructed her readers to listen to the absence of sound—or “silence”—that remained after certain insect species were eliminated from the ecosystem as a result of using DDT and other pesticides with toxic properties. Although the focus of her work is not on the auditory culture of nonhuman environments, her evocative title tells us that if we learn to listen to the environment, we can diagnose and monitor its health. A loud, boisterous, sonically rich, and varied soundscape communicates a healthy ecosystem, while a silent soundscape is one that signals decline and disrepair. As a catalyst for the environmental movement in the United States, Carson was a vocal “witness for nature” (Lear, 1997)

558   Galloway and what Denise Von Glahn (2013) would refer to as a “skillful listener” to the nonhuman world. For acoustic ecologists, including R. Murray Schafer and the other members of the World Soundscape Project and Bernie Krause, silence is auditory evidence of environmental harm (Schafer, 1977). Acoustic ecology projects, such as the World Soundscape Project’s Five Village Soundscapes, address how the soundscape shifted and was reorchestrated in response to changes in society and the environment, acknowledging the need for preservation methods to retain endangered sounds that may become silenced from the soundscape. Similarly, Krause illustrates the need to monitor for aural as well as visual and physical evidence of environmental degradation. Since 1968, he has visited every continent with his field recording equipment to archive endangered sounds and monitor environmental change over time, using the field recorder to generate audible data that he can analyze to better understand the ecological relationships and changes in a given place. In Voices of the Wild: Animal Songs, Human Din, and the Call to Save Natural Soundscapes (2015), Krause reveals that more than half of his audio data comes from sites “so badly compromised by various forms of human intervention that the habitats are either altogether silent or the soundscapes can no longer be heard in any of their original forms” (p. 29). If we listen critically to the soundscape of a place, we might hear evidence of environmental harm that is not detectable by the eye or measurable using conventional scientific instruments (Krause has written extensively on soundscape ecology, see further Krause, 1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2002, 2008, 2012, 2013,  2015). “Silence” is a deafening alarm that all is not well with an ecosystem. In “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome,” we only hear the nondiegetic parody cover of Tegan and Sara/The Lonely Island’s “Everything Is Awesome” reminding the audience that the current state of affairs should not remain the status quo. The LEGO Arctic does not make a sound. And if there are not immediate changes made in the fossil fuel industry, this onscreen silent LEGO soundscape soaked and immersed in crude oil will become an actual reality. In The LEGO Movie, Emmett and Wyldstyle are on a quest to stop President Business from gluing their planet into permanent stasis. In Greenpeace’s video, however, our hero and heroine, like all of the other creatures, are no match for oil. They cannot move their limbs and escape danger as they could in the feature film. In “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome,” they require human effort and assistance; otherwise they remain affixed to their block in this LEGO landscape tableaux. If children were to play with Greenpeace’s Arctic Oil Spill Playset diorama as they play with the earliest LEGO sets that include brand names like Shell and Esso, they would be interacting with LEGO block machinery drilling, fracking, and extracting oil. These children would be playing with these branded toys to enact processes that cause irreparable harm to the environment and playing with objects of their own future’s destruction. The LEGO minifigures and wildlife are inert and silent. This silence is kinesthetic and aural. The Arctic and its wildlife, a place largely unpopulated by human life, like the LEGO minifigures and wildlife, cannot move and migrate elsewhere, they cannot cry for help or speak up

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   559 against the environmental trauma inflicted upon them, and they cannot fight back against Big Oil.8

Sinking Polar Bears and Oil-Covered Toys: Objects of Play and the Playful Manipulation of Meaning The success of Greenpeace’s “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” video for the “Save the Arctic” campaign is contingent on the viewer’s recognition of the cultural citation of LEGO and their personal connection to the toy brand. Don’t Panic used blocks, structures, and minifigures from across the LEGO product line, combining the flexibility of the generic modular building sets with the environmental and thematic detail of the less flexible playsets that require minimal to no assemblage. As Mark J. P. Wolf (2014a) writes on the use of the LEGO play system in transmedia adaptations, “While less flexible than building sets, playsets featured designs that were often more representational than the abstracted versions of things built from pieces of a building set, and had more complete and detailed environments than those that one could construct with a building set” (p. 16; see further Wolf 2014b). Each set is made up of bricks and minifigures that can be remixed and recombined to fashion new worlds and narratives: “Every brick can be used with every other brick; even though they may have different shapes, colors, and other properties, they all click together” (Landay,  2014, p. 55). Greenpeace’s “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome,” like The LEGO Movie, is a playful remix of pre-existing materials but results in a different cultural outcome. Greenpeace and Don’t Panic remixed pre-existing music and the feature film it was originally composed for, but they also remixed an iconic children’s brand of toy. The entire landscape of “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” is crafted from LEGO. Taking approximately three weeks to build the film set from 120 kg of donated and freecycled LEGO pieces and 50 gallons of glycerin mixed with India ink for the oil spill, the short was shot entirely using a Canon 5Dm3 camera on a Gazelle motion control rig. Don’t Panic is known for their high-impact promotional videos that are designed to draw YouTube viewers and circulate online with ease. Prior to their work with Greenpeace, Don’t Panic was recognized by their jarring “If Britain Was Like Syria” video for the

8  Although the Shell franchise minifigures and their vehicles, the oil rig, and the businessman smoking his cigar from the edge of the oil rig are all made of LEGO, and therefore also immobile, the viscous incessant flowing of the oil spill across the landscape provides the allusion that these figures, like the oil, have movement and agency in the landscape. We do not see the businessman or Shell franchise minifigures enveloped by the oil. It appears that in this scenario they have agency and an ability to escape that the wildlife and local citizens are not privileged to.

560   Galloway NGO Save the Children. The concept to use children’s material culture was inspired by the trailer “Believe” for the Xbox release of Halo 3 (Vaughan, 2014). LEGO is a global leader in the toy industry. It is a cultural material and toy synonymous with play, creativity, innovative spatial construction, and imaginative world making. Each tiny plastic building block is a global icon, a position LEGO has achieved on the basis of their product’s craftsmanship, their strategic branding strategies, and the transmedia of LEGO building sets and minifigures (see further Wolf 2014b). As Wolf (2014c) explains, “Whether viewed as a toy, collectible, building material, modeling material, artistic medium, educational tool, franchise venue, product, culture, industry, or object of nostalgia, LEGO crosses many boundaries and its audience spans all ages and several generations, making it an ideal subject of study” (p. xxiv). Don’t Panic refused to buy new LEGO Playsets and individual pieces to construct their Arctic environment. This decision illustrated a commitment to sustainability in an era where children’s toys are considered disposable as soon as the newest innovative toy arrives in the stores, and a refusal to support LEGO and Shell during the filming of the video and the “Save the Arctic” campaign. Instead, they sought out used pieces and playsets that children had played with, loved, and used to create inventive structures from their imaginations. Key pieces used in “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” are featured in Greenpeace’s parody on LEGO Playsets. Greenpeace’s “official LEGO brand” Arctic Oil Spill series features oil rigs, tankers, and extraction equipment; the carcasses of animals who succumbed to the oil; and animals and people who are stained with oil that the user must try to clean using rehabilitation clean-up materials; however, the player must choose who survives because there are not enough resources to clean everyone. Greenpeace modified certain pieces to support the film’s narrative and their campaign message: polar bears with oil-soaked paws and dead fish floating on their sides in the oil-saturated Arctic Ocean. In a video filmed in Toronto by Greenpeace (Canada) volunteers and posted online to their official site,9 viewers watch as children stop on the street with their parents to play with the “LEGO Playset” unaware at first that it is a parody Playset because they were unaware of the economic and political alliance between LEGO and Shell.10 Children’s toy culture, like cover songs, is highly intertextual. When children play with and adapt toys to realize stories they have imagined or participate in pretend roleplay, the meaning of these objects changes (Benjamin,  1999; Sicart,  2014, pp. 35–47; Sutton-Smith, 1986). These manipulations of the objects and shifts in meaning might go against the intended use of the toy but lead to creative reinterpretations and uses of it. 9  The video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifs3mjNsEOQ. 10 http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/blog/Blogentry/new-arctic-oil-spill-play-set-by-lego-shell/ blog/50135/. Greenpeace’s coverage of this event was recorded on camera and took place outside the Eaton Center in downtown Toronto in July 2014. The website states: “The Greenpeace crew hit the streets of Toronto this past weekend to promote the newest fruit of LEGO’s partnership with Shell: the new Arctic Oil Spill LEGO set! We showed it to people walking down the street, recorded their reactions, and . . . well see for yourself!”

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   561 Greenpeace and Don’t Panic played with LEGO as a child would, manipulating and rearranging the building blocks to create their desired ecoconscious narrative. They took pieces from pre-existing donated and freecycled LEGO Playsets, including LEGO’s Arctic series, Shell promotional LEGO sets, and other transmedia product lines licensed from well-known intellectual properties from film and television,11 and remixed these collections to create an Arctic landscape as a child might imagine it. The original spirit of LEGO when it was first advertised and entered the toy market was of “creativity, imagination, and possibility achieved through remixing” (Landay, 2014, p. 58), and “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome” evokes that same spirit of creativity, imagination, and possibility by playfully remixing their own set of pre-existing sonic and visual building blocks to envision a better outcome for the Arctic than the one portrayed in the short. Greenpeace prominently celebrated the successful influence of their campaign as a contributing factor in LEGO severing its long-term brand and economic relationship with Shell. Some critics, however, highlight that Greenpeace’s campaign ignores key environmental factors, including the material history of the substances that LEGO bricks are made of and the immediate dangers of plastic pollutants in Earth’s oceans from widespread plastic manufacturing and discard (Skapinker, 2014). Made of hard, brightly colored plastic, or ABS, and injection-molded into interlocking shapes, LEGO is made from oil-based products, the very substance the Greenpeace promo is protesting against. As environmental sociologist Max Liboiron (2014) suggests, “plastic pollution [along with other forms of toxicants] is contested, amorphous, and often invisible” (see also Liboiron, 2010, pp. 1–9; 2012, pp. 393–401; 2013, pp. 9–12). LEGO, a child’s plaything, is far from innocent in the global environmental crisis. However, LEGO adopts sustainable practices through the reduction of waste and packaging and the creation of a high-quality product that can withstand the repeated abuse and play of multiple children assembling, taking apart, and reassembling the bits and pieces of LEGO Playsets. These products are seldom discarded and thrown away. Instead, LEGO is downcycled, passed down through generations of children and sold at community garage and street sales and flea markets. LEGO is still a company dependent on petroleum to create their products. This illustrates that everyone—including a child’s toy brand—can be implicated in the fossil fuel industry’s assault on the nonhuman environment.

11  Some examples from LEGO’s vast transmedia licensed production collection include, among others, LEGO Star Wars (1999), LEGO Harry Potter (2001), LEGO Bob the Builder (2001), LEGO Spiderman (2002), LEGO SpongeBob SquarePants (2006), LEGO Avatar: The Last Airbender (2006), LEGO Batman (2006), LEGO Indiana Jones (2008), and LEGO Toy Story (2009).

562   Galloway

Conclusions: A System of Play, a System of Learning, a System of Climate Change Critique Over the years LEGO has positioned its toy brand as a “System of Play” and a “System of Learning” aimed at creating a positive impact on society (LEGO, 2015).12 LEGO is an ecology of playthings that combine play with creativity, making, and education (Jensen,  2015; Landay,  2014, pp. 58–59; LEGO Foundation, n.d.; LEGO Group, n.d.). Greenpeace and Don’t Panic have also illustrated that LEGO is a system of remix, where its pieces and cultural references can be repurposed as a system of climate change critique. Greenpeace used LEGO to playfully construct an audiovisual environment where audiences learn how global corporations they interact with daily are implicated in climate change among other forms of environmental violence. Greenpeace’s critics might argue that citing and remixing references to current popular culture and celebrity involvement might mute the core message or soften the impact and political significance of issues concerning environmental health. Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign, however, illustrates how digital media campaigns and viral videos that playfully juxtapose, manipulate, and interpret pre-existing texts raise the visibility and audibility of environmental issues. Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign continues; however, following the aggressive three-month #legoblockshell intertextual campaign that included promotional materials, advertisements, and online and in-person activist events, LEGO publicly announced their decision to end their relationship with Shell. Their audiovisual campaign materials, specifically the complex intertextuality and replayability of the viral video “LEGO: Everything Is NOT Awesome,” were indispensable to the efficacy and positive outcome of Greenpeace’s targeted climate change activism.

Recommended Readings Doyle, J. (2007). Picturing the clima(c)tic: Greenpeace and the representational politics of climate change communication. Science as Culture, 16(2), 129–150. 12  In the section on “Responsibility” on LEGO’s official website, the corporation outlines a threepart model: Innovate for Children; Environmental Leadership; and Caring, Ethical and Transparent. This responsible business model was conveniently published to the website on September 23, 2015, in the middle of Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign. Under the heading “Environmental Leadership” LEGO’s communication representatives write: “We want to create positive impact on society, and an important part of this ambition is to reduce our environmental impact. We want to address climate change by reducing our emissions through improving our energy efficiency, and we want to source and use resources responsibly and to improve our waste management. This is to ensure we do not consume resources and materials at a faster rate than they are regenerated, so that future generations can also benefit from the same variety of resources and materials our generation has access to.” https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/responsibility

“Everything Is Not Awesome”   563 Middleton, R. (2000). Work-in(g)-practice: Configurations of the popular music intertext. In M. Talbot (Ed.), The musical work: Reality or invention (pp. 59–87). Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. Plasketes, G. (2005). Re-flections on the cover age: A collage of continuous coverage in popular music. Popular Music and Society, 28(2), 137–161. Stimeling, T. (2015). Music, television advertising, and the green positioning of the global energy industry. In A. Allen & K. Dawe (Eds.), Current directions in ecomusicology: Music, culture, nature (pp. 188–99). New York, NY: Routledge. Wolf, M. J. P. (Ed.). (2014). Lego studies: Examining the building blocks of a transmedial phenomenon. New York, NY: Routledge.

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566   Galloway Skapinker, M. (2014, October 15). Everything is not awesome about Greenpeace’s assault on Lego. Financial Times. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/7a8885fc-538c11e4-8285-00144feab7de Smith, M. (2014, July 2). Greenpeace protest against Lego deal with Shell by hijacking toymaker’s theme park. Irish Mirror. Retrieved from https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/weirdnews/greenpeace-protest-against-lego-deal-3800412 Stimeling, T. D. (2014). Music, place, and Gulf Coast tourism since the BP oil spill. Music and Politics, 8(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0008.202 Stimeling, T. D. (2015). Music, television advertising, and the green positioning of the global energy industry. In A.  S.  Allen & K.  Dawe (Eds.), Current directions in ecomusicology: Music, culture, nature (pp. 188–199). New York, NY: Routledge. Sutton-Smith, B. (1986). Toys as culture. New York, NY: Gardner Press. Thompson Buchanan, E. (2015, September 2). Greenpeace activists install giant polar bear outside Shell’s London headquarters. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www .independent.co.uk/news/uk/emma-thompson-joins-greenpeace-campaigners-onlondons-southbank-to-protest-shell-10482200.html Vaughan, A. (2014, July 9). Lego told “everything is not awesome” in viral Greenpeace video. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/ jul/09/lego-told-everything-is-not-awesome-in-viral-greenpeace-video Vernallis, C. (2013). Unruly media: YouTube, music video, and the new digital cinema. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Von Glahn, D. (2013). Music and the skillful listener: American women compose the natural world. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Wolf, M. J. P. (2014a). Adapting the Death Star into LEGO: The case study of LEGO set #10188. In M. J. P. Wolf (Ed.), Lego studies: Examining the building blocks of a transmedial phenomenon (pp. 15–39). New York, NY: Routledge. Wolf, M. J. P. (Ed.). (2014b). Lego studies: Examining the building blocks of a transmedial phenomenon. New York, NY: Routledge. Wolf, M. J. P. (2014c). Prolegomena. In M. J. P. Wolf (Ed.), Lego studies: Examining the building blocks of a transmedial phenomenon (pp. xxi–xxv). New York, NY: Routledge.

chapter 28

Ex pl oiti ng th e Fron tier Advertising and the Western Soundtrack Mariana Whitmer

Studies of music and advertising have almost exclusively focused on generic melodies (without lyrics), jingles, and popular music (usually songs), often evaluating how their application (specifically, the mode, tempo, melody, and volume) may shape our brand loyalty and purchasing decisions. These have generally been from two distinct perspectives. While psychologists and advertisers have been concerned with pragmatic matters, namely, how audiences react to music, musicologists have focused on the kinds of music adapted by advertisers, noting how and why this music was selected, with a broader perspective concerning the music as a text. In the former category, Sidney Hecker (1984) outlined a framework for market researchers toward an understanding of how and why music can further a commercial message. A few years later, in the latter category, musicologist David Huron (1989) responded with a similar exploration of how music (particularly jingles) is useful in advertising, yet with a general emphasis on how music can contribute to marketing strategies. Recently, the adoption of rock music and alternative or indie music, especially songs, has inspired a wide variety of inquiries, such as Bethany Klein’s As Heard on TV: Popular Music in Advertising (Klein, 2009). Timothy Taylor focuses on the impact that music, primarily jingles, had on creating a culture of consumerism. He argues that music “has played a potent role in making goods and consumption part of our habitus” and highlights the blurring of lines between popular music and music composed specifically for advertisements (Taylor, 2012, p. 5). The crossover of hit songs into advertisements (and vice versa) is the subject of David Allan’s work, where he discusses the use of songs like “Teach the World to Sing” in the Coca-Cola commercials from the early 1970s and Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock” connected with the Chevy truck ads in the early 1990s (Allan, 2015). The use of concert hall or art music (classical or high-brow music) in commercials has attracted less scholarly attention, with the exception of musicologist Nicholas Cook’s

568   Whitmer “Music and Meaning in Commercials” and music sociologist Anna Lisa Tota’s “ ‘When Orff Meets Guinness’: Music in Advertising as a Form of Cultural Hybrid.” Both studies closely examine the impact that transferring a well-known concert work into the world of advertisement might have on a listener. Music that is not newly composed for a specific commercial, either as a jingle or a memorable tune, will necessarily carry with it other associations for the listener. Tota questions, “What happens when art [music] meets or clashes with advertising? When, under what conditions, and to what extent, is it no longer possible to listen to one’s favorite symphony as before because of the newlyestablished link between it and a specific commercial product?” (Tota, 2001, p. 117). Tota ponders the consequences of connecting Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with Luchino Visconti’s provocative film Death in Venice (1971), as well as additional hypothetical uses in advertising. She highlights three disparate encounters with a musical composition: the initial hearing (on a CD or in the concert hall) identified as t1, the work heard again as a soundtrack to a commercial (t2), and finally, a third experience with the piece not used in an ad (t3). When heard in connection with an advertisement, the music takes on a different meaning for the listener, creating a change in its “textual strategy” or purpose. Tota labels the resulting effect “hybridization.” Subsequent encounters with the composition will combine the two (or three) experiences, yet these incidents will be completely different if the listener never had initial knowledge of the piece. The use of distinctively Western music as background for advertising, whether familiar or not, raises questions complementary to Tota’s: How will pre-existing music previously attached to a narrative (as Mahler’s Fifth was not) fare when adapted for a commercial? What happens to the listener’s experience of the commercial, as well as later encounters with the music? The use of film soundtracks for advertising purposes is even less common than classical music, suggesting that advertising executives may find connecting a brand with a pre-existing narrative risky or that music licensing costs (controlled by the studios) are prohibitive. While some motion pictures have promoted spin-off products, like toys, or have been linked to merchandise, as in the case of the Nissan Rogue, which was promoted by the Star Wars franchise, film scores are rarely repurposed for ads. Western film soundtracks, however, have proven to be the exception. Advertisers have successfully utilized this repertoire to enhance product branding, drawing on the genre’s long and robust history of selling merchandise. The Western narrative has always been a readily accepted and even attractive vehicle for communicating important information. For instance, John  F.  Kennedy offered a Western metaphor in his 1960 inauguration speech, when he characterized the United States as being on the verge of a “New Frontier” (Kennedy, 1961). Terminology associated with the Western is often heard not only connected with politics but also in everyday language and literature. The allure of the West works easily in advertising, and when the music associated with the genre is added, it particularly enhances the message. Western music, whether adapted from popular song or films or newly composed, carries with it additional significance in the realm of advertising. From the music for “Marlboro Country,” which directly quotes Elmer Bernstein’s score for The Magnificent Seven, to the “Dairy Queen Western BBQ Cheeseburger” and other advertisements that

Exploiting the Frontier   569 evoke a barren and lonely landscape with a Western-stylized score, the commercial application of the music from this popular genre prompts close examination. The Western is considered by film scholars to be the genre perhaps most reflective of sociopolitical trends, as well as the most popular. Advertisers have exploited its ­visuals since the beginning of the 20th century, and the psychological implications of adapting the Western’s music are significant. This chapter, which focuses only on the music used in television commercials, surveys how music associated with the Western has been applied to advertising and examines how the dynamics have changed in advertising as the filmic genre developed from simple shoot-em-ups to psychological dramas.

The Significance of the Western Film If no medium has been in closer communion with the mass mind than advertising, no popular tradition is more deeply entrenched in American culture than the Western.  (West, 1996, p. 38)

Western movies may be situated in the Old West, but they are not intended to be accurate historic representations of what occurred there. Most often they are what film scholars Mary Lea Bandy and Kevin Stoehr identify as a “fusion of history and myth” that suggests a commentary on contemporary sociopolitical issues (2012, p. 2). “Clues about America are scattered along the ‘sagebrush trail’ of Western movies . . . [revealing that] for more than a century, Western movies have reflected—and sometimes have helped shape—American history and culture,” affirms historian Richard Acquila (2015, p. 5). In dealing with the themes of conflict and aggression (individual or political), overcoming adversity, and dominating one’s environment, Westerns constitute a “thought experiment,” according to cultural historian Richard Slotkin, on how we should consider and confront contemporary issues. Hollywood producers and directors, he also suggests, often “used the Western to re-make people’s sense of what American history is about” (Slotkin,  2008). When Western feature film production increased in the late 1930s, Slotkin notes, it was a move designed to “[foster] a revival of nationalism [and] patriotism” and to increase hope during the Depression. The production of Westerns has often been politically or civically motivated, and their “legendary tales,” Richard Aquila notes, “reflected and reinforced American beliefs in democracy, freedom, self-reliance, morality, nationalism, and heroism” (Acquila, 2015, p. 7). In her book on American exceptionalism, Deborah Madsen traces the conflicts enacted in Westerns back to the colonization of the country and considers the role of the genre (including novels and films) in bolstering the mythology of the West: “The Western hero . . . represents the idealized American, living out the extreme significance of America’s exceptional destiny” (Madsen, 1998, p. 124). No matter whom he is fighting,

570   Whitmer whether train robbers, cattle rustlers, or town bullies, the hero’s ultimate goal is justice. And the traditional Western plays this out for audiences, often in an exaggerated and embellished fashion, modeling the decency and moral honesty that was important to American exceptionalism. Madsen concludes, “One of the most powerful contributions made by the Western to the ideology of American exceptionalism was the ability to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate claims to such things as power, land, water, women” (Madsen, 1998, p. 151). For all of these reasons, the Western became synonymous with all that was good in America during the 1940s and early 1950s, conveying patriotism, heroism, and successful boldness. As the genre began exploring the psychological aspects of the Western character throughout the 1950s, it became more realistic in its gritty depiction of the frontier. During the era of the Korean War and the later conflicts in Southeast Asia, the clear distinctions between heroes and villains in the Western became blurred, reflecting the social and moral confusion triggered by these wars. Films such as The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950), Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), and Saddle the Wind (Robert Parrish and John Sturges, 1958) portrayed retired gunfighters coping with the consequences of their careers as they try to live peaceful lives. Other examples of questionable characterizations abound: in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) the entire town is deemed criminal for not supporting their sheriff; in The Tin Star (Anthony Mann, 1957) a despised bounty hunter helps a young sheriff; in The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958) a pacifist struggles to live among violent ranchers; and No Name on the Bullet (Jack Arnold, 1959) features Audie Murphy as a hired gun whose target is the local judge hiding an evil past. These fundamental changes in the Western had ramifications on the genre’s soundtrack and consequently provided differing musical options for future advertising. TV Westerns, meanwhile, tended to eschew the psychological developments and remained simplistic in keeping with the heroic paradigm. Perhaps to preserve their broad audience and retain existing sponsors, contemporary shows such as The Rifleman, Wagon Train, and Gunsmoke remained characteristically respectable and involved violence only when required. Thus, commercials that targeted children tended to utilize visuals related to TV Westerns, while adults were expected to manage references to the more complex film versions.

Westerns and Advertising Over the years, the popularity of the feature-length Western, and then its television rival, has inspired a variety of marketing campaigns. They have used imagery and star appeal tied to the Western to sell all kinds of products, from prunes to Coca-Cola to whiskey. Provocative images from the 1950s and 1960s of women clad in a bra, cowboy hat, gloves, gun, and gunbelt claim, “I dreamed I was [wanted/queen of the Westerns/ wild in the West] in my Maidenform bra” (see Figure 28.1). As historian Elliott West has observed, “The Western myth has been an ideal medium for expressing that pull and tug

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Figure 28.1  “I dreamed I was . . . in my Maidenform bra.” (Used by permission of Hanesbrands, Inc.)

572   Whitmer of interests and loyalties. Its story of pioneers renewed through heroic accomplishment speaks to Americans’ obsessive reach toward anything newer and better; its Edenic images and characters larger than life recall glory days now behind us. Western-based advertisements have drawn on this mythic tradition and have given it their own twists” (West, 1996, p. 40). West categorizes Western ads as identifiable in three groups: those with the frontier as a place, as a story, or as a style. The first classification focuses on the West as a geographic location, “a magnificent, mythic setting” and “a country of topographical magnificence” (West, 1996, p. 41). These descriptions conjure the West represented in the Westerns of John Ford, with the towering rock formations of Monument Valley. West adds that this category also exploits “the American fascination with movement into that place, with picking up and heading westward toward particular destinations and toward peculiarly Western experiences” (West, 1996, p. 40). The second category focuses on the Western narrative, “the mythic tradition of pioneers who overcome formidable challenges and hardships, a test that brings out their best and tempers the emerging steel of their character” (West, 1996, pp. 43–44). This approach can often be seen in commercials as stories of conflicts resolved, perils conquered, or opportunities successfully seized. Finally, the third category that West describes is not a place or a story; it is a style, imbued with a “mythic quality” that envelopes the product and makes it particularly attractive. “That quality and the object were inseparable, almost interchangeable; in a sense the product became its ‘Western’ at­trib­ute” (West, 1996, p. 46). Using one or any combination of these three approaches aligns the product with the heroic and attractive traits of the frontier. Thus, West concludes, the “ads are appealing to customers who want to feel advanced and in sync with the latest trends while [staying] in touch with virtues of a receding past” (West, 1996, p. 47). The use of the American Western myth to sell products is represented in several early television commercials. At that time, advertisers called on favorite Western stars like Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Steve McQueen to sell cereal and cigarettes, tapping into the demographics at both ends of the age spectrum. More recently, John Wayne (prior to his death in 1979) created a series of commercials for Great Western Savings Bank using his Western persona (dressed in cowboy gear, sitting on a horse, and located amid rocky hills) to suggest how the bank could have assisted in settling the West, but now they can help with your modern banking needs. With ads clearly tailored for target populations and age groups, the commercial reliance on Western popular culture demonstrates how prevalent the genre has become. While earlier commercials reflect two of West’s signifiers—the Western location, in the case of the cereal and cigarette ads, and the Western narrative, as related by John Wayne—more recent advertisements apply a more nuanced approach by conveying the Western style. Adding Western music to advertisements especially reinforces the Western style, as it promotes the allure of a product. Music connected with the Western will aurally transport audiences to the historically and (possibly) geographically distant location, while similarly assisting in the recall of Western-themed narratives.

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The Western Soundscape In “The Western: Affective Sound Communities,” Felicity J. Colman deconstructs the soundtrack for the film Dead Man (1995, directed by Jim Jarmusch) and discusses how sounds, including music, create a place (“a sound-induced place” or “sound-place”) in the Western (Colman, 2009, p. 197). In this film, it is Neil Young’s grunge-styled and melancholy score that assists in defining the distinctive sound-place that brings together the two protagonists, the misplaced accountant named William Blake (played by Johnny Depp) and the Native American named Nobody. Colman’s examination of the score for Dead Man highlights the importance of music and sound in the Western and how it can bind together disparate entities—whether characters, locations, or events—into a recognizably historical and geographical unit. These “Western sound communities” (Colman, 2009, p. 196) have evolved from the 1930s to the present in a variety of recognizable manners. Initially Western scores featured the use of pre-existing music, such as the contemporary (mid- to late 1800s) popular songs of Stephen Foster and others, as well as through the evocative use of hymn tunes. Cowboy songs, like “The Dying Cowboy (O bury me not on the lone prairie)” and “Home on the Range,” as well as others collected by John Lomax in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (Lomax, 1911) were similarly adapted to identify and legitimize the Western soundscape. Newly composed music has often emulated these sources, thus providing a somewhat authentic sonic evocation of the West. Starting in the late 1950s, feature-length Westerns moved away from the songinspired score and took on a symphonic sound, as demonstrated in Jerome Moross’s score for The Big Country (1958) and Elmer Bernstein’s for The Magnificent Seven (1960). The music became stylized to evoke the wide expanse of the Western landscape through broad melodies and consonant harmonies (sometimes with string tremolos to mimic the fluttering of leaves in the wind). But more than the surrounding geography, Western film music is often coded with references as to the nature of the Western character. Western films are notoriously devoid of dialogue, so the music often supplies some of the needed descriptions. Thus, the music that accompanied the classic Western narrative of the 1940s and 1950s often assumed a heroic and bold stance, energized by the use of syncopated rhythms, which matched the strong characters of the story. During the mid-1960s, as the adult or psychological Western began to dominate the field, the genre experienced another change in its musical accompaniment. No longer simple shoot-em-ups, the narratives developed as the characters (both good and bad) became complex and, at times, increasingly brooding and introspective. Sergio Leone, however, took this change to a new level with his stark narratives in the “Dollars Trilogy” (A Fistful of Dollars [1964], For a Few Dollars More [1965], and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly [1966]). Ennio Morricone’s music for these films established a creative precedent for the Western film score through his use of minimalism and adoption of techniques from musique concrète. Morricone adopted timbral techniques, characteristically

574   Whitmer natural sounds, utilized by Dimitri Tiomkin in a variety of Westerns, including vocalizations; whistles; and the sounds of whips, gunshots, and church bells, along with galloping rhythms and evocative trumpet solos (Estebaranz & García, 2015). While he still included the expected expansive, singable melodies, Morricone’s scores were also full of short motives using limited pitch-class sets and reiterated intervals, particularly evident in the score for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Rather than full orchestration, the Morricone model features sparse textures and long passages of silence, allowing the elements of musique concrète to be especially conspicuous. The realism inherent in Leone’s films’ visuals, including graphic depictions of violence and cruelty, were aurally represented in the music and sound in unexpected and groundbreaking ways. The opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968) contains only diegetic sounds (natural and mechanical) until Charles Bronson’s character is introduced, notably playing a reiterated three-note motive on the harmonica. Although the strong orchestral sound is still apparent in many recent Westerns, since Morricone’s introduction of minimalist techniques in the 1960s, this has become the most used technique for underscoring in Western films. Tota considers Morricone’s music emblematic of the Western, noting that “one is so used to listening to his music while watching a Western movie, that a sort of fixed pattern of association has been established: the music reminds us immediately of that movie genre” (Tota, 2001, p. 112). Advertising firms have adapted all three of these general historic styles in commercials to enhance the Western experience and receptivity of audiences.

Western Music in Advertising A successful advertising campaign will be one, which, . . . succeeds in changing, irreversibly, the current perception of that musical text, linking it for some considerable time to the [product] being advertised. (Tota, 2001, p. 119)

During a time when most marketing firms maintained that the musical jingle, a short simple melody with memorable lyrics, was the preferred method for selling products, the Leo Burnett Agency in Chicago began working on a new ad campaign intended to boost the masculine image of Marlboro cigarettes for the Philip Morris Company. Throughout the 1950s the campaign experimented with various images and narratives, in both print and video media. It was not until 1963, when they paired the visuals with Elmer Bernstein’s main title theme from The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), that sales of Marlboro catapulted from last place in the industry to number three and climbing, within the span of just six years. As one Burnett staffer recalled, “It was very stylized initially. The concept at first didn’t get at the heart of the idea, which is the reality of the West” (Leo Burnett, 1986). It was several months into the campaign when one of

Exploiting the Frontier   575 the creative staff at Burnett brought a recording of the main theme from The Magnificent Seven to a screening of the new commercials. “We sat in the conference room in New York,” recalled Philip Morris executive Jack Landry, “and looked at all the test footage we’d done for the Marlboro Country campaign, with no voiceovers, nothing, just playing the record against the footage. You knew right away. The whole thing is here now. We’ve got the whole package. We got ourselves an ad campaign” (Gloede, 1985, p. 46). One of the reasons for their success is that the Burnett Agency achieved representation in all three of West’s advertising categories. They not only created a sense of place (West’s “Edenic” location) and style but also told the story of a cowboy that men would want to emulate. The commercials had nothing to do with the interventionist plot of The Magnificent Seven, but that was of little consequence. Elmer Bernstein’s iconic theme was meant to evoke the landscape and the heroic nature of the characters from the original film, not the narrative of the film. The campaign was so successful that versions of the ad continue to run in certain foreign markets and the Marlboro music is familiar to a multigenerational audience to this day.1 Almost 30 years later the Leo Burnett Company achieved another success using Western music to underscore another major ad campaign. “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” was launched in 1992 with music from Aaron Copland’s ballet Rodeo (1942), offering lively, stirring music to accompany the shots of beef being prepared in various healthy ways (Beef, 1992). The ad was narrated with an offscreen voiceover by actor Robert Mitchum, who started his career in 1943 primarily in shoot-em-ups, thus enhancing the Western atmosphere. Mitchum also starred in Lewis Milestone’s The Red Pony in 1949, which, coincidentally, was scored by Copland. “Hoe-Down” from Rodeo was the featured music in the commercial. It is based on a traditional folk melody suggested by choreographer/producer Agnes De Mille to inspire Copland’s composition of the ballet. “Hoe-Down” is a verbatim adaptation of the fiddle tune “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” as performed by Kentucky fiddler William H. Stepp (Stepp, 1937). The provenance of Stepp’s rendition of “Bonaparte’s Retreat” enhances the rural characteristics that make this music so appropriate to the cowboy or rancher tone of the commercial. Burnett’s beef campaign was hugely popular. When Mitchum died in 1997, the ads were allowed to run out and a different campaign was initiated. Two years later, however, it was decided that the new ads were not as effective, and the old campaign was renewed with Sam Elliott, another popular Western actor (boasting a similarly resonant voice), taking over as narrator. The combination of “Hoe-Down” and beef has become the most popular example of Western music used to elicit an emotional response to a product.

1  The Burnett Agency acquired the rights to Bernstein’s music directly from United Artists in January 1963. Whereas the first contract asked for a one-time payment of $5,000 for use of the theme, a year later the renewal increased the fee to $55,000 for the first year and $5,000 for the second. Clearly, Bernstein’s music was having a significant impact on sales yet it was not expected to last, judging by the lower fee for the second year. However, by 1991 the worldwide fees for use of the music had risen to $1,750,000, signifying the value of Bernstein’s music to the ad campaign. For more on the Marlboro ad campaign see Whitmer, 2017.

576   Whitmer Copland’s and Bernstein’s music reached a wider audience and became far more popular than the composers likely imagined. The music enjoyed initial receptions as ballet and film scores, respectively, and hence were attached to an initial narrative/visual (Tota’s t1). When the music was applied to the advertisements (t2), it assumed an additional association, not distantly related to the first encounter (if there was one), since the Western connection is visually maintained in both campaigns. Tota’s suggestion that the ensuing hybridization could be “irritating” and possibly ruin the listener’s subsequent enjoyment of the music (t3) seems unfounded in this case, since the music aptly complements the Western ambiance of the advertisement. Even audiences that did not view the film or experience the ballet have come to recognize these tunes and connect them with the commercials without knowing the source of the music. The long-lasting success of the Marlboro and beef campaigns inspired other commercial ventures to use similar, but newly composed, melodies for Western-themed commercials, such as the “Herding Cats” commercial.

Herding Cats Electronic Data Systems (EDS) created a unique commercial for their “[Problem] Solved” campaign that features heroic Western music to accompany their “Herding Cats” commercial (EDS, 2000). Aired originally during the Super Bowl in 2000, the now-defunct information technology consulting firm used the metaphor of herding cats to signify the difficulty surrounding the “bringing together of information, ideas, and technology.” The narration, consisting of commentaries from the “cowboys,” is quasi-documentary. The opening, where the young boy points to a photograph and names his great-grandfather as the first cat herder in the family, provides a historic (and thus, authentic) context and suggests that it has credibility. The visuals include several views of cats that recall the frequent cattle drives seen in Westerns, including individual and herd running shots, aerial shots, and a river crossing (not unlike scenes in Howard Hawks’s Red River from 1948). There is also a dissolve shot that features a mounted cowboy (with a cat on his lap) with a background shot of cats silhouetted along the horizon, simulating many such shots of cattle drives in Westerns. The mock authenticity of the visuals is overlaid with humorous allusions to the challenges of herding cats, such as two cowboys discussing their wounds, a cowboy cleaning his jacket with a lint roller, and an allergic sneeze from another cowboy. After the initial unaccompanied narration, the music enters to support the evocation of the Western landscape (see Figure 28.2). The music is tonal (B-flat major) beginning with a major third followed by an octave, a motive that recalls the main theme from The Magnificent Seven, which prominently features these intervals. The descending line that follows is echoed and developed. The instrumentation at this point is symphonic, consisting of a large force of strings and trumpets, punctuated by tympani and cymbal crashes. As the narrator talks about bringing the herd into town, the music changes from

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Figure 28.2  Accompaniment to “Herding Cats” (composer unknown).

the classic heroic Western sound to a more populist Western style, featuring guitar (acoustic then added electric) and harmonica, ending with a whoop. This commercial appeals to an audience’s prior knowledge of the phrase herding cats and using the known Western signifiers (including the music) to parody the cowboy life in an amusing scenario that the advertising agency hoped would be remembered. About the same time that Bernstein’s music was conjuring Marlboro Country, the mid-1960s, Leone and Morricone were popularizing a different Western soundscape. Yet Morricone’s style of music was not applied to commercials until several decades later. As the need for bolder advertising increased and commercial narratives frequently applied a competitive setting, Morricone’s music, or facsimiles thereof, became connected with several commercials. There are two main cues from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the last installment of Leone’s trilogy, that are typically used for commercials, depending on the approach favored for the ad. The first is the Main Title theme (see Figure 28.3), which is typically used for competitive or conflict narratives. Widely recognized, Morricone’s melody was especially popularized by Hugo Montenegro’s cover of the work, which was released in 1968 and made it to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Not only did this new soundscape for Westerns begin to dominate feature-length films, but also the competitive narrative that typically highlighted the experiences of the “Man with No Name” became inextricably linked with the music. The music has thus become shorthand for communicating this competition in various commercials, as well as in other popular venues.2 In 2015 Nissan utilized the Main Title theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to underscore the cutthroat homeward commute of two businessmen. At other times this music has been used to advertise sporting competitions, such as MLB Sunday Night Baseball. While the melody from the film has become a classic signifier of the Western soundscape, the instrumentation is often just as recognizable and is often all that is needed to bring to mind the iconic Western melody. This is the case in two recent commercials for Gilt.com and Dairy Queen. Whereas “Outfit Showdown” from Gilt.com combines the place and story approaches as outlined by West, Dairy Queen offers only an imaginary evocation of a Western location. 2  Eddie Murphy even whistles Morricone’s theme during a standup comedy routine (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=IGkNzbRDvKs). The audience’s reaction to the Western reference is especially indicative of the wide popularity of the music.

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Figure 28.3  Main title, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (excerpt, Ennio Morricone, composer).

Outfit Showdown In “Outfit Showdown,” a 2012 commercial for Gilt.com, the online shopping venue, two attractively dressed women (notably, one in black and one in white) donning cowboy hats and holsters (for their cell phones) circle a pair of shoes (Gilt.com 2012). The image recalls the three-way standoff at the end of Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, as well as numerous confrontations in other Westerns, and the music reinforces that connection. In addition to their apparel, the visuals offer further signifiers of the West, particularly those from popular films. The clock shown at the beginning points to two minutes before 12 (“high”) noon, while the barren, sandy landscape with brown hills in the background conjures the desolation of many Western backdrops. The soundscape could similarly be adapted from any one of several spaghetti Westerns, starting with a chime and the ticking of the clock, a prominent sound feature of Leone’s A Few Dollars More (1965), as well as the more recent The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995). The music is characteristically minimalist, featuring isolated plucking on an electric guitar, primarily outlining a D-minor triad (the same key as Morricone’s Main Title in Figure 28.3), but unexpectedly concluding on a G-sharp. The music, which does not formulate a distinct melody, pauses for the dialogue and the soundscape is embellished by the occasional cry of birds. A cymbal roll, chime, and tympani articulate a change and quick dotted rhythms on a snare drum intensify the suspense. A four-note motive reinforces D minor (see Figure 28.4, m. 1) and the texture swells with the entry of a male chorus. The voiceover begins and as the clock strikes noon, the music shifts to E minor. Simultaneously the girl in white pulls out her phone and, as she points it, a sound like a gunshot is heard. A prominent solo trumpet melody (see Figure 28.4, mm. 11–14) accompanies the girl in black lunging too late for the shoes. The overall sound design of this commercial recalls Morricone’s film scores, but the trumpet solo especially reinforces the connection between the spaghetti Western and this ad. As Jeff Smith points out in The Sounds of Commerce, “Morricone gave prominence to his scores by treating generic elements, such as showdowns and gunfights, as occasions for extended musical exposition” (Smith, 1998, p. 131). These lengthy musical passages in Morricone’s scores were often characterized by reiterated melodies, a feature that is briefly replicated in the Gilt.com commercial, as the strings enter with a repetitive melody (see Figure 28.4, m. 13). Westerns, and their related commercials, are typically viewed as masculine experiences, imitating the rugged and demanding life of the pioneer, the cowboy, or the ­gunfighter. Women are typically cast as madonnas or prostitutes, as exemplified in

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Figure 28.4  Accompaniment to “Outfit Showdown,” Gilt.com (composer unknown).

Stagecoach (1939) by Dallas (the whore) and Mrs. Lucy Mallory (the expectant mother). In this commercial the images and signifiers of the West are emasculated, made glitzy to appeal particularly to women, thus complicating the gender specificity of the Western by adding a veneer of femininity. What Fiske describes as the “sensuous images of desire, of style, and of materiality” are here combined with the masculine characteristics of competition (Fiske, 1987, p. 262). The cowboy hats, holsters, and rough environment are masculine, while the high heels, shiny cocktail dresses, hair, and makeup are all feminine. Meanwhile, the palpable competition in the ad, while necessarily neither masculine nor feminine, is heightened by the historically male Western atmosphere, thus increasing the allure of the shopping website where the battle for great deals beckons. The music, although it is lightly orchestrated, enhances the masculine aspects of the advertisement’s visuals, as it recalls and emphasizes the essentials of the spaghetti Western soundscape.

Dairy Queen Recently Dairy Queen (DQ) launched a campaign advertising their Western BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger titled “Go West” (Dairy Queen, 2017). In this 30-second commercial one DQ employee asks the other where he can find the sauce for this cheeseburger. In response, his colleague launches into an explanation that begins, “Go west, son” (a reference to the well-known statement attributed to Horace Greeley: “Go west, young man”)3 and continues with a description that amusingly includes “rolling onion ring prairies,” “majestic sundae mountains,” and “where the BBQ sauce flows like the raging waters of the Yukon.” 3  For an enlightening history of the origins of this quotation, see Fuller, T. (2004). “Go west, young man!”—An elusive slogan. Indiana Magazine of History, 100(September). Trustees of Indiana University.

580   Whitmer Coinciding with the beginning of his portrayal of the route to the BBQ sauce, the music enhances his imaginative descriptions of the West by providing just enough of a sonic reference to spaghetti Western scores: A guitar strums twice and a single chime is heard, followed by the sound of wind and an eagle’s cry. While the opening visual of the commercial informs the audience that it takes place inside a DQ kitchen, the music, along with the employee’s colorful descriptions, relocates the narrative to the West. The audience is temporarily transported, but the spell is broken when the first employee, baffled by the response, asks “What?” At that instant a single gunshot restores us all to reality, but the implication is clear: Consuming the BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger, along with the accompanying onion rings and ice cream sundae, will convey us to the West. What is particularly intriguing about the DQ commercial is that, unlike previous commercials, there is no attempt to alter the visual to further the Western narrative; the creators rely solely on the dialogue and the sound to engage the public in this imaginary relocation. Indeed, most of the shots focus directly on the (perhaps intentionally unattractive) DQ employee.

The Ecstasy Nike, Modelo Especial, and Lamborghini have recently adopted Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold,” the cue that accompanies one of the final scenes in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, for their advertising campaigns. For each campaign, this music was likely selected to replicate in audiences the sense of excitement felt by Tuco (played by Eli Wallach) in the film as he races around the cemetery searching for the gravestone that holds the gold, which has been the focus of the narrative (“Ecstasy of Gold” 1966). While the approaches of the ads vary to a certain extent based on the commercial intent, all three campaigns contain messages of inspiration and the search for excellence. Interestingly, this sidesteps West’s theories of place, story, and style, as the marketing approach for these commercials reimagines the Western narrative based on this music: In the case of “The Ecstasy of Gold,” the music carries with it an emotional appeal that advertisers mined to sell their product. The scene in the film is neither showdown nor gunfight, but rather a display of emotional intensification as Tuco realizes he is near the gold. Yet Morricone’s accompaniment builds excitement by extending the musical exposition through repetition and changes in instrumentation, as he would for gunfights or showdowns. Smith argues that Leone “devised this montage to accompany a prerecorded track”: Not only do the visuals seem to be edited to match the buildup of the music with a “formal autonomy” that highlights this scene in particular, but also the cue lacks the hallmarks of music composed to accompany action. Smith identifies these as “ostinato figures, sustained chords, or unusual shifts in tempo.” Indeed, Smith asserts, “the cue’s harmonic progressions and rhythmic drive suggest that it advances according to a musical rather than a narrative logic” (Smith, 1998, p. 151). Smith concludes that the hierarchy of image and music is

Exploiting the Frontier   581

Figure 28.5 Melody from “The Ecstasy of Gold” from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (excerpt, Ennio Morricone, composer).

reversed in this scene, as it is in other instances in Leone’s films, such that the music assumes a higher importance than the visual. Notwithstanding the strength of Smith’s argument, in his comprehensive Film Score Guide Charles Leinberger contends that the music was not composed first. Indeed, he quotes Morricone that the scene was scored after the filming was completed. Leinberger notes that the close relationship between the music and the visual was carefully constructed: “Morricone was able to achieve, through changes in tempo, rhythm, orchestration, and dynamics, a gradual increase in musical energy that matches, very precisely, the gradual increase in physical and emotional energy that Tuco is seen to experience as he comes closer and closer to reaching his goal” (Leinberger, 2004, p. 101). As with other prominent film scores, the more robust the thematic material, the more audiences will remember it, thus promoting soundtrack sales. In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Smith notes, “By giving the music a logical priority, [Leone and Morricone] not only elevated Morricone’s music from a subordinate position to one that was equivalent to the film’s image track, but it also served as a perfect vehicle for selling the score in soundtrack album form” (Smith, 1998, p. 153). The commercial potential for this cue is further demonstrated by its noticeable use in advertisements. Like many of Morricone’s melodies, “The Ecstasy of Gold” is modal4 and is characterized by relentless repetition, starting with the rolling reiterated four-note figure in the piano (adapted from a previous cue). The melody begins with an ascending fifth followed by a descending minor third and continues with a tightly constructed melisma between A and E (see Figure 28.5). In the consequent phrase, the melody repeats with the register extended to B and the melisma altered to cadence on an E. Initially played somewhat mournfully in the solo English horn, the melody is repeated by the female voice and then layered with added strings, percussion, voices, and brass. As the tempo of the visuals accelerates, so too does the music, reinforced by dotted rhythms in the percussion. Throughout the cue, the melody is repeated with little variation and intensifying orchestration, at times heard in imitation throughout several voices (Leinberger characterizes this as a canon or round). The music heard in the commercials under consideration in this chapter is not that of the original soundtrack, however. Notably, the creative teams for Nike, Casa 4  In this case it is based on a minor hexatonic scale on A, according to Leinberger (2004, p. 99).

582   Whitmer

Figure 28.6  Drumbeat from Bandini remix of “The Ecstasy of Gold” (Morricone).

Modelo, and Lamborghini all selected the Bandini remix of this cue, which is strikingly upbeat.5 This rendition presents the music in a distinctly different manner from its original, in an application of what Nicolai Graakjaer terms “hypertextuality” (Graakjaer, 2015). The remix differs from the original largely in its rhythmic conception, starting with the piano ostinato, which is faster and slightly uneven. A prominent drum track establishes a steady pulse, articulated regularly by a chime (retained from the original) and a snare drum roll (see Figure 28.6). The soprano rendition of the melody is featured in this recording with a repeat of the opening phrase (see Figure 28.6, mm. 1–6) before continuing with an altered version of the consequent phrase. The remix continues with a new ostinato, which is not in Morricone’s original, before it returns to the soprano melody. Starting in October 2008, Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” provided the audio for a Nike football commercial featuring Troy Polamalu (b. 1981, retired Pittsburgh Steeler) and L. T. (LaDainian Tomlinson, b. 1979, who was playing for the San Diego Chargers at the time). This commercial showcases the exceptional, in this instance, the careers of these two superior athletes. This Nike campaign, titled “Leave Nothing (Fate),” suggests the concept of working hard and excelling to the point where an athlete utilizes everything in their power to be successful and to win. Visuals of Polamalu and Tomlinson track their careers from infancy through college and professional teams until they finally collide (literally) on the football field. Throughout the commercial one recognizes the determination that fuels their efforts to become superior athletes. The remix version of Morricone’s cue is utilized without edits throughout this one-minute commercial, so while the melody is clearly identifiable from the film, the context differs by virtue of the additional percussion and driving rhythms, as well as the new bridge passage. The connection between Nike’s athletic drive and Tuco’s quest for the gold is clear, and even strengthened by the fact that both visuals involve running. The question arises as to whether the specific appeal of the Nike commercial would be as evident to those in the audience who do not recognize the music. It is the audience’s familiarity of the theme from that specific scene in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that especially strengthens the message. The use of “The Ecstasy of Gold” in this commercial hints at a new development in the adaptation of the Western soundscape, one that evokes not gunfights or showdowns (i.e., competitions), but the quest for success.6 5  Morricone remixes (Vol. 2). (2004). Compost Medien GmbH & Co. 6  Interestingly, Nike featured two other athletes (Shawn Merriman and Steven Jackson) in a previous “Leave Nothing” commercial (demonstrating how they give their all and “leave nothing” on the field), but the accompanying music was Trevor Jones’s cue “Promontory” from Last of the Mohicans (1992), which has more of a Celtic dance feel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55BZ2gSsSmY

Exploiting the Frontier   583 In the Lamborghini commercial (“We are not supercars, we are Lamborghini”), the images come quickly with superimposed text prominently featuring the word you (“If you can dream, you can build,” “If you can inspire, you can lead,” etc.) (Lamborhini, 2017). The intent is not to sell the car, but to sell an aspiration, along with the values of the company. While the commercial speaks directly to the viewing audience (“you”), it also celebrates the ambitions of all those who worked on the car, including its founder, Ferrucio Lamborghini, who is shown briefly in the ad. This theme is clarified at the end of the commercial, when the Lamborghini employees are shown behind the text “We are Lamborghini.” Thus, the ad praises all that went into creating the car, its design, technology, and history, while suggesting that anyone (“you”) can be similarly successful. In this self-described video manifesto, Lamborghini appeals not so much to West’s designation of style, but to a comingling of style (the “mythic quality” of the West) and story (the quest for success), as well as the emotional encouragement. Casa Modelo Mexican Beer was founded in Mexico in 1925 and is now owned and distributed in the United States by Constellation Brands. In 2015, the company launched a new campaign to expand sales of Modelo Especial, which, despite having been available in the United States for 30 years, was lacking market share. The initial commercial, introduced in 2015, was titled “Discover the Especial” and utilized the remix version of Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold,” possibly suggested by the gold seal on the bottle. As the narration states, “We gave our beer a clear bottle to show off its character and sealed it with gold.” The audience recognizes that this commercial is about more than just beer—it is about integrity. As in the Nike and Lamborghini advertisements, the notion that this commercial is selling something more than a product is emphasized by the music, which, as we know from the film, communicates positive feelings of hope and victory. Starting in the summer of 2017, Modelo Especial began a new campaign utilizing the same music, but with loftier goals. “Brewed with a fighting spirit” features notable Latin Americans, such as Modelo master brewer Jorge Burgos (“Fighting for Perfection”), retired astronaut José Hernandez (“Fighting to Reach New Heights”), decorated war veteran Juan Rodriguez-Chavez (“Fighting for Honor”), and military pilot Olga Custodio (“Fighting for Respect”), among others. These recent commercials are the same length as the initial ad, “Discover the Especial,” but the music includes the second phrase of the melody, rather than just a repeat of the first phrase. Like the Nike and Lamborghini ads, Modelo’s commercials similarly seek to communicate not just product, but values, ending with the tag line, “It doesn’t matter where you come from—it matters what you’re made of.” This sentiment extends the tone of their “fighting spirit,” as it challenges the current political climate, which threatens the United States’ relationship with Mexico. Indeed, the most recent commercial with Hernandez asserts that as a young child working in the fields (as a migrant worker), “[Hernandez] couldn’t tell where one country ended and the next began.” The campaign spotlights these individuals to personify the best of Latin America. This refers not only to the Latinos featured in the ads but also to the beer itself. Coming from Mexico, Modelo is on target to become “The fastest growing beer in America.”

584   Whitmer With over 3 million views on YouTube (and these numbers are from just one posting; there are several uploads available), the scene of Tuco running around the cemetery in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is clearly one of the most well-known and appreciated scenes in the film. The music does much to encourage its popularity. The rock band Metallica has been using “The Ecstasy of Gold” to open their live shows since 1983, and their cover of this cue was recorded in 2007 as part of a tribute to Morricone.7 Many young audiences have come to know Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” through Metallica’s use of the cue, suggesting a reappraisal and possible expansion of Tota’s three time periods (t1, t2, and t3) to include a t4 or even t5. With the multiple reuses of this melody, it is difficult to track just three encounters and this complicates audiences’ appreciation of the musical text. Indeed, an informal poll of my students (a total of 60, both graduate and undergraduate) revealed that most of them recognized and appreciated “The Ecstasy of Gold,” but only a few knew its origin. The further removed from the original film, the more new associations develop and its original Western connection is lost.

Conclusions Not content to merely adapt the music or the soundscape of Western films, some advertisers have recreated mini Western narratives to sell products. Pepsi, Volkswagen, and T-Mobile produced commercials that recreate vignettes adapted from Western narratives to sell their products, and these have had varying success. The Pepsi ad (from prior to 2007) features soccer stars David Beckham and Iker Casillas, along with other members of the Manchester United and Real Madrid teams recreating a showdown outside a saloon, and thus it had a broad audience appeal. Its musical accompaniment features a blend of a heroic, upbeat melody and sonic references to the minimalist scores of Morricone. The latter is heard particularly during the tense standoff between the two protagonists. These commercials demonstrate that the Western continues to garner attention in the advertising world. Its narrative and visuals, as well as its music, are often called upon to market products, and whether using original music or directly quoting a known and popular soundtrack, advertisers know that tapping into the Western sensibility will still attain results. Commercials have changed, however, from the wholesomeness of Roy Rogers to the grittier realism of Clint Eastwood, and this shift is particularly evident in the accompanying music. As marketing objectives changed to highlight the competitive aspects of 7  This connection between Westerns and rock music is also evident in Bruce Springsteen’s use of Elmer Bernstein’s Main Title from The Magnificent Seven to open his “Badlands Tour” in 2002. Both instances add a sense of swagger and bravado to the performers’ image that enhances their appeal to young audiences.

Exploiting the Frontier   585 our materialistic culture, the heroic and consonant pastoral scores that dominated the classic Hollywood Western adjusted to the minimalist music introduced in the spaghetti Westerns. Yet, even commercials that simply suggest a Western setting, such as the DQ ad, use the minimalist soundscape as a shorthand method for evoking the West. The recent and frequent use of “The Ecstasy of Gold” is an interesting development in the commodification of the Western soundscape, since it carries neither the brave and daring connotations of the classic archetype nor the harsh realism of the minimalist accompaniment. Instead, this cue conveys a hopeful and encouraging tone that is likely intended to create a positive impression. Sidney Hecker, vice president and associate research director at Young and Rubicam in New York City, explored the connection of music with the creation of brand imagery in 1984. In his study, Hecker delineated a framework for understanding the way music can further a commercial message. He identified different values or feelings that may be communicated through music (i.e., excitement, relaxation, attention, etc.), adding that the specific aim of the commercial and its music determines which value will assume priority. Of those values listed by Hecker, it is clear that imagery, which he defined as a “longer-term and less definable value,” was the most critical. Imagery can often be particularly valuable in establishing a bond between the consumer and the product, leading to brand loyalty. Music enhances the imagery by helping to create “a positive image and brand personality” that makes a long-lasting impact. “Music,” Hecker concludes, “when used appropriately, is the catalyst of advertising. It augments pictures and colors words, and often adds a form of energy available through no other source.” The use of Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” is heartening, as it signals a new development in marketing practices prompted by changes in cultural attitudes toward a more positivistic stance. The use of Western film soundtracks in advertising continues the long, and successful, tradition of pairing the frontier narrative with ideals, images, and merchandise. It subtly imbeds the concept of American exceptionalism into our everyday lives, along with a sense of culturally encouraged competitiveness and bravado. As Tota asserts, the hybridization of a highbrow art, such as music, into advertising, preserves hegemonic cultures (Tota, 2001, p. 113). While some may question the cultural status of the Western soundtrack, the appeal of the West associated with this filmic genre emanates from its music and summons us to do its bidding, including purchasing products.

Recommended Readings Fox, S. (1997). The mirror makers: A history of American advertising & its creators. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Madsen, D. L. (1998). American exceptionalism. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tota, A. L. (2001). “When Orff meets Guinness”: Music in advertising as a form of cultural hybrid. Poetics, 29, 109–123.

586   Whitmer West, E. (1996). Selling the myth: Western images in advertising. Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 46(2), 36–49.

References Acquila, R. (2015). The Sagebrush Trail: Western movies and twentieth-century America (The modern American West). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Allan, D. (2015). This note’s for you: Popular music + advertising = marketing excellence. New York, NY: Business Expert Press. Bandy, M. L., & Stoehr, K. (2012). Ride boldly ride: The evolution of the American Western. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Colman, F. J. (2009). The Western: Affective sound communities. In G. Harper (Ed.), Sound and music in film and visual media: An overview (pp. 194–207). New York, NY, and London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. Cook, Nicholas, Music and meanings in the commercials. Popular Music 13(1), 27–40. Estebaranz, Á. J., & García, L.  P. (2015). Influencias de la música para Western de Dimitri Tiomkin en el spaghetti Western. Ucoarte. Revista de Teoria e Historia del Arte, 4, 93–113. Fiske, J. (1987). Television culture. London, UK: Routledge. Gloede, W. F. (1985, August 1). Agency execs feel at home in Marlboro Country. Advertising Age, p. 46. Graakjaer, N. (2015). Analyzing music in advertising: Television commercials and consumer choice. New York & London: Routledge Interpretive Marketing Research. EBSCOhost. Hecker, S. (1984). Music for advertising effect. Psychology and Marketing, 1(3/4), 3–8. Huron, D. (1989). Music in advertising: An analytic paradigm. Musical Quarterly, 73(4), 557–574. Kennedy, John  F., President Kennedy’s Inaugural Address. (1961, January 21). Retrieved December 25, 2015, from http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/ReadyReference/JFK-Quotations/Inaugural-Address.aspx Klein, B. (2009). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing. Leinberger, C. (2004). Ennio Morricone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A film score guide. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Leo Burnett Advertising Agency interview with Norman Muse, June 16, 1986. Muse worked on the Marlboro campaign in 1961 or 1962 shortly after he joined Leo Burnett. Retrieved April 25, 2016, from the Philip Morris Public Document website, http://pmdocs.com/#Home Lomax, J. (1911). Cowboy songs and other frontier ballads. New York, NY: Sturgis & Walton Company. Madsen, D. L. (1998). American exceptionalism. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Slotkin, R. (2008). Western movies: Myth, ideology, and genre. Wesleyan University Lecture. Retrieved from iTunes. Smith, J. (1998). The sounds of commerce: Marketing popular film music. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tota, A. L. (2001). “When Orff meets Guinness”: Music in advertising as a form of cultural hybrid. Poetics, 29, 109–123.

Exploiting the Frontier   587 West, E. (1996). Selling the myth: Western images in advertising. Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 46(2), 36–49. Whitmer, M. (2017). Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven: A film score guide. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Video References “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” 1992. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tviyAIS9c_U “Bonaparte’s Retreat” performed by William  H.  Stepp 1937 Lomax Recording. https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=1yeQucos9-M Dairy Queen. Western BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger 2017 https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wRXJ/ dairy-queen-western-bbq-bacon-cheeseburger-5-buck-lunch-go-west “Ecstasy of Gold,” The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 1966. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ubVc2MQwMkg EDS “Herding Cats” 2000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MaJDK3VNE Gilt.com. “Outfit showdown” 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0wdqGgbhro Lamborghini “We are not supercars. We are Lamborghini.” 2017. https://youtu.be/ F2_UKvTkhHM

Music and Political Ads

chapter 29

M usic a n d Sou n d Design as Propaga n da i n Hell-Ben t for Election Lisa Scoggin

United Productions of America, or UPA as it was better known, was a cartoon studio that was perhaps best remembered for its cutting-edge animation design and its ability to create such designs using what is now known as “limited animation” on a fairly small budget.1 Its overall approach, clearly seen in the studio’s most heralded film, Gerald McBoing Boing (1950), includes a focus on modern design elements over realism, using blocks of color or patterns, stylized characters, and simpler backgrounds that tend to suggest the setting more than aiming for accuracy. This style influenced many other cartoon studios, including Warner Brothers, Hanna-Barbera, and even Disney.2 Both the visual style and the use of limited animation also influenced instructional films as well as animated commercials, especially ads for the burgeoning television market.3 The combination of low budget and eye-catching, modern design worked wonderfully to 1  Limited animation (as opposed to full animation) is a term used to describe various ways of cutting down on the actual amount of drawing required from what is seen in a traditional cartoon (e.g., classic Disney films such as Fantasia or Pinocchio). This can include techniques such as animating only part of a figure (such as an arm or the mouth) while the rest of the character remains still (allowing that portion of the drawing to be reused), recycling portions of the animation (such as when characters walk), or cutting down on the number of frames per second used (usually from 24 down to 12). Many have also considered this to be a cost-saving technique, especially in works produced in studios like Hanna-Barbera and Filmation. See Furniss (2016, pp. 211, 445) and Maltin (1987, pp. 343–344) for more information on limited animation and on the typical reception of it. 2  See, for example, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (Buena Vista, 1953), the Witch Hazel series of cartoons from Warner Brothers, and just about every Hanna-Barbera cartoon ever made. 3  See Furniss (2016, pp. 215–217) for a brief history of the beginnings of the use of animation in advertising.

Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election   591 convey the message to the masses. Despite the studio founders’ artistic aspirations, UPA knew this early on and throughout their existence, allowing them to produce a number of instructional shorts for the United States Armed Forces in addition to several product advertisements during their first few years.4 While UPA’s visual style and its influence on animation has been well documented,5 their use of music, be it as standard “cartoon music,” as atmospheric element, or as (sub) conscious influencer, has not been studied to the same extent—in part because of the large number of composers used and subsequent lack of stylistic coherence.6 This is not to say that the music did not work well, however; indeed, many of UPA’s films, including Gerald McBoing Boing (music by Gail Kubik), Rooty Toot Toot (1951; music by Phil Moore), and The Tell-Tale Heart (1953; music by Boris Kremleniev) have particularly well-written scores that contribute strongly to the film’s success. Composer Earl Robinson (1910–1991) and lyricist Yip Harburg (1896–1981) fall into this category with their score and sound design for UPA’s first animated cartoon, Hell-Bent for Election (1944). Because of the nature of the film as a political advertisement, however, their approach does not match those of the previously named films; instead, Robinson and Harburg use the music and overall sound design to persuade the viewer of the urgent need to vote for their candidate: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Though neither Robinson nor Harburg were apparently acquainted with UPA (then Industrial Film and Poster Service), their previous work would suggest an affinity for such projects.7 The biography from the Yip Harburg Foundation (n.d.-b) states that he “was known as ‘Broadway’s social conscience,’ ” having written the lyrics for such tunes as “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” (1932), as well as “April in Paris” (1932), “Lydia the

4  Cartoons produced for the Armed Forces include the A Few Quick Facts . . . series for the Army Signal Corps and numerous safety films for the Navy, while advertisements include ones for Carrier Corporation, Pontiac Motor Company, Shell Oil Company, Ford Motor Company, and Goebel Beer Company, among others. See Abraham (n.d.) for more specific examples. Note that their early visual style (especially during World War II) does not, for the most part, match the style of later classics, but rather more often resembles Chuck Jones’s cartoon The Dover Boys (1942). This is also true of Hell-Bent for Election. I maintain, however, that these earlier works, including Hell-Bent, still follow many of the tenets of limited animation in terms of simpler backgrounds and less attention to realism, and that the cartoon’s visual aspects are still stylized enough to catch the viewer’s eye, especially in certain scenes, such as the dream sequence in Hell-Bent. 5  See, for example, Maltin (1987, p. 323), Furniss (2016, pp. 209–214), Barrier (1999, pp. 526, 543–534), Abraham (2012, pp. IX–XI), and Amidi (2006) . 6  For example, upon a cursory study of the films in the UPA Jolly Frolics Collection (2012) , no fewer than 16 composers were used over the course of 38 shorts, including Del Castillo, Gail Kubik, David Raskin, Hoyt Curtin, Ernest Gold, Phil Moore, George Bruns, Boris Kremenliev, Benjamin Lees, Dennis Farnon, Billy May, and Mel Leven, among others. As one would expect from this list, then, the musical styles varied widely, from fairly modern classical music to sophisticated jazz music to Disney-style tunes to what people consider to be stereotypical cartoon music (in the model of Looney Tunes). 7  In his autobiography, Robinson intimates that he and Harburg were thrust into the project with little to no compensation (or expectation of such); see Robinson and Gordon (1998, p. 178) for the precise explanation.

592   Scoggin Tattooed Lady” (1939), and “Over the Rainbow” (1939) by this time.8 Robinson was a fervent supporter of Roosevelt and in fact was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. He was also a Communist and had been pushing pro-labor ideas for some time, as evidenced by his work in Communist youth summer camps and by his song “Joe Hill” (about a songwriter for the early labor movement). In addition, he and Harburg already knew each other, having written several songs together over the course of World War II, including one pushing for the desegregation of blood by the American Red Cross (“Free and Equal Blues,” 1944).9 Likewise, the members of UPA (as well as other animators who worked on the film) were well suited artistically and politically to persuade the given audience of the cartoon’s message. The founders of the studio, Stephen Bosustow, David Hilberman, and Zachary Schwartz, were not only former Disney artists but also considerably left-leaning in their politics. Bosustow, for example, was one of the leaders of the Disney strike of 1941, and Hilberman was a member of the Communist Party at the time (as well as being part of the Disney strike; Abraham, 2012, pp. 9, 14, 18).10 Others were similarly minded: storyboarders John Hubley and William Hurtz were likewise former Disney artists who took part in the strike, and in fact, Hurtz was the one who called for the strike in the first place. In addition, they and many other animators for UPA had been honing their abilities to get a message across to a wide audience by working on training films for the Armed Forces via the First Motion Picture Unit and other, similar groups. Thus, those working for UPA at this time had both the passion and expertise to produce a cartoon supporting FDR. Others not officially part of the studio were also interested in supporting Roosevelt’s re-election campaign by contributing to the cartoon. For example, director Chuck Jones, a strong supporter of both the labor movement and of Roosevelt, moonlighted on the project for a greatly reduced fee while still working at Warner Brothers.11 As Adam Abraham (2012) has noted, any other animators from other studios either donated their time or worked for reduced pay on the project as well. Overall, then, although the studio was being paid for the film, for many involved, it was also a labor of love, or at least, of passion, and this shows in the resulting work. As mentioned earlier, UPA’s first animated cartoon was in fact Hell-Bent for Election, a political advertisement commissioned by the United Auto Workers union that pushed for the re-election of FDR over Thomas Dewey.12 The cartoon sells FDR and the rest of 8  See Yip Harburg Foundation (n.d.-b) for more information. 9  See Bullert (1995) and Robinson and Gordon (1998, pp. 175–179) for more information. Collaboration confirmed in Yip Harburg Foundation (n.d.-a). 10  See Colt (2017) for more on the Disney strike and its context. 11  Note that, while his style probably influenced other early UPA films, Jones was not a full-time employee of the studio. See Abraham (2012, pp. 50–55) for more information on Jones’s role with Hell-Bent for Election. 12  Hell-Bent for Election is, at the time of this writing, available for purchase commercially. This article uses the print from Looney Tunes Platinum Collection (2011) as a reference, and all of the subsequent timings listed stem from this. (Please note that this is on the Blu-ray only; it is not part of the DVD version). The film was originally shown at meetings for the United Auto Workers unions; it was not, to the author’s knowledge, shown in commercial theaters at the time.

Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election   593 the Democratic Party primarily through metaphor. Roosevelt, along with Thomas E.  Dewey, the Republican candidate, are represented by anthropomorphized trains: Dewey by a decrepit-looking 19th-century beater steam engine, and Roosevelt by a modern, art deco–inspired engine (looking vaguely like Roosevelt himself). At the station, a track switch (representing the American vote) will allow only one train through to get to the final destination (i.e., to win the election). Joe, a blonde, tan, muscular man representing the American worker, is told by Sam, the station manager (who looks distinctly like the Uncle Sam in recruitment posters of the time), that Joe must make sure the train representing Roosevelt (called the Win the War Special) must be the one that gets through. A tubby, pale-skinned, white-haired politician (the primary villain in the film, representing the Republicans) is determined to stop Joe from pulling the lever and letting the right one continue.13 He manages to put Joe to sleep using a variety of techniques, including a “Phillie Buster” cigar, “no proof campaign champagne,” and a political tirade, all with Stephen Foster’s soothing song “Beautiful Dreamer” in the background. Interspersed with this are scenes of the trains moving toward the station, including (literally) dirty tricks played by the Dewey train (blowing smoke and throwing oil at the Win the War Special) as well as views of sample train cars representing various aspects of each prospective presidency. While Joe is asleep, he dreams of what missing the switch would mean and how to stop that from happening—by voting. Joe is able to wake up just in time to pull the lever, causing the Dewey train to derail and crash and allowing the Roosevelt train to fly through. The cartoon ends with a mass song encouraging everyone to vote and extolling the virtues of Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. Robinson divides the music design for this story into four spheres: music for the railroad station, music associated with the politician, music for the dream sequence, and music for the two trains. Within these spheres, the musical styles vary greatly, from classical modernist to popular song quotation to agitprop mass song, each of which is designed to appeal to the primary audience: the working class and union members. This chapter will examine how the composer, along with his lyricist, uses these different styles and techniques to augment and help persuade the viewer of the film’s central tenet: They’ve “got to get out and vote” for Roosevelt and his party.

Music for the Two Trains The music for the two different trains is a study in contrast. The Defeatist Limited’s soundscape features a mix of styles, depending on the context, whereas the Win the War Special uses different variants on a single theme: “Got to Get Out and Vote” (written specifically for this cartoon). While the Dewey train’s music changes tunes constantly, the FDR train’s music provides consistency. 13  Adam Abraham notes that the politician is “a sneaky Southern senator,” though it is not entirely clear where he gets this information. See Abraham (2012, p. 54).

594   Scoggin When we first see the 1929 Defeatist Limited (1929 of course referring to the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression), its accompanying music is overshadowed by various squeaks, grunts, and other sound effects indicating sonically the old, broken-down piece of equipment that is Dewey’s train. Indeed, the train itself at this point is hobbling along, apparently not able to move with any sort of speed. Once it realizes that it must beat FDR’s train to the station, however, the train rushes forward, and these sound effects give way to the underlying music—somewhat chaotic and moderately angry in tone, with no tonal center and regular downward tumbling motives in the trombones. Meanwhile, the quick but steady Win the War Special train’s music sounds modern yet accessible, with a tonal center, but full of whole tones and perfect fourths. (As suggested previously, this is in fact a variant on Roosevelt’s “Got to Get Out and Vote” song, which I will describe further later in the chapter.) As the trains continue their race to the station, FDR’s train continues to use variants of the theme, while Dewey’s tumbling motives are now spreading to other instruments, including clarinets and French horns. As the story progresses, the antics of the Defeatist Limited become increasingly visually unsportsmanlike, shooting oil and blowing smoke at the Win the War Special. Only after the audience has seen the politician start trying to convince Joe of his/the Republican cause do we hear musical verification of this as well as of the train’s (and hence Dewey’s) true stances on the issues, especially when the audience sees a close-up of the individual cars of the train. Each car reveals a particular expectation should Dewey win. For example, we see the “Social Security” car with a man sleeping on a park bench with Harburg’s song “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” played in the background (5:47–5:50), the “Labor Legislation” car displays a coffin (5:58–6:00), and the “Housing for War Workers” car carries outhouses on the car and uses the tune “There’s No Place Like Home” in the background (6:00–6:03). (See Table 29.1 for a concordance of music to action for this sequence.) For most of the cars on Dewey’s train, however, the accompanying music is the song “The Preacher and the Slave,” by Joe Hill, complete with lyrics: You will eat, by and by, In that glorious land in the sky, way up high! Work and pray, live on hay, You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.14

This song is appropriate in more ways than one. First, Joe Hill, the composer, was a Swedish immigrant originally named Joel Hågglund, who became involved in the labor movement in the early 1900s. Hill not only wrote and published many songs for the International Workers of the World union (IWW) but also was a martyr for the cause. Convicted and executed for murdering a grocery store clerk in 1914 (a crime for 14  This song is apparently where the phrase “pie in the sky” entered into mainstream thought. For more on “The Preacher and the Slave,” see Koerner (2003) and Harmon (n.d.-b).

Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election   595 Table 29.1  Dewey train Time Action

Music

5:34 FDR into war plant

slow moving chords

5:42 Hot Air Car

 

5:44 Business as Usual car

 

5:47 Housing For War Workers car

There's No Place Like Home

5:50  

The Preacher and the Slave starts

5:52 High prices car

 

5:55 Tax program car with cost of the war on back of worker

 

5:58 Labor legislation coffin car

 

6:00 Social security car w/park bench

Brother Can You spare a Dime (instrumental)/ The Preacher and the Slave

6:04 Unemployment insurance applecart

The Preacher and the Slave ends

6:06  

Go Down Moses starts

6:07 Jim Crow car

 

6:10 Farm & apple trees

 

6:13 smoke in

 

6:15 dead trees

Go Down Moses ends

6:16  

Win the War music starts

6:17 FDR train appears

 

which many say he was framed), Hill apparently told people not to bother with mourning his death, but rather, to organize instead.15 His fame spread even further in 1936, when Robinson, our composer, wrote an enormously popular pro-labor song about him. Second, the song used here, one of those in the IWW’s “Little Red Songbook” of songs and perhaps Hill’s most famous song overall, was designed to point out how many things that sound too good to be true are often false. Indeed, the phrase “pie in the sky” still indicates purposely false promises to this day. Through the union connection, then, the cartoon’s intended audience, the United Auto Workers members, would have had intimate knowledge of the music and have understood precisely what the lyrics mean.16 That this song is played in conjunction with the images of the 15  See Harmon (n.d.-a) for a fuller biography. 16  Note that the cartoon’s composer Earl Robinson would have chosen this song with all of this knowledge beforehand, as he had also written many songs for the labor movement, including one specifically on Joe Hill. See Bullert (1995) and Robinson and Gordon (1998) for more information on the relationship between Robinson and the labor movement.

596   Scoggin v­ arious 1929 Defeatist Limited train cars and their related campaign issues indicates precisely what message is intended: that all of the promises that Dewey and his party made to the workers of America were “pie in the sky” statements just to get them to vote for him. As the train nears its end with a car labeled “Jim Crow,” the music transitions to an instrumental version of the well-known spiritual “Go Down, Moses” (6:07–6:15).17 Meanwhile, we see the smoke from the Dewey train kill off everything it touches like a plague of locusts, thus calling forth several surface connections, both political and biblical, to the music within a matter of seconds. As such, we both hear and see the woe that comes from the train. Indeed, according to this portion of the film, if you (the worker) believe in Dewey and his party, not only will you be sorely disappointed, but also the country will be harmed as a result. From this and other similar scenes, the audience can see and hear the mix of styles and music that helped to show the inconsistencies in Dewey’s message. FDR’s train, on the other hand, the Win the War Special, is the model of musical and textual con­ sist­ency. All of the music associated with the train, as well as the opening title sequence and the final few minutes of the short, is based on one piece: “Got to Get Out and Vote.”18 There are several features that stand out in this work. First, it’s easy to sing. It has a small vocal range and uses simple intervals (that, when not stepwise, often outline basic chords) that combine to create a clear, tonal melody. It also has a regular meter with standard rhythmic use, including constant march-like dotted patterns. Second, both the phrase structure and the overall structure are quite repetitive. The repeating rhythmic patterns appear regularly within the phrases, for example, and the work uses a basic AABA song-form structure that is repeated several times. Third, the harmonic structure is also easy to follow and play, using only a few chords. Fourth, Yip Harburg’s words, when included, are direct and use basic vocabulary.19 Finally, despite (or perhaps because of) the simple nature of the piece, the tune sticks in one’s head easily, allowing the viewer to sing along by the time the words appear for the final verses and to remember the tune well after watching the cartoon.

17  The United Auto Workers was more concerned with race relations at the time than many might think (or expect) today. For example, in 1946, they worked with UPA on a different cartoon entitled “Brotherhood of Man,” which emphasized getting along and the similarities between races (though the cartoon is still a product of its time, failing to mention Latinos and Native Americans specifically). Note too the placement of the Jim Crow car symbolically in the rear (as several other critics have also observed). 18  The exact title for this song is not precisely clear, as it varies slightly depending on the source. For example, the cue cards with the lyrics within the cartoon itself say “Got to Get Out and Vote,” while Robinson’s autobiography refers to it as “Gotta Get Out and Vote” (Robinson & Gordon, 1998, p. 178). 19  The words are heard only at the end of the cartoon.

Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election   597 All of this means that this song functions as a mass song.20 For those who are unfamiliar with such works, these are typically associated with Communism and the Soviet Union in particular. Designed to be catchy and easy for the masses to sing as a group (hence the name), they were generally used to support various ideological stances—in other words, act as propaganda. Our composer, Earl Robinson, would have been quite familiar with such music, being a Communist himself at the time and even having worked at summer camps for Communist youth (as noted in the film Earl Robinson: Ballad of an American [1994]). Being a big fan of Communism and of Roosevelt, it would make sense that he would use the tools of one to help the other. The most obvious use of this tune is at the end, where we get the full song with all of the verses, complete with lyrics cards for the last bits: There’ll be a job for everyone, Everyone—everyone, There’ll be a job for everyone If we get out and vote. You want to have security, Security—security, Want to have security You’ve got to get out and vote. They’re growing big red apples That Hoover is promoting.21 If you don’t want to sell those apples, Start voting, man! Start voting! Oh! Get behind the President, President—President, Get behind the President If you want to win the War.22 20  Though mass songs are in many ways similar to commercial jingles as well as to many traditional folk tunes, there are several differences. First, mass songs are intentionally written to be sung en masse by the proletariat/workers, whereas traditional folk songs are not written with this in mind, and jingles do not have this as their primary intent. Second, mass songs can be quite long, with multiple verses, whereas jingles tend to be fairly short to be more memorable and to fit into the commercial length. Third, mass songs are usually political in nature, whereas traditional folk songs and jingles may or may not be. See Ron Rodman’s chapter in this book for more on jingles and their function. 21  Note that one of the well-known symbols of the Great Depression only a few years prior to this is the once-wealthy man who ended up selling apples on the street. As such, this text intimates that voting for Dewey, or not voting at all, will bring back the Great Depression, along with all of the financial difficulties that many suffered through during that time. 22  Hell-Bent for Election (11:58–12:28). The text here represents the last full iteration of the full AABA structure, though there is a short coda at the end of the song (with no lyrics cards), helping to bring the cartoon as a whole to an end.

598   Scoggin However, Robinson is able to “prime” the listener ahead of time by using bits of the music earlier, including the opening title and multiple times after that. Since portions of the theme are heard each time the Win the War Special is on the screen, the viewer not only starts to learn the song ahead of time but also associates it with voting for Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. Thus, both the music and its associated policies and ideologies are slowly ingrained in the viewer as the cartoon progresses, culminating with the overt message in the song.

Music for the Railroad Station The music for the railroad station is not nearly as involved, lengthy, or complex as that for the two trains. Nevertheless, coming as it does near the beginning of the film, it plays a pivotal role in setting up the human characters and overall plot.23 Upon first seeing the station, the viewer hears an extraordinarily familiar tune: “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” played at some length on the harmonica, with a banjo accompanying it. The music in combination with the folksy instrumentation instantly suggests a feeling of comfort and connection surrounding the station to the working-class audience, which then translates to those who work at the station: Joe and Sam—especially Joe, whom, soon after the scene is set, we see physically working at the railroad (as the song suggests). As such, the viewer subconsciously trusts Joe not only because they can see that he works hard but also because the music suggests that he is a good person at home in his surroundings and in his position. This relatively calm scene of Joe moving boxes into freight cars to folk music is interrupted with an urgent message from Sam, heralded by the apparent sounds of a telegraph. These sounds morph into a call to arms from the trumpet and French horns, as Sam runs out to Joe. It is at this point that, having garnered the audience’s attention via the urgency of not only Sam but also of the music, the plot of the film unfolds, thus helping to ensure the viewer’s knowledge of precisely what is at stake. During this expositional dialogue, the audience also first sees and hears the politician, whose appearance (especially the ill-fitting suit) and accompanying sound effects mark him as not fitting in the surroundings of the train station, and hence, not fitting with Joe and Sam and their message.24

23  The other scenes at the railroad station primarily use music related either to the politician or to the two trains and thus will not be considered in this section. 24  For more on the politician and his music, see the “Music for the Politician” section later in the chapter.

Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election   599

Music for the Dream Sequence While the music and imagery for the train station set the general tone for the cartoon in a relatively conventional way for the time, the dream sequence was, for many, something different. The visual aspect in particular is, in many critics’ opinions, the closest in style to what would become the standard in UPA cartoons. Most of the sequence looks as if it were drawn on a chalkboard, with white outlines on a black background, adding color only for emphasis. Classical standards of perspective are practically nonexistent, instead exaggerating the perspective to stress certain aspects, such as the never-ending skyscraper of inflation, or the distance Joe must run once he misses his chance to stop the Dewey train in the dream. The visuals move rapidly from scene to scene while maintaining a constant flow of monologue and music. To add to this, the politician, acting as a sort of narrator for the first portion of the dream, describes why his party’s ideas are perfectly reasonable, while Joe’s dream surroundings indicate metaphorically the reality of what those ideas really mean, including giant tacks for sales tax, and a huge blizzard for frozen wages. In other words, this looks not like the more realistic Disney films (or even Fleischer’s Superman series) of the time, but rather, with an eye toward persuasion through whatever means necessary, resulting in a feeling of the uncanny and uncomfortable, as any nightmare should. The accompanying music, designed to augment the viewer’s emotional response similarly to live-action films, similarly feels both unearthly and unnerving, particularly at the beginning, where the texture consists of high-pitched strings using harmonics, low-pitched strings and woodwinds, and nothing in between. The perceived tempo at this point is quite slow—so much so as to feel as though listening through a fog. Low horns join the bassoons, repeating a short melody in a minor key but without a strong tonal center. As the tension builds, muted trumpets sound a tumbling motive reminiscent of the one heard at the beginning of the cartoon in association with the Dewey train, thus adding an aural but perhaps subconscious connective tissue between the two. By this point, the music has also helped to persuade the ­audience of the issues they would face if this literal nightmare scenario were to come true. Once Joe is finally able to catch up to the Dewey train, he decides to hit the person running it, who, perhaps to no one’s surprise, is the politician. As he is about to do so, however, a voice cries out, “Wait, Joe! There’s a better way.” At this point, the now unmuted trumpets sound a call similar to the call to arms from the train station, and a large stamp appears in Joe’s hand, with which he votes (complete with accompanying trumpet blasts) for the “Win the War” candidates—in other words, Roosevelt’s party— thus ending the nightmare and allowing Joe to escape the unnerving sights and sounds within it.

600   Scoggin

Music for the Politician As we have observed so far, most of the music for this cartoon, including the music for the railroad station, the dream sequence, and most of the music for the individual trains, follows what one would expect for a live-action or feature film. The music for the opposing politician, however, is a bit different: It actually does sound like cartoon music much of the time. This is apparent from the first time the politician is on the screen: As he ­slithers down a ladder, a slide whistle slurs down along with him (2:09–2:10). The exaggerated sound effects keep coming throughout, including a sharp gong when the politician’s attempt to knock out Joe with a mallet backfires (3:14–3:18),25 or when he is accidentally flattened like a pancake by Sam and then manages to pop himself back into his normal shape (4:36–4:40), accompanied by another gong-like sound as he is injured and the sound of a balloon being rubbed as he struggles to become normal, thereby emphasizing the action. The audience also hears Mickey Mousing (a technique considered to be “cartoonish” in live-action films by this point) in several spots, such as when he stops the spittoon from spinning as he sets up his trap for Joe in the shed (4:11).26 Finally, several musical quotes of selections that are often associated with Golden Age cartoons accompany his actions. Consider, for example, the section where the politician sets up and initially springs his trap on Joe (3:52–5:25). (See Table 29.2 for the concordance of action to music/sound effects in this section.) The audience hears Felix Mendelssohn’s “Spring” as the politician gets ready to lull Joe to sleep, the Viennese tune “Oh du lieber Augustin” when the politician morphs into Adolf Hitler, a broken version of “Yankee Doodle” as he morphs back, and Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer” as part of the politician’s trap.27 If the rest of the film had similar music, this would be unremarkable and, in fact, somewhat expected by the average viewer, given that it is an animated film. Since the rest of the film’s music is not stand­ ard cartoon music, however, the cartoonish nature of it stands out. As such, it suggests a

25  The mallet is labeled “Made by Smith Connally & Co.” This is a reference to the Smith-Connally Act of 1943, which, according to critics, was considerably anti-union, as it made it even more difficult to strike. It also made it more difficult for (largely Democrat) unions to give money to candidates. See LaRaja (2008, pp. 63–64) for more information. 26  Mickey Mousing is a technique in which the music playing mimics the action, such as notes sounding for each step as someone goes up a set of stairs. See Goldmark (2007, p. 6) for additional clarification of the term. 27  The blatant quotation of other music in cartoons may mean one of several different things. Sometimes, it is simply to set the mood, as is often seen in live-action films. Occasionally, the music works to reference other media, often in a satirical way (such as using Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra to reference 2001: A Space Odyssey). In Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons (during almost all of the Carl Stalling era and for most of their cartoons afterward), the composer often used them as what is known as “film funners.” The reference here relates to the title of the tune and not necessarily the musical characteristics. For example, the listener might hear “Sweet Georgia Brown” while the character is walking through Georgia. See Goldmark (2007, pp. 15–16, 21–28) for more information on how these work. The use of the quotes here varies.

Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election   601 Table 29.2  The Politician’s Trap Time

Action

Music

3:52

As Joe is leaning on door we see politician's eyes in the window and cigar smoke

Variant of Mendelssohn's Spring

3:58

Politician sets up chair

Normal version of Spring with ­cartoonish orchestration starts

4:11

Politician stops spittoon

Bell tone

4:12

Politician runs over to radio

Flute triplets of Spring

4:14

Politician messes w/radio

(No music)

4:15-4:17

Startled politician switches station after music comes on

Music from Good Neighbor film comes on

4:19

Finds Beautiful Dreamer on radio and decides all is ready

Beautiful Dreamer starts

4:32

Politician opens shack door to let Joe in

 

4:36

Squashing of politician

Squeaky sounds

4:54

Politician forces Joe to drink champagne

Cartoon sound effects

4:58

Politician forces Joe to have cigar

Cartoon sound effects

5.07

Politician shows Joe anti-labor paper

 

5:16

Politician angry and morphs into Hitler

The More We Get Together/Oh du lieber Augustin

5:20

Politician morphs back

 

5:22

Bucktoothed grin

Broken Yankee Doodle

negatively associative cartoonish quality to the politician on top of the character’s insidious words and actions. Several of the musical quotes here also support the sinister aspect of the politician’s character if one digs a little deeper. Consider, for example, “Oh du lieber Augustin.” If the listener knows the tune under its alternate title of “The More We Get Together” (as most of the audience would), hearing it at the same time as seeing the politician as Hitler would strengthen the association of the politician, the Republicans, and Dewey himself to the Nazis. Those with a more esoteric bent could also know that the original version of the song is actually about losing everything during a plague, thus connecting the image of Hitler (and by association, the politician) with the idea of loss.28 “Yankee Doodle” would normally suggest patriotism, but given the broken, incomplete version that accompanies the politician’s chagrined, buck-toothed smile immediately after morphing into Hitler and back again (and right after “Oh du lieber Augustin”), it instead implies that he only pretends to represent American interests. Despite being a ­cartoonish 28  Admittedly, most audience members would be unlikely to know this second meaning. Nevertheless, I maintain that this is a possibility, especially for the composer and some of the union leaders.

602   Scoggin buffoon, then, this politician, both visually and musically, suggests that he could create some serious trouble, just as one would expect in such a film. The politician is also linked visually to the Dewey train in multiple instances, such as the segue of the politician’s smile to the cowcatcher of the engine, or the smoke puffing off his cigar to the steam engine’s smoke puffs, thus reiterating the connection between the two. As a result, the viewer subconsciously connects all of the issues surrounding the politician to the Dewey train (and hence, his campaign as well). This connection is emphasized aurally when the politician turns on the radio, only to hear music from the film The Gang’s All Here (1943) (which was part of FDR’s “Good Neighbor” policy), to which he reacts badly, quickly changing the channel to something not only more soothing but also less politically offensive to his (but not the target audience’s) ears. As they saw in the opening railroad scene, the politician, and hence the Dewey train, is not one that relates to them, no matter how much the politician tries to prove otherwise.

Conclusions As was the case with the UPA studio’s output as a whole, the music within the film HellBent for Election varies widely. The music at the station alternates between folksy and almost militaristic; the sounds associated with the politician sound clownish; the music for the dream sequence is designed to be eerie; and music for the trains comes off as either chaotic (for the Dewey engine) or steady and controlled (the FDR engine). Each of these, however, has a purpose, designed to slowly convince the audience to vote for FDR and his party. The music for the railroad station sets the general tone and is designed to put the viewer at ease with our main character, Joe, while the tunes associated with the politician paint him as a two-faced, sinister buffoon. The music for the dream sequence as well as Dewey’s train each show in different ways the result of voting for that party, while “Got to Get Out and Vote” consciously and subconsciously reminds the viewer to go vote for the “Win the War” candidate—FDR—and the others in his party. In combination with the visuals (and to some extent, the storyline), this music and its accompanying lyrics seem to have effectively convinced their core audience to vote as their union wanted, given the resulting re-election of FDR in 1944. The film also spurred the United Auto Workers’ later requests for further work from the studio, including the 1946 short Brotherhood of Man: another progressive-minded short (which, in this case, focuses on the similarities of the different races).

Recommended Readings and Viewing Abraham, A. (2012). When Magoo flew: The rise and fall of animation studio UPA. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Amidi, A. (2006). Cartoon modern: Style and design in fifties animation. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.

Music and Sound Design as Propaganda in Hell-Bent for Election   603 Barrier, M. (1999). Hollywood cartoons: American animation in its golden age. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Bosustow S., Hubley, J., Cannon, R., Babbitt, A., Burness, P., Hurtz, W. . . . Parmalee, T., (2012). UPA jolly frolics collection. [Motion picture (DVD)]. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Robinson, E., & Gordon, E. (1998). Ballad of an American: The autobiography of Earl Robinson. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Warner Bros. (2011). Looney Tunes platinum collection (Vol. 1). [Motion picture (Blu-ray)]. Warner Brothers Home Video.

References Abraham, A. (2012). When Magoo flew: The rise and fall of animation studio UPA. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Abraham, A. (n.d.). When Magoo flew: Filmography. Retrieved from http://whenmagooflew .com/Filmography.html Amidi, A. (2006). Cartoon modern: Style and design in fifties animation. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. Barrier, M. (1999). Hollywood cartoons: American animation in its golden age. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Bullert, B. J. (Producer). (1995). Earl Robinson: Ballad of an American [Television broadcast]. United States: KCTS television. Colt, S. (Producer and director). (2017, August 29). American Experience: Walt Disney [Television broadcast]. United States: Public Broadcasting Service. Furniss, M. (2016). A new history of animation. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson. Goldmark, D. (2007). Tunes for ‘toons: Music and the Hollywood cartoon. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Harmon, J. (n.d.-a). Joe Hill: The making of a martyr. Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved from http:// local.sltrib.com/charts/joehill/hill.html Harmon, J. (n.d.-b). Joe Hill’s Music: The defiant power of song. Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved from http://local.sltrib.com/charts/joehill/music.html Kimball, W. & Nicols, C. (1953). Toot, whistle, plunk and boom. [Film]. Buena Vista. Koerner, B. (2003, January 15). Where does the phrase pie in the sky come from? Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2003/01/ where_does_the_phrase_pie_in_the_sky_come_from.html LaRaja, R. J. (2008). Small change: Money, political parties, and campaign finance reform. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Looney Tunes Platinum Collection (Vol. 1) [Blu-ray]. (2011). Warner Brothers. Maltin, L. (1987). Of mice and magic: A history of American animated cartoons (revised edition). New York, NY: Plume Books. Robinson, E., & Gordon, E.  A. (1998). Ballad of an American: The autobiography of Earl Robinson. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. UPA Jolly Frolics Collection [DVD]. (2012). Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Yip Harburg Foundation. (n.d.-a). Who is Yip/Biography. Retrieved from http://yipharburg .com/about-yip-2/biography/ Yip Harburg Foundation. (n.d.-b). Stage musicals and motion pictures [Yip Harburg]. Retrieved from http://yipharburg.com/resources/stage-screen/

chapter 30

As Hea r d on  .  .  . The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads Justin Patch

As this volume and others attest, music is a vital element of advertising culture in the age of mass media and before.1 From street hawkers and junk peddlers through songsters, jingles, and the convergence of advertising with pop music and pop culture more broadly, the stealthy art of advertising has been accompanied by the fine art of music. As Rodman (2010) points out, music serves many purposes in advertising—occultation, augmentation, imbuement, affective cueing, and cognitive shortcutting. As sonic branding has become increasingly complex and adapted to the semiotic interplay of sound, text, image, association, and affect within broadcast and digital media, experiments and uses of music have both expanded and contracted. While there is untapped potential in pairings of the sonic and visual, as experimental film and video continue to demonstrate, certain musical tropes and topics dominate and define characteristic notions that correspond to common modes of reception and interpretation (Kivy, 1984; Rodman, 2010). It is no surprise, then, that presidential campaign advertising makes use of these common modes of semiotic and affective representation and interpretation. As candidates and campaign teams crisscross the country, they introduce themselves to the electorate and seek to persuade voters with their affect, charisma, rhetoric, and vision for the nation. This pursuit is dependent on a tightrope walk of recognition and innovation. Candidates participate with and through hegemonic discourses and craft their popular appeals within these boundaries. However, they must also project their own uniqueness: traits, characteristics, or histories that separate them from their competitors. Music partakes in these subtle acrobatics. As Paul Christiansen (2018) points out in Orchestrating Public Opinion, oftentimes music is the discourse. The sounds that 1  See Rodman (2010) , Taylor (2012) , and Lindstrom (2005) for examples.

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   605 a­ccompany political ads are as essential to the interpretation as text and imagery. Without the sonic accompaniment, some campaign ads would lose their meaning and their power to persuade. But how is this musical discourse formed? While Christiansen’s work presents a thorough overview of music in campaign ads, from Stevenson–Eisenhower in 1952 through Clinton–Trump in 2016, his work leaves two interconnected questions unanswered. First, how do musical cues and topics gather the power to connect candidates to extrinsic ideas; and second, where is this musical discourse generated? The short answer is that common musical discourse is created and disseminated through narrative genres like the film score, with its leitmotifs and pictorial gestures derived from concert music of the Romantic era, melodrama, and radio plays with their evocations of character, place, emotion, and scenario.2 These musical semiotics, purveyed through mass media, made possible a national musical language of advertising commodities that creates lifestyle brands and brands candidates. Once these musical gestures are made iconic through repetition, they then serve to connect citizens with ready-made identities and ideologies, interpellating them into partisans with predictable modes of reception and structures of feeling. These widely disseminated aural cues are augmented by the phenomenon of screen pedagogy, where the audience learns to feel the emotions of the characters and scenarios on the silver screen. In the analysis of Susan Buck-Morss (1994) , the screen becomes a prosthesis, an extension of the human sensorium. But under monopoly capital and the culture industry, this new appendage does not exhibit sensory variation, and actors’ expressions, dramatic sequences, landscape shots, and the accompanying music are intended to evoke specific emotions and reactions. Under a regime of aggressive advertising and branding, where social life, including democracy, is lived as a transaction, political advertising mimics “the sounds of capitalism” (Taylor, 2012). Public opinion is orchestrated, not debated, and political advertising is the model for the campaign, rather than one part of a larger contest of ideas. Persuasion, rather than information, is the purpose of the campaign. The candidate is a lifestyle commodity to be bought into and partisanship is a fetishization of that commodity. Examining political campaign music lends insight into a specific discourse of American politics. The reliance on narrative musical techniques with specific topics and connotations illuminates alliances and fissures within state politics. It also tells us about the shortcomings of campaign politics and the need to refine democratic critique. If our political ears are still attuned to the sonic techniques of European nationalism, early sound films, melodrama, and advertising’s convergence with popular culture, then is the scope of our political imaginations similarly caught in that era? Does campaign music’s conformity to the norms of advertising, film, and television connote, to paraphrase Nancy Frazier (1994) , the impossibility of a democratic public sphere under capitalism? Campaign advertising music indicates how campaigns envision the candidate and the electorate, and the evidence is that the U.S.  political 2  See Rapee (1924) , Deaville (2011) , Pisani (2014) , and Rodman (2010) .

606   Patch i­magination has been on repeat, recycling old motives and themes. The conflation of capitalist modes of manipulation and commodity fetishization with political campaigns interpellates voters as consumers rather than citizens, bodies to be molded and marketed to rather than heard and uplifted. The music of presidential campaigns correlates to the political gridlock and the dearth of fresh faces and ideas that have been part of U.S. politics for over two decades. I believe that developing critical aural literacy is essential to a contemporary democratic solution, just as John Stuart Mill considered literacy part of a 19th-century democratic solution (Mill, 1991). It is not only that critical listening expands subjectivity but also that knowing the history of music and the repertoire of topics used in advertising dulls their affective power and forces a line of flight away from raw social repetition (Aristotle,  2000). Critically understanding history and narrative does not necessarily alter the present, but it does give us new tools to live in it differently (Trouillot, 1995).

Two Examples of Music and Campaign Advertising Early in the Television Age In slightly more than a century since the first truth in advertising laws were passed, which separated advertising from the practices of snake-oil salesmen and legitimated the industry, advertising has become culture. James Twitchell (1996) and Timothy Taylor (2012) detail the dominance of advertising not only as a means to sell products but also as a determinate of lifestyle and identity, a mode of communication, and a lingua franca. Stuart Ewen (2001) chronicles the ethos of early admen who viewed themselves as performing a public service—pedagogizing new Americans into modernity, teaching them how to lead better, modern lives and how to succeed in a booming young nation. Advertisers were not selling products, but the American Dream (Marchand, 1985). This ethos elides flawlessly with political advertising in the media age, where political ads address aspirations and fears rather than policy. Both early broadcast media and political ads revolved around the jingle. The jingle defined the sound of early campaign advertising as a mode that is a distinct part of the campaign, but it has musical predecessors. Before the dominance of the jingle, songsters were used to communicate presidential or partisan messages. These lengthy campaign songs were contrafacta of the day’s popular songs with lyrics that extolled the virtues of the candidate, announced the shortcomings of his rivals, and often included a healthy dose of patriotism (Schoening & Kasper, 2012). These songs were sung on street corners and distributed in pamphlets and small booklets. In some cases, like William Henry Harrison and James Tyler’s “Tippiecanoe and Tyler Too,” which painted incumbent Martin Van Buren in a negative light, the songs gained substantial popular traction. Critic Helen Kendrick Johnson

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   607 wrote of the song: “ ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,’ was to the political canvass of 1840 what the Marseillaise was to the French Revolution” (Johnson, 1884, p. 494). However, cases of this magnitude were rare. Songsters as a method of outreach and advocacy were unsuited to campaigning in an age of mass media and broadcasting. By the 1950s, radio and television (along with other mass media) were common household items and had begun to reshape the way Americans heard and processed sound (Sterne,  2003). Radio and television stations were switching to ad-based magazine format rather than single-sponsor format, and the 30- or 60-second spot was becoming a standard unit (Rodman, 2010; Taylor, 2012). Ads for the president, which were aimed at a national audience, musically mimicked the ads of the day. Following the landmark success of “Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot,” the standalone jingle became one of advertising’s key aural features (although traditional hardsell advertising was never totally eclipsed; Taylor, 2012, p. 85). The first notable presidential jingle was “I Like Ike,” from Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign. Typical of jingles of the time, it was repetitive, bouncy, simple, and catchy. The style of the music mimics Tin Pan Alley, with male and female voices singing in alternating tutti and SA and TB blocks. Its lyrics celebrated popular support for Eisenhower instead of praising any of the candidate’s intrinsic characteristics or policies. But in 1952, the war hero needed no introduction to the American public. Accompanying this jingle (which aired on radio and on television) is a childish cartoon featuring (white) men and women in various professional garb marching behind a cartoon Uncle Sam with an “Ike” pin and a circus elephant draped with Eisenhower’s face. The affect of this ad is a combination of enthusiasm and peer pressure. The jaunty jingle is meant to give the viewer positive associations with the candidate (an easy feat given Eisenhower’s reputation as Europe’s liberator and plain-spoken “man from Abilene”) and to induce enthusiasm/pressure to act in line with “everybody” by voting for Eisenhower (Schoening & Kasper, 2012, p. 24). John F. Kennedy’s “Kennedy for Me” from 1960 is similar to “I Like Ike” but pushes the form of the jingle, indicating its limits as an advertising and campaigning form. The jingle has two versions, a 30-second and a two-minute, which differ in key ways. While more grandiose in orchestration and variation of vocal timbre than “I Like Ike,” Kennedy’s march is also a major key paean to the candidate. Similar to “I Like Ike,” “Kennedy” contains a repetitive chorus that prominently features the candidate’s name and was used in different time formats for radio and television. Unlike the Eisenhower ad, which uses a cartoon, “Kennedy” features photographs in collage, quick-cut, or pan. What these two ads have in common on the surface is that they conform to a contemporary advertising standard. They are made to be memorable and leave the listener with a positive feeling, a soft sell rather than a hard one, and make no attempt to expose viewers to the opinions or the voice of the candidate. “Kennedy” also participates in a peer-pressure affect by incorporating the phrase “it’s up to you” repeatedly, set to different images of faces and groups of (presumably) Americans. But the two-minute version of “Kennedy” edges away from “Ike” in interesting ways.

608   Patch The 30-second version of the ad features only the selling point that defends against critics of Kennedy’s age—a mere 44 at the time of his campaign. The verse extolls Kennedy’s youth as “a man for president who’s seasoned through and through/but not so doggone seasoned that he won’t try something new” and “a man who’s old enough to know/and young enough to do.”3 The second verse, for the 60-second version, does much the same, as does the fourth verse, which was sometimes used rather than the second in 60-second spots. But the third verse, in the full two-minute version, tackles the issue of Kennedy’s Catholicism in a fashion that is more nuanced than a typical jingle. “Do you deny to any man the right he’s guaranteed/to be elected president no matter what his creed/it’s promised in the Bill of Rights to which we must be true/so it’s up to you, it’s up to you, it’s strictly up to you.” Kennedy’s faith was an issue that precipitated a speech and meeting with Protestant ministers in Houston in September of 1960, and was a point of skepticism. Here, Kennedy’s religion is defended not on personal grounds, but based on the First Amendment while the title of “Bill of Rights” pans across the screen in the television ad. “Kennedy” also deviates from Eisenhower’s white-washed imagery in that it includes people of color, although only African Americans. The images also include poverty and struggle alongside images of working Americans, pictures of Kennedy in various stages of work or oration, and glamorous pictures of the Kennedy family, whose short tenure in the White House would come to be known as “Camelot.” In lyrical content and the imagery, Kennedy’s campaign jingle demonstrates the limits of the form. While it is easy to remember the name “Kennedy” and feel positive about him thanks to the catchy march, nuances of the imagery and lyrics may be lost. In his run for president, Kennedy was confronting a history of the executive office being exclusively held by white, Anglo-Saxon protestants. He was also championing a civil rights, workers’ rights, and anti-poverty platform. These were alluded to in the ad, but in ways that did not forward meaningful conversation or argument in favor of radical action and acceptance. While it could be argued that the subtle approach to these issues are part of the ad’s allure, I argue that the affect of the music works against more radical interpretations and flattens potentially meaningful affects. The form of the jingle makes it easy to feel good about a candidate without knowing why—the musical rhetoric eclipses the textual/visual and political rhetoric.

Changing of the Guard After Kennedy, presidential campaigns came to grips with the importance of media, and the 1964 contest between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater transformed campaign advertising. The notable ad “Daisy” pushed campaign advertising toward its 3  See these examples for the one-minute version: Museum of the Moving Image (2016a) and Popisms (2011).

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   609 c­ ontemporary form and established visual and sonic repertoires for campaign ads that depended on viewers’ familiarity with common cultural signifiers and mass-mediated modes of perceiving and interpreting. The ad in question aired only once, but it created such a ripple effect that its significance should not be underestimated.4 The ad features no music, but it is its eerie soundscape that heralded fear as a sought-after affect of political advertising. The ad begins with a pastoral shot of a young girl picking the petals off a daisy in an open field, accompanied by (seemingly diegetic, but badly mixed) bird sounds. While she picks, she counts backward from 10, endearingly counting incorrectly. As she reaches zero, her voice is overtaken by the metallic, echoing voice of a launch countdown, at the end of which a nuclear weapon explodes. As a mushroom cloud unfolds in slow motion, Lyndon Johnson’s voice is heard saying: “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.” When the screen shifts to “Vote for President Johnson on Nov. 3” over a black background, a less ominous male voice finishes the ad: “Vote for President Johnson on November third. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.” The message is clear: Goldwater represents danger, the greatest of which is the potential for nuclear destruction. Johnson’s campaign changed the relationship of the spectator to the campaign ad. Previously, political ads followed two typical formats: testimonial or jingle. In both cases the spectator was in a position of being appealed to, and the advertisement clearly invited the audience to process it as such. “Daisy” was different; it turned the screen into an affective prosthesis where the viewer felt what was on the screen through a series of metaphors, sounds, and images. This technique is closer to film, with its progressive narrative, than to the informational or aspirational aesthetics of advertising. In her analysis of cinema and affect, Susan Buck-Morss (1994) notes that filmmakers performed a type of cultural pedagogy, teaching the viewer how to feel about the images on the screen. She notes that early audiences had difficulty interpreting images in film and were often distressed by their presentation. Learning how to perceive film was a process, one that opened new interpretative windows, but under a capitalist regime of mass media it also leads to affective conformity and the manufacturing of consent. Buck-Morss states that, “the surface of the cinema screen functions as an artificial organ of cognition. The prosthetic organ of the cinema screen does not merely duplicate human cognitive perception, but changes its nature” (p. 48). These techniques, like the use of close-up shots to create intimacy or the deployment of loaded images as metaphors for specific constellations of emotions, were used in “Daisy.” The audience was not supposed to see young Monique Corzilius as a child threatened by nuclear war, but an innocence threatened by Barry Goldwater’s extreme ideologies. The eerie, low-fi, reverberating countdown and nuclear explosions were not depicting a current reality or a specific news story for a designated place and time, 4  See Brader (2006) , Christiansen (2018) , and Roberts (2014).

610   Patch but rather they were an evocation of fear and danger that corresponded to contemporary anxieties. This was not the only negative ad from either Johnson or Goldwater’s campaigns, but the most famous and compelling. “Daisy” severed association between political advertising and other forms of advertising like jingles, testimonials, and unique selling points. Political advertising was becoming a mass medium closely linked to the affective semiotics of narrative forms: film, television, radio shows, and their trailers. Musical topic cues like fear, heroism, patriotism, and nostalgia, as well as geographic cues aimed at establishing specific or idealized locations, became part of the campaign ad sonic vocabulary. Campaign ads borrowed musical topics from the familiar sonic arsenals of film score, radio plays, melodrama, and their advertising trailers. This trend continues into the present. The critical issue with this turn, of moving political advertising out of the aesthetics of the jingle and into that of film, television, and broadcast entertainment, is audience transformation. The affective pedagogy that Buck-Morss (1994) locates in viewers identifying with images on the screen in similar or identical ways is not benign. It is an insidious form of violence done to democracy’s ideological notion of consensus gathered through intersubjective participation. The creation and presentation of homogenized celebrities and predictable plots to elicit formulated emotions circumscribes the parameters of individual perception and delimits subjectivities. “The crowd in a movie theater . . . has a “mass” experience. The movie audience is not an assembly of individual viewers. It is one viewer infinitely reproduced” (p. 53, emphasis in original). She continues, “When the mass audience has a sense of immediate identity with the cinema screen, and perception in itself becomes consensus, the space for intersubjective, critical debate and discussion disappears” (p. 55). While “Kennedy” failed to open spaces for important public debates on poverty, race and religion, “Daisy” effectively closed off any debate: Vote Johnson or face annihilation. While Buck-Morss’s analysis is ocular centric and does not deal with sound, I believe they can be applied to the popular musical vocabulary of political ads, which are largely drawn from the techniques of 19th-century European Romanticism that accompanies cinema from its golden age to the present. When our ears are attuned such that common and familiar musical figures are readily paired with emotions, projections, and modes of anticipation, there is a flattening of possibility, interpretation, and creation. This direct channeling, which is effective for the narrative and character purposes of film, is part of the bifurcation of the electorate by emotion. Music affectively binds viewers to images, ideologies, candidates, and party. As cognitive scientists have demonstrated, partisanship regularly overrides ideology and logic in modern America, and the cultural pedagogy of film is part of the narrowing of debate and possible subjectivities (Kahan et al.,  2017; Westen,  2007). The presentation of compelling sounds and images becomes enough to create consent without debate, fact-checking, proof, or public input. If we believe historian Rick Perlstein’s (2008) assertion that the partisan dividing of America began with Nixon’s 1968 election, it is the pedagogy of “Daisy” that moved him in that direction.

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   611

Interlude: Speculation on the Role of the Sound of Film and Television Trailers in Emotional Cueing Before proceeding into more recent campaigns, it is essential to ask a question about how a diverse array of film cues become standard in presidential ads and appeal to an expansive electorate. In examining campaign ads from 1964 to the present, an extraordinary diversity of music is represented. There are chaotic and dissonant electroacoustic sounds, low synth drones, and white noise associated with horror films; open-voiced string chords that accompany Americana pastorals; military marches and triumphant brass for jingoistic military scenes; and the soft piano or orchestral sounds that symbolize intimacy and domestic bliss. This diverse sonic repertoire is unique because it represents a range of film genres whose audience overlap is likely to be quite small. Yet when incorporated into presidential campaign ads, viewers are expected to know and recognize the connotations and meanings of this varied topical repertoire. Although nearly impossible to quantify, it is my assertion that it is the short, dramatic music of film trailers that instructs viewers and provides the aural cues and sonic vocabulary of political ads. While few in the electorate could be expected to be fans of genres ranging from horror to action, sci-fi, drama, and romance, the film advertising industry fills in the gaps. Blockbuster films advertise to a national audience, and their trailers contain obvious sonic cueing that provides predictable information about plot, character, and affect to viewers. It is through these trailers, as well as trailers for television shows that imitate these genres, that cues like white noise and low synth drones become associated with suspense and horror, for example. Both audiences and political campaigns pay attention to these sonic cues. Audiences use them to determine if they want to see a film and which characters they identify with. Campaigns use the same sonic cues to set up their rhetoric, to frame candidates as heroic, situations as dire, and adversaries as threats or buffoons. As Taylor (2012) points out, advertising sound has become the soundtrack of life under monopoly capitalism. Film advertising sound—the sound that entices audiences and leaves them with enough answered and unanswered questions to make decisions about viewing a film—has become the soundtrack of totalitarian democracy. The cultural and philosophical implications of this will be revisited.

The New Wave in Advertising: Nixon and 1968 Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign deserves attention for two reasons. The first is that Nixon’s campaign used media in a uniquely modern capacity: to reinvent the candidate. Instead of having media highlight desirable traits, media was a tool to refurbish Nixon’s

612   Patch reputation as a stodgy, wooden wonk and to shed his tarnished reputation as a two-time loser. The second is that Nixon’s campaign set the battle lines that have come to define much of modern politics. While it is argued that these lines were borrowed from Barry Goldwater’s embarrassing defeat, it was Nixon who effectively executed this playbook and redefined American conservatism in the process (Perlstein, 2008). As Joe McGinnis chronicled in “Selling the American President,” by 1968 Nixon had learned a critical lesson, that television was the single most important campaign tool. On television a candidate could effectively remake himself into anything the electorate desired. Nixon’s entire campaign, from his television and radio spots to his scripted televised conversations with local audiences, was managed as a marketing campaign for a product instead of a political campaign for a candidate (McGinnis, 1969). Nixon’s advertising, which emphasized fear, anxiety, and nationalism, utilized a host of sounds derived from film score. Ads like “The First Civil Right” make use of an electroacoustic soundscape that is reminiscent of B-horror, monster, and science fiction films, as well as mid-20th-century avant-garde compositions. The quick-cut images that flash on the screen are indicative of chaos: protesters shouting, some of them bloody and laying on the street; riot police firing tear gas; lines of bayonets; military personnel on walkie-talkies; close-ups of weapons; and buildings on fire. As these repeated images flash past, arrhythmic, dissonant piano clusters drenched in reverb are played over a marching snare with slap-back delay.5 After 15 seconds, an atonal brass cluster builds and then gives way to the voiceover, which is accompanied by a prominent bass clarinet line with the piano and snare lower in the mix. The voiceover criticizes the violent dissent associated with the anti-war, student, Black Power, and civil rights movements; the urban race riots that damaged Detroit, Newark, Los Angeles and other cities; and the massive rioting that broke out in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis.6 The ad ends with Nixon intoning the powerful lines: “Let us recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence. So, I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States.” At this point, the music and picture fade and the viewer is left with a silent black screen with the words “This time vote like your whole world depended on it.” Other Nixon ads use similar techniques. His “Vietnam” features a soundscape composed of a low tympani roll processed with heavy reverb with an arrhythmic dry tom added midway through. Where a marching snare and expansive brass might reframe the still photos of the pain of war as heroic, the uneven tympani rolls create an air of chaos, disorder, and impending doom. Taking advantage of the violence that unfolded at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Nixon’s “Convention” ad utilizes unusual blending techniques that are effective despite their technical fumbling. The ad begins with photographs from the convention that prominently feature Nixon’s 5  Slap-back is an analog or digital sound effect that produces a harsh, sharp, fast echo. 6  The histories of violence associated with these movements are complex, and Richard Nixon’s campaign appealed to the narratives and fears (often racialized and classed) more than the realities of these events.

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   613 ­ pponent, Hubert Humphrey, at the podium. These stills are accompanied by the rago time tune “A Hot Time in the Old Town” by Theo Metz, which seems like an inside joke.7 Ten seconds into the ad the music begins to degenerate into a delay feedback loop while the photographic image sputters between mirror images of Humphrey speaking, mouth open. As the music completely gives way to the feedback loop, the images change to photos of the rioting outside of the Democratic National Convention and firemen fighting a blaze in a set of rowhouses. This negative sound and imagery last only a few seconds before returning to “Hot Time” and convention photos. This pattern repeats two more times. The second negative sequence is photos of the Vietnam War featuring injured U.S. soldiers, and the third sequence is that of rural poverty. The ad contains no text, but the message and its intentions are clear: Associate Humphrey with disorder, civil rights and Vietnam protests, chaos, and suffering. A final, unusual piece of advertising is a Nixon ad called “Decisions,” an attempt to cast Nixon as a beacon of security in troubled times. The ad is unique for several reasons. First, it makes no mention of Humphrey as his challenger. Second, the ad is shot in black and white. Finally, the ad’s soundtrack has a distinct narrative arc: from question to answer, anxiety to sureness, foreign to American, the unknown to Nixon. The ad’s sound mirrors and reinforces the imagery and text of the voiceover. The ad begins with four ascending piano and vibraphone clusters over a steady snare played by brushes, during which a voiceover intones: “Think about it. When the decisions of one man can affect the future of your family for generations to come, what kind of a man do you want making those decisions?” The images shown are long shots of the National Mall, the Capitol Building, and an overexposed picture of the White House, finally coming to rest on the presidential seal, shot in reverse (appearing backward and viewed from below). After this (approximately 10 seconds), high brass enters playing a staccato pattern, marking a transition into a rapid piano figure. During these musical sounds, photos of men around a meeting table are shown, followed by photos of nuclear warheads, Khrushchev, Castro, Mao, soldiers, and weapons of war, and finally crescendoing on a trumpet note that accompanies a close-up of a soldier’s face as he screams. These ominous sounds and images make up the first half of the ad. The second half of the ad is the response to the question of who the decision maker should be. Again, the image is of the presidential seal, but presented boldly on the screen, dead center, accompanied by a gentle, major-mode brass melody and soft strings. The music continues in the major mode (with an oddly placed cluster near the resolution) throughout the rest of the ad. The images in these final 10 seconds include a clear and grandiose photo of the White House, an aerial of Lower Manhattan, and the Statue of Liberty at sunset. The voiceover concludes, “Think about it. Who is the one man who has the experience and the qualifications to lead America in these troubled,

7  Metz’s (1896) instrumental “Hot time in old town” became was known as “There’ll be a hot time in old town to-night,” as Hayden (1917) added lyrics to Metz’s original composition. Also see McGinnis (1969) . Unfortunately, McGinnis does not include the rationale behind the choice of music.

614   Patch dangerous times? Nixon’s the one.” The music and image cut out and the viewer is left with a black screen and the slogan “This time vote like your life depended on it.” What makes this ad visionary, despite its heavy-handed approach, is the aim of telling the viewer a clear story, of shepherding them from one emotion, fear, to another, comfort, over a short time span. This ad mimics the sound of film trailers, which often include miniature imitations of the film’s narrative. Nixon’s campaign team, which included a young Roger Ailes (future executive of Fox), Harry Treleaven (a J. Walter Thompson ad man who had worked for George H. W. Bush’s 1966 campaign for the House of Representatives in Houston), and Frank Shakespeare (president of CBS), employed techniques that hook viewers, pique their interest, and set them up for an expected ending. These audiovisual techniques would define a standard for political ads that carries into the present. Examples of similarly persuasive political ads from the past 40 years include Reagan’s “Morning in America” and “Bear,” George  H.  W.  Bush’s “Revolving Door,” Clinton’s “The Change Is Coming,” and George W. Bush’s “Wolves” and “Safer, Stronger.” These ads employ the aural semiotics of film and television, instead of advertisement, to sell a candidate.

Counteracting Blockbuster Sounds With Verité The publication of Joe McGinnis’s book, a journalistic chronicle of the artifice of the Nixon campaign, may have influenced the McGovern/Shriver campaign’s choice of documentary film maker Charles Guggenheim to produce their ads. At this point in his storied career, Guggenheim had already made documentaries about integration in Detroit and Little Rock, the building of the Arch in St. Louis, the American West, the struggles of parents with a child born with birth defects, and a tribute to Robert Kennedy.8 Guggenheim’s approach to McGovern’s ads was to humanize him, to paint him as genuine and caring, and to portray his supporters as a diverse group of Americans.9 An example of Guggenheim’s work for George McGovern is the ad “Convention,” a four-minute mini-documentary about the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami, Florida. The ad begins with a long shot of the backstage area at the Democratic National Convention. As the camera zooms in, the viewer can see that it is McGovern standing at the top of a staircase, waiting for his cue to walk onstage. The sound is that of cheering, and the voiceover begins: “It was almost dawn in Miami when the final moment came, but the lateness of the hour did not dim the emotion in that hall. For the victory they celebrated was not his alone.” While the sound of cheering continues, close-ups of various delegates are shown, as well as a panning shot of the convention floor. McGovern 8  See Guggenheim Productions INC. (n.d.) for a list. 9  See Museum of the Moving Image (2016b).

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   615 takes to the podium and begins speaking about the preciousness of his victory. The voiceover continues as the camera focuses on different faces: “The reforms at work, for in Miami that night were people from the entire length and breadth of their party. Some were professionals, many were amateurs, but they all were Democrats, and they all shared the belief that this year each of them would make a difference.” As this section closes, the sound changes to open-air bird calls and a scene of sunrise on a farm. Before the speaker’s face is shown, her voice is heard identifying herself as “a housewife, and a mother, and a dairy farmer.” The speaker relates her story about going to the convention with her son directly to the camera. The woman is one of four characters whose interspersed stories of the convention make up the middle section of the video. The other three are a middle-aged white male professional who is being interviewed in an office, a young white woman interviewed outdoors in a semi urban area, and a white, blue-collar man (with a can of Coke in his hand, which receives a close-up) who is interviewed on a factory floor. All three give positive personal accounts of their experiences but emphasize the hard work and teamwork involved and the participation of the people in the political machine. The final section returns to McGovern’s address, when he waxes about returning the government to the people, denounces the influence of big money in the other campaign (Nixon’s), and makes an appeal: “Let the opposition collect their ten million dollars in secret money from the privileged few, and let us find one million ordinary Americans who will contribute twenty-five dollars each to this campaign, a million-member club, with members who will not expect special favors for themselves but a better land for us all.” The voiceover ends: “The contributions of 200,000 ordinary Americans had made him their nominee. He would need a million more to make him their president.” Many of the shots of McGovern are from the side, not the typical power shots of the speaker front and center, presenting McGovern as spontaneous and unchoreographed. This ad is strikingly devoid of music. True to the style of cinema verité, which prized the aura of naturalness and unmediated filming, the only sounds are those of human voices and bird calls. This sound design recalls what Michel Chion calls a “rendering,” a sonic element that the “spectator recognizes . . . to be truthful, effective, and fitting not so much if they reproduce what would be heard in the same situation in reality, but if they render (convey, express) the feelings associated with the situation” (1994, p. 109). The sounds actually heard in the convention might have been different from those conveyed in the ad. There are numerous shots of delegates speaking to each other or on the phone that are not sonically represented. The birds and machines heard in the middle section are acousmatic sounds; the sound producers never appear in the camera shots, but their sounds set the sense of place and meaning. The soundscape creates the aura of participation, keying into the other vital affect in campaigning, enthusiasm.10 The soundscape draws viewers in, gives them a taste of the thrill of participation, and then gives them the hard sell: Send money to the McGovern campaign and be part of the movement. Despite 10  Marcus (2002) concludes that the two most effective affects in politics are fear/anxiety and enthusiasm. Nixon’s campaign and others represent the opposite of McGovern’s.

616   Patch McGovern’s populist rhetoric and progressive credentials, this strategy is taken straight from Madison Avenue: Buy into the new movement, our movement. And it was done with a filmmaker’s technique that edits to mimic reality, to pique emotional involvement by providing a false sense of unmediated presence, and to fundamentally affect the viewer by bringing them into a familiar scene. This technique never fully caught on in campaigns but takes on new significance with the birth of digital media and the advent of online campaign videos. Campaigns seek to humanize their candidates, making the most of a scripted candidate in mass media while portraying a casual candidate in online videos. These videos seek to capture the candidate in spontaneous moments or addressing topics that are not the usual news fare. Verité techniques, which were intended for supporters, are now a part of the candidates’ online advertising and outreach.11

The Digital Battleground: Partisan Posturing, Madison Ave Sound The 2008 election was predicted to be the “YouTube election” by Newsweek (Ramirez,  2008), the New York Times (Lizza,  2006), the Guardian (Wood,  2007), Vanity Fair (Wolcott,  2007), and other outlets. Citizens and journalists watched Virginia Republican George Allen’s campaign sputter thanks to his “macaca” comments going viral, and pundits read Obama’s electoral victory through his superior numbers of YouTube hits and hours the public spent watching campaign videos online. It was clear to all that digital outreach (including massive online, small-dollar fundraising) was a key to the Oval Office, even if its nuances were yet to be fully grasped.12 As the technology has expanded, the digital world has been ground zero for both electoral successes and election meddling, making it a globalized space in which politics and identity are contested. Digital media has allowed for two types of advertising that deviate from the forms that dominated broadcast media to proliferate. The first is the campaign web video; the second is user-generated content. Campaign web videos, most importantly, are distributed for free and are relatively easy to produce with low-cost, portable equipment. After the 2008 election, TubeMogul, a data service, estimated that Obama videos were watched for 14.5 million hours. This would have cost the campaign $46 million in advertising costs if they had purchased broadcast time. While the Obama campaign hired an award-winning CNN producer to supervise the content, there is no doubt that the 11  A good example is the Clinton campaign’s web series (December 31, 2015) “Quick Question,” which features Clinton answering queries like “What’s it like to watch football with your family?” or “Can you tell us a fun story about a world leader you’ve met?” (Clinton, 2015). 12  Towner and Dulio (2011) provide an excellent summary of the research into the effect of online campaigning and partisanship.

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   617 s­ avings to the campaign were substantial (Ramirez, 2008). The web format allowed the campaign to experiment, to target and narrowcast their ads, and to be responsive to different demographics. Contrary to political strategist Matthew Dowd’s prediction that YouTube limits the amount of experimentation that candidates can participate in, the Obama campaign’s use of online video showed that ideas can constantly be tinkered with. This provides flexibility that traditional broadcast media does not. Campaign videos can be used to show the candidate in a host of different lights that depart from a disciplined public persona or partisan stance (Lizza, 2006). Web videos can also be used as a form of direct outreach, as was the case with Obama campaign manager David Plouffe giving web presentations directly to supporters and activists (Ramirez, 2008). The inclusion of user-generated content, coupled with the availability of inexpensive digital editing software and accessibility of social media, has dramatically altered the campaign ad landscape. Digital materials like tribute and parody videos attract millions of hits, get passed around social media, and create partisan enthusiasm. They give the impression of popular support, particularly among younger voters, who are perceived as more likely and able to participate in read/write digital culture (Saffle, 2015, 2017). As both major parties struggle to attract, retain, and excite young voters, fan-made digital videos are becoming a necessary accoutrement to successful campaigns. In the contentious 2016 election, tribute videos trickled up into the mainstream, particularly for insurgent Democratic Party candidate Bernie Sanders. Before the New Hampshire primary, the Sanders campaign released an ad entitled “Vote Together” (Sanders, 2016b). This ad is compelling for two reasons. The first is that it came from supporters and was not commissioned by the Sanders campaign. While “Vote Together” is of vastly higher quality than a typical tribute video and was professionally made, it is a showcase example of the impact that supporters can have on the campaign. The second reason is that it represents an ethos that the Sanders campaign did not easily embody. Early in the campaign, one of the staunchest criticisms of Sanders was that his platform of economic justice had a crucial blind spot regarding racial justice. While Sanders did take time to meet with activists, augment his staff to include advisers who prioritized racial justice, and nuance his platform, the impetus to make these moves came from below. From activists disrupting Sanders’s rallies to citizens posting about the candidate’s civil rights cred, activists pushed the septuagenarian to update his policy and rhetoric (Patch, 2019). “Vote Together” used the candidates’ own words and a sophisticated sense of video production to persuade voters of Sanders’s commitment to inclusion and racial justice. The fact that it was not an official video serves to strengthen the claim that it is not campaign spin but a testimonial from fellow citizens. In this case, digital media allows citizens to participate in advertising culture, in a medium, the peer testimonial, that has been part of campaign ad culture since the explosion of mass media. The slickly produced “Vote Together” features a voiceover from a Sanders speech as various photographs flash across the screen. The background sound begins with the activation click and ambient mechanical sound of a reel-to-reel film. This sets up the ad’s initial low-tech visual style of flashing Sanders’s bold words onto the screen, one at a time, in dramatic Indic font: “OUR JOB IS NOT TO DIVIDE[;] OUR JOB IS TO BRING

618   Patch PEOPLE TOGETHER.”13 Following this entrance is a sonic crossfade fade into crowd noise/applause accompanied by numerous close-ups of faces that read as contrasting (by age, race, gender and decoration). When Sanders’s monologue continues into not letting “them” divide “us,” the applause crossfades into a low and midrange synth and voice drones, accompanied by the sound of thunder, the sound of paper being torn (which accompanies images of faces that are torn in half and paired with a different face), and the repeated mechanical clicking of a projector starting, but without the accompanying film noise. As the monologue continues, photographs of individuals torn down the middle appear. The sonic mix is such that Sanders’s voice remains the focal point, with the background sounds serving as devices to add tension and a sense of movement, although harmonically static. The kinetic sense is derived from a combination of Sanders’s own dramatic oration and the subtle layering of sound. As the monologue continues, a piano pedal is added, along with a synthesized violin ostinato and a dramatic synthesized low percussion/bass hit that twice punctuates the line “When we stand together.” At this textual turning point, the visuals turn to faces being put together, rather than separated, with the camera zooming in for even closer views of the photographs. As the ad moves to the climax, Sanders delivers the denouement: “And that’s what this campaign is about: it’s bringing people together.” The image changes to Bernie Sanders delivering the final line with the words “BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER” projected over the image. This moves his voice from voiceover to diegetic sound. This delivery predictably results in a round of applause, matched by a distance camera shot that captures Sanders at the podium in a stadium, framed by supporters on all sides. “Vote Together” was made by a New York nonprofit media company called Human, directed by founder Jonathan Olinger, and was submitted to the campaign.14 According to Nick Corasaniti (2016) of the New York Times, the ad made its debut as a video that screened before eminent thinker Cornell West addressed the audience at a rally in Iowa City on January 30, 2016.15 The video itself is introduced by Mark Foster of Foster the People at the end of his acoustic set. He states that the video was made by friends of his in Los Angeles, and that the video is about “unifying, a united vision, and being together.”16 The debut is surprisingly uneventful. When the video stops, there is a 10-second gap of silence and darkness before the first timid cheers, which are then eclipsed by West’s fiery entrance. But it is clear from the video’s story and the 13  Coles (2016) also points out that this Indic font is from OS X, the Apple operating system, lending some insight to this project’s origins. There are also two extremely fast images before the ad begins, one of a woman standing outside a house and one of a text that looks like film directions with the words “playing . . . board . . . black.” No explanation can be found for these. 14  Gill (2016) points out that there are no credits and no form of provenance in the original video, which was posted to Vimeo. 15  A segment of this rally featuring Bernie Sanders singing “This Land Is Your Land” went viral, but the “Together” video did not catch on until nearly two weeks later. 16  See the Sanders rally (January 30, 2016) where Foster’s introduction begins near the 38:00 mark (Sanders, 2016a).

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   619 e­ nthusiasm that Foster shows for it that those who watched it before its public debut were moved. Corasaniti writes that the video was submitted to the campaign and vetted by a team, led by Sanders’s wife, Jane, who then chose which user-generated content would be posted on the official digital and social media. They clearly liked “Vote Together” enough to give it a prominent place in a star-studded concert event. The fact that this video went on to become an official Sanders campaign ad is a testament to the role that media from below can play in a campaign. “Vote Together” also represents a materialization of both social and racial justice as campaign priorities, and a visual aesthetic that effectively places them within Sanders’s own rhetoric in ways that Sanders himself struggled with early on. It also skirts some of the time-worn techniques of cultural mimesis that have plagued other candidates who tried to reach across demographic lines. While Bill Clinton, referred to in his presidential years as the “first black president,” was able to channel cool by playing rhythm and blues saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show, other candidates’ attempts at musical diversity, like Hillary Clinton doing the whip and nae-nae on Ellen, or Marco Rubio talking about his love of hip-hop, often fall flat (Patch, 2018). In “Vote Together,” Olinger skirts the issue of sonic appropriation, favoring visual mimesis, and using captivating but nonintrusive music, in this case music by Mel Flannery and Danny Sher that was licensed to the campaign.17 The soundscape of the ad registers as sophisticated and professional, not the transparently clumsy semantic pandering that often haunts campaign appeals to diversity and inclusion. This user-generated content adheres to the advertising dictum that ads that focus on the voice or text should be accompanied by unobtrusive music (Kellaris, Cox, & Cox, 1993). In the case of “Vote Together,” user-generated content, which contained the aesthetic logic and practices of advertising in it, becomes a major campaign ad, and in the process helps to redefine the candidate’s relationship to key issues. While this ad alone did not change how voters perceived Sanders (it should be noted that a long web ad featuring Erica Gardner, the daughter of Eric Gardner, whose death at the hands of Staten Island police officers was captured on video, was released shortly after “Vote Together” and went viral), it was part of a major shift in the identity of Sanders into a modern progressive populist and champion of racial justice (King, 2015). Contrary to the assumptions that user-generated content will be a revolutionizing, inclusive aesthetic force, this particular study shows that digital media has far more political power than aesthetic power. Our political ears are still tuned to the affective languages of film, television, and advertising sound, so much so that users now reproduce it. The musical rhetoric of campaign ads is still derived from the logics of capitalism. 17  It should be noted that Gill (2016) takes a rather critical stance on this ad, criticizing it for skirting Federal Election Committee rules (sold as user generated, but campaign advertising in all but name) and for visually plagiarizing an earlier nonprofit campaign for the United Nations 2009 conference in Copenhagen by John Clang. For Gill, the lack of transparency or remuneration should have raised more eyebrows than it did.

620   Patch

Conclusions At the turn of the 19th century and into the interwar years, American advertisers envisioned themselves as teaching the people a new way forward, away from outdated ethnic identities and practices and toward a new modernity (Marchand, 1985). This new era was one of rational choices, efficiency, equality, opportunity, and new, innovative commodities that would bring comfort, luxury, and social ascension (Ewen,  2001; Lears,  1995). At this same moment, mass media like radio, television, movies, and records was poised to become the lingua franca of American culture. Movie theaters from coast to coast carried the same films and books, like Rapee’s Motion Picture Moods (1924), which aimed to standardize the sonic accompaniment of film affect. Syndicated radio plays were broadcast into households nationwide. As the visual and auditory culture of American mass media, including the sounds of national advertising campaigns, became more homogenous, political advertising used this established semiotic and affective sonic language to reach voters and cement partisan support. The advent of television as a dominant household entertainment finally pushed broadcast campaign advertising away from “rational” approaches of testimony, unique selling point, and direct address and into the visual and affective realms of film and television, including the adoption of narrative musical scores. The affect on the sound of campaign ads was profound, shifting campaigns away from attempts at being contests of ideas and personal attributes and toward eliciting emotional reactions. Appealing to hearts and minds became unidirectionally aimed at the heart, partially through using the ear, utilizing the emotional cueing of narrative music. The notion that political rhetoric was falling short of a genuine competition of ideas is not new to the television age. In 1927, John Dewey pointed out that the problems of a modern America are far too complex to be addressed in a long speech, let alone in a slogan or an advertisement. This led to a proliferation of sloganeering and recourse to well-worn and accepted ideas, not necessarily better ones (Dewey, 1954/1927). But the switch to an even less text-intense form of advertising that facilitates the combination of loaded and fantastic images and sounds that pique the hopes and fears of voters without addressing policy or precedent ushered in an age of assumptions, cognitive shortcutting, and partisanship. A zero-sum form of politics, and the end of big, public projects, from infrastructure to social welfare, begins early in the age of television and continues today. It is also concerning that the aesthetics of mass culture have come to define modern politics, just as the aesthetics of monopoly capital have come to define the sound images of pop music (Taylor, 2012). The notion of selling policy with the same vocabulary used to sell commodities is disconcerting. Advertising convinces consumers to part with their money, often through the allure of social status or creature comfort. In contrast, statesmanship should be executed with goals like equity, sustainability, feasibility, and principle. While both endeavors deal with imagined futures, political campaigns should deal with verity and a clear-eyed vision that advertisement need not (despite truth in

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   621 advertising laws). Commodity fetishism and statesmanship should not be articulated in the same sonic semiotics and deciphered through similar symbolic decoding. On a more abstract level, the question of musical culture must also be asked. If we believe Herbert Marcuse’s (1978) notion that art is capable of presenting new ways of thinking and living, and that art has the power to bring new subjectivities into being, what does this say about the music of the campaign? Historically, the vocabulary of film score is largely borrowed from European Romanticism, from the age of European nationalism, the growth of the modern nation-state (and its mono-ethnic implications), and the acceleration of colonization (with its inhumane practices). Within this musical vocabulary are ideological kernels from the Enlightenment, the political departure from monarchy, radical individualism, and new upward social mobility, ideas that defined the adoption of democracy as an aspiration and utopia (Attali,  1985; Steinberg,  2004). However, since that historical moment, a vast array of new and more inclusive subjectivities has formed, and with them sounds that project affects and stances that are alien or opposed to those projected by Romantic ideologies. It seems out of place that the most common music for political advertisement is derived either from outdated musical vocabulary and techniques or from popular music, the “sound of capitalism” (Taylor, 2012). Perhaps this is also linked to the uninspiring array of candidates brought forward, many who seem so ill at ease or pair badly with the plurality of sounds that represent complex modern subjectivities. Perhaps this final point is the reason for the shift from advertising sound to narrative sounds. For over a century, advertising has been about things modern and original. It sells the audience a new (and improved) product, image, or lifestyle. Its techniques are designed for novel endeavors and as such they must be dynamic, their sounds included. Modern film and television sound has its progressive edges, but it overwhelmingly utilizes vocabularies and techniques that are audible in classic films and Romantic music, albeit in more sophisticated fashions, and make use of popular music styles. Perhaps this also holds true of U.S. political campaigns: They have their progressive edges, but they stick to strategies, including approaches to sound, from an earlier era. Perhaps in the watershed moments of the 1960s, a period of social upheaval, political parties became conservative, opted for safe candidates and guarantees of loyalty, and adopted soundtracks that reflected an antiquated view of democracy, the nation, the state, and the range of possible citizen subjectivities, one that has largely repelled other possible interpretations (Serow, Shannon, & Ladd, 1990, pp. 1–3). If political campaigns, cultural politics, and public policy are as intimately connected as I believe them to be, our democracy needs and deserves a better soundtrack.

Recommended Readings Brader, T. (2006). Campaigning for hearts and minds: How emotional appeals in political ads work. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Christiansen, P. (2017). Orchestrating public opinion. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.

622   Patch Kasper, E. T., & Schoening, B. S. (Eds.). (2018). You shook me all campaign long: Music in the 2016 presidential election and beyond. Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press. Patch, J. (2019). Discordant democracy: Noise, affect, populism, and the presidential campaign. New York, NY: Routledge. Saffle, M. (2015). User-generated campaign music and the 2012 U.S.  presidential election. Music and Politics, 9(2).

References Aristotle. (2000). Politics. Mineola, NY: Dover. Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The political economy of music. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Brader, T. (2006). Campaigning for hearts and minds: How emotional appeals in political ads work. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Buck-Morss, S. (1994). The cinema screen as prosthesis of perception: A historical account. In C. Nadia Seremetakis (Ed.), The senses still: Perception and memory as material culture in modernity (pp. 45–63). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Chion, M. (1994). Audio-vision: Sound on screen. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Christiansen, P. (2018). Orchestrating public opinion: How music persuades in television political ads for US presidential campaigns, 1952–2016. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. Coles, S. [Fonts in Use]. (2016, March 16). Bernie Sanders ad: Together [Video file]. Retrieved from https://fontsinuse.com/uses/11969/bernie-sanders-ad-together Corasaniti, N. (2016, February 13). Bernie Sanders relies on supporters for ad about unity. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/politics/bernie-sandersrelies-on-supporters-for-ad-about-unity.html Deaville, J. (Ed.). (2011). Music in television: Channels of listening. New York, NY: Routledge. Dewey, J. (1954). The public and its problems. Athens, OH: Swallow Press. (Original work published 1927) Ewen, S. (2001). Captains of consciousness: Advertising and the social roots of consumer culture. New York, NY: Basic Books. Frazier, N. (1994). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 109–143). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gill, K. E. (2016, February 12). That hot 60-second “Bernie Sanders ad” isn’t a campaign ad. Wired Pen. Retrieved from http://wiredpen.com/2016/02/12/that-bernie-sanders-ad-wasntcreated-by-the-campaign/ Johnson, H. K. (1884, May). The meaning of a song. North American Review, 138(330), 494. Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Dawson, E.D., Slovic, P. (2017). Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Behavioural Public Policy, 1(1), 54–86. Kellaris, J., Cox, A., & Cox, D. (1993). The effect of background music on ad processing: A contingency explanation. Journal of Marketing, 57(4), 114–125. King, S. (2015, October 14). Asked whether black lives matter or all lives matter, Bernie Sanders nailed the answer. Daily Kos. Retrieved from https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/10/ 14/1432193/-Asked-whether-Black-Lives-Matter-or-All-Lives-Matter-Bernie-Sandersabsolutely-nailed-the-answer

The Changing Musical Language of Presidential Campaign Ads   623 Kivy, P. (1984). Sound and semblance: Reflections on musical representation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lears, T. (1995). Fables of abundance: A cultural history of advertising in America. New York, NY: Basic Books. Lindstrom, M. (2005). Brand sense: Sensory secrets behind the stuff we buy. New York, NY: Free Press. Lizza, R. (2006, August 20). The YouTube election. New York Times. Retrieved from https:// www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/weekinreview/20lizza.html Marchand, R. (1985). Advertising the American dream: Making way for modernity, 1920–1940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Marcus, G. (2002). The sentimental citizen: Emotion in democratic politics. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Marcuse, H. (1978). The aesthetic dimension: Toward a critique of Marxist aesthetics. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. McGinnis, J. (1969). The selling of the American president. New York, NY: Penguin. Mill, J. S. (1991). Considerations on representative government. New York, NY: Prometheus. Patch, J. (2018). Representation bind: How political and musical representations fail. American Music, 35 (2), (pp. 418-427). Patch, J. (2019). Discordant democracy: Noise, affect, populism and the presidential campaign. London, UK: Routledge. Pearlstein, R. (2008). Nixonland: The rise of a president and the fracturing of America. New York, NY: Scribner. Pisani, M. V. (2014) When the music surges: Melodrama and the nineteenth-century precedents for film music style and placement. In D. Neumeyer (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of film music studies (pp. 559-582). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Ramirez, J. (2008). The YouTube election. Newsweek, 11(9). Rapee, E. (1924). Motion picture moods. New York, NY: Schirmer. Roberts, P.  T. (Director). (2014). Bombs away: LBJ, Goldwater, and the 1964 campaign that changed it all. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Center for Politics. Rodman, R. (2010). Tuning in: American narrative television music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Saffle, M. (2015). User-generated campaign music and the 2012 U.S.  presidential election. Music and Politics, 9(2). Saffle, M. (2017, January 12). Trump bump II: Satire, remix culture, and user-generated campaign musical posts. Retrieved from http://traxonthetrail.com/article/trump-bump-iisatire-remix-culture-and-user-generated-campaign-musical-posts Schoening, B. S., & Kasper, E. T. (2012). Don’t stop thinking about the music: The politics of songs and musicians in presidential campaigns. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Serow, A. G., Shannon, W. W., & Ladd, E. C. (Eds.). (1990). The American polity reader. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Steinberg, M. P. (2004). Listening to reason: Culture, subjectivity, and nineteenth-century music. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sterne, J. (2003). The audible past: Cultural origins of sound reproduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Towner, T.  L., & Dulio, D.  A. (2011). An experiment of the campaign effects during the YouTube election. New Media & Society, 13(4), 626–644.

624   Patch Trouillot, M. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston: Beacon Press. Twitchell, J. (1996). Adcult, USA: The triumph of advertising in American culture. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Westen, D. (2007). The political brain: The role of emotion in deciding the fate of the nation. New York, NY: Public Affairs. Wolcott, J. (2007, May 7). The YouTube election. Vanity Fair. Wood, G. (2007, July 8). From the web to the White House. The Guardian.

Media Sources Clang, John (2009). Hopenhagen: 6.8 Billing People Together Can Fight Climate Change. http://johnclang.com/video Clinton, H. (2015, December 31). Quick question | Hillary Clinton [Web series]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt9jO9QkAAoeIVwS6dekFT0Mm865hg-co Guggenheim Productions INC. (n.d.). Filmography. Retrieved from https://www.gpifilms .com/filmography.html Metz, T. (1896). Hot time in the old town [Audio]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.100010764/ Metz, T.  A., & Hayden, J. (1917). There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night [Notated music]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2013569509/ Museum of the Moving Image. (2016a). 1960 Kennedy vs. Nixon. Retrieved from http://www .livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1960/jingle Museum of the Moving Image. (2016b). 1972 Nixon vs. McGovern. Retrieved from http:// www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1972 Popisms. (2011). John  F.  Kennedy presidential election commercial (1960). Retrieved from https://www.popisms.com/TelevisionCommercial/40319/John-F-Kennedy-PresidentialElection-Commerc.aspx Sanders, B. (2016a, January 30). Iowa City concert and rally (with Vampire Weekend and other special guests) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= URHTUro7AA0 Sanders, B. (2016b, February 25). Vote Together | Bernie 2016 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0wsUlzMBro

chapter 31

From the Su bli mi na l to the R idicu li ng How U.S. Campaign Ads Use Music to Evoke Four Basic and Two Compound Emotions Paul Christiansen

As he states in the introduction to his The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, Drew Westen wrote his book for Democratic voters who have been frustrated by loss after election loss despite the fact that polls show Americans favoring Democratic economic and social policies over Republican ones by overwhelming majorities (Westen, 2008). His book was published over a decade ago: his arguments were only strengthened by the political landscape of 2016, when Democratic prospects seemed as bleak as they had been for a long time. Westen invites us to ask ourselves whether our emotions and emotional responses are being exploited by campaign operatives, through political advertising and other means, to get us to vote against our own interests. And it looks as though negative advertising is here to stay. Campaign advisers love “going negative,” which they see as a powerful tool. Bill Clinton’s campaign adviser Mark Penn has said, “Clever negative advertising works. That is reality. The tactic meets with media and pundit disapproval and spawns accusations of negativity, but the reality is that a clever negative ad can be devastatingly effective.”1 Although ads become more expensive by the year, it seems that negative ones will always be with us. And in them, music continues to figure prominently. Countering Westen’s pessimistic views, Martha Nussbaum argues for the necessity of cultivating positive emotions for the benefit of society as a whole (Nussbaum, 2013). Stating the case for progressives to embrace a public discourse in which their values are expressed unabashedly with powerful emotions, she writes: “Ceding the terrain of ­emotion-shaping 1  Cited in Politico.com (August 11, 2008, as quoted in Ridout & Franz, 2011, p. 3).

626   Christiansen to antiliberal forces gives them a huge advantage in the people’s hearts and risks making people think of liberal values as tepid and boring” (Nussbaum,  2013, p. 2). Nussbaum holds that emotions “are not just impulses, but certain appraisals that have an evaluative content” (Nussbaum,  2013, p. 6). She uses “disgust” and “anger” primarily directed toward certain groups in a society as an evil that must be combatted with positive emotions of compassion and kindness. In the spirit of Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, Nussbaum recognizes a place for the humorous and amusing: “Room must also be made for subversion and humor: making fun of grandiose pretensions of patriotic emotion is one of the best ways of keeping it down to earth” (Nussbaum, 2013, p. 7). Nussbaum argues for an idealistic use of public emotions to build a kind, compassionate, liberal society. She points to something that Westen also observed about Democrats—namely, that they have been uncomfortable expressing their values in emotional terms, preferring instead to let the ideas stand on their own rational merit. This would be a fine idea if voters were rational actors. Yet for better or worse, they do not tend to act rationally. My own study analyzes the use of emotions in TV political ads for purely pragmatic purposes—to win an election (Christiansen, 2018). The question is how well the ads accomplish this task. This chapter posits a theory of emotions for political ads, and how music contributes to those emotions. No model of emotions exists that would conform seamlessly with the range of emotions political ad creators aim to evoke in viewers. Silvan Tomkins (1962, 1963, 1991, 1992) defines eight basic emotions—surprise, interest, joy, rage, fear, disgust, shame, and anguish—but these do not map neatly onto TV political ad emotions. Surprise, interest, and shame do not figure at all. Anguish is an imperfect substitute for what I am calling “sadness,” and disgust is an emotion analogous to but nevertheless distinct from what I am calling “contempt.” There are many theories of emotion, and my model for emotions in political advertising differs in one way or another from all of them. Happiness, sadness, fear, and anger (or their equivalents) figure in most of them, as does disgust (to which contempt might be a rough analog). Patriotism is the outlier in this regard, but it does seem to be a discrete emotion in political ads, separate from happiness. The closest pre-existing theory to my model seems to be that of Keith Oatley and Philip N. Johnson-Laird (1987), which encompasses happiness, sadness, anxiety, disgust, and anger.2 Of course, the debate about various theories of emotion rages on. My own investigation aims to contribute to understanding how music as a stimulus for emotion within the context of political advertising can be categorized in different ways. Some readers will object to the separation of one’s inner emotional life into a series of discrete experiences, unfolding like a flipbook of emotions that when fanned rapidly enough approximates an emotional life. They would not be entirely wrong to thus 2  Curiously, I developed my own categories by watching many political ads; it was only in researching this study that I happened upon Oatley and Johnson-Laird.

From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing   627 object, nor would they be the first to harbor such reservations. Furthermore, I do not fundamentally disagree—emotions are messy. Emotional states often overlap, conflict with each other, and generally bewilder, frustrate, and delight us. Yet it does seem that there is in political ads a particular range of targeted emotions that can be expressed musically, and an analysis of political ads’ musical appeals within a framework of discrete emotions can be instructive. My model for emotion in political ads has six categories: happiness, patriotism, sadness, fear, anger, and contempt (hereafter when writing about ads I will capitalize these categories for the sake of clarity). Inevitably, there will be some overlap between emotional categories: A Happiness ad could be mistaken for a Patriotism ad; an Anger ad might be categorized as a Contempt ad. Happiness, Sadness, Fear, and Anger I ­conceive of as basic emotions; Patriotism and Contempt I present as compound emotions. This list of six emotions is neither exhaustive nor all the emotions that may be represented in political ads. Rather, this list can be seen as a guide to the predominant emotions in a political ad context. Since I wrote about presidential ads in my book (Christiansen, 2018), here, gubernatorial, senatorial, and congressional ads will be covered in detail, with only brief mention of some presidential ads. Spots that I have chosen are readily available on YouTube or on the Living Room Candidate (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org). Given the short time span of a television ad, music has to accomplish its goals almost immediately. It does so often by invoking a particular genre well known to general audiences. A famous 2006 ad by Bill Richardson for the governorship of New Mexico used tropes of Western music, which, together with the images, whipcrack sound effects, narration, and Richardson’s own comments, created a spoof of a Western film to show Richardson as a tough sheriff who had brought needed change to New Mexico.3 In a couple of seconds, the whole effect is established musically. Ron Rodman notes that television music evokes something like a collective subconscious of cultural figures and tropes in working its effects (Rodman, 2010, pp. 14–15). Often music is the lynchpin of an emotional appeal. Philosophers such as Jenefer Robinson (2005) and Derek Matravers (1998) write of the centrality of emotion to the musical experience. Yet scholars of rhetoric, communication, media studies, and political science tend to focus on rhetorical appeals or images when writing about campaign ads. Where music is mentioned, it is often done so in a superficial or even incomplete manner. Even in a study specifically focusing on emotional appeals (Brader,  2006), music is never directly addressed, let alone analyzed. This study aims to address this lacuna in a small way through analysis of specific ads.

3  The ad can be found at “Governor Bill Richardson Not Much of a Cowboy,” https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=sMVtQBBZD2M

628   Christiansen

Happiness Under the category of happiness, there are at least three subcategories: joy, hope, and contentment. Happiness ads are known as positive or advocacy ads, those that present the candidate in a favorable light, including those using self-deprecating humor to poke fun at themselves. Through the symbiosis of elements in an ad, such spots are intended to generate pleasant feelings in the viewer such as satisfaction during times of prosperity or relief at a challenge met and overcome. These positive feelings are meant to accrete to the candidate. Music in Happiness ads might be in the major mode, possibly with lively rhythms and frequent modulations. Examples from U.S. presidential campaigns include “Nixon Now!” (1972), Jimmy Carter’s “South” (1976), Bill Clinton’s “Surgeon” (1996), and Obama’s “Yes, We Can” (2008). In 1998, North Woods Advertising, a Minneapolis advertising company, created an ad “Jesse the Mind,” for then-Minnesota gubernatorial independent candidate Jesse Ventura.4 The ad features Ventura posing in a loincloth, seated and with his head on his right fist, as the model of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker.” Under the ring name “The Body,” Ventura had had a career as a professional wrestler, and this fact played a key role in his successful campaign. Making light of his critics’ insinuations that he was a meathead with no business running for office, “Jesse the Mind” is comedy gold. As the platform on which Ventura sits rotates counterclockwise in front of the camera, the male narrator states the candidate’s qualifications: “Navy SEAL . . . union member . . . volunteer high school football coach . . . outdoorsman . . . husband of 23 years . . . father of two” and some of his political positions. While this is going on, we hear music, and not just any music, but opera—the popularly stereotypical musical genre of intellectuals. The specific aria chosen in the ad is hilariously inspired: “Casta diva” from Vincenzo Bellini’s 1831 opera Norma. The aria is funny here partly because of the incongruence between the aural and the visual. We hear an elaborate, ornamented melody sung by a woman as we see a stereotypically masculine man sitting stoically. The very few initiates among the viewing public who recognized the music had a special treat of recognition given the associations brought up by the quotation. In the context of the opera itself, the aria is actually an apostrophe—an aside to the moon goddess, asking for peace with the Romans. (Norma, a Druid priestess during a time of Roman occupation in Gaul and in love with a Roman proconsul, is urged by her people to lead an insurrection against their oppressors; she reacts with the aria). But even for the vast majority of people who do not know the opera, the bizarre juxtaposition of the aural stimulus of a disembodied female voice with the visual stimulus of a muscle-bound man brings a smile to most. At the very end, Ventura breaks the fourth wall by smiling and winking at the viewer.

4  North Woods Advertising also produced other commercials for Ventura’s campaign such as “Action Figure.” The firm also worked with another popular Minnesotan politician’s campaign, that of U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone.

From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing   629 It is difficult to imagine a stranger pairing than Jesse Ventura (as Navy SEAL, wrestler, or political candidate) and this music, both in surface detail and in overall aesthetic. This incongruity delights the viewer. Knowing that his former profession as a wrestler stereotyped him in some people’s minds as something of a dumb blond, Ventura endeared himself to voters through self-deprecating humor. Ventura’s willingness to lampoon himself bespoke a strong self-confidence. The ad worked because Ventura was portrayed as a serious candidate, and not a novelty, merely hoping for attention. When elected, he took his job as governor seriously and attempted to influence legislation accordingly. So instead of the ad making him seem unsubstantial, it showed someone with a sense of humor about himself and therefore someone to be taken seriously. Many viewers already knew he was a serious candidate; the ad also made him likeable.

Patriotism Patriotism ads can overlap somewhat with the emotional content of Happiness ads, but they are treated as separate here because they fulfill a discrete function. Viewers of Patriotism ads are supposed to feel national pride, dignity, duty, and collective sense of purpose. Such impulses are not particularly distinct from Happiness, but Patriotism is more complex. In these ads, the candidate is often portrayed in a heroic, at times even messianic, manner—an anointed and beloved leader of the people. Music in Patriotism ads might be characterized by a major mode melody, the nostalgic timbre of an oboe, a martial trumpet or snare drum, or sweeping orchestral gestures followed by cymbal crashes and striking modulations. Examples from U.S. presidential campaigns include Dwight Eisenhower’s “I Like Ike” (1952), Kennedy’s “Jingle” (1960), Reagan’s “Morning in America” (1984), and George W. Bush’s “Whatever It Takes” (2004). Iconic as the quintessential political ad, Reagan’s “Morning in America” (actually titled “Prouder, Stronger, Better”) featured cloying scenes of Americans going about their morning routines, while narrator (and advertising executive) Hal Riney spoke of America’s supposed economic prosperity. Most memorable about “Morning in America,” and matching Riney’s voiceover line by line, was the ad’s rich, orchestral, cinematically inspired underscoring, which made the ad primarily an appeal to emotion. The cinematic approach in “Morning in America” revolutionized political advertising (Christiansen, 2016). So masterfully crafted was the ad, in fact, that campaign operatives often refer to it today as the model they would like their ad creators to emulate.5 This ad has been the standard for the quintessential Patriotism ad since its first airing on December 31, 1983.

5  Media producer Jim Cole, in an interview in Christiansen (2016) , said that his client wanted exactly this type of ad for the (ultimately successful) 2012 Maine same-sex marriage campaign.

630   Christiansen The most notable ad from the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign from a musical point of view and within the category of Patriotism ads is Bernie Sanders’s ad “America.” It is considered a new type of Patriotism ad—for the 21st century. Scenes in Sanders’s “America” are similar to those of “Morning in America”—though with updated characters to be more inclusive and diverse—but the music is strikingly different. “Morning in America” contains lush orchestral music with frequent chromatic modulations—from C major to E-flat back to C, then finally to D-flat. It is artful, highly produced, and sophisticated. Music in “America,” on the other hand, is the simple, guileless folk-rock waltz “America,” of Simon and Garfunkel,6 featuring simple guitar and harmonized singing. Unlike “Morning in America,” the Sanders ad has prominent sound effects accompanying the scenes, culminating in the last 30 seconds with the roar of the crowds at his huge rallies. The intended effect in both ads was to make voters feel proud of their country and its ideals, but their musical means diverged. Music in “Morning in America” made the ad sound professional and cinematic, while “America,” though well done, did not seem professionally produced. Though competently created, the Bernie Sanders ad did not approach the cinematic scope of the Reagan one. Another crucial difference bears mentioning: “Morning in America” aimed to make voters proud of America as it was at that time (or at least as it was portrayed to be); “America” presented America as it could be. There is a generational dimension to “America”—it was meant to appeal to baby boomers who came of age with the song while also introducing the song to new generations. The “We’ve all come to look for America” lyric invites viewers to imagine a truly progressive America, far beyond corporate neoliberalism and the New Democrat “Third Way” of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Sanders’s policy proposals about climate change, higher education, health care, and a host of other issues were clearly stated throughout his campaign and can be supported or criticized on their merits; similarly, his long record as a U.S. congressman and senator can likewise be scrutinized. In contrast, the ad “America” was meant to connect with voters on an emotional level. The ad aims to appeal to the idealistic impulses of Sanders’s supporters. No fact-checking is needed—it is all rhetorical sweep and grand vision. Sanders’s ad features a folk-style song that connotes a communal musical experience in which the audience feels connected to the performer in the struggle for a more inclusive and fairer society. The 6/8 meter lends the carefree melody a gentle lilt, while the falling diatonic bass line propels the song forward. The acoustic guitar, drum kit, humming, and close harmonies and close harmonies musically convey unpretentiousness and calm contentedness. Voices harmonizing together can also be interpreted as a musical representation of people working together for a common cause (Christiansen, 2018, p. 209). Music does much in “America” to create a sense of nostalgia and yearning—nostalgia for what was good about the past and yearning for a bright future in a progressive, inclusive society. 6  Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had given the Sanders campaign their blessing to use the music in the ad.

From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing   631 In a Patriotism ad, people feel connected to each other through shared adherence to an ideal. This is often outwardly expressed through collective actions such as singing a national anthem or saluting the flag together. For a political ad to be a Patriotism one, it has to connect with viewers’ feelings of collective national pride and occasionally collective sacrifice. To do this, specific images and video sequences must be connected in viewers’ minds with music and voiceover to create an aesthetic unity. Sanders’s “America” accomplishes this.

Sadness Sadness ads can encompass any range of quiet negative emotions such as melancholy, depression, or grief. Such ads are not very common because a campaign would hardly want viewers to associate their candidate with sadness, but also associating an opponent with sadness is a tricky proposition. Consequently, Sadness ads often focus on a particular issue. Music in Sadness ads is frequently slow, soft, in minor mode, and with limited instrumentation and dark timbres like bass clarinet or cello. Occasionally, Sadness music is followed by Happiness music in a contrast ad where presentation of an opponent is followed by the candidate him- or herself. Examples from U.S.  presidential campaigns include Lyndon Johnson’s “Poverty” (1964) and Barack Obama’s “Understands” (2012). Whereas Contempt and Anger ads tend to be produced for Republican campaigns, Sadness ones are more often created for Democratic campaigns. George Lakoff, in his book Don’t Think of an Elephant!, writes of the popular designation of the Republican Party as the “Daddy party” and the Democratic Party as the “Mommy party” (Lakoff, 2004). To the extent that outdated attitudes about gender prevail, it might not be surprising that on the negative side of the ledger, the “Daddy party” is more inclined toward anger (and the demand for order), whereas the “Mommy party” might lean toward sadness (and the appeal for compassion). One precursor in this regard is Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 ad “Poverty,” which aimed to evoke sadness and pity in voters. Even recent Sadness ads seem influenced by Johnson’s “Poverty.”7 Democrat Tom Udall’s 2008 campaign to represent New Mexico in the U.S. Senate produced a number of ads that could be characterized as Sadness ads. “Humbled” was one. In it, we see a wheelchair-bound former Army sergeant whom combat left with head trauma so severe that he cannot speak. A speech synthesizer speaks for him, expressing his thoughts (similar to how Stephen Hawking speaks). The veteran thanks Udall for securing more funding for treatment of veterans’ postcombat brain trauma. Music in “Humbled” consists of quiet synth sounds and piano in a pandiatonic D. The music sounds gentle and melancholy, music meant to get out of the way of the words while still setting the solemn affect. Except for a brief move to B, a drone on D sounds 7  For more on Johnson’s ad “Poverty,” see Christiansen (2018, pp. 58–59).

632   Christiansen throughout. The ad ends with the disclaimer: “I’m Tom Udall and I’m humbled to approve this message.” Music, never overpowering the words, reinforces the humble message. “Burn Pits” was a powerful ad about veterans who have had to breathe fumes of burn pits, where trash and medical waste were burned with jet fuel, releasing toxic fumes into the air to be breathed by soldiers. It begins with Udall himself speaking and continues with a veteran stating that Udall has instituted a national victim registry, which could lead to positive changes for victims. Music in A minor accompanies the ad. After an opening chord progression of A minor–E major–D minor–A minor, there is a bass line progression A–G–F–G–A–G–A, which resembles the beginning of a lamenting descending tetrachord (A–G–F–E). As an analog to tears falling down cheeks, the trope of the descending minor tetrachord has symbolized melancholy and loss since the early 17th century.8 In another ad entitled “Tragedy,” Tom Udall tells of a drunk driver who caused the death of a mother and her three children. He mentions that as attorney general he had been advocating for tougher drunk driving laws before the incident and that afterward he was able to work with others to pass legislation that would make the roads safer. The maudlin tone to the music, with a steadily falling musical line that sounds like a traditional lament, provides solemn accompaniment for Udall’s remarks. Udall’s Sadness ads invite the viewer to quietly reflect and feel deeply.

Fear Political scientist Ted Brader has written persuasively about emotional appeals in political campaigns, using empirical research to buttress his claims (Brader, 2006). Among other findings, he reports that his research indicates that fear appeals often led lowinformation voters to withdraw from the political process, whereas such appeals steeled the resolve of the politically involved to act. Carol Krumhansl’s research has shown that the pulse rates of subjects as they listened to musical excerpts identified as “fearful music” increased significantly (Krumhansl, 1997). Fear ads can generate the most primal emotional response of any type of stimulus within the amygdala—the so-called fight-or-flight impulse. Fear music might include low drones, shrill and dissonant strings, loud and irregular drumbeats, and uncanny timbres—essentially the musical elements found in horror film scores. Often in tandem with disturbing images, the goal of music in Fear ads is to make the viewer uneasy. Fear, the dominant emotion portrayed in some political ads going back to the mid1960s, took on a powerful role after 2001. Among the first “terror ads,” forged in the furnace of post-9/11 fear and anxiety and still prominent in the doxa of political advertising, 8  In a chapter entitled “Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues: Bass Lines of Music History” from his book Listen to This, Alex Ross (2010) treats the widespread use of the trope to represent sorrow.

From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing   633 was George W. Bush’s “Wolves” (2004). The ad was one of the most effective in the entire 2004 campaign, featuring quasi-horror film music with sound effects so subtle as to almost seem subliminal.9 Of presidential ads aired in battleground states that year, “Wolves” had the highest rate of unaided voter recall (Devlin, 2005, p. 287).10 Other examples of Fear ads from U.S.  presidential campaigns include Ronald Reagan’s “Russian Bear” (1984), George H. W. Bush’s “Revolving Door” (1988), Michael Dukakis’s “Oval Office” (1988), and George W. Bush’s “Finish It” (2004). These days, Fear ads attack an opponent by asserting that he or she is not sufficiently serious about addressing the threat of terrorism. Recently, though, Fear advertising has occasionally veered into presenting the opponent not only as apathetic to the threat of terrorism but also as actually an active supporter of terrorism. Such is the case with “Terrorists, Not Clients,” Kurt Schaeffer’s 2016 Republican primary attack ad against Josh Hawley for the position of Missouri attorney general.11 Opening with a disclaimer featuring positive-sounding piano music and a color sequence of Schaeffer for the first five seconds, the ad shifts to showing opponent Hawley in mostly black and white, with onscreen text highlighted in alarming yellow and red. The ad aims to smear Hawley by positing that rather than abhorring and pledging to fight terrorists, he instead serves them as clients. Onscreen text of the ad is: JOSH HAWLEY WORKED FOR THE AMERICAN TALIBAN JOSH HAWLEY WORKED FOR PEOPLE’S MOJAHEDIN JOSH HAWLEY WORKED FOR THE TERRORISTS WHO KILLED U.S. SOLDIERS ASSASSINATED CIVILIANS BOMBED US EMBASSY JOSH HAWLEY TO REMOVE ISLAMIC RADICALS FROM TERROR LIST JOSH HAWLEY CALLED THEM CLIENTS.

Nouns and verbs associated with violence—Taliban, terrorists, killed, assassinated, bombed, terror, terrorists—join with the fearful music and the concerned tone of the narrator to construct a harrowing scene. Anxiety-producing music makes the ad: repetitive motives in D minor with an incessantly repeated phrase moving from the tonic to the dominant, which has the effect of leaving the viewer hanging. The dominant calls for resolution to the tonic, and in the prevailing theme, the dominant pitch is highlighted by its upper chromatic neighbor, B-flat. Prominent in the instrumentation—playing the main theme, in fact—is an electric guitar, plucked near the bridge for a twangy sound reminiscent of the spaghetti western film genre. Instrumentation characterizes Schaeffer as a positive figure (soft 9  A significant aspect of the ad’s effectiveness might have been due to its use of a female narrator. Ted Brader shows that in Fear ads in 2000, female narrators were already being used more often than male narrators by a two-to-one margin (Brader, 2006, p. 163). 10  A detailed analysis of this ad can be found in Killmeier and Christiansen (2011). 11  “Terrorists, Not Clients” had a companion ad in Schaeffer’s campaign, “Families, Not Terrorists.”

634   Christiansen acoustic piano) and Hawley as a negative figure (harsh electric guitar). A jarring sound effect is heard at wipes between scenes, but also at irregular intervals throughout (this unpredictability of when the sound effect will come contributes to the unpleasantness of the ad).

Anger In contrast to Contempt ads (discussed later), which have a sardonic character, Anger ads attempt to elicit strong, active negative emotions in the viewer—outrage or indignation is usually the goal. An Anger ad, as opposed to a Contempt ad, does not talk down to its subject—it confronts it as an equal. Whereas humorous music is often an element of Contempt ads, Anger ads do not use it. Music in Anger ads tends to be aggressive, often highly dissonant, in minor mode or even atonal. Electronic sound effects are often used to deny the opponent positive timbres—the warmth of acoustic strings or the vibrancy of brass. Where there are acoustic instruments in Anger ads, there might be those of a darker timbre such as bass clarinet or cello. Seeming lack of coordination between instruments in an ensemble is often a feature. Examples from U.S. presidential campaigns include Barry Goldwater’s “America’s Image” (1964), Richard Nixon’s “Convention” (1968), and George H. W. Bush’s “Harbor” (1988). These days, rarely does an Anger ad employ “angry” music. Usually we hear subdued and quietly mournful music that might just as well fit in a Sadness ad, but with an overall angry demeanor in images and voiceover. But Angry ads used to have angry music. A number of ads by Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign featured music that is best characterized as angry music.12 Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign four years later took a page from Goldwater with Anger ads such as “First Civil Right.” An ad for the Nixon–Agnew campaign, “First Civil Right,” produced by Leonard Garment, Harry Treleaven, and Frank Shakespeare, has the harshest music in a campaign that had a fair amount of harsh music in its ads. Visually, the “First Civil Right” is striking: We see upsetting stills of a man shouting, soldiers shooting tear gas at a crowd, bayonets, a revolver, rifles, a bloody man, a fire in the streets. Even more upsetting than the images, though, is the cacophonous music, which makes the ad extremely unpleasant to watch. The tumultuous year of anti-war and civil rights demonstrations was unsettling, or even frightening, to large numbers of Americans, leading some politicians to promise to bring “law and order” to society. The chaotic music consists of irregular loud percussive notes on piano, punctuated by shrill, irregular glissandi, pulsating drum cadences, a trumpet crescendo, and a 12  Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 ad “KKK” used a subtler form of angry music: a lone drum playing march cadences. The simplicity of one drum playing militaristically brilliantly highlights the anger of the narrator connecting Barry Goldwater to a Ku Klux Klan leader who supported him. Music in the ad is understated, and for that reason, it is all the more effective.

From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing   635 c­ hromatic, menacing bass clarinet line. At 00:20, Nixon starts to speak in stentorian tones of restoring order, and as he speaks, the music attenuates. Nixon therefore acts as an acousmêtre,13 an omniscient, omnipotent narrator. The mere presence of his voice seems to quell the unrest and to singlehandedly restore order. The ominous final message, presented in silence to contrast it with the extreme dissonance that preceded it, is the following onscreen text: “This time vote like your whole world depended on it—NIXON.” The demonstrators shown in the “First Civil Right” are angry, but so is Nixon, who angrily confronts them in his voiceover.

Contempt It is difficult to provide a formula for Contempt ads, which employ ridicule, derision, and sarcasm to attack an opponent. Bombastic music can cast an opponent as pompous; we can find such music used in an ad by an underdog against an entrenched incumbent. Frivolous music, on the other hand, can make an opponent appear trivial or inconsequential; this is often a gambit of an incumbent or more experienced politician against a youthful challenger. In Contempt ads, campaigns seek to belittle an opponent, often using the opponent’s own words against him or her and using music to set the tone. Given that they often employ irony for their attacks, Contempt ads provoke complex cognitive and emotional responses. For instance, the 2012 Obama ad “Firms” makes use of the technique of using an opponent’s words against him. In this case, it is Mitt Romney’s singing of “America the Beautiful” that becomes the sarcastic backdrop for sobering onscreen text and images about Romney’s outsourcing of jobs to other countries as well as his offshore bank accounts. Contempt ads are a relatively new phenomenon, starting in the late 1980s. Examples from U.S.  presidential campaigns include George  H.  W.  Bush’s “Tank Ride” (1988), George  W.  Bush’s “Windsurfing” (2004), John McCain’s “Education” (2008), and Obama’s “Big Bird” (2012). A quintessential Contempt ad, one that lacked music altogether, was Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 “Laughter,” in which the only aural stimulus is laughter heard from an offscreen male as a television screen shows the text “Agnew for Vice-President [sic].” The actor laughs so hard that he ends up coughing. The year 2008 was a banner year for Contempt ads, as can be seen in even a cursory glance at ads that aired in the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. A Contempt ad from that year by Nebraskan Republican incumbent Congressman Lee Terry, entitled “Jim Esch Doesn’t Care About Us,” mocked Democratic candidate Jim Esch. The overall tone portrays Esch as unsubstantial and unworthy of serious

13  I use Michel Chion’s term, meaning a voice that has not been visualized on the screen (Chion, 1999).

636   Christiansen c­ onsideration. It criticizes him for a 2001 drunk driving conviction and for supporting payroll taxes and taxes on businesses. Immediately striking about the ad is its visual aspect. There is a real actor dancing and gesturing in a silly way with a large photo of Esch’s face awkwardly superimposed onto the body. He looks like a bobble-head doll, with his oversize head wagging back and forth. A pair of hands with twiddling thumbs appears at one point. Elsewhere, Esch is depicted with his hands in his pockets, indicating idleness. The music played in the ad is a piece called “Frolic,” originally composed by Luciano Michelini for the 1974 Sergio Martino film La bellissima estate. Most famously, “Frolic” was used as a theme to Larry David’s sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm.14 In the ad, the style of Michelini’s piece is just what we might expect to hear in a vaudeville performance or to accompany clown antics in a circus. We hear circus music, featuring banjo, mandolin, and other instruments not often heard in an orchestral context, along with all manner of comical sound effects such as slide whistle and bass drum strike. Tuba, an instrument often used in comical situations, is prominent. With a chromatically falling melodic line and tonal nodes of B7, A7, G7, and then B7 again, the melody and harmony just “spin their wheels”—that is, there is no discernible melodic or harmonic progression. The overall impression is one of being stuck in a rut—musically, this makes the explicit argument of the ad nonverbal as well. A lack of harmonic or melodic progression is a musical analog to the idleness connoted by hands in pockets and twiddling thumbs—no musical progression implies no political progress. In another congressional race, U.S. Representative Leonard Lance from New Jersey ran a devastating attack ad against his challenger Linda Stender, an ad that played on a rhyme of her name. Created by Jamestown Associates, “Spender” uses black-and-white sequences, images, and graphics to evoke a 1950s television show like Leave It to Beaver or Father Knows Best. At a breakfast table, the man says, “Did you know that Linda Stender is a spender?” The woman replies, “Yes, honey, but did you know that Stender is a double-dipping pension padder?” Lush but light orchestral music plays in the background, lending the ad just the right amount of derisive musical smirk. Eighteen seconds into the ad, the male says, “Two pensions—you pay more in higher taxes.” Accompanying this crucial line about raised taxes is a striking modulation from D to E-flat. This semitone key change gives the line an extra jolt. Unlike the outwardly comical Contempt music of “Jim Esch Doesn’t Care About Us,” music here isn’t comical. The music’s straight-faced nature makes the ad powerfully contemptuous. About the effectiveness of serious music in comic films, Mel Brooks said, “You never do funny music for a comedy. The humor must come from the truth of the situation, the juxtaposition of serious music and bizarre behavior” (as cited in Yacowar, 1981, p. ix). So serious music makes this ad amusing, in a bitterly caustic manner. This orchestral music, along with the visual elements of the ad, signals safety, happiness, and contentment. “This is the world I belong to” is what certain viewers 14  I thank Ron Rodman for pointing this out to me.

From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing   637 might think, “a simpler time.” This music might in another context (say, in an actual TV ad from the 1950s) sound like Happiness music. But here, the matter-of-factness with which the charges of wastefulness are leveled, coupled with deadpan music, makes this a Contempt ad. Such a characterization might appeal to voters of a certain age—in fact, the demographic that most reliably votes in large numbers. Those who watched the sitcoms this ad evokes when they were originally aired are those most likely to appreciate the humorous homage to the genre. Another ad that might seem to invite generational conflict is Republican Bob Shaffer’s 2008 “Department of Peace,” which associates U.S. Senate candidate from Colorado Mark Udall as a stereotypical psychedelic burnout hippie from the 1960s. Characterizing Udall in this way serves not only to paint him as too liberal but also to represent his political platform itself as five decades outdated and therefore unresponsive to current political climes. The actor’s style of delivery marks him as a burned-out baby boomer druggie, possibly belonging to the Grateful Dead’s faithful fan entourage. “Department of Peace” appears like a Super 8 film reel, with fake imperfections in the “film” as the frames go by. Its color palette bends toward a yellowish/sepia tone. “Welcome to the Department of Peace,” says the actor, an overweight, middle-aged man with gray hair, a bandanna, T-shirt, blazer, and gaudy tie as he gestures to a 1960s-era Volkswagen van. Tie-dyed pieces of cloth obscure the windows from the inside, and “The Department of Peace” is emblazoned in psychedelic letters on the door of the van. After saying Udall wanted to “spend billions” on such a department as well as a Peace Academy and voted against funding for troops, the actor says to the camera, “Come on! Let’s go inside Udall’s Peace Department” and opens the van door. As a huge cloud of (presumably marijuana) smoke emits, he quickly closes the door, looks around furtively, and slinks away stage right. Music in the ad sounds like acid rock in the vein of Jimi Hendrix or Deep Purple, with blues-infused electric guitar soloing over bass and drum kit. In analyzing the effect political ad creators are trying to achieve, one must always ask, “How does this speak to the most reliable voting bloc—the elderly?” Music here seems chosen specifically to address those voters. The generation targeted might have been the generation before the baby boomers, the generation dubbed by Tom Brokaw the “Greatest Generation.” In the 1960s, rock music often put these people off (sometimes intentionally, rebelliously). For them, popular music was Frank Sinatra or big band swing music. For people of this earlier generation who did not like 1960s rock music, their dislike was not merely musically aesthetic; they disliked what they associated this genre with: liberal sexuality, drugs, and moral decay. But it is not only a generational appeal. For more conservatively-oriented viewers from any generation, the drug reference and the musical underpinning might have nudged some toward voting against Udall. For those who perceive Democrats as weak on terrorism or national defense, this ad does its job. It scratches the Far Right’s national

638   Christiansen security itches by mocking someone who prefers peace to war.15 Whether the ad would have appealed to the small group of undecided voters—those who were persuadable but still undecided—is an open question. But “The Department of Peace” is a powerful Contempt ad. One 2008 ad targeting alleged corruption of the opponent was “Wheel of Corruption,” by Republican U.S. Representative incumbent Lincoln Diaz-Balart against Democratic challenger Raúl Martínez. Referencing the game show Wheel of Fortune, the ad features a narrator and a spinning wheel, which arrive at successive alleged corruption scandals. Between onscreen text and narrator voiceover (“It’s time for Raúl Martínez’s Wheel of Corruption!”), the key messages are “another scandal,” “handing out government jobs,” “$1.2 million for legal fees, back pay & interest,” and “prosecuted for racketeering and extortion.” The ad ends with the narrator intoning, “We know Martínez is corrupt enough for Washington, but that doesn’t mean we should send him there!” while a black-and-white picture of Martínez is set against the text “Washington is corrupt enough” (with no music at the end). As in other Contempt ads, music belittles the opponent as unworthy of public office. Like the theme to Wheel of Fortune itself, music here is a bit corny. By association with this unsubstantial cliché game show music as well as the narrator’s sardonic “master of ceremonies” tone, Martinez appears tacky and trivial—a cheap criminal. In the first two-thirds of the ad, Martínez is in color, grinning broadly while the wheel spins. The impression is that he is glad, even proud, of his record of corruption scandals. When we see him in black and white and scowling at the end, it seems as though he is angry at having been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Wheel of Corruption” seethes with indignant disdain.

Uncategorizable Some ads seem to defy neat categorization. Hilary Clinton’s “3 A.M.” ad is difficult to categorize—perhaps it could be called “Fear with Patriotic Music.” The ad was created in the red-hot Democratic primary season of the U.S. presidential election of 2008. Barack Obama had been steadily gaining ground against establishment favorite Clinton in both primaries and caucuses as well as, eventually, among superdelegates. Throughout the spring, Clinton was feeling the nomination slipping from her grasp, despite it seeming 15  The idea that a cabinet-level Department of Peace (which the Alliance for Peace has supported) should be laughable is curious indeed—after all, the so-called Department of Defense was called the War Department until 1949. Of course, given the United States’ focus on endless war around the world, it is easier for citizens to imagine what a secretary of war would do on a daily basis; it would be much harder, then, to envision what a secretary of peace’s work schedule would look like. Escalations toward and preparations for war are easily imaginable. What do preparations for and maintenance of peace look like? There is nothing new about the thought of a Department of Peace, though—Dr. Benjamin Rush advocated in 1793 for it to be established and to be equal in power to the War Department.

From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing   639 inevitable mere weeks earlier. Her campaign felt pressure to strike back and hit hard. So, her ad intimated that citizens could feel secure in their beds only with Clinton at the helm. The converse implication, of course, was that Obama was not the leader citizens would want to answer a crisis call in the middle of the night. In C major, music in “3 A.M.” is orchestral, majestic, and presidential. Prominent in it are snare drum, trumpet, and high chimes, which play military rising gestures. At the very end of the ad, as we see Clinton holding a phone to her ear, we hear the briefest of fanfares. In fact, it sounds like a tiny sampling of John Williams’s “Olympic Fanfare and Theme,” and in the same key as the original, G major. There seems little possibility that this was an accidental similarity—the same instrumentation, key, tempo, and register, with virtually the same melody and rhythm. Since this appears to be an intentional inclusion to the ad’s music, we must ask why the composer of the ad’s music wanted to evoke a quadrennial sporting event during an ad for a quadrennial political campaign. The answer may be that this brief evocation of the Olympics lent Clinton a soupçon of invincibility, the air of a champion. In addition to associations of victory, an allusion to the Olympics can also symbolize international status for the candidate. Could the Olympic reference be a subtle, underthe-radar reminder of Clinton’s foreign policy experience on the Armed Services Committee as U.S. senator and the eight years she spent in the White House as First Lady? Another important possible valence for the allusion is the aura the Olympics grants its participants. Olympic athletes train intensely for years, adhering to specialized diets, grueling exercise, and training regimens. Perhaps nobody in any possible field of endeavor is as prepared for a culminating goal than an Olympic athlete is for her competitions. So, by association, the composer might hope to—in an oblique way—call attention to what the campaign thought was Clinton’s excellent preparation for the presidency. People from Obama’s campaign, as well as commentators in the media, were quick to denounce the ad as racist. There is no space here to explore this claim.16 In the end, though, the ad did not make the difference for Clinton; indeed, it may have backfired on her and contributed to her defeat by Obama.

Conclusions Martha Nussbaum cannot be pleased with the current state of affairs in political advertising. It hardly reflects an encouraging picture of positive emotions as those she posits as dominant in an ideal society. The “disgust” and “anger” that Nussbaum claims are aimed at particular groups in society continue to be present in political discourse 16  One of the most prominent places where this claim was leveled was the New York Times. See Patterson (2008).

640   Christiansen (­especially in campaign ads!). Why are music, sound effects, and emoting narrators used for political appeals to voters anyway? Nussbaum argues for the cultivation of positive emotions in the political sphere. But isn’t it information about voting records and policy proposals that voters need to make informed decisions about candidates, rather than appeals to pathos? If the aim of political ads were to convey information, why all the extraneous sounds and images? We might imagine a political discourse grounded only in facts, records, and political platforms, with candidates’ talking heads addressing viewers. That certainly was the case with most television political ads up through 1960. But times have changed, and political ads without any appeal to emotion are exceedingly rare these days. In this brief review of some political ads, we found that different negative emotions are evoked between the two parties: oversensitive or melancholy ones such as Sadness more often by Democrats, but more intense ones such as Anger and Contempt by Republicans. It is important not to draw sharp conclusions based on this observation; that is, Republican voters are of course not necessarily lacking in compassion to their Democratic counterparts (or, put another way, Democrats can just as easily suffer from a lack of compassion). Nevertheless, there seem to be general tendencies in how each party addresses its own as well as undecided voters using emotion. How do emotions figure in voters’ decisions? Two recent studies point in opposing directions with regard to emotions in political decision making. One indicates that emotion is a sine qua non in making important political choices (Seymour & Dolan, 2008), while another presents evidence that people are not capable of thinking rationally while they are processing emotions; that is, when they feel, they cannot think logically (Jack et al., 2013). Emotional appeals, in other words, might short-circuit logical thinking. This would appear to be the chief aim of most modern political advertising. The Dunning Kruger Effect, known in some circles as the “third-person effect,” describes how people with a low level of skills or knowledge in a particular area tend to describe themselves as being more skillful or knowledgeable than others in that area. Their lack of self-awareness is said to impede their ability to assess their own abilities. One recent study shows that subjects attributed susceptibility to political ad appeals to other people, presuming themselves resistant to the appeals (Wei & Lo, 2007). Roderick Hart, in his book Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter, writes about how people deal with politics emotionally instead of rationally (Hart, 1999). He observes that television viewers in the United States tend to think of themselves as informed, even though they are usually misinformed or significantly underinformed (Hart, 1999, pp. 12–13). This sounds like unfortunate news, because campaigns would certainly not spend huge amounts of money on ads containing music without a strong conviction that music can make powerful nonverbal appeals (regardless of accurate voter perception of these effects). While much still remains unknown about how the brain processes complex artifacts such as political ads, campaign operatives in the present day believe music to be an

From the Subliminal to the Ridiculing   641 essential component in a political ad.17 For the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s campaign spent $600 million, and Hillary Clinton’s spent an even more staggering $1.2 billion. Much of this money went toward ad buys for TV. Especially now, eleven years after the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission Supreme Court decision, which ruled unconstitutional any restrictions on “independent” political spending by corporations, unions, and other entities, there is no indication that this will change anytime soon.

Recommended Readings Christiansen, P. (2018). Orchestrating public opinion: How music persuades in television political ads for US presidential campaigns, 1952–2016. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. Rodman, R. (2010). Tuning in: American narrative television music. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Schwartz, T. (2017). The responsive chord: How media manipulate you—what you buy, who you vote for, and how you think (2nd ed.) Coral Gables, FL: Mango. (Original work published 1973.) Taylor, T. D. (2012). The sounds of capitalism: Advertising, music, and the conquest of culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

References Brader, T. (2006). Campaigning for hearts and minds: How emotional appeals in political ads work. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Chion, M. (1999). The voice in cinema (C.  Gorbman, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Christiansen, P. (2016). It’s morning again in America: How the Tuesday team revolutionized the use of music in political ads. Music and Politics, 10 (1). http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ mp.9460447.0010.105 Christiansen, P. (2018). Orchestrating public opinion: How music persuades in television political ads for US presidential campaigns, 1952–2016. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. Devlin, L.  P. (2005). Contrasts in presidential campaign commercials of 2004. American Behavioral Scientist, 49, 279–313. Hart, R. (1999). Seducing America: How television charms the modern voter (Rev. ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Jack, A. I., Dawson, A. J., Begany, K. L., Leckie, R. L., Barry, K. P., Ciccia, A. H., & Snyder A. Z. (2013). fMRI reveals reciprocal inhibition between social and physical cognitive domains. Neuroimage, 66, 385–401.

17  For more on campaign officials’ involvement in the creation of political ads, see my interview with composer Matthew Nicholl, in which he discusses how Mike Murphy and Alex Castellanos were involved in the process (Christiansen, 2018, pp. 241–251).

642   Christiansen Killmeier, M., & Christiansen, P. (2011). Wolves at the door: Musical persuasion in a 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign ad. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 50, 157–177. Krumhansl, C. (1997). An exploratory study of musical emotions and psychophysiology. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51, 336–352. Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant! White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green. Matravers, D. (1998). Art and emotion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2013). Political emotions: Why love matters for justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Oatley, K., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1987). Towards a cognitive theory of emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 1, 29–50. Patterson, O. (2008, March 11). The red phone in black and white. New York Times. Ridout, T.  N., and Franz, M.  M. (2011). The Persuasive Power of Campaign Advertising. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Robinson, J. (2005). Deeper than reason: Emotion and its role in literature, music, and art. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Rodman, R. (2010). Tuning In: American narrative television music. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Ross, A. (2010). Listen to this (3rd ed.). New York, NY: FSG. Seymour, B., & Dolan, R. (2008). Emotion, decision making, and the amygdala. Neuron, 58, 662–671. Tomkins, S. S. (1962). Affect imagery consciousness (Vol. I): The positive affects. London, UK: Tavistock. Tomkins, S. S. (1963). Affect imagery consciousness (Vol. II): The negative affects. London, UK: Tavistock. Tomkins, S. S. (1991). Affect imagery consciousness (Vol. III): The negative affects—anger and fear. New York, NY: Springer. Tomkins, S. S. (1992). Affect imagery consciousness (Vol. IV). New York, NY: Springer, 1992. Wei, R., & Lo, V.-H. (2007). The third-person effects of political attack ads in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Media Psychology, 9(2), 367–388. Westen, D. (2008). The political brain: The role of emotion in deciding the fate of the nation New York, NY: Public Affairs. Yacowar, M. (1981). Method in madness: The comic art of Mel Brooks. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.

Pa rt I I I

R E C E P T ION Edited by Siu-Lan Tan

R eception Empirical Approaches to the Study of Music and Advertising Siu-Lan Tan

Music is pervasive in advertising— featuring in 85 percent of German TV commercials (Leo, 1999), 94 percent of American prime-time TV commercials (Allan, 2008), and about 90 percent of prime-time TV commercials in Spain (Palencia-Lefler, 2009), according to some studies. Music is also prevalent in retail settings such as stores, restaurants, and coffee shops and virtual and online shopping environments (Cheng, Wu, & Yen, 2009; Ramlee & Said, 2014). Thus, it is surprising that the topic of music in advertising has not received more attention among social scientists and other researchers undertaking experimental studies. Compared to the steady growth of scholarship in the humanities, empirical research focusing on the role of music in advertising has advanced at a much slower pace, and findings have been characterized as fragmented and lacking in cohesion (Ruth & Spangardt, 2017). One of the main aims of the final “Reception” section of this book is to inspire further theory and research on how music may influence people’s attitudes, emotions, and behaviors in the context of advertisements and within service environments, by providing reviews of empirical studies on many facets of advertising music, proposing testable hypotheses and models, and pointing to avenues for future studies. Chapters in Part III address questions such as how music may affect purchase intentions and attitude toward a brand, influence comprehension and recall of an ad’s message, lower resistance to an ad, and alter perceptions of many aspects of a service environment, and even how background music may influence the taste of food or drink.

Models, Mechanisms and Methods To open the first section, Lincoln Craton outlines a model consisting of four factors— the listening situation, the musical stimulus, listener characteristics, and listeners’ processing strategies—that may predict consumers’ responses to the music used in an

646   tan advertisement (and, in turn, shape their attitudes toward the ad, brand, and message). These factors are foundational to the ensuing chapters in this section on “Reception,” and to various discussions in Parts I and II throughout the book. Building on relevant research from music psychology, Craton extends this model (Lantos & Craton, 2012) from the arena of marketing to a more psychological sphere, by including possible mechanisms underlying the relationships between these four key factors and consumers’ responses to advertising music. Whereas Craton’s model pertains to more complex music, Vijaykumar Krishnan and James Kellaris focus on sonic logos, asking: What makes a good sonic logo (or “sogo”)? A sogo comprises a few tones that create a unique auditory identity for a brand in six seconds or less, but there is little empirical research on how this may best be achieved. The authors offer a set of testable propositions based on the premise that “sonic personality” (a sogo’s distinctive character) and “sonic awareness” (recognizability and memorability) are strongly influenced by the degree of “processing fluency” (i.e., the ease with which information is processed). Krishnan and Kellaris’s propositions systematically address how these may vary with the specific design characteristics that make up a particular sogo, such as the number, range, directionality, and repetition of tones. Following the chapters presenting conceptual models, Daniel Müllensiefen shifts our attention to techniques for studying emotional responses to music in advertisements. With six years of experience as the former Scientist in Residence at a prominent advertising agency in London, while holding a university post in psychology, the author brings a unique perspective to this topic with his combined experience in academic and industry research. (Thus, the discussion makes a good companion to the chapter by Kupfer in Part I of this volume.) Using dual-process models such as the elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo,  1986) and psychological studies on the emotional effects of music as the backdrop, Müllensiefen describes techniques that can be implemented in both academic and industry research, including his own innovative tool for assessing music-brand fit. Because direct questions do not always yield reliable data as people are not always accurate reporters of their own responses, the chapter also reviews implicit research techniques such as skin conductance response (SCR), electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and implicit association tests.

Cognitive and Affective Responses The next subsection reviews research findings pertaining to cognitive and affective responses to various facets of music and advertising. David Allan’s chapter­provides an overview of empirical studies on the effects of popular music in television and radio ads conducted during the past 30 years or so, focusing on attention, memory, attitudes, and purchase intention. Taking a closer look at how the presence of music affects comprehension and memory of the message in an ad, Cynthia Fraser reviews research findings

Reception   647 on the effects of background music on television and radio ads, addressing the important question of whether the presence of music helps or hinders accurate comprehension and recall of the brand message. The two chapters provide a brief background to some of the core theories, models, and cognitive concepts that underpin much of the research on advertising music discussed in the ensuing chapters within this section, and some discussions in Parts I and II of the book. Steve Oakes and Morteza Abolhasani’s chapter addresses a concept that surfaces in almost all chapters in the “Reception” section of this book: musical congruity or “musical fit” (MacInnis & Park, 1991). The perceived degree of “fit” between the music and the advertising message and brand has emerged as a key factor mediating an ad’s effectiveness, especially when it comes to consumers’ attitudes toward the brand and advertisement, recall of the ad’s message, and purchasing intentions. The authors include a brief discussion of “netnographic” research (a technique similar to ethnography but applied to online communities) as an example of how user-generated content (such as consumer postings and product reviews on YouTube and social media) can serve as a rich resource for researchers. They point to the importance of expanding the scope of study to the digital realm, to examine the role of music in the virtual and online contexts made possible by technological developments. Madelijn Strick turns our attention to narrative ads, such as television and internet commercials that are similar to short narrative films as they include protagonists, drama, and a plot structure to engage audiences. Studies on “psychological transportation” (the sense of being “carried away” by the narrative) through engagement with novels and films have shown that readers and viewers often accept attitudes and beliefs consistent with the world of the stories (Costabile & Terman, 2003; Green & Brock,  2000). Extending this research to audiovisual ads that employ narrative elements, Strick outlines a series of studies exploring the possibility that emotionally moving music (such as music eliciting “chills”) may intensify the viewer’s level of psychological transportation into the story, thus reducing cognitive resources available for critical thought and decreasing resistance to the ad. In turn, this may increase the likelihood of adopting attitudes and behaviors consistent with the story world presented in the ad. Music supports an ad but often serves as an advertisement for itself—for instance, in concurrently bringing attention to and positioning the performer, artist, band, and their own brand (see Klein’s chapter in Part II). Whereas other chapters in this section focus on music in advertisements, Hubert Léveillé Gauvin’s chapter addresses music as advertisement, conveying the idea that music inherently advertises itself by “winning” our attention. Léveillé Gauvin addresses compositional practices that make popular music appealing to listeners, in a world in which they are enticed by an increasing number of music listening options. What kind of music seizes listeners’ attention? What sustains our attention? And what makes music memorable? Using David Huron’s (1989) framework on the functions of music in advertising, discussed from an “attention economy” perspective, the chapter explores how an appealing piece of music may keep us from switching channels.

648   tan

Multisensory Marketing Finally, the last subsection of Part III broadens the scope of discussion beyond the sense of hearing alone, to explore how “multisensory marketing” engages the five senses, and how this is influencing the way that products, ads, and (both real and virtual) commercial environments are designed. Bertil Hultén explores the role of music in sensory marketing strategies that engage multiple sensory modes (Krishna, 2012), and how these are applied in settings such as shopping malls, supermarkets, restaurants, and banks. Echoing themes explored earlier in the book, various topics such as the influence of different musical genres, familiar versus novel music, and musical congruency or musical fit emerge again as salient variables in studies on the effects of in-store music and “store atmospherics” on consumers’ experience of service environments and perceptions of brand identities and products. Klemens Knoeferle and Charles Spence close the final section of this book with a chapter on multisensory marketing, expanding the discussion to encompass both music and sound design (and complementing the chapter by McLeod in the “Production” section of the book). Even small alterations made to the fizzing sound of a carbonated drink, the rustling noise of a potato chip bag, or background music playing while consuming food can significantly change our perceptions of a product and quality of our experience (e.g., see Wang & Spence, 2019). Emphasizing that our senses do not operate independently, the authors review many surprising research findings about the links between our auditory sense and sense of taste, vision, smell, and touch. Knoeferle and Spence point to the important role of sound in both traditional forms of advertising and new contexts for multisensory marketing experiences made possible by technological developments, such as multisensory advertising billboards and multisensory virtual reality (VR) experiences.

Opportunities for Future Growth The role of music has been largely neglected in the empirical research on advertising. One of the goals of the “Reception” section—and of The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising as a whole—is to inspire further theory and research and to encourage more cross-fertilization of ideas among colleagues in various disciplines. Therefore, chapters in this section are presented by authors in several different fields and are intended for a broad readership. Overviews of key concepts, theories, and research findings on many specialized topics are presented by leading researchers in music and advertising, with many illustrative examples and applications. A variety of research techniques are presented, including quantitative and qualitative studies conducted in both lab and naturalistic settings; direct methods (e.g., questionnaires, rating scales) and implicit tests (e.g., reaction time measurement to detect implicit preferences); recording of brain activity and physiological responses; corpus studies (such as analyses of large bodies of

Reception   649 music, or ads); and netnographies (similar to ethnography, applied to online communities). Implications of research findings and avenues for future research are explored at the end of each chapter. To serve a broad base of readers from various fields, technical terms in this section are shown in italics wherever they are first introduced and defined. Readers may sense some gaps in coverage, which generally reflect the scarcity of studies within those areas of advertising music research—mirroring gaps in the empirical literature on music and multimedia more broadly (see Tan, Cohen, Lipscomb, & Kendall, 2013). Especially notable is the lack of attention to topics related to gender and culture, mirroring limitations in advertising research in general (Williams, Lee, & Haugtvedt, 2004); the dearth of studies on the effects of music in ads targeted to children and adolescents, such as mascots singing jingles, and use of brand names in pop song lyrics (see Siegel et al.,  2013, for prevalence of alcohol brands mentioned on Billboard’s most popular songs); lack of attention to diegetic ad music, such as the effect of onscreen performers on audience engagement and perception of brand (and performer), as artist-brand partnerships are increasingly common; the scarcity of rigorous neuroimaging studies on music and advertising in the academic literature; and the need for more studies on the role of music in the digital advertising realm (including online ads, social media, and marketing in virtual communities). Although most of these topics are touched on in various chapters, a great deal remains to be explored. The chapters on production (Part I) examined the factors, creative forces, industry practices, and people behind the music for the marketing pitch, both historical and present day. The analyses of ads used in the section on text (Part II) draw on traditional music theory, semiotics, and hermeneutic analysis. Rarely included in a substantial way alongside these topics and perspectives, Part III of this book’s tripartite structure focuses on theoretical and empirical investigations of the effects of music in advertising and commercial environments. As discussed in our introductory chapter, there is much to be gained from the sharing of knowledge and collaboration between individuals with different skills and expertise from multiple fields, with the goal of building a more integrative understanding of the production, text, and reception of advertising music.

References Allan, D. (2008). A content analysis of music placement in prime-time television advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 48(3), 404–417. Cheng, F.-F., Wu, C.-S., & Yen, D. C. (2009). The effect of online store atmosphere on consumer’s emotional responses: An experimental study of music and color. Behavior & Information Technology, 28, 323–334. Costabile, K. A., & Terman, A. W. (2013). Effects of film music on psychological transportation and narrative persuasion. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35(3), 316–324. Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 701–721. Huron, D. (1989). Music in advertising: An analytic paradigm. Musical Quarterly, 73(4), 557–574.

650   tan Krishna, A. (2012). An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to affect perception, judgment and behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 332–351. Lantos, G., & Craton, L.  G. (2012). A model of consumer response to advertising music. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 29(1), 22–42. Leo, H. (1999). Musik im Fernsehspot [Music in television commercials]. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang. MacInnis, D. J., & Park, C. W. (1991). The differential role of characteristics of music on highand low-involvement consumers’ processing of ads. Journal of Consumer Research, 18(2), 161–173. Palencia-Lefler, M. (2009). Banda sonora de la publicidad televisiva Española: Formas, géneros y estilos musicales [Soundtrack of Spanish TV advertising: Shapes, genders, and musical styles]. Comunicación Y Sociedad, 23(1), 299–318. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123–205. Ramlee, N., & Said, I. (2014). Review on atmospheric effects of commercial environments. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, 153, 426–435. Ruth, N., & Spanghardt, B. (2017). Research trends on music and advertising. Mediterranea, 8(2), 13–23. Siegel, M., Johnson, R. M., Tyagi, K., Power, K., Lohson, M. C., Ayers, A. J., & Jernigan, D. H. (2013). Alcohol brand references in U.S. popular music: 2009–2011. Substance Use & Misuse, 48, 1475–1484. Tan, S.-L., Cohen, A. J., Lipscomb, S. D., & Kendall, R. A. (2013). Future research directions for sound and music in multimedia. In S.-L. Tan, A. J. Cohen, S. D. Lipscomb, & R. A. Kendall (Eds.), The psychology of music in multimedia (pp. 391–405). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Wang, Q. J., & Spence, C. (2019). Sonic packaging: How packaging sounds influence multisensory product evaluation. In C.  Velasco & C.  Spence (Eds.), Multisensory packaging (pp. 127–159). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Williams, J. D., Lee, W.-N., & Haugtvedt, C. P. (2004). Diversity in advertising: Broadening the scope of research directions. New York, NY: Psychology Press.

F r a m e w o r k s: M o d e l s, M e c h a n i s m s, and Methods

chapter 32

Towa r d a U tilita r i a n Theory of Consum er R esponse to A dv ertisi ng M usic Lincoln G. Craton

Inspirations and Aspirations Responding in one way or another to music is a familiar everyday experience, but it is interestingly complex. Consider the following scenarios: • Anthony is alone at home, sitting comfortably on the couch and listening attentively to a favorite rock song that he has performed many times with his band. • Maria is at a house party chatting happily with friends while a pop song plays in the background; although the singer’s vocal acrobatics are slightly irritating, the song has a catchy beat that makes her bob her head in time. • Jacob walks into a clothing store at the mall and is immediately assaulted by loud, thudding music; it feels like ice picks on his ears, so he turns around to leave. Anthony, Maria, and Jacob represent a spectrum of possible musical responses from positive to mixed to negative, respectively. We may have intuitions about what caused those contrasting responses, but it is hard to know with certainty. Intuitively, control of the musical selection seems like a key factor—Anthony chose his listening experience, while Jacob did not; Maria may have had to negotiate with others at the party to find a mutually acceptable playlist that was something of a compromise. Other factors about

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   653 the listening situation were likely influential as well, particularly the social context (alone, with friends, or in a crowd of strangers). Features of the listening situation, in turn, presumably interact with listener characteristics. Anthony’s solitary listening allows him to engage deeply with a genre of music he enjoys (musical taste); the upbeat music at the party complements Maria’s animated conversations and promotes a sense of shared experience (social identity); Jacob’s easygoing nature (personality/personal identity) is a poor fit with the vigorous music in the store. And of course, both the listening situation and the listeners’ characteristics interact with features of the music stimulus itself to determine each individual’s musical response. Now consider this scenario: • Nina is watching a TV show with her spouse and there is a commercial break… Our interest in this chapter lies with the last scenario. What will happen next? If she is like the author, Nina may well mute the TV and go to the kitchen to get a beer. Otherwise, she will almost certainly hear some music accompanying the commercials that ensue. For instance, in the United States, 94% of ads playing during prime time include music (Allan, 2008). If Nina listens to the commercial, then presumably the three factors outlined previously—the listening situation, listener characteristics, and musical stimulus— will interact to determine whether her response to the ad music is favorable or unfavorable. Why do these factors have the effect they do? It is easy to see how useful and exciting a fully developed, empirically supported model of consumer response to ad music would be in this instance. Such a model would be able to describe every aspect of Nina’s (favorable or unfavorable) musical response. Better yet, it would successfully predict her response ahead of time. Better still, an ideal model would be able to explain in detail and at several levels of analysis (e.g., psychological, biological, developmental) what caused Nina’s response when it occurs. Realizing this pie-in-the-sky vision would be thrilling for researchers in music psychology and marketing, and it would provide advertisers with a powerful tool for deciding how to incorporate music into commercials. It is almost certainly too much to hope for. As North, Hargreaves, and Krause (2016) put it, “It is probably impossible to devise a detailed model of all the characteristics of the music, the customer, and of the commercial environment, and to assess how all of these interact to [help a business] make a given spending decision” (p. 799). Yet these authors and others have taken important steps in this direction and I believe there is still progress to be made. For instance, marketers can benefit from research in music psychology, particularly work on musical preferences. In presenting their influential reciprocal feedback model (RFM) of response to music, Hargreaves, North, and Tarrant (2006) define musical preference as “a person’s liking for one piece of music as compared with another at a given point in time,” which they distinguish from taste, which is “the overall patterning of an

654   Craton individual’s preferences over longer time periods” (p. 135). This model usefully organizes the many factors known to determine musical response around the three broad variables mentioned earlier: the music, the listener, and the situations and contexts in which listening takes place (Hargreaves et al., 2006). Importantly, each of these three main determinants of musical preference can simultaneously influence the other two, hence the designation “reciprocal feedback.” The RFM continues to provide a useful framework for organizing new empirical findings (for a review, see Greasley & Lamont, 2016). Our model of consumer response to advertising music was inspired by the RFM as well as work on music cognition (e.g., Bharucha, Curtis, & Paroo, 2006), except that it is designed with the specific goal of helping advertisers address the challenge of selecting appropriate music for broadcast commercials (Craton & Lantos,  2011; Lantos & Craton, 2012). Developed with my colleague Geoff Lantos, the model consists of four broad variables (listening situation, musical stimulus, listener characteristics, and listener’s advertising processing strategy) that interact to determine attitude toward the advertising music (Aam), a multidimensional construct that captures the many cognitive and affective elements of a consumer’s experience of ad music. The response component Aam focuses in particular on cognitive and affective elements that are most important for achieving specific advertising objectives, such as creating a positive brand image and providing a positive hedonic experience. Similarly, the components that constitute the main determinants of musical response in our model—the listening situation, musical stimulus, listener characteristics, and listener’s advertising processing strategy—are tailored to feature those factors that apply to the specific case of a consumer watching or listening to a broadcast commercial. This chapter will describe how emerging work supports our model of consumer response to advertising music and suggest ways in which the model might be improved and extended. The primary goal of the chapter is to provide the empirical and theoretical scaffolding for an extension of the model, what I will refer to as a utilitarian theory of musical response, which adds a layer of internal psychological processes that mediate between its four broad causal variables (listening situation, musical stimulus, listener characteristics, listener’s advertising processing strategy) and attitude toward the advertising music (hereafter referred to as Aam). In the first main section, I discuss the challenge of describing musical response using our model’s response component, Aam. I summarize recent work on negative and mixed musical responses that fits well with the Aam construct and then address the problems of developing an adequate measure of Aam and clarifying its structure. In the second main section, I introduce the idea of a utilitarian theory as a means of explaining consumer response to ad music. I propose that Aam’s complexity arises from the simultaneous operation of a large and diverse set of independent psychological processes. Drawing on the emotion and music psychology literatures to compile a provisional list of these processes, or “mechanisms,” I revisit the examples of negative and mixed responses to illustrate this idea. The envisioned theory is utilitarian in the sense that the mechanisms it proposes evolved to perform practical, biologically important tasks not specifically related to music processing.

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   655

Describing Musical Responses For the advertiser, deciding whether to incorporate music into a commercial seems like a no-brainer. As mentioned, virtually all TV ads incorporate music—businesses invest large sums of money based on the belief that music enhances not only the ad but also brand attitudes and consequent sales. The assumption seems to be, “Of course music helps—at least, it can’t hurt!” However, in reviewing the marketing literature, we argued that music does not always add value to an ad and can even have a negative effect (Craton & Lantos, 2011; see also the chapter by Fraser, in this volume). Further, we suggested that there are many aspects of response to ad music, each of which might have a favorable or unfavorable effect on ad music reception. To try to capture this more complex view, we proposed a new construct: attitude toward the advertising music (Aam). At one level, Aam is synonymous with a common term in marketing research, “music appeal” (Allan, 2007); it simply refers to how much a consumer likes or dislikes a musical stimulus at a particular point in time. At a more fine-grained level, Aam aspires to include all of the many elements of a listener’s conscious experience of the ad music—all the thoughts and feelings caused by the music—that might affect an advertiser’s objectives. Altogether, Aam includes 12 elements, each of which is relevant to a specific advertising goal. Craton and Lantos (2011) describe these response elements in detail and discuss how they can help or hinder achievement of advertising goals. As an overview, the following brief list presents each element in italics and, where the meaning of the label may not be obvious, a parenthetical description of its associated advertising goal. The 12 response elements in the model include seven cognitive elements, as follows: • Level and persistence of attention to music • Depth of processing of music (to enhance memory of ad content) • Perceived features of music available for association (to create new music-brand associations) • Remembered features of music available for association (to tap prior associations with familiar music) • Image suggested by music (to create a brand image) • Music perceived as distinctive or not (to differentiate the brand) • Perceived music-message fit (to reinforce the ad message) In addition, there are five affective elements, as follows: • • • • •

Emotions (feelings) evoked by music Mood induced by music Emotional memories activated by music Emotional arousal response to music Hedonic response to music

656   Craton Because this formulation of Aam posits 12 separate elements, it leads to two potentially useful predictions for marketers. First, by pointing to 12 unique ways in which response to an ad’s music might be negative, it implies that negative responses should occur at least some of the time. Second, because each of the 12 response elements can be favorable or unfavorable for a given piece of ad music, the overall response can be complex and sometimes even contradictory—that is, a simultaneous mixture of liking and disliking. When we first introduced the Aam construct, relevant data on negative and mixed musical responses were sparse and suggestive at best. The next two subsections discuss some empirical evidence that has emerged since then. The third and last subsection addresses limitations in the current formulation of Aam and offers some suggestions for future work.

Describing Negative Musical Responses Because any of the aforementioned 12 separate response elements might contribute to an unfavorable attitude toward the advertising music (Craton & Lantos, 2011), our model predicts that overall negative responses to ad music should sometimes occur. It has been known for some time that musical preferences and musical taste vary significantly between individuals, and this continues to be an active area of research (BonnevilleRoussy, Stillwell, Kosinksy, & Rust,  2017; Greasley & Lamont,  2016; Hargreaves et al., 2006; Rentfrow, 2012; Rentfrow et al., 2012; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). Yet this work focuses on why people like their preferred music and largely neglects negative musical response. Similarly, work on music and emotion has documented a potpourri of positive emotions that are elicited when listeners hear music they enjoy (e.g., Zentner, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2008), but we know little about how it feels to listen to disliked music. However, it is becoming clear that most listeners express strong distaste toward some music (Ackerman, 2016; Craton, Kleeberg, & Roche, in preparation; Greasley, Lamont, & Sloboda,  2013). For instance, qualitative research (Ackerman,  2016; Greasley et al., 2013) suggests that listeners have no trouble identifying music that they actively dislike. Greasley et al. (2013) conducted in-depth interviews with adults in their homes, using participants’ personal music collections as memory aids for their preferred styles and artists. Most people had “omnivorous” tastes—that is, they liked a wide range of music. Yet they also identified music that they disliked, and participants sometimes explicitly defined their musical taste by contrasting liked genres and artists with what they intensely disliked. For example, one interviewee liked classical and country music and actively disliked heavy metal. A common comment was that disliked music “all sounds the same,” suggesting a negative evaluation for the Aam cognitive element music perceived as distinctive or not. Similarly, Ackerman (2016) showed that participants found it easy to list their musical dislikes and to provide reasons why they dislike each musical piece, artist, or style on their list. Importantly, participants in this study differentiated carefully between music they dislike and music to which they are indifferent. Two studies coming out of my own laboratory corroborate the finding that listeners genuinely dislike some music and suggests that empirical work can help characterize

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   657 what it is like to listen to it. In an online study, we surveyed a large sample of listeners (N = 960) to obtain retrospective accounts of listeners’ experiences when exposed to disliked music (Craton et al., in preparation). After identifying their most liked and most disliked musical genres, respondents rated how strongly they liked/disliked these genres (−5 = hate; 5 = love). The majority of listeners were not neutral about music they did not like, although their negative ratings were not as extreme as the intensity of positive ratings for liked music. Specifically, the mean ratings for disliked and liked music were −3.1 and 4.0, respectively. Similarly, 43% of respondents gave their most liked music the highest possible rating; 28% gave their most disliked music the lowest possible rating. In response to the question “Have you ever been in a situation where you were forced to listen to your most disliked genre of music?,” 67% of the respondents indicated that they had had this experience. When prompted to describe the situation(s) in which this had occurred, the accounts were often colorful and, frankly, highly entertaining. Content analysis of these accounts is ongoing, but overall they are anything but “neutral” with respect to response to disliked music. For instance: “In a car with friends, when they had control of the radio. Most awful indeed.”; “everywhere you go you have to listen to rap and i hate it and it is on tv all the time and i hate it.”; “I was at an event, and people were playing Gospel. I wanted to scream.”; “During a visit to a spa. They often play new age music and it’s really annoying.”; “My ex husband loved electronic music and listened to it all the time. I found it boring and soulless.”; “I went to the opera one time to experience it live. It was still horrible.”; “Riding in Uber and the driver refused to change the station because we were in his car…. . . LOL bad rating for him.” These short quips were chosen quickly from the top of our data file; there are many more, including longer passages. We next asked respondents to provide one to three words that described the emotion they felt during this situation; respondents who had indicated that they had not had this experience (33%) were asked to imagine such a situation. Altogether, 358 distinct words were recorded, with the 10 most frequent being annoyed (270), irritated (237), bored (206), angry (179), disgusted (122), frustrated (101), hate (94), sad (64), uncomfortable (44), and unhappy (37). In a second study, we measured negative musical response directly by exposing listeners to strongly disliked music in the laboratory (Craton, Kleeberg, Roche, Bosse, & Daly, 2017). Prior to this experiment, participants had indicated their dislike of heavymetal music during prescreening with the Short Test of Musical Preferences (STOMP; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). As expected, participants reported a much greater number of negative feelings while they listened to two 10-minute loops of loud heavy-metal music than they did during a no-music baseline condition. Over half the listeners reported the following six emotion terms: agitated, annoyed, impatient, irritated, uneasy, and uninterested. This list emerging from our lab study is strikingly similar to the selfnominated terms in the online survey. Along with these findings from music psychology on negative musical response, at least one marketing study published since our model came out (Knittel, Beurer, & Berndt, 2016) suggests that disliked ad music might negatively affect not only reception of the commercial but also the brand. The dark side of consumer brand relationships has

658   Craton been referred to in the marketing literature as brand avoidance (or sometimes brand hate), which Knittel et al. define as “the deliberate and conscious act of refraining from using and purchasing a particular brand” (p. 28). Thus, as defined, this advertising nightmare occurs even though the brand is readily available and the consumer has the financial means to purchase it. Based on qualitative data from focus groups and interviews, Knittel and colleagues add advertising avoidance as a new factor that can lead to brand avoidance and identify ad music as an important contributor to advertising avoidance. They quote the following sample response from a participant regarding music in advertising: “I don’t like advertising if it is just too stupid, or also too noisy, or just annoying. . . . Yeah, if I just feel annoyed by the whole thing. It can be because it is very loud and noisy or through like the music” (p. 36).

Describing Mixed Musical Responses In addition to predicting that negative musical responses will occur, our formulation of the Aam construct predicts that response to a piece of ad music can be complex and that positivity and negativity might even co-occur, leading to a mixed or ambivalent overall response. The first part of this prediction, that musical response might be complex, is relatively intuitive. It simply means that either more than one of the 12 response elements can be affected at any given moment in time or a given element can itself give rise to multiple responses (e.g., the image suggested by the music may itself have many features). Personal experience and research bear this out; music seems to be able to elicit a wide variety of thoughts and feelings, often all at once (Greasley et al.,  2013; Juslin,  2013,  2016; North et al.,  2016; Schubert, Hargreaves, & North,  2014). There is much to work out regarding which particular elements of Aam are likely to co-occur, whether some of the elements of Aam are partially redundant or overlapping, and which if any pairs of elements may be mutually exclusive. However, I will set these complications aside for now and focus on the second part of this prediction, that one type of complex musical response is a mixture of positivity and negativity. This is also intuitive, although it could benefit from some empirical evidence. Logically, many combinations of positive and negative responses could occur in response to music (Schubert, 2013). Beyond music research, the question of whether mixed emotions are possible is as old as experimental psychology itself—although the problem was sufficiently difficult to stifle any real progress by the early 20th century (Larsen,  2017). Exciting developments coming out of the general area of emotion research may help pave the way for music and marketing researchers, however. As Larsen (2017) states in a special section of Emotion Review devoted to mixed emotions: Indeed, a PsycInfo search revealed only nine articles on the topic between 1918 and 2000. The search also revealed, however, that we are in the midst of a second wave of research. Indeed, 49 articles have been published since 2000 and most of those have appeared since 2010. (p. 97)

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   659 Empirically, this new wave of research on mixed emotions has provided compelling evidence that simultaneous positive and negative feelings are indeed quite possible (Berrios, Totterdell, & Kellett, 2015; Heavey, Lefforge, Lapping-Carr, & Hurlburt, 2017; Larsen, 2017). Marketing research too has shown that ads highlighting mixed emotions (e.g., happiness and sadness) increase discomfort and negatively affect attitude toward the ad in some individuals (Williams & Aaker, 2002). Other marketing research indicates that anticipatory ambivalence about a purchase (mixed hope and fear) affects purchase intention (Bee & Madrigal, 2013). In music research, a strong test case for mixed emotions would be to ask whether music can simultaneously evoke common emotions that are opposite in valence— happiness and sadness, for instance. Indeed, several experiments that independently varied musical cues for happiness and sadness suggest this is the case (Hunter, Schellenberg, & Schimmack,  2008,  2010; Ladinig & Schellenberg,  2012; Larsen & Stastny, 2011). These studies take advantage of the well-documented findings that fasttempo music is associated with happiness, whereas slow-tempo music is associated with sadness, and that music in the major mode sounds happier than music in the minor mode (e.g., Gagnon & Peretz, 2003; for an overview, see Hunter & Schellenberg, 2010). Hunter et al. (2008) presented listeners with 30-second excerpts of recordings from a variety of musical styles (classical, pop, folk, alternative, jazz, electronic) that had consistent cues for happiness (fast tempo and major mode), consistent cues for sadness (slow tempo and minor mode), or conflicting cues (fast tempo and minor mode; slow tempo and major mode). After listening to each excerpt, participants rated their responses on separate scales for happiness and sadness (Experiment 1) or on a ­two-dimensional grid with separate axes for happiness and sadness (Experiment 2). The results for both experiments revealed that music with conflicting cues elicited more mixed emotion than music with con­sist­ent cues. This effect seems robust (Hunter et al., 2010; Ladinig & Schellenberg, 2012; Larsen & Stastny, 2011). Ladinig and Schellenberg, (2012) obtained the same pattern of results using identical stimuli and a more complex method of measurement. Hunter et al. (2010) obtained the same pattern with more controlled stimuli; specifically, multiple versions of Bach harpsichord pieces whose tempo and mode were manipulated with computer software to produce consistent and conflicting cue conditions. Finally, Larsen and Stastny (2011) used a button-press measure to cast doubt on the alternative explanation that participants in these experiments were vacillating between happiness and sadness rather than experiencing both emotions simultaneously. Their participants listened to stimuli from Hunter et al. (2008) and—while they were listening, rather than afterward—pressed one button whenever they felt happy and another button whenever they felt sad. The results indicated that participants spent more time pressing the happy and sad buttons simultaneously during songs with conflicting cues than during songs with consistent cues. Like the work on negative musical response, the literature on mixed emotions should give marketers pause. Recall the scenario that opened this chapter, in which Nina is watching TV with her spouse and there is a commercial break. What happens next? It is

660   Craton easy to see that if the ad music elicits a purely negative response in Nina, she may well mute the commercial, tune it out, or even leave the room until the TV show comes back on. Now imagine that the ad music elicits a mixed response in Nina, for instance, by making her feel simultaneously both happy and sad as in the research described earlier. Is this the kiss of death for the marketer? At this point, we simply do not know. On the one hand, music that evokes a mixed response might be particularly engaging, so it might attract Nina’s attention to the commercial. On the other hand, any amount of negativity in Nina’s response risks undermining the advertiser’s goals by leading her to dislike the commercial and turn her attention elsewhere. Which of these scenarios is more likely is an important question for future research. As I discuss later, an important consideration to keep in mind is that mixed responses involving cognitive elements are probably more common than mixed emotional responses. Indeed, some research suggests that music evokes emotions only about 55% to 65% of the time, with large differences between individuals (Juslin & Laukka, 2004; Juslin, Liljeström, Västfjäll, Barradas, & Silva, 2008). Mixed responses involving combinations of emotions may be quite rare, occurring in as few as 11% of listening episodes (Juslin, Liljeström, Laukka, Västfjäll, & Lundqvist, 2011).

Attitude Toward the Advertising Music (Aam): Addressing the Limitations Now that we have seen how the predictions of negative and mixed musical responses are gaining traction empirically, let us consider two limitations of the Aam construct. Recall that Aam identifies two levels of response to advertising music: a level of overall “music appeal” and a more fine-grained level composed of Aam’s 12 response elements. These two levels of response are depicted in the central box in Figure 32.1 labeled “Attitude Toward the Advertising Music (Aam).” The figure also shows the four broad variables (listening situation, musical stimulus, listener characteristics, and listener’s advertising processing strategy) and other components of our original model (see Figure 32.1). The first limitation of the Aam construct is that we have not specified an instrument to meas­ ure response at either of these levels. It will be necessary to do so before the construct can be adequately tested and improved. The studies on negative and mixed musical response summarized earlier suggest some general guidelines for how to proceed. At the global level of music appeal, retaining a standard single unidimensional meas­ ure seems like a good idea. Marketers will find a single bipolar scale useful at the global level because it can serve as a rough-and-ready predictor of whether a person is likely to continue listening to an ad or to tune out. (See also the chapter by Léveillé Gauvin, in this volume.) However, our studies of negative musical response indicate that this global measure needs to reflect the reality that listeners genuinely dislike and even hate some music. Thus, a Likert-scale measure for responding to questions such as “How much do you like the music in this ad?” should have strongly negative as well as strongly positive anchors (−5 = hate; 5 = love). The common approach of measuring “music appeal,”

Affective Emotions (feelings) evoked by music mood induced by music emotional memories activated by music emotional arousal response to music hedonic response to music

‘Music Appeal’

Cognitive Level and persistence of attention to music depth of processing of music perceived features of music available for association remembered features of music available for association image suggested by music music perceived as distinctive or not perceived music-message fit

Attitude Toward the Ad Music (Aam)

Attitude Toward the Ad (Aad)

Attitude Toward the Brand (Ab)

Figure 32.1  The original model of consumer response to advertising music (Lantos & Craton, 2012).

Listener Characteristics Musical taste Age Sex Culture Subculture Social class Social group/social identify Personality/personal identity/ lifestyle Prior mood state

Role of music Musical source Structural characteristics Genre and style Musical artist/performance

Musical Stimulus

Ongoing activities Social context Program content Voluntary vs. involuntary

Listening Situation

Advertising Processing Strategy

Purchase Intention

Brand Choice

662   Craton “liking,” or “music preference” with a Likert scale that has neutral and strongly positive anchors (1 = not at all; 7 = a great deal) is insufficient because it fails to distinguish neutral from strongly negative responses (Allan, 2007; Hargreaves et al., 2006; Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). To measure each of the 12 elements at the fine-grained level of Aam, the work on mixed emotions indicates that unidimensional measures will sometimes be unsatisfactory. For example, consider a measure of emotional response to ad music that uses a single scale with positive and negative emotions as anchors (e.g., 1 = sad; 11 = happy). If a consumer gives a unidimensional rating of 6 out of 11 on this scale for a particular selection of ad music, this could reflect either indifference (“This music makes me neither happy nor sad”) or ambivalence (“Listening to this makes me feel both happy and sad”)! The studies by Hunter and others show that distinguishing between ambivalence and indifference is possible. For instance, researchers can employ two separate scales, one for happiness and one for sadness (both scales would then range from 1 = not at all to 11 = extremely). An interesting question for future research is what other dimensions of response ought to be measured with separate scales for positivity and negativity. A look at the list of 12 response elements of Aam presented earlier suggests some candidates. For instance, one could measure image suggested by music with two separate scales, one for positive image suggested (1 = not at all; 11 = extremely) and a second for negative image suggested (1 = not at all; 11 = extremely). This would allow marketers to distinguish whether ad music is creating a positive, negative, mixed positive and negative, or indifferent brand image. The second limitation of our initial formulation of the Aam construct is that we did not provide a clear justification for its two-level structure. Our tacit assumption was that overall music appeal was a global response that represents some kind of joint function of the 12 response elements. Is there any theoretical precedent for this conceptualization of musical response? Indeed, the new wave of emotion research introduced earlier has provided conceptual tools that seem ready-made for beginning to tackle this problem. In particular, the evaluative space model ESM; Cacioppo, Berntson, Norris, & Gollan, 2012) provides strong theoretical justification for the global and subsidiary components of Aam (for a related model, see Shuman, Sander, & Scherer, 2013). Although the ESM does not address musical response specifically, it does offer a more general account of “evaluative processes” that differentiate positive and negative stimuli. It posits a global/subsidiary structure that nicely parallels that of the Aam construct. At the global level, the ESM holds that “physical constraints limit behavioral expressions and incline behavioral predispositions toward a bipolar organization” (Cacioppo et al., 2012, p. 42). In other words, a person will tend to either approach or withdraw from a stimulus; they cannot both approach and withdraw simultaneously. At the subsidiary level, in contrast, the ESM proposes separate evaluative processes that operate simultaneously. Crucially, some of these processes can produce positive evaluations while other processes produce negative evaluations at the same time. Consider again the opening scenario in which Nina is watching TV with her spouse. At the global level, the ESM implies that Nina will either “approach” (pay attention to the

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   663 ad and its music) or “withdraw” (to another room, another channel, or the mute button). As discussed previously, marketers can readily measure Nina’s overall response at the global level using a single scale of “music appeal” to help predict which of these two choices she is likely to make. At the subsidiary level, the ESM implies that multiple processes independently evaluate the ad music while Nina listens. As we will discuss shortly, one can imagine that there might be many such evaluative processes, each of which contribute to a positive or negative evaluation for one of the 12 subsidiary elements of Aam. Certainly, the precise details of how Aam might map onto the ESM are still quite murky. My main point at this juncture is that the two-level global/subsidiary structure of the ESM allows for precisely the sort of richness in musical response that we hope Aam will eventually be able to capture. The ESM thus provides an encouraging theoretical framework for our purposes, particularly so because of growing support for its claim that negative and positive evaluations involve at least partially separable neural systems (Cacioppo et al., 2012; Man, Nohlen, Melo, & Cunningham, 2017).

Whence Complexity? Explaining Musical Responses The previous discussions of negative musical response, mixed response, and the meas­ ure­ment and structure of Aam illustrate how our model makes it possible to describe musical response. Next, we consider the challenge of explaining musical response. Researchers in music psychology (e.g., Greasley & Lamont,  2016; Hargreaves et al., 2006) and in marketing (Bruner, 1990; Kellaris, 2008; Krishnan, Machleit, Kellaris, Sullivan, & Aurand, 2014; Kupfer, 2017) often approach this question by trying to map causal links from the three broad variables introduced at the beginning of this chapter (the listening situation, musical stimulus, listener characteristics) directly to musical response. As noted earlier, the Lantos and Craton (2012) model takes this approach as well, with the addition of a fourth variable, the listener’s advertising processing strategy (see Figure 32.1). The model is intended to be helpful in predicting Aam by providing a “checklist” of features within each of the four variables that marketers can refer to as they select ad music. However, it falls short of explaining consumer response because it does not show why these features have the effect they do. The primary goal of this chapter is to provide some empirical and conceptual scaffolding for what I refer to as a “utilitarian theory” of consumer response to advertising music. The envisioned theory not only describes consumers’ musical responses but also explains them by specifying the psychological processes that mediate between the four broad determinants and Aam. Music cognition researchers refer to these psychological processes as underlying mechanisms. In the mid-2000s, researchers argued persuasively that there are typically many such mechanisms at work whenever a listener hears music (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008; Scherer, 2004). This must be true for listening to ad music as

664   Craton well; indeed, we have argued that the simultaneous operation of many music-processing mechanisms helps explain why Aam is such a multifaceted construct (Craton, Lantos, & Leventhal, 2017). What, then, are the mechanisms that elicit musical response? There is no shortage of candidates in the literature; in fact, there is an embarrassment of riches. In recent years, the most extensive work on music-processing mechanisms that generate emotional responses has come from Juslin and collaborators (Juslin,  2013,  2016; Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008). To date, this work has proposed eight independent mechanisms collectively known as the BRECVEMA framework: • • • • • • • •

Brainstem reflexes—respond to “urgent” sounds Rhythmic entrainment—adjusts internal rhythms to beat Evaluative conditioning—triggers conditioned responses Emotional contagion—mimics expressed emotion Visual imagery—creates mental pictures Episodic memory—retrieves past listening experiences Musical expectancy—gauges likelihood of musical events Aesthetic judgment—uses subjective criteria to assess aesthetic value

Another set of candidates comes from appraisal theory (Scherer, 2004), which proposes that emotions arise when a person evaluates a stimulus (not necessarily music) with respect to a set of dimensions, such as whether the stimulus fulfills or frustrates the person’s goals. Different versions of the theory propose different appraisal dimensions (Moors, 2009). For instance, the levels of valence (LOV) elaboration of appraisal theory views emotional responses as resulting from several qualitatively different types of evaluations: (un)pleasantness, goal obstructiveness/conduciveness, low or high power, self-(in) congruence, and moral badness/goodness (Shuman et al., 2013). For simplicity, we group all appraisal mechanisms under one rubric: • Cognitive appraisal—evaluates likely effect of music on several dimensions Finally, Craton, Lantos, and Leventhal (2017) added two additional mechanisms: • Feature analysis—detects basic features (e.g., rhythm, pitch) • Emotion recognition—identifies expressed emotion In sum, the literature to date has identified at least 11 music-processing mechanisms. Of the last two “new” mechanisms, emotion recognition is particularly relevant for marketers. The emotion recognition mechanism allows a consumer to identify the emotions expressed in a piece of ad music; this is in contrast to the emotional contagion mech­an­ ism, which leads a consumer to “catch” or actually experience the emotions expressed in the music. The emotion recognition mechanism produces a cognitive effect that leads the consumer to associate the music with a particular image or “personality.” Among other things, this probably influences the degree of “fit” or congruence between the ad

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   665 music and the message conveyed by other features of the ad (e.g., visuals, narration). Better fit/congruence between the music and ad message may, in turn, lead to a stronger sense of familiarity or liking of the ad music—and the ad overall—as a possible consequence of greater processing fluency (see also chapters by Krishnan and Kellaris, and Oakes and Abolhasani, in this volume). Marketers focused on predicting consumer response may wonder whether it is necessary to delve into such an unwieldy list of mechanisms. In fact, appreciating that there are multiple mechanisms at work and understanding how they work can help marketers a great deal. The simultaneous operation of multiple mechanisms can lead to negative responses or mixed responses to ad music that work against achieving advertising objectives. Understanding the causes of negative and unfavorable mixed musical responses can inform decisions on how to incorporate music in commercials and reduce the risk of unanticipated consumer responses (Craton, Lantos, & Leventhal, 2017).

Explaining Negative Musical Responses Any of the four broad variables in our model could contribute to negative musical response in consumers (Lantos & Craton,  2012). What mediating mechanisms are involved in eliciting a negative musical response? Juslin (2016) argues that appraisal theories cannot explain musical emotions, and so he largely discounts the work by Scherer and colleagues (e.g., Scherer, 2004) on appraisal dimensions, which he collectively refers to as the mechanism of cognitive appraisal. However, the data on disliked music reviewed earlier suggests that some of the appraisal dimensions mentioned in the previous subsection do play a role, at least in the case of negative musical response. For instance, several of the most common emotion terms that participants used to describe how it feels to listen to disliked music suggest that it is appraised negatively as goal obstructive: annoyed, irritated, frustrated in our online survey (Craton et al., in preparation) and annoyed, impatient, irritated in the lab experiment (Craton, Kleeberg, et al., 2017). Other suggestive evidence for cognitive appraisal as a mechanism underlying negative response comes from Krause and colleagues, who have shown that dominance/control influences musical responses (Krause, North, & Hewitt, 2014, 2015; Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). For instance, using an experience sampling method, they found that having control over the listening situation leads to positive responses like contentment and enjoyment. However, listening experiences are often controlled by or negotiated with others—such as music selected by friends, group fitness instructors, store managers, restaurant managers, and advertisers. Kraus et al. report that the low level of control in these situations often leads listeners to become less content and more lethargic (low in arousal). This work suggests that appraisals of low power play a role in negative musical response. Other appraisal dimensions such as (un)pleasantness, self-(in)congruence, and moral badness/goodness may also play important roles in negative response to music. For instance, we might speculate that a consumer’s negative appraisal of the morality of a famous musician would contribute to a negative response to ad music performed by that individual.

666   Craton We have only begun to explore the “dark side” of musical response. An important goal for future research is to identify which of the other mechanisms in the long list provided earlier underlie negative thoughts and/or feelings toward ad music. Empirical research can also help rule out or diminish the relevance of certain mechanisms for eliciting negative responses. An interesting example is the mechanism of emotional contagion, which causes a listener to “catch” the emotion expressed by a piece of music by first recognizing the emotion and then “mimicking” it internally (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008). Emotional contagion makes one feel sad when listening to sad music, happy when listening to happy music, and so on. The results from our lab experiment with heavy metal–hating participants, discussed earlier, suggest that the emotional contagion mechanism may not operate in the case of disliked music (Craton, Kleeberg, et al., 2017). The participants in that study rarely reported feeling emotions that reflected the expressed emotion of the heavy-metal music that we exposed them to (e.g., angry, hostile, malicious, vengeful, and violent). Future studies might test this intriguing hypothesis using different types of disliked music. Thinking about negative musical responses can also help us evaluate new theoretical proposals. For instance, Schubert et al. (2014) propose the intriguingly parsimonious idea that a single mechanism—“spreading activation” in a listener’s cognitive ­networks—can explain musical preferences: the more activation a piece of music causes, the more the listener likes it. However, it is unclear how this account might explain negative musical responses, because networks do not exhibit negative activation. One possibility is to propose additional networks for negative responses, along the lines of the ESM.

Explaining Mixed Musical Responses A multi-mechanism approach hypothesizes that mixed responses to music are the result of the simultaneous activation of two or more mechanisms that produce contrasting responses (Juslin,  2013,  2016). For instance, we might speculate that ambivalent responses to slow music in the major mode (as discussed earlier) arise because tempo activates the emotional contagion mechanism, while mode activates the musical ex­pect­ ancy mechanism. By this account, a slow song resembles a sad human voice and the listener “catches” this sadness through contagion. At the same time, the musical expectancy mechanism might lead listeners to feel happy when they hear music in the major mode. The idea in this case is that because the major mode occurs more often than the minor mode in Western music, it is expected. Correctly predicting what will happen next in a musical piece is naturally rewarding and leads to a biologically based “prediction effect,” a positive feeling that listeners may experience as happiness (Huron, 2006, pp. 131–141). This account is illustrative and, as far as I know, has yet to be tested. The crucial point is that one can explain simultaneous happiness and sadness in terms of the simultaneous operation of distinct mechanisms.

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   667 Another example of mixed response is the curious but familiar fact that we often enjoy listening to sad music. Juslin (2013,  2016) proposes that “pleasurable sadness” stems from the interaction of two mechanisms, emotional contagion and aesthetic judgment. In this instance, a song’s expressive, voice-like cues for sadness can trigger the contagion mechanism, resulting in felt sadness. The listener may also experience the song as beautiful through activation of the aesthetic judgment mechanism (for an alternative account, see Eerola, Vuoskoski, Peltola, Putkinen, & Schäfer, 2017). The opposite mixture of positivity and negativity occurs in guilty pleasures when, for instance, we experience a banal pop tune as pleasurable: “I know I shouldn’t like this . . .” (Greasley et al., 2013). In this case, positive feelings might emerge because the song contains cues for happiness (emotional contagion) despite its being evaluated as bad (aesthetic judgment). Interestingly, a song might also be enjoyed because it is bad. Such ironic enjoyment of music appears to be common (van den Tol & Giner-Sorolla, 2017). I propose that this can occur when, for instance, the aesthetic value of the song is evaluated negatively (aesthetic judgment) along with other listeners, activating mechanisms related to social identity that trigger positive responses based on shared enjoyment—ironic, shared enjoyment of the badness of the tune, that is! Another mixed emotion, the wistful affection for the past that we call nostalgia, occurs frequently in response to familiar music. Nostalgia is an interesting mixed musical response because it involves a cognitive component—autobiographical memories— in addition to a “bittersweet” mixture of positive (happiness, feelings of youthfulness) and negative (sadness, loneliness) emotions (Barrett et al.,  2010; Janata, Tomic, & Rakowski, 2007; Juslin, Harmat, & Eerola, 2014; Juslin, Barradas, & Eerola, 2015; Zentner et al., 2008). The episodic memory mechanism itself can elicit both happy and sad memories, showing that a single mechanism can generate simultaneous mixed emotions. In addition, an even more complex response can occur if the nostalgia-inducing music elicits other cognitive and affective responses via other mechanisms on the list. Ambivalence, pleasurable sadness, guilty pleasures, ironic enjoyment, and nostalgia are all familiar examples of complex, mixed musical responses. I suggest that they may be the tip of the iceberg with respect to the range of possible complex musical responses and the combinations of mechanisms that give rise to them. This is particularly true if we consider cognitive responses, along with affective responses. Although this chapter has focused on affective responses, cognitive responses are probably much more common (Craton & Lantos, 2011). For instance, although we sometimes do feel emotions when we listen to music, it is more common to perceive the emotion that the music is expressing without actually experiencing the emotion ourselves (Schubert,  2013). Similarly, the evaluative conditioning mechanism sometimes triggers emotional associations to music but virtually always triggers a wide variety of (conscious or unconscious) thoughts by activating “networks of association” formed from a listener’s past experience (Schubert et al., 2014). This sort of cognitive “priming” can even influence in-store purchase decisions (North et al., 2016, pp. 795–796) and presumably affects consumers’ reactions to ads as well.

668   Craton This discussion of mixed musical responses suggests that the brief scenarios of musical responses that opened this chapter are just thumbnail sketches. Anthony’s, Maria’s, and Jacob’s responses are more like caricatures than real responses, which I suspect are often much more complex. Extremely careful and systematic description of any individual’s musical response (e.g., Heavey et al., 2017) would arguably reveal a rich phenomenology combining many cognitive and some affective elements. Specifying the mechanisms that cause these complex responses is a central goal of the utilitarian theory outlined in the next section.

Summary and Prospects: A Utilitarian Theory The primary goal of this chapter was to clear the way for an extension of our model of consumer response to advertising music (Lantos & Craton, 2012). Previous sections discussed how to describe responses to ad music, particularly negative and mixed musical responses, and then explored how a multi-mechanism approach helps to explain these responses. Now at last I turn to the utilitarian theory of musical response promised in this chapter’s title, which embraces all 11 of the mechanisms listed earlier and seeks to discover more. The extended model consists of three steps, as follows. The listening situation, musical stimulus, listener characteristics, and listener’s advertising processing strategy (Step 1) interact to affect a large and diverse array of music-processing mechanisms (Step 2), which in turn generate a complex musical response, attitude toward the advertising music (Aam), which is multidimensional and potentially mixed valence at the subsidiary level, but unidimensional at the global level of consumer behavioral response (Step 3). The original model focused on the relationship between Steps 1 and 3. The extended model, which I refer to as a utilitarian theory, adds Step 2 to our original formulation. The extended model is inspired by the utilitarian theory of perception, which in turn is grounded in evolutionary biology (Ramachandran, 1990). Biologists like to note that nature is opportunistic, and that consequently the mind is more a “bag of tricks” (Ramachandran, 1990, p. 347) than an elegant information-processing machine. The observation that musical response is complex and involves many separate mechanisms, as described in this chapter, suggests that our mental capacity for perceiving music is a case in point. The utilitarian theory of consumer response to advertising music holds that “music-processing” mechanisms are actually a diverse collection of separate neural circuits that evolved for many different reasons—a bag of tricks—rather than an elegant music-processing machine. The theory is utilitarian in the sense that the mechanisms it proposes evolved to perform practical, biologically important jobs, not to process music. A glance back at the 11 mechanisms listed earlier confirms this—few (if any) of them are “for” music processing per se. Nevertheless, when presented with a musical stimulus, these 11 mechanisms “get the job done” (hence, they are “utilitarian”). The picture painted by the utilitarian theory is that ad music “invades” and exploits in­de­pend­ ent neural systems designed for tasks like auditory scene analysis, speech processing, social interaction, self/identity monitoring, and a host of other functions (for an excellent technical treatment of this idea, see Trainor, 2015).

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   669 A good theory of consumer response to advertising music should give psychologists and marketers work to do. If we consider each of the three steps listed at the beginning of this section, we can see that the proposed utilitarian theory is quite promising in this respect. There are at least four jobs that will require considerable empirical and theoretical effort. First, it will be necessary to clarify how the four broad determinants listed in Step 1 (listening situation, musical stimulus, listener characteristics, and listener’s advertising processing strategy) interact to trigger different combinations of mechanisms in Step 2. Second, the set of mechanisms in Step 2 is probably large and diverse, and so we ought to try to discover new mechanisms. I believe that each of the 11 mechanisms listed earlier (in the “Whence Complexity? Explaining Musical Response” section) has a role to play, but they are just a start. This means that we will need to abandon notions of theoretical parsimony and adopt a more-is-better approach. If music processing utilizes a mental “bag of tricks,” then our theory grows stronger every time we add a new trick to the list. (The theory is thus utilitarian in a second, whimsically Millsian sense: by welcoming every researcher’s favorite mechanism, it promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of researchers!) Third, we need to continue studying the operation of all of the mechanisms listed earlier and begin to study how different combinations of mechanisms yield different complex musical responses (Step 2 → Step 3). As we have argued at length elsewhere, unpacking the possibilities here is crucial for understanding what causes a complex response in the individual consumer, as well as differences in response between individual consumers (Craton et al., 2017). Fourth, we must derive and test hypotheses involving Step 3, the musical response attitude toward the advertising music (Aam). As discussed earlier, a goal for future work is to draw on the evaluative space model (ESM) and other frameworks to clarify the relation between the two levels of Aam: exactly how do positive and negative evaluations at the subsidiary level jointly determine unidimensional response at the global level? Presumably, a preponderance of negative evaluations at the subsidiary level leads to negative response at the global level. Things are probably more complicated for mixed musical responses. For instance, as marketers are already aware, consumers sometimes find mixed feelings appealing (e.g., Andrade & Cohen, 2007). This suggests that musical responses at the global level may not always be a simple summation of positive and negative evaluations at the subsidiary level. The ESM and related approaches discussed in this chapter, along with emerging work in the neuroscience literature exploring how positivity and negativity are represented in the brain (Man et al., 2017), may provide guidance on this problem in the years to come.

Conclusion To the music cognition researcher, the ubiquity and relatively short duration of advertisements provide a convenient opportunity to explore listeners’ real-world musical responses. Theoretically inclined academic researchers may not care a whit about

670   Craton ­ arketers’ bottom lines, but it is certainly fascinating to investigate and better underm stand how ad music affects listeners. Professionals in the advertising industry, in turn, may not feel compelled to grapple with the nuances of theoretical models, but perhaps the expanded model presented in this chapter will help guide them in the evaluation, selection, and implementation of ad music. Consider once again the four brief scenarios that opened this chapter. The first three scenarios featuring Anthony, Maria, and Jacob illustrate a range of listening contexts and a spectrum of possible musical responses from positive to mixed to negative, respectively. The fourth scenario then poses the central question of the chapter: Nina is watching a TV show with her spouse and there is a commercial break. What will happen next? We know that the ensuing ads are likely to include music. Will there come a day when we can fully describe, accurately predict, and completely explain Nina’s response to this music? Such a day may be a long time coming, but our model of consumer response to advertising music offers a way forward (Lantos & Craton, 2012). To describe Nina’s musical response, it proposes the Aam construct as a way of capturing both her overall global response and the many thoughts and feelings that contribute to it. It proposes that her response might well be negative or a complex mixture of positivity and negativity, and the present chapter has reviewed some recent empirical support for this. Looking ahead, the chapter has also suggested how one might develop an instrument to measure Nina’s Aam and how theoretical developments such as the evaluative space model may help to clarify how multiple independent evaluations at the subsidiary level jointly make up her global response. To predict Nina’s response, the original Lantos and Craton model provides a checklist of features within four causal variables: the listening situation, the musical stimulus, listener characteristics, and the listener’s advertising processing strategy. To explain Nina’s response, however, it is necessary to show why those causal variables have the effect they do. The utilitarian theory introduced in this chapter accomplishes this by specifying the independent psychological processes that contribute to Nina’s musical response. It thus extends our original model by adding a large and diverse array of mechanisms that mediate between the four determinants and Aam. In doing so, the utilitarian theory of consumer response to advertising music aims to reveal the sources of Nina’s complex musical response and may ultimately help marketers avoid negative and unfavorable mixed responses to ad music.

Recommended Readings Craton, L. G., Lantos, G. P., & Leventhal, R. (2017). Results may vary: Overcoming variability in consumer response to advertising music. Psychology and Marketing, 34(1), 19–39. Juslin, P. N., & Västfjäll, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 559–621. Lantos, G., & Craton, L.  G. (2012). A model of consumer response to advertising music. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 29(1), 22–42. Trainor, L. J. (2015). The origins of music in auditory scene analysis and the roles of evolution and culture in musical creation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 370(1664), 1–14.

Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   671

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Utilitarian Theory of Consumer Response to Advertising Music   673 Kupfer, P. (2017). Classical music in television commercials: A social-psychological perspective. Music and the Moving Image, 10(1), 23–53. Ladinig, O., & Schellenberg, E. G. (2012). Liking unfamiliar music: Effects of felt emotion and individual differences. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(2), 146. Lantos, G., & Craton, L.  G. (2012). A model of consumer response to advertising music. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 29(1), 22–42. Larsen, J. T. (2017). Introduction to the special section on mixed emotions. Emotion Review, 9(2), 97–98. Larsen, J. T., & Stastny, B. J. (2011). It’s a bittersweet symphony: Simultaneously mixed emotional responses to music with conflicting cues. Emotion, 11(6), 1469. Man, V., Nohlen, H., Melo, H., & Cunningham, W. (2017). Hierarchical brain systems support multiple representations of valence and mixed affect. Emotion Review, 9(2), 124–132. Mehrabian, A., & Russell, J. A. (1974). An approach to environmental psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Moors, A. (2009). Theories of emotion causation: A review. Cognition and Emotion, 23(4), 625–662. North, A.  C., Hargreaves, D.  J., & Krause, A.  E. (2016). Music and consumer behavior. In S. Hallam, I. Cross, & M. Thaut (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of music psychology (2nd ed., pp. 789–801). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Ramachandran, V. S. (1990). Interactions between motion, depth, color and form: The utilitarian theory of perception. In C. Blakemore (Ed.), Vision: Coding and efficiency (pp. 346–360). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Rentfrow, P. J. (2012). The role of music in everyday life: Current directions in the social psychology of music. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(5), 402–416. Rentfrow, P. J., Goldberg, L. R., Stillwell, D. J., Kosinski, M., Gosling, S. D., & Levitin, D. J. (2012). The song remains the same: A replication and extension of the MUSIC model. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 30(2), 161–185. Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The do re mi’s of everyday life: The structure and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1236–1256. Scherer, K. R. (2004). Which emotions can be induced by music? What are the underlying mechanisms? And how can we measure them? Journal of New Music Research, 33(3), 239–251. Schubert, E. (2013). Emotion felt by the listener and expressed by the music: Literature review and theoretical perspectives. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 1–18. Schubert, E., Hargreaves, D. J., & North, A. C. (2014). A dynamically minimalist cognitive explanation of musical preference: Is familiarity everything? Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 38. Shuman, V., Sander, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2013). Levels of valence. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. Trainor, L. J. (2015). The origins of music in auditory scene analysis and the roles of evolution and culture in musical creation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 370(1664), 1–14. van den Tol, A. J. M., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2017). Listening to ironically-enjoyed music: A selfregulatory perspective. Psychology of Music, 45(3), 321–337. Williams, P., & Aaker, J.  L. (2002). Can mixed emotions peacefully coexist? Journal of Consumer Research, 28(4), 636–649. Zentner, M., Grandjean, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2008). Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement. Emotion, 8(4), 494–521.

chapter 33

Hea r i ng, R em em ber i ng, a n d Br a n di ng Setting Strategic Directions for Sonic Branding Research Vijaykumar Krishnan and James J. Kellaris

Marketers have long recognized the potential for harnessing the power of sound in the service of branding, yet the central role of auditory logos has only recently received serious attention in the empirical literature (Krishnan, Kellaris, & Aurand,  2012). Additionally, consumers are becoming more exposed due to the ubiquitous presence of digital devices in their lives. These gadgets have multiplied consumers’ access to auditory interfaces. In the book Sonic Branding, Jackson (2003) refers to auditory interfaces as “sonic touch points.” Radio, TV, cell phone, music played during telephone hold, and customer interactions in an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system are but a few examples of the 14 touch points identified by Jackson. This access has powered the 10-fold growth in the music industry from $4 billion in 1970 to $43 billion in 2006 (Krasilovsky et al., 2007). In 2006, Americans spent over 20 hours per week listening to the radio, downloaded over 50 million ringtones, and spent about $12 million on iPods (Krasilovsky et al., 2007). Sonic touch points are important for branding, because whereas an audience can close their eyes or turn their head away from a visual stimulus, they cannot shut their ears. Auditory attention is largely involuntary (Eyenck, 1982). Moreover, although visual processing tends to dominate (Colavita, 1974), sound can shape perception of visual information (Boltz, 2001, 2004; Tan, Cohen, Lipscomb, & Kendall, 2013). Despite the undeniable centrality of sonic branding, there is a paucity of research devoted to systematic research on the topic. We attribute this, in part, to a lack of explication (e.g., a widely agreed-upon definition of sonic branding), which will be our first

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   675 step. As a consequence of this paucity of research, the practice of sonic branding is precariously dependent upon the intuition of musicians who design, and managers who select, the sounds used in audio branding. Although the identity of brands is often expressed both visually and sonically, branding research has almost exclusively focused on the visual domain. For example, studies on preattention (Krugman, 1965), unconscious processing of information that is not the focus of percipients’ attention (Janiszewski, 1988), salience effects on judgment of bright versus drab stimuli (Fiske & Taylor, 1991), and camera angles and salience effects (Meyers-Levy & Peracchio, 1992) have all required respondents to see pictures or read messages rather than listen to music or hear messages. There is a need to redress this neglect of sonic branding stimuli. However, without the benefit of concise operational definitions and concept explication, academic research on sonic branding cannot progress meaningfully. Additionally, a conceptual framework is needed to describe the theoretic interrelationships among sonic branding stimulus design characteristics, process, and response outcomes such as brand recognition or brand personality. This chapter outlines such a conceptual framework to facilitate empirical research on sonic branding, beginning with a comprehensive definition.

Defining Sonic Branding According to Jackson’s (2003) account, the term marque sonique (sonic brand) was first used in France in the mid-1980s. Introduced by Jean Pierre Baçelon, the term was subsequently introduced into the English language by Jean Pierre and Diarmid Moncrieff, who crystallized the expression into the phrase “sonic branding”. Jackson (2003) describes sonic branding as “the creation of brand expressions in sound and the con­sist­ ent, strategic use of these properties across touch points” (p. 9). To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest published definition. This definition comprises two facets—creation of “brand expression” and consistent deployment of that “expression.” The focus on consistent application is congruent with principles of integrated marketing communication (Stahl,  1964). However, what is “brand expression”? Is it a designed configuration of features (i.e., design characteristics) making up the branding stimulus? Alternatively, is it the perceiver’s holistic evaluative judgments of the stimulus? According to Reber, Schwarz, and Winkielman (2004), aesthetic judgments such as beauty are anchored by processing fluency, emergent at the interaction between properties residing in the stimulus and the beholder’s cognitive and affective processes. Therefore, “brand expression” could reside in the brand stimulus or in the cognitive processes of the perceiver, or emerge as an interaction. Insofar as the brand expression leads to an auditory identity for the brand, several questions regarding interrelations among the design characteristics, processing fluency, and response outcomes of the sonic branding emerge. What is auditory identity? What are the constituent c­ omponents

676   Krishnan and Kellaris making up the auditory identity? On what design factors do these components depend? This deconstruction is required to understand the underlying psychological mechanisms by which sonic branding operates. Without insights revealed by such deconstruction, the practice of sonic branding will continue to rely primarily on the intuition of musicians and managers. Further, such auditory identity should not only be unique but also congruent to the product category and interpretable with some degree of consensus across cultures. Thus, we propose (and subsequently elaborate) the following definition for sonic branding: Sonic branding is the creation and perpetuation of a consistent, distinctive, universal, and appropriate nonverbal aural identity for a brand as a unique configuration of evaluative judgments of familiarity, liking, recognition, and personality, through the considered arrangement of design characteristics using natural or synthesized sounds. Design characteristics refer to the properties inherent in the stimulus. Symmetry, clarity, goodness of form, proportion, balance, and harmony (Henderson & Cote,  1998; Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004) are examples of design characteristics in a visual stimulus. Number of tones, melodic contour, range, and repetition of musical patterns are examples of auditory design characteristics. Processing fluency refers to the phenomenological experience of ease in detecting and identifying an incoming stimulus (Reber, Wurtz, & Zimmermann,  2004; Lee & Labroo, 2004). It is typically experienced as a direct consequence of prior exposure to the stimulus (Bornstein & D’Agostino, 1992). However, this phenomenological experience may alternatively reside in present circumstances such as stimulus clarity, size, regularity, goodness of form, or symmetry (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998). It may stem from processing facilitation through priming (i.e., being exposed to something that makes it easier to think about a different but related idea) or duration of current exposure (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998). It may reside in greater semantic connectivity (i.e., conceptual similarity) of the stimulus (Whittlesea, 1993) in its associative mental representation, such as bread and butter (versus bread and helicopter). Exposure to a stimulus typically results in two kinds of processing fluency: perceptual fluency and conceptual fluency (Janiszewski & Meyvis, 2001). Perceptual fluency may be defined as the subjective ease of processing perceptual features of a stimulus, and conceptual fluency as the subjective ease of processing the semantic meaning of a stimulus. Whereas a feature-based memory representation of the stimulus (wherein one imagines attributes of the stimulus) leads to perceptual fluency, a meaning-based memory representation (wherein one recognizes the semantic meaning of the stimulus) leads to conceptual fluency. It is conceivable that a given sonic stimulus leads to processing fluency that is a unique combination of both perceptual and conceptual fluency. Thus, design characteristics interact with the perceiver’s cognitive and affective systems resulting in processing experiences. These phenomenological experiences are misattributed, depending on context (Janiszewski & Meyvis, 2001), influencing evaluative judgments such as familiarity (Whittlesea,  1993), likeability (Reber et al.,  1998), truth effects (Reber & Schwarz, 1999), or likeability for a brand (Lee & Labroo, 2004). In other words, in predicting evaluative judgments on a brand, it is the emergent ­processing

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   677 fluency rather than the design characteristic per se that determines the “brand expression.” Response dimensions collectively refer to the typical evaluative judgments resulting from exposure to a branding device. Response dimensions include a respondent’s evaluative judgments on the extent to which a branding device is recognizable, generates consensus interpretation in meaning or personality, evokes positive affect, and appears familiar (Henderson & Cote, 1998). Sonic branding should be designed to meet specific branding outcomes such as distinctiveness or elicitation of a targeted personality. We use the term distinctiveness here to mean avoidance of a false feeling of recollection of the brand upon initial exposure to the sonic stimulus, which would be problematic in that false recognition undermines distinctiveness—an idea to which we will return in a moment. Some stimuli are easier to perceive, encode, and retrieve than others in that they are inherently symmetric or otherwise possess goodness of form (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004), and are thereby processed more fluently. Processing fluency can also derive from prior exposure (Bornstein & D’Agostino,  1992). Because a fluent stimulus processing experience is conveniently attributed to prior exposure as a practical heuristic, it can lead to “illusions of familiarity” (Whittlesea, 1993). At the same time, a higher processing fluency engenders inclusion of the brand among those people consider for eventual purchase (Shapiro, 1999). Thus, one of the desired outcomes for sonic branding is right sizing of processing fluency from a distinctive identity versus false familiarity perspective. What factors or design characteristics locate a sonic branding device along the processing fluency continuum? How may we distill these factors? Answers to these questions will help in right-sizing processing fluency, in turn meeting desired branding goals. The level of processing fluency of a stimulus may be designed to meet the role that sonic branding is expected to play—namely, defining its objective in terms of brand recognition, brand recall, or brand identity. Different answers will lead to different actions. For instance, brand recognition function may encourage a low-resistance path via piggybacking on a Top 40 hit song—a quick-fix way to increase processing fluency. However, such licensed songs come with identities of their own, the meaning of which can change over time. Contrast this with Borden’s sonic branding device—Elsie the mooing cow—eliciting invariant meanings relating to the dairy product category. Thus, a sonic branding design targeting brand recognition could undermine another key function: perpetuation of aural identity. In contrast, sonic stimuli designed to enhance distinctiveness will be unique, such that it will require multiple repetitions to attain similar levels of processing fluency. An increase in the frequency of stimulus exposure requires additional marketing investment. Specifically, the design characteristics should be such that they maximize potential for ready and distinctive recall in the largest market segment of interest for a given level of repetition frequency. Thus, sonic branding depends on the considered arrangement of the design characteristics and consequent processing fluency leading to the intended outcomes of recognizability, familiarity, meaning, and affect for the associated brand.

678   Krishnan and Kellaris Finally, sonic stimuli should work independently of confounding artifacts such as lyrics in vocal music. Indeed, many effects attributed to “music” may actually stem from the verbal content of lyrics (Kellaris & Kent,  1993). Hence, we propose exclusion of human voice as an element of sonic branding when it is used to convey verbal messages. However, nonverbal use of the human voice, such as in yodeling, humming, whistling, and beat box, is included in sonic branding. Finally, sonic branding should strive to use universally familiar sounds that elicit consensus in the meanings they convey.

Sonic Logo—Sogo Perhaps the most basic form of sonic branding is the sonic logo, or “sogo.” A sogo is a unifying, focal sonic branding device. Whereas brand knowledge has been conceptualized as an associative memory network involving brand recognition and brand image (Keller, 1993), a logo may be thought of as a compact “zip file” of this brand knowledge network. The research literature on corporate identity views a logo as an entity’s signature on its materials (Snyder, 1993). Just as a logo serves as a quick visual identifier that lights up the brand nodes in memory, a sogo is a swift auditory identifier. Analogously, we define a sogo to be a sonic branding device that plays the role of a short distinctive auditory signature, typically not lasting more than six seconds. A sogo is the “auditory analog of a visual logo” (Krishnan et al., 2012) that works as an auditory zip file. Familiar examples include Intel’s and Nokia’s sogos, each of which is based on a distinctive fivetone sequence. Such sogos “activate” the entire brand knowledge that includes brand attributes, brand benefits, and brand attitudes. It may also make accessible the brand’s jingle, if any, and other communication attributes that already exist for the brand. Thus, the sogo is not the message. Rather, it is a short (three- to six-second) potent cue that activates and renders the entire brand message accessible. In sum, whereas sonic branding is the whole, a sogo is the core part. The Chiquita jingle is not a sogo, although it is sonic branding. An appropriate sonic subset carved off from that jingle (i.e., a musical phrase, such as the cadence) not lasting more than six seconds may be a retrospective manifestation of a sogo. In fact, for mature brands with pre-existing popular jingles, this may be a good way to retrofit a sogo. A multiproduct company may have different jingles for each product, tied together by the corporate sogo. For instance, an adaptation of the Chiquita jingle wrapped around the same sogo may convey a different meaning for a new brand extension, while retaining the overarching sonic identity. Thus, a brand extension of a smooth, thick, bananaflavored Chiquita yogurt may have a jingle that is congruently slow paced but wrapped around the same sogo. As another example, sonic branding for different models of the Nokia phones would be different but related musically as a family, signed off by the same sogo. Finally, while acknowledging that nonmusical sounds like Elsie’s moo or the MGM lion roar may be effective sogos, given their greater prevalence and versatility, we limit our detailed discussion in this chapter to musically based sogos.

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   679

The Multiple Roles of Sonic Branding Having defined sonic branding, next we examine its potential multiple roles vis-à-vis an overall branding strategy. A brand is an associative knowledge network of ideas and concepts (Keller, 1993). Branding is the creation and nurturance of this network, beginning with sensorial stimuli—of which sound is a powerful example. Sonic branding, we argue, plays a pivotal role in influencing brand awareness, brand recognition, brand personality, brand image, and brand attitude. The memorability of the Intel and Nokia sogos and the instant recall that the Chiquita jingle evokes are self-evident examples. Furthermore, music is a nonverbal language that can convey abstract and concrete meanings (Zhu & Meyers-Levy,  2005) and cue memory (Stewart, Farmer, & Stannard, 1990). As such, it may be particularly useful in cross-cultural communications when verbal languages impose a need for translation. Clearly, sonic branding influences brand recall and brand recognition, independent of verbal or visual cues. We call this aspect of sonic branding sonic awareness, which is the capacity of the sonic stimulus to engender easy recognition. Cattell and Saunders (1954) developed the idea that musical preferences can also reveal insights into personality. Rentfrow and Gosling (2003, 2006) suggest the in­tri­ guing possibility of using music to convey brand personalities and to appeal to the idealized self of prospective consumers. These studies demonstrate linkages between four identified types of music preferences and the “big five” personality types: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience (see Goldberg, 1990, for a review on big five personality dimensions). Aaker (1997) identifies an analogous “big five” for brand personality: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. These converging research streams from music psychology and branding indicate a role for sonic branding in shaping and conveying brand personality. We propose the term sonic personality to represent this “voice” of the brand. That is, sonic personality represents the distinctiveness component of the sonic stimulus and will be further discussed in the next section.

Sonic Branding: A Conceptual Framework As noted earlier, the core of sonic branding is the sogo. In the sogo is embedded the DNA for the sonic branding, coded with a unique combination of sonic awareness and sonic personality. Our conceptual framework puts a microscope on this sonic code. What is a good sogo? We assert that the answer lies in uncovering the processes leading up to sonic awareness and sonic personality.

680   Krishnan and Kellaris

Sonic Awareness and Processing Fluency: What Is a Good Sogo? A good sogo delivers unique auditory identity for the brand. Henderson and Cote (1998) delineate four defining characteristics for a logo: the extent to which it is recognizable, evokes positive affect, generates consensus interpretation in meaning, and obtains subjective familiarity. Our discussion parallels these recommendations in the auditory context. Uniqueness of auditory identity results from a combination of coordinates along these response dimensions. We assert that it is possible to create unique configurations of these dependent variables by varying the design characteristics of the sogo. True recognition and false recognition. Concerning visual logos, Henderson and Cote (1998) observe that recognition occurs at two levels: (1) recognition, which is memory for a past encounter at the next encounter, and (2) recall, which is association of the logo with the brand. Further, recognition may be either an acknowledgment of a true past encounter (i.e., true recognition) or illusory, based on feelings of subjective familiarity even when there was no past exposure (i.e., false recognition). Analogously, consider an experiment wherein respondents are asked to identify either a novel or a previously heard sogo. True recognition occurs when people correctly recognize a previously heard sogo. Conversely, false recognition occurs when a new sogo is misconstrued as having been previously heard. An implication is that whereas both true recognition and false recognition may increase sonic awareness, the latter would also detract from distinctiveness. For example, a simple three-tone sogo like the NBC chime, G3-E4-C4, is highly memorable and yet can easily be confused with the Airbus preannouncement chime, C4-G4-E4. Conversely, a different but perceptually as fluent three-tone sogo C4-E4-G4 might sound familiar and therefore likely be misconstrued as having been encountered before. Therefore, design characteristics of the stimulus may determine sonic awareness. More recently, the SCAPE, or Selective Construction and Preservation of Experiences framework for memory (Kronlund, Whittlesea, & Yoon 2008) suggests that recognition is a simple determination about whether a currently encountered event was encountered in the past, rather than an explicit retrieval of the content of that event. According to SCAPE (Kronlund et al., 2008), this heuristic conclusion occurs by a constructive process in the present comprising two facets: (1) a production of psychological events in interaction with the situation and stimulus and (2) an evaluation of this production inducing the phenomenological experience concerning the efficiency of this production. Therefore, recognition memory may be construed as a heuristic inference based on the subjective ease of processing. Previous studies converge with this idea. For instance, Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989) demonstrate that perceptual fluency increases not only overall recognition but also proportion of false recognition by inducing “illusions of memory.” Similarly, as Experiment 2 (Whittlesea, 1993) shows, increasing conceptual fluency reduces overall recognition but increases the proportion of true recognition. This pattern of results shows that different combinations of perceptual and conceptual

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   681 fluency as defined earlier emanating from stimulus characteristics may in turn influence true versus false recognition. Affective outcomes. It is well established that music can affect moods (Bruner,  1990; Juslin & Sloboda, 2011). Further, emotion seems to be the broadest, most basic outcome engendered by music (Meyer, 1956), requiring the least musical competence for detection. Design characteristics of the stimulus may lead to affective outcomes by influencing processing fluency. In particular, the influence of perceptual fluency of the stimulus on the affective judgment is well researched. Reber, Winkielman, and Schwarz (1998) show that perceptual fluency may occur in the visual domain through means other than mere exposure, such as by presenting a subliminal suggestion, by increasing the background contrast surrounding a stimulus, or by increasing the duration of exposure. Across such manipulations, Reber and colleagues found that affective judgment is con­ sist­ently positive (i.e., favorable) rather than neutral, regardless of the focus of the question. In the study by Reber et al. (1998), participants were asked to rate either the prettiness or the ugliness of a stimulus (i.e., the focus was varied). Perceptual fluency increased the prettiness scores and reduced the ugliness scores, suggesting that it always led to positive affective judgment. Sogos may vary in their perceptual fluency too, depending on their design features. For instance, sogos with fewer (vs. many) notes, monotonic (i.e., linear upward/downward vs. zigzag) melodic contours, repeating (vs. nonrepeating) patterns, and more (vs. less) consonant intervals may be perceptually more (vs. less) fluent, leading to positive affective judgment. Perceptually fluent sonic stimuli would be easier to hum, whistle, or play in the head, just as perceptually fluent visual stimuli such as the National Geographic rectangle are easier to visualize or draw. Thus, perceptual fluency depends on stimulus features. In contrast, conceptual fluency is based on meanings conveyed by stimuli. Hevner (1935) demonstrated that even those with no musical training characterized music pitched in minor keys as unhappy. Perhaps respondents effortlessly attribute affective meanings to musical modality (minor/major)—a design characteristic of the stimulus. That is, modality increases the conceptual fluency of the sonic stimulus by readily evoking associated meanings in memory. Conceptual fluency has been studied in the context of memory accessibility of brands and their consequent influence on a brand’s inclusion in consideration sets and choices (e.g., Nedungadi,  1990). Recent research (Lee & Labroo, 2004) shows that although conceptual fluency increases processing fluency, the affective outcome may be either positively or negatively influenced by the valence of the conceptual fluency. In other words, if exposure to a target (e.g., hair dryer) is preceded by exposure to a conceptually related item (e.g., shampoo) that is negative in some sense (e.g., lice-killing shampoo), processing of target (hair dryer) information will be easier, but affective evaluations less positive. Thus, stated generally, design characteristics influence perceptual and conceptual fluency, leading to affective outcomes. Consensual meanings. Music may evoke consensual meaning, provided that music can perform a representational function. The foregoing discussion showed that musical modality (e.g., major and minor keys) might express different affective meanings

682   Krishnan and Kellaris (Hevner, 1935). Does music perform a representational function or is it only an expressive device? Young (1999) argues that tonal and rhythmic changes across time are a key feature of music, and thus music is a suitable device to represent motion. Adjectival descriptions of motion such as rising, falling, surging, soaring, skipping, hopping, and pausing (Young, 1999) often lead to evaluations of contexts; therefore, it is possible that music evokes these meanings. Further, certain movements are associated with specific affective states; for instance, whereas lightly skipping might be associated with being carefree, deliberate movements suggest melancholy (Young, 1999). Thus, a question of interest is not whether a meaning can be evoked at all, but rather, can consensus meaning be evoked for a sogo? Clearly, a sogo invoking widely differing meanings is not relevant as a branding device. Henderson and Cote (1998) define “codability” to be the extent to which such consensual meaning is evoked by a logo. Analogously, we argue that sogos too may be categorized as less or more codable. Higher codability is a desirable property in a sogo. Higher codability “indicates” unique meaning (Janiszewski & Meyvis, 2001)—that is, listeners readily access associated meanings. Codability is therefore an operationalization of the conceptual fluency. Subjective familiarity. Within a culture or a subculture, some stimuli may readily evoke a consensually held meaning (Henderson & Cote, 1998). For instance, in most Western cultures, a sogo that tracks through C4-B3-A3-G3 (“Joy to the world . . .”) or G3-G3-F3E3-E3-D3-C3 (“Away in a manger . . .”), especially as organ music, may invoke imagery of a church service at Christmastime and thus seem familiar. Because familiarity leads to liking (Zajonc, 1968), subjective familiarity may be a desirable goal. However, notice that subjective familiarity may also lead to false recognition—an undesirable goal. Thus, increasing familiarity may be desirable up to a point, insomuch as it promotes liking but prevents false recognition, after which it detracts from distinctiveness. As noted earlier, processing fluency, specifically perceptual fluency, leads to illusions of subjective familiarity (Whittlesea, 1993). Thus, sonic awareness of a sogo captured by recognition, affect, and familiarity dimensions encompasses part of the sonic branding code. The complementary part of the sonic code—sonic personality—identifies the personality.

Sonic Personality and Processing Fluency: What Is a Good Sogo? Interaction effects among design characteristics of music could evoke different personality dimensions for brands represented by sogos. For example, music pitched in a major key at a fast, medium, or slow tempo may indicate respectively the exciting, majestic, or serene character of a brand (Bruner, 1990). The Short Scale of Musical Preferences, or STOMP (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003), is a 14-item scale that identifies personality correlates of listeners on the basis of their music listening preferences. For instance, listeners preferring dance/electronica, rap/hip-hop, and soul/funk are often

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   683 found to have an energetic personality. This study thus implies that the music of a particular genre could perhaps express a correlated personality. Two challenges arise in deploying the musical genre taxonomy to derive a personality type. First, the musical genres are ill defined (Aucouturier & Pachet, 2008 see also Oakes & Abolhasani on genre congruity, in this volume). Second, a short musical clip that lasts no more than six seconds may not fully convey the expressive power of a musical genre. Yet, even a short clip reveals many things—the instrumentation, mode, range, direction of the musical contour, etc., that may conceivably suggest the character (“brand personality”) of the brand represented by the clip. For instance, whereas drums and trombone have been found to connote masculinity, violin and flute have been associated with femininity (Abeles & Porter,  1978), and brass instruments tend to express majesty (Bruner, 1990). In addition to the pitch-related design characteristics previously identified, instrumentation (and the resulting blend of timbres) can determine the personality of a sogo. For example, the baby care products from Johnson & Johnson are positioned on the mildness, tenderness platform appropriate for the delicate treatment of a baby (the shampoo cleans gently; it is the no-tears shampoo). This sonic personality can perhaps be brought alive with a sogo that has just three distinct and delicate tones pitched in an upper octave, played on a delicate-sounding instrument, such as a bamboo flute. In contrast, the Ivory shampoo that “cleans and conditions gently” (with a baseline—not fancy just fabulous) is gentle, rich, and flowing, but not baby soft. A few legato bows on the violin around the middle C could bring alive this mellifluous personality, steering away from delicate tenderness yet retaining the gentleness component. The sogo for a freshness shampoo may convey energy with bounding leaps, comprising three tones covering a wide range of pitches, and played on a keyboard. Thus, a sonic personality may vary based on pitch, timing, and instrumentation. However, there is a need to convert these speculations along a formal (sonic) personality scale. To this end, Aaker’s brand scale (1997) merits discussion. According to Aaker (1997), consumers impute human personality traits or “animism” to brands and thus have a symbolic relationship with the brands. Essentially, animism seeks responses to questions such as “If this brand was a human being, will he/she be ________?” For instance, brands may be perceived as down-to-earth, daring, intelligent, feminine, and so on. Based on exploratory or confirmatory factorial reductions, Aaker’s (1997) 42-item Brand Personality Scale (BPS) with five dimensions and 15 facets has been found to be reliable, valid, and generalizable (Sweeney & Brandon, 2006). It is interesting to note that several items in the BPS readily lend themselves to adjectival descriptions for auditory stimuli. For example, it is conceivable that a sogo may be described as outdoorsy, sophisticated, exciting, or sincere, paralleling dimensions and facets of the brand personality scale (Aaker, 1997). We believe that animism is equally applicable to music as it is to a brand. It is equally feasible to ask the question “If this sogo were a human being, would he/she be ________?” Given the related paradigm (i.e., measuring personality in a branding context), we propose a personality classification for sogos based on Aaker’s (1997) BPS.

684   Krishnan and Kellaris On the other hand, arguments may be raised against using the BPS to glean sonic personality. Indeed, even the adequacy of the traits included in the BPS has been questioned. For example, Sweeney and Brandon (2006) contest that brands positioned along negative traits (such as arrogant, cocky, or controlling) may appeal to certain subcultures, but Aaker’s scale includes only positively valanced items. However, the essence of the lexical approach is that representative items capture the underlying factors and a complete enumeration is both impossible and unnecessary, given the factor analytic approach. Also, this scale is built upon lexically based five-factor personality models that have a long tradition (see Goldberg, 1990, for a review) and wide acceptance in the personality literature. In addition, the overarching principle in scale development is that new scales should be developed only if every possibility of using existing validated scales is exhausted (Bruner, 2003; Churchill, 1979). Aaker’s (1997) scale is a relevant and viable possibility with strong measurement properties (see Sweeney & Brandon, 2006).

Design Characteristics Sound can be characterized in terms of sonic properties, such as frequency and amplitude (which we perceive as pitch and loudness, respectively). Musical sound can be characterized by its three structural components of pitch, time, and texture (Bruner, 1990). The pitch component refers to variabilities ensuing from the nature and arrangement of tones in a sequence. Figure 33.1 (parts A through F) shows six different ways pitch can characterize a sogo. Just as a short brand name is easier to recall, a sogo constructed of fewer tones should be more recallable. Further, the number of tones in the sogo can perform specific mnemonic functions. It can cue the brand name by mirroring the number of letters (e.g., J-E-L-L-O; N-O-K-I-A). It may parallel the number of syllables in the brand name such as in the Kit Kat chocolate commercial “Give me a break . . . break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar” where the last three tones, C3-C3-C3, parallel the syllables Kit’Kat’bar. Ideally, it may do both (N-B-C). A sogo should have at least three tones to gain any distinctiveness, but may have a maximum1 of 12 tones, for it is intended to be a short, distinctive audio signature, not an expansive musical composition. Secondly, sudden stops in a sogo are attention grabbing and serve as excellent recognition cues. The brief stop after the second L in the J-E-L-L—O is an example (Figure 33.1B). A third way pitch characterizes a sogo is by the repetition of tonal patterns. Repetition creates a musical emphasis and may lead to higher memorability and identity for the sogo; that is, repetition strives to make a musical point (Figure 33.1C). It can take different forms; for instance, a phrase can repeat an octave apart or on a different instrument.

1  A comfortably pleasant tempo is about a tone a second (quarter note or crotchet M.M= 240), while four tones a second would be fast (quarter note or crotchet M.M = 240), or a maximum of 12 tones in three seconds.

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   685

Figure 33.1  Examples of pitch-related independent variables for a sogo.

A fourth variation is the direction or melodic contour of the sogo. A rising pitch (Figure 33.1D) connotes increasing emotional intensity, and music in higher pitches is considered happier (Bruner, 1990). For instance, a sequence of notes can be ascending gently tone to tone (J-E-L-L-O), descending (Windows XP startup chime), or zigzagging (Intel sogo).

686   Krishnan and Kellaris A fifth variation is the sogo range. We define a sogo to have wide (or narrow) range when the chromatic interval2 between the highest and lowest tone exceeds (or not) twice the number of tones in a sogo. Sogos “leaping” from a tone to a much higher tone (Figure 33.1E) skipping several intervals in the chromatic scale would be characterized as having a wide range. As an aside, this hypothetical sogo for Folger’s coffee (Fol-gers-in-your-cup, G4-A4E5-D5-C5) illustrates retrospective sogo creation from an extant popular jingle (“The best part of waking up is Folger’s in your cup.”). Sogos with a wide range would be more difficult to perceive (i.e., obtain a lower perceptual fluency). The Windows Vista startup chime that traverses a whole octave in just four tones is another example of a sogo with a wide range. Some design characteristics evoke meaningful interpretations (i.e., possess higher conceptual fluency). Musical tonality has been extensively studied (e.g., Meyers, 1956; Hevner, 1935, 1936; Kellaris & Kent, 1993); music in minor (Figure 33.1F) keys is often perceived as less happy and more pensive (Hevner, 1935), while a sequence of descending tones seems serene (Bruner, 1990). Again, going back to the hypothetical sogo for Folger’s coffee (Fol-gers-in-your-cup, G4-A4-E5-D5-C5), the leap from A4 to E5 conveys leaping to a higher state of wakefulness. Time, stated simply, refers to the speed (tempo) of the music heard. It also refers to particular rhythms and metric structure. Much of the expressive power of music stems from its temporal attributes. However, in the context of a sogo lasting only three to six seconds, it is difficult to discern temporal attributes other than overall perception of speed. Texture refers to overall characteristics such as the volume and instrumentation. For instance, whereas woodwind instruments have been found to be perceived as mournful, brass wind instruments tend to be perceived as majestic (Bruner, 1990). Clearly, musical meanings are conveyed through the design properties of music and their joint interplay. Surprisingly, despite the potential importance of the choice of instrumentation and resulting timbres on the connotations of sogos, there is a paucity of empirical studies addressing this topic. Bruner (1990) speculates, and Kellaris and Kent (1993) confirm, that constituents of music may not only obtain main effects but also combine to produce interaction effects. For instance, perceptual fluency may decrease with the increase in number of tones only when there are no repeating elements. Similarly, perceptual fluency of a sogo may decrease with a higher range, but not when the higher range is obtained by mere repetition at a higher octave. Therefore, interaction effects among design characteristics are to be anticipated and explored.

Mediating Role of the Processing Fluency The features of a stimulus influence perceptual fluency, which in turn influences sonic awareness by increasing the bias for recognition. In contrast, conceptual fluency is based on semantic content in a stimulus. Hence, conceptual fluency would arise only 2  There are 12 semitones and 12 chromatic intervals in an octave.

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   687 when there is a semantic match on subsequent exposure. That is, whereas conceptual fluency enhances true recognition, perceptual fluency enhances recognition based on feelings of familiarity and is therefore susceptible to increasing false recognition. Henderson and Cote (1998) report an increase of 7.2% in variance explained in true recognition with the inclusion of meaning and affect factors (e.g., likability and interestingness) in the model. However, this increase was only 3.4% for false recognition and only the affect factor was significant. This pattern of results suggests a mediating role for conceptual fluency on true recognition and a similar role for perceptual fluency on false recognition. Further, Henderson and Cote (1998) report that a 21.4% variance in “familiar meaning” (a construct comprising codability and familiarity) is explained by design factors. The “familiar meaning” construct qualitatively mirrors processing fluency overall, with the “familiar” component representing perceptual fluency and the “meaning” component representing conceptual fluency. The fewer the number of tones in a sogo, the less effort involved in the auditory perception. Thus, processing fluency appears to mediate effects on recognition measures—and, by implication, on sonic awareness. As noted earlier, easy hummability is indicative of perceptual fluency. Humming requires temporary retention of the tones in the phonological store that retains memory traces of encoded stimuli for only about two seconds before decay, unless kept activated through continuous rehearsal (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Baddeley & Logie, 1992). As the number of tones in a sogo increases, the process of rehearsal must begin for the initial tones of the sogo already heard, even before all the tones have been completely presented. Thus, perceptual fluency should decrease as the number of tones increases. Similarly, a “monotonic” contour (i.e., a linearly ascending or descending contour) is more hummable and thus more fluent than a zigzagging pattern, which should decrease perceptual fluency. Further, a rising pitch connotes increasing emotional intensity, and music in higher pitches is considered happier (Bruner, 1990); that is, linear contours are more representative (a rising pitch “lifts you up”) and meaningful. Thus, monotonic (linear, or consistently ascending or descending) melodic contours should exhibit greater conceptual fluency. Sogos with a wide range are likely to have at least one tone widely separated from the other tones along the chromatic scale, again leading to decreased processing fluency. Repetition enhances fluency by breaking the sogo into “chunks” of elements. Finally, some of these effects may be countervailing. For instance, increasing the number of tones tends to decrease perceptual fluency, but only if the increase is not due to mere repetition. Similarly, if range increases by mere repetition at a different octave, it may increase rather than decrease processing fluency. Thus, several interactive effects of design characteristics on processing fluency may be expected. Because meaning and correct recognition provide the building blocks for discerning sonic personality, we propose that processing fluency of a sogo will mediate the influence of design characteristics on the sonic personality as well.

688   Krishnan and Kellaris

Main Propositions of the Conceptual Framework We assert that there is a need to jump-start research on sonic branding, particularly owing to increased consumer accessibility at auditory interfaces. Academic research on sonic branding cannot progress meaningfully without the benefit of concise operational definitions and concept explication. In summation, Figure  33.2 illustrates that sonic branding is the optimal creation and perpetuation of nonverbal aural identity. A sonic logo or a sogo is a unifying focal sonic branding device not lasting more than six ­seconds. It is the auditory signature of the brand comprising the sonic awareness and sonic ­personality. Sonic awareness captures the capacity of a sogo’s memorability and true ­recognizability. Sonic personality is sound personified: It is the “voice” of the brand. Sonic awareness and sonic personality of a sogo systematically vary with the design characteristics in the sogo. A good sogo has desirable sonic awareness and a targeted sonic personality. Processing fluency plays a key mediating role in determining sonic awareness and sonic personality. These interrelationships lead to the sonic branding conceptual model shown in Figure 33.2. We began this chapter by noting that despite the undeniable centrality of sonic branding, there is a paucity of research devoted to systematic research on the topic. Consequently, the practice of sonic branding is precariously dependent on the intuition

Design characteristics

Processing fluency

Response dimensions • Recognition • Affect • Subjective familiarity

Number of tones Contour

Linear/Zigzag

Rest

Perceptual fluency

Present/Absent

Repetition

Sogo

Present/Absent

Mode

Sonic Awareness

Sonic Personality

Major/Minor

Range

Short/Expanded

Sound Texture

Conceptual fluency

Natural/Synthetic

Personality dimensions Aaker (1997)

• Down to earth • Daring • Rugged...

Interactions

Figure 33.2  Sonic branding conceptual framework.

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   689 of musicians who design, and managers who select, the sounds used in audio branding. The conceptual development covered in this chapter points to a central construct, the processing fluency of sogos. Specific empirical insights on the influence of sogo design elements on processing fluency could lead to a more objective approach to sogo design and by implication to sonic branding. With this intent, we suggest the following five propositions as a starting point concerning the main effects of design characteristics on processing fluency: P1: The lower the number of tones in a sogo, the higher the perceptual fluency. P2: The higher the monotonicity (i.e., linearity of melodic contour) of the sogo, the higher the perceptual fluency. P3: The higher the monotonicity (or linearity) of the sogo, the higher the conceptual fluency. P4: Sogos with a low (high) range should obtain high (low) perceptual fluency. P5: Sogos with repeating (non-repeating) elements should obtain a higher (lower) perceptual fluency.

We have a general expectation that there may be other interactions among design characteristics. Therefore, we view this as a question for further research, although we suggest two interactional propositions by way of illustration: P6: Sogos with a greater number of tones will have less perceptual fluency only when there are no repeating elements. P7: Sogos characterized by a wide range will have less perceptual fluency, but not when the wider range is obtained by mere repetition at a higher octave.

The quality of processing fluency determined by the design characteristics as a combination of perceptual and conceptual fluency would influence the quality of response dimensions. Lastly, we suggest six propositions relating processing fluency to response dimensions: P8: The higher the perceptual fluency of the sogo, the higher the false recognition. P9: The higher the conceptual fluency of the sogo, the higher the true recognition. P10: The higher the perceptual fluency of the sogo, the higher the subjective familiarity. P11: The higher the conceptual fluency of the sogo, the higher the subjective familiarity.

690   Krishnan and Kellaris P12: The higher the perceptual fluency of the sogo, the more positive the affect. P13: Perceptual fluency and conceptual fluency will influence the sonic personality by influencing a sogo’s meaning and recognizability.

Taken together, this set of 13 propositions offers a conceptual framework and describes the theoretic interrelationships among design characteristics, processing fluency, sonic awareness, and sonic personality. This framework explicates the underlying psychological mechanisms by which sonic branding operates. As noted earlier, without insights revealed by such deconstruction and systematic testing, we will continue to rely mostly on the intuitions of musicians and marketers without an empirical base to serve as a guide. A working paper by Krishnan, Kellaris, and Gaffney (2018) reports initial evidence for some of these propositions. For example, one study found a significant effect of sogo complexity (number of tones) on both true recognition and false recognition, and a mediation effect of fluency on false recognition. Sogo distinctiveness was explored using hit and false alarm rates (collapsed d-primes, as described by Macmillan & Creelman, 1991). Sogo distinctiveness was found to be maximal at a moderate level of complexity. A conceptual replication found a similar pattern of results when varying the number of tones (five vs. seven) and the contour (linear vs. zigzagging) of sogos to represent complexity. Empirical findings flowing from the 13 propositions noted earlier should help us objectively identify a good sogo that efficiently addresses response goals for a sogo as a branding device—that it is recognizable, generates consensus interpretation in meaning or personality, evokes positive affect, and appears familiar. Once a good sogo is identified, consistent deployment is achieved across communication devices by harnessing and extending the sogo such that the most distinctive aspects of these variations are still recognizable as the sogo. In other words, auditory communications should be designed using the sogo as the first and most salient aspect of a jingle, television commercial, or telephone hold music relating to the brand represented by the sogo. This is in line with the recommendation for visible consistency in every communication relating to the product, the brand, and the company (Stahl, 1964). Sonic branding would follow the same tenet in the auditory domain. Figure 33.3 illustrates this outward sonic branding propagation from the core. The core consists of the sogo characterized by objective properties, resulting in a certain designed combination of sonic awareness and sonic personality. According to our framework, music characterized as high in sonic awareness should increase brand awareness. However, sonic branding should be a matter of conscious design and not merely a fortuitous consequence of juxtaposing music and the brand. A key to such a conscious design is the convergence of the intended brand personality and the sonic personality. In other words, the sogo should be designed to evoke an appropriate sonic personality as well. The outer circle indicates the deployment phase wherein the sogo is appropriately extended to other auditory communications. What is this appropriateness? For e­ xample,

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   691 • Corporate website

• Electronic brochures

• Retail website

Corporate

• IVR • Radio

ce • Cell alerts

ess aren Aw d n Bra

• TV

ic ss Son arene w A

nce ere lia i onf • C orab m me

ty nic ali So rson e P

Ch an ne l

Advertis ing

fa Cu sto m er In te r

• Telephone hold

• Cinema • Broadband

lity ona Pers d n Bra

Promotions • Brand events

• Downloadable ring tones

• Sponsored elevator chimes

Figure 33.3  Sonic branding propagation outward from the sogo.

a rich medium like television could allow elaborate embellishments on the core Nokia sogo, consisting of complete musical phrases around each of the five tones and ending with a flourish in a distinctive sign-off on the sogo. In contrast, in a sparse medium such as the Nokia website, sonic branding may simply manifest as sounding one of these tones on each click sequentially. In either case, the core auditory value is retained in its entirety. The outer dotted circles indicate future concentric possibilities, following this principle of consistent extension.

When Is Sonic Branding Appropriate? According to construal level theory (see Trope & Liberman, 2003, for a review), people create different mental representations of an object they are judging; higher level construal is more abstract, captures the core, but omits the details. Lower level construal is more concrete and specific. When the object of judgment is at a distance, spatially or temporally, abstract judgments are formed. Conversely, concrete judgments are formed when the judgment object is closer in time and space.

692   Krishnan and Kellaris Brands may also be viewed as objects of judgment that could be construed at different levels of abstraction. A brand corresponding to a consumer packaged good (sometimes called a “fast-moving consumer good”, or FMCG) can be visually inspected or touched and its quality is relatively invariant from sample to sample. Often, more information may be available from prior consumption of FMCG brands. Thus, it is easy to construe the brand promises of an FMCG brand. However, the brand promises of serv­ ice brands are more abstract given that services are intangible, inseparable from the producer, heterogeneous, and perishable (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry,  1985). Service brands promise a positive intangible experience, for instance, requiring respondents to imagine an efficient banking process or reassurance in seeking legal consultancy. Sonic branding is more relevant where an enduring identity is desired in a relatively abstract context. Corporate identity is another area where brand positioning is typically abstract. Corporate identity articulates “ethos, aims, and values” (Van Riel & Balmer, 1997). For example, organizations may prefer to be identified as innovative (“leap ahead,” Intel) or easygoing but serious (Google). Because music can evoke meaning relating to movement and in turn emotions, a sogo is more versatile than a static logo in facilitating such abstract construal. When brand extensions move a brand to newer product categories, the span of interpretation for the brand expands and becomes more abstract. In extreme cases, the brand is the corporate entity (e.g., Dell); for such brands, sonic branding is more relevant. Finally, sonic branding is relevant for ingredient branding where the ingredient brand cannot be seen but only experienced (e.g., “Intel inside,” “the Lycra stretch”). For instance, the elastic properties of “the Lycra stretch” would come alive with a glissando from C4 to G4 and back (or even to C5) on a violin. Thus, sonic branding is more appropriate for (1) corporate branding, (2) brands with a wide span of extensions, (3) services branding, and (4) ingredient branding.

Managerial Implications and Conclusions Sonic branding is a topic drawing an increasing amount of attention from marketing practitioners (as reflected in some chapters in the “Production” section of this book). As of the time of writing, a Google search on “sonic branding” yields about 300,000 results. Dozens of sonic branding websites advertise solutions that appear to be born of expert judgment rather than objective evidence. Ford Motor Company believes that consumers come to conclusions about product quality based on gadget sounds and the company endeavors to design cars taking sonic elements into consideration. For example, Taurus car doors are designed to make a “vault-like” sound (Kiley, 2007). To increase brand recognition, Lufthansa introduced an ascending four-tone corporate sonic logo that is expected to invoke the idea of “taking off ” and “well-being” (Walther, 2006).

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   693 Despite this strategic appreciation for sonic branding, dependence on the intuition of musicians continues. For instance, according to Steve Ball, musician Robert Fripp was recruited to design the four-tone Windows Vista startup sound for Microsoft and the effort took 18 months (Linn, 2006). Industry captains (notably technology and auto sectors) are incorporating sonic branding in their branding strategies. However, despite the appreciation of strategic value in sonic branding, there is still some ambivalence toward implementation due to lack of research and empirical evidence in this area. It appears that there is a general reluctance to commit investments that rely on anecdotal solutions provided by the mushrooming sonic branding industry. With this in mind, the present chapter has addressed the need to propose and outline a conceptual framework to facilitate empirical research on sonic branding, beginning with a comprehensive definition. (See also Müllenseifen’s chapter in this volume for a discussion of empirical methods used in research studies that combine academic and industry research.) In this chapter, we explicated the concept of “sonic branding,” proposed a conceptual framework, and suggested an agenda for future research in the form of testable research propositions. Whereas the topic of sonic branding is a relatively new area of empirical investigation, we expect these propositions to be further refined as the propositions developed here meet investigation. Over time, findings in this line of research could enable marketers to make informed sonic branding decisions and to lean on musicians for execution rather than branding strategy. We also return to the refrain that the auditory domain is relatively underrepresented in consumer judgment contexts, and that research in this area would extend the context of consumer judgments. After all, branding is not an activity that takes place in silence. Thus, sonic branding is an essential and somewhat ignored piece in the development of the branding literature.

Recommended Readings Henderson, P. W., & Cote, J. A. (1998). Guidelines for selecting or modifying logos. Journal of Marketing, 62(2), 14–30. Jackson, D. M. (2003). Sonic branding: An introduction (P. Fulberg, Ed.). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Kellaris, J. J., & Kent, R. J. (1993). An exploratory investigation of responses elicited by music varying in tempo, tonality, and texture. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2(4), 381–401. Krishnan, V., Kellaris, J. J., & Aurand, T. W. (2012). Sonic logos: Can sound influence willingness to pay? Journal of Product and Brand Management, 21(4), 275–284. Zhu, R., & Meyers-Levy, J. (2005). Distinguishing between the meanings of music: When background music affects product perceptions. Journal of Marketing Research, 42(August), 333–345.

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694   Krishnan and Kellaris Aucouturier, J.-J., & Pachet, F. (2008). A scale-free distribution of false positives for a large class of audio similarities measures. Pattern Recognition, 41(1), 272–284. Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. J. (1974). Working memory. In G. A. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 47–90). New York, NY: Academic Press. Baddeley, A. D., & Logie, R. (1992). Auditory imagery and working memory. In D. Reisberg (Ed.), Auditory imagery (pp. 179–195). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Boltz, M. G. (2001). Musical soundtracks as a schematic influence on the cognitive processing of filmed events. Music Perception, 18(4), 427–454. Boltz, M. G. (2004). The cognitive processing of film and musical soundtracks. Memory and Cognition, 32(7), 1194–1205. Bornstein, R. F., & D’Agostino, P. R. (1992). Stimulus recognition and the mere exposure effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 545–552. Bruner, G. C., II. (1990). Music, mood, and marketing. Journal of Marketing, 54(4), 94–104. Bruner, G. C., II. (2003). Combating scale proliferation. Journal of Targeting Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, 11(4), 362–372. Cattell, R. B., & Saunders, D. R. (1954). Musical preferences and personality diagnosis: A factorization of one hundred and twenty themes. Journal of Social Psychology, 39(1), 3–24. Churchill, G. A., Jr. (1979). A paradigm for developing better measures for marketing constructs. Journal of Marketing Research, 16, 64–73. Colavita, F. B. (1974). Human sensory dominance: Auditory versus visual stimulus. Perception and Psychophysics, 16(2), 409–412. Eyenck, M. W. (1982). Attention and arousal. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag. Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The big-five factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(6), 1216–1229. Henderson, P. W., & Cote, J. A. (1998). Guidelines for selecting or modifying logos. Journal of Marketing, 62(2), 14–30. Hevner, K. (1935). The affective character of the major and minor modes in music. American Journal of Psychology, 47(1), 103–118. Hevner, K. (1936). Experimental studies of the elements of expression in music. American Journal of Psychology, 48(2), 246–268. Jackson, D. M. (2003). Sonic branding: An introduction (P. Fulberg, Ed.). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Jacoby, L. L., & Whitehouse, K. (1989). An illusion of memory: False recognition induced by unconscious perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118(2), 126–135. Janiszewski, C. (1988). Preconscious processing effects: The independence of attitude formation and conscious thought. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 199–209. Janiszewski, C., & Meyvis, T. (2001). Effects of brand logo complexity, repetition, and spacing on processing fluency and judgment. Journal of Consumer Research, 28(1), 18–32. Juslin, P. N., & Sloboda, J. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kellaris, J. J., & Kent, R. J. (1993). An exploratory investigation of responses elicited by music varying in tempo, tonality, and texture. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2(4), 381–401. Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring and managing customer based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1–23. Kiley, D. (2007, December 6). Fine-tuning a brand’s signature sound. BusinessWeek, pp. 24–28. Krasilovsky, W. M., Shemel, S., Gross, J.M., & Feinstein, J. (2007). This business of music. New York, (10th ed.). NY: Watson Guptill.

Directions for Sonic Branding Research   695 Krishnan, V., Kellaris, J. J., & Gaffney, D. R. (2018). Sonic branding: Designing distinctive auditory identities (Working paper). https://niuits-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/a1599319_ mail_niu_edu/EQiiOFOSZn9GosWkslKyp_UBUqpHSJuGkT0KoCZPQJGeSA?e=RybFt5 Krishnan, V., Kellaris, J. J., & Aurand, T. W. (2012). Sonic logos: Can sound influence willingness to pay? Journal of Product and Brand Management, 21(4), 275–284. Kronlund, A., Whittlesea, B. W. A, & Yoon, C. (2008). Consumer, memory, fluency and familiarity. In C. Haugtvedt, P. Herr, & F. R. Kardes (Eds.), Handbook of consumer psychology (pp. 77–102). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Krugman, H. E. (1965). The impact of television advertising: Learning without involvement. Public Opinion Quarterly, 29(3), 349–356. Lee, A. Y., & Labroo, A. A. (2004). The effect of conceptual and perceptual fluency on brand evaluation. Journal of Marketing Research, 41(2), 151–165. Linn, A. (2006). Start me up: The sound of Vista. Msnbc.com. Retrieved May 31, 2008, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15656246/ Macmillan, N. A., & Creelman, C. D. (1991). Detection theory: A user’s guide. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Meyer, A. S. (1956). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. Meyers-Levy, J., & Peracchio, L. A. (1992). Getting an angle in advertising: The effect of camera angle on product evaluations. Journal of Marketing Research, 294, 454–461. Nedungadi, P. (1990). Recall and consumer consideration sets: Influencing choice without altering brand evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research, 17(3), 263–276. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1985). A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research. Journal of Marketing, 49(4), 41–50. Reber, R., & Schwarz, N. (1999). Effects of perceptual fluency on judgments of truth. Consciousness and Cognition, 8(3), 338–342. Reber, R., Schwarz, N., & Winkielman, P. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver’s processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(4), 364–382. Reber, R., Winkielman, P., & Schwarz, N. (1998). Effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments. Psychological Science, 9(1), 45–48. Reber, R., Wurtz, P., & Zimmermann, T.  D. (2004). Exploring “fringe” consciousness: The subjective experience of perceptual fluency and its objective bases. Consciousness and Cognition, 13(1), 47–60. Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2003). The do re mi’s of everyday life: Examining the structures and personality correlates of music preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(6), 1236–1256. Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. (2006). Message in a ballad—The role of music preferences in interpersonal perception. Psychological Science, 17(3), 236–242. Shapiro, S. (1999). When an ad’s influence is beyond our conscious control: Perceptual and conceptual fluency effects caused by incidental ad exposure. Journal of Consumer Research, 26(1), 16–36. Snyder, A. (1993, December 6). Branding: Coming up for more air. Brandweek, 34, 24–28. Stahl, G. (1964). The marketing strategy of planned visual communications. Journal of Marketing, 28(1), 7–11. Stewart, D.  W., Farmer, K.  M., & Stannard, C.  I. (1990). Music as a recognition cue in ­advertising-tracking studies. Journal of Advertising Research, 30(4), 39–48. Sweeney, J.  C., & Brandon, C. (2006). Brand personality: Exploring the potential to move from factor analytical to circumplex models. Psychology and Marketing, 23(8), 639–663.

696   Krishnan and Kellaris Tan, S.-L., Cohen, A. J., Lipscomb, S. D., & Kendall, R. A. (Eds.). (2013). The psychology of music in multimedia. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal construal. Psychological Review, 110(3), 403–421. Van Riel, C. B. M., & Balmer, J. M. T. (1997). Corporate identity: The concept, its measurement and management. European Journal of Marketing, 31(5/6), 340–355. Walther, K. (2006). Lufthansa’s world of sound: Corporate sound increases brand recognition. Lufthansa.com. Retrieved May 31, 2008, from http://konzern.lufthansa.com/en/html/ presse/pressemeldungen/?c=nachrichten/app/show/en/2006/08/596/HOM&s=0 Whittlesea, B. W. A. (1993). Illusions of familiarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 19(6), 1235–1253. Young, J. O. (1999). The cognitive value of music. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57(1), 41–54. Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2 Pt 2), 1–27. Zhu, R., & Meyers-Levy, J. (2005). Distinguishing between the meanings of music: When background music affects product perceptions. Journal of Marketing Research, 42(3), 333–345.

chapter 34

M ethods for Te sti ng the Emotiona l Effects of M usic i n A dv ertisi ng a n d Br a n d Com m u n ication Daniel Müllensiefen

Marketing pioneer and businessman John Wanamaker framed this now-famous quote around one hundred years ago: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”1 These words highlight the importance of devising reliable methods to assess the effectiveness of advertisements and brand communication, both for practical commercial purposes and for advancing scientific theory and academic research. Psychological models of advertising perception have been changing over the past 100 years (see Fennis & Stroebe, 2016, for a review). Currently, so-called dual-process models are most common and provide the theoretical frame for investigating the role of emotions and music for effective advertising. Hence, this chapter takes dual-process models as a starting point for describing the mechanisms by which music can make advertising and branding more effective. But music has to be selected carefully to be most effective with a given brand, and therefore I introduce in the subsequent section a selection tool that assesses how closely musical pieces fit a target brand. Finally, the chapter gives an overview of testing methods that are suitable for providing empirical 1  John Wanamaker (1838–1922) was an American businessman and political figure. He owned several large department stores on the American East Coast and also opened stores in London and Paris. Today he is considered a pioneer of modern marketing, having introduced many innovations to the field. Wanamaker also believed in the positive benefits of advertising—back then a fairly novel marketing tool—but his famous saying indicates that he was aware of the financial risks when advertising is treated as a black box process.

698   Müllensiefen evidence for the effects of music on advertising perception. Here, reaction time tasks and skin conductance response measurement are covered in greater detail because both are methods that are easy to use and suitable for testing the emotional effects that music can contribute to advertising effectiveness. This chapter reflects my perspective as scientist in residence with a major advertising company (adam&eveDDB, London), which allowed me to explore over the course of six years the potential and challenges of applying rigorous psychological research methods to real-world advertising use cases and problems.

Dual-Process Models as a Framework for Understanding Advertising Perception Most dual-process models of general cognitive processing are heavily influenced by the heuristics and biases research program pursued by Tversky and Kahneman (1974). Within this research program a large number of studies published in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated how, in many instances, human decision making was not compatible with rational choice behavior but often influenced by heuristic principles and cognitive biases, leading to sub-optimal choices (see the summary in Kahneman, 2011). Heuristics and biases are often described as rules of thumb that help people to make quick decisions. But applying heuristic rules might not lead to the best decision because it means that people do not consider all options, weighing up all pros and cons in a given situation. Heuristics and biases seem particularly relevant for making fast and frequent decisions in everyday behavior, such as buying choices when walking along the supermarket aisle or preference judgments when presented with novel music on radio or TV. However, not all human decisions are irrational, and humans are certainly capable of logical thinking and rational decision making. This gap between the nonrational mode of information processing and the human capability for rational thinking is the core issue that dual-process models like the elaboration likelihood model suggested by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) or the heuristic-systematic model by Chen and Chaiken (1999) sought to address. (For brief overviews of the elaboration likelihood model, see chapters by Oakes and Abolhasani, and Allan, in this volume). Advertising perception—or more generally the psychology of persuasion—has been an application area where dual-process models appear to be highly useful frameworks for academic research and hence have been employed frequently in empirical studies. In the context of advertising perception and brand communication, dual-process models are characterized by two different modes of processing. The high route of processing represents the rational mode of decision making where information is processed consciously and a decision is made after considering all available options and consequences. In contrast, the low route of processing describes the nonrational mode where decisions are

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   699 made without processing much of the presented information consciously and decisions rely much more on subtle cues or subconscious triggers that can lead to nonrational choices. The high mode of processing involves conscious engagement with an advertising message and an explicit evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of persuasive arguments presented as part of the advertising message. This evaluation then results in a cognitive response, either positive or negative, with respect to the advertised product or brand, which in turn can lead to a change in the consumer’s attitude or behavior in the future. In contrast, within the low mode of processing, the message and contents of the advertising communication are not processed with conscious attention. Instead, processing is dominated by low-level attention mechanisms such as priming (Bargh & Chartrand, 2000), the mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968), and evaluative conditioning (Hofmann, De Houwer, Perugini, Baeyens, & Crombez, 2010). The cues processed by these mechanisms are typically not the advertising message and content but peripheral cues such as surface features of the visual and auditory elements of the ad (e.g., colors, sounds, images, pace of changes, characteristics of the endorser). These peripheral cues are evaluated by psychological heuristics and low-attention mechanisms as positive or negative, which can then lead to attitude and behavior changes in the consumer. The decision whether a piece of advertising communication is processed along the low or the high mode depends on the situational context as well as on characteristics of the perceiver. The perceiver’s current information processing capacity and the motivation to engage with an advertisement can have an impact on the choice of mode. Music is generally considered to be a heuristic cue of advertising communication and hence will mostly be processed along the low mode. However, exceptions to this general rule include commercials that advertise music products or where the content of the music (e.g., lyrics or features of a song) is designed to be part of the advertising message. It is difficult to quantify the contributions of the advertising message versus heuristic cues for the effectiveness of advertising communications and hence to obtain precise empirical evidence for the relative importance of the high and low mode of advertising processing. However, the prevalent view in the psychological (Kahneman, 2011) as well as the advertising research literature (Fennis & Stroebe, 2016; Heath, 2012) currently holds that low-mode processing dominates in terms of both frequency (i.e., most ad communications are processed along the low mode) and effectiveness (i.e., changes in consumer attitude are more likely as a result of low-mode compared to high-mode processing). As an explanation Heath (2012) points to the possibility that while processing consciously along the high mode, consumers can build up cognitive defenses against persuasive messages. However, if the processing of surface features of an ad remains unconscious, the effects of persuasive communication on one’s own behavior are not attenuated by such defenses. In addition, most low-attention mechanisms that form part of the low mode are directly linked to emotional processing, such as the mere exposure effect, the recognition heuristic, and evaluative conditioning. Emotional processing, or system 1 processing in Kahneman’s (2011) terminology, is thought to be the default way of processing environmental stimuli in everyday life.

700   Müllensiefen

Sales Activation Versus Emotional Brand Building Campaigns The distinction between the high and low mode of processing advertising communication is mirrored by the distinction that practitioners draw between two fundamentally different types of advertising communications: sales activation messages and emotional brand building (Binet & Field, 2013). Sales activation messages usually target the high mode of processing and make propositions that aim to activate consumers to purchase. Sales activation messages typically include propositions like discounts, limited offers, and newly enhanced product features. For example, think of radio ads announcing sales activation messages like “Chocolate bar X, now 2-for-1 only this month,” “This weekend, massive discounts on all DIY products at your local building supply store,” or “The new SUV, finance now with 0% interest from our licensed brand dealers.” On the other hand, emotional brand building generally avoids the inclusion of direct messages that encourage an immediate purchase. Instead, emotional brand building focuses on a given brand (rather than a specific product) and its association with positive heuristic cues and surface features. An example of this category is a TV ad for a rum brand that uses lush images of beautiful people on tropical islands with a smooth reggae sound in the foreground. Advertisements of the emotional brand building category usually contain less verbal information and do not require much conscious attention for processing. Based on the ad effectiveness database of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), Binet and Field (2013) distinguish different patterns of effects for sales activation and emotional brand building advertisements. For short-term effects (in the order of days or a few weeks), sales activation messages show a much larger uplift on sales over the base sales rate compared to emotional brand building. However, this large effect of sales activation messages has a fast decay rate (i.e., the positive effect of advertising on sales diminishes comparatively quickly over time). In contrast, emotional brand building advertising shows much smaller short-term effects, but the decay of the effect on sales uplift is much slower. Hence, emotional brand building ads have the potential to build up cumulative effects over repeated campaigns, leading to larger long-term effects (in the order of months or years) on sales uplift for a brand. According to Binet and Field (2013), these long-term effects cannot be achieved by repeated sales activation campaigns because of their quick decay, which does not allow for cumulative effects to build up.

The Role of Music in the Emotional Processing of Advertising Communications Given that music—in most instances—forms part of an advertising’s surface features and heuristic cues and is processed along the low mode, it follows that the effects of music should be largest for emotional brand building advertising communications. In

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   701 fact, for sales activation messages that rely on the transmission of a crucial piece of information to the consumer (e.g., “sale is on this weekend,” “half-price in all of our stores,” “get free add-on feature with our latest product”), music could also have a negative effect on ad message recall, especially if it is competing with crucial verbal information simultaneously transmitted through the auditory modality (e.g., Furnham & Bradley, 1997; see also chapter by Fraser in this volume). In contrast, music may have strong positive effects on ad effectiveness if it is used as part of emotional brand building communication. One of the mechanisms by which music can be a very effective heuristic cue is its ability to trigger or strengthen the emotional processing of advertising communications. In fact, one of the core functions of music is to induce, regulate, and alter emotions in the listener (Schäfer, Sedlmeier, Städtler, & Huron, 2013). Several theoretical accounts have demonstrated that there is a large range of psychological mechanisms by which listeners can engage emotionally with music (Juslin, 2013). Because of the close links between music and emotions, some evolutionary theories of music (e.g., Brown, 2000) have posited that music may have developed as a human capacity for communicating emotional states alongside verbal language, which transports primarily semantic contents with reference to the external world. In sum, the large potential of music to evoke and influence emotional processing is generally agreed upon in the academic community, and this makes music a very suitable feature of advertising communications that aim at emotional brand building.

Measuring Brand-Music Fit Irrespective of its general positive potential, the effectiveness of music is conditional on its fit to the target brand, as several studies have shown (e.g., Hung, 2001; MacInnis & Park, 1991; Zander, Apaolaza-Ibanez, Zander, & Hartmann, 2010; also see the literature reviews in Allan, 2007, and Oakes, 2007, for a broader range of results). The terms music-brand fit and music-brand congruency are frequently used in music and advertising research and refer to perceived similarities between a music piece and a brand (as discussed further in the chapter by Oakes and Abolhasani in this volume). The music-brand fit or congruency is usually perceived on an emotional or metaphorical level and can be expressed by using the same attributes to describe a brand and music such as “energetic,” “cheeky,” or “loving.” For assessing the fit of musical pieces with individual TV ads, Herget, Schramm, and Breves (2018) recently suggested an expert classification tool that describes the degree of fit in terms of four categories, ranging from “no fit” to “perfect fit.” Research on music-brand fit (North, Mackenzie, Law, & Hargreaves, 2004; Yeoh & North, 2011) has shown that not just any piece of music that is emotionally appealing to the general population will be effective for any brand or product. Hence, a key practical problem for the employment of music in advertising campaigns is the choice of pieces that bear a close fit to the commercial brand according to the perception of the brand’s target and audience. Phrased differently, only if music and

702   Müllensiefen brand are perceived as congruent does music have the potential to increase advertising effectiveness substantially. As a model, Müllensiefen and Baker (2015) suggest an approach that aims to align features of the music, characteristics of the brand’s target audience, and positive values of the brand. In practice, solving this problem of finding suitable music pieces for advertising campaigns is usually the job of specialized audio branding and music consultancy companies that have access to a large range of music from different sources. Commonly used sources include databases of royalty-free music, publisher databases of tracks by signed artists that can be licensed for use in advertising, and composers who can produce original music to a given specification. A skilled music consultant will typically be able to retrieve several tracks from each source that fit (e.g., a target energy drink brand) in qualitative terms. For instance, both the track and the brand might be categorized as “energetic” and “uplifting” according to the brand profile and meta-tags on a music database. A qualitative match can also be established if brand and music appeal to the same audience in terms of age, gender, and other demographics. However, determining how closely each track from a candidate set of tracks fits the target brand is a quantitative question (Brodsky, 2011).

The Semantic Differential Tool for Measuring Brand-Music Fit Müllensiefen, Davies, Dossman, Hansen, and Pickering (2013) suggested a quantitative tool based on a semantic differential to measure the closeness (or distance) between a brand profile and music tracks. The semantic differential is a list of adjectives (such as “vibrant,” “sad,” or “tender”), each with a corresponding rating scale. As a psychological research tool, the semantic differential was introduced by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957) to measure the meaning and emotional associations of objects. When used in marketing research, consumers are asked to think about a brand or a product and to indicate to which degree it is associated with each attribute on the semantic differential. The semantic differential suggested by Müllensiefen et al. (2013) for assessing musicbrand fit is based on an adjective profile for emotional perception of music pieces (Asmus, 1985). Both the target brand and candidate music tracks are rated on the same adjective list. Having ratings for both then allows the calculation of a numeric distance measure between target brand and music tracks. In other words, brands and music pieces are measured with the same yardstick, which makes it possible to say how closely they match. The original version of the semantic differential tool (Müllensiefen et al.,  2013) comprises 39 attributes that are grouped on three underlying factors. However, for greater efficiency in practical applications, Baker, Trahan, and Müllensiefen (2016) have suggested a shorter version of the tool comprising only 15 adjectives but loading on the same three factors (Vibrant, Dark, and Tranquil; see Table 34.1). Subscales corresponding to the three factors show good psychometric properties (alpha coefficients of

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   703 Table 34.1  Adjectives of the Short Version of the Semantic Differential Tool for Assessing Music-Brand Fit (as Suggested by Baker, Trahan, & Müllensiefen, 2016) Factor

Adjective

Vibrant

Vibrant

 

Exuberant

 

Humorous

 

Amusing

 

Playful

Dark

Depressive

 

Blue

 

Sad

 

Lonely

Tranquil

Peaceful

 

Calm

 

Gentle

 

Serene

   

Tranquil Tender

.88, .85, and .87, respectively), and the short length of the revised semantic differential tool allows for a quick assessment of the congruency of music and brand profiles. Müllensiefen et al. (2013) recommend that the rating of the target brand be carried out by (a small number of) individuals with a very good knowledge of the brand (i.e., brand or marketing managers or planners in an advertising agency working with the brand). In contrast, the rating of the music tracks should ideally be completed by a large sample of participants representative of the brand’s target audience. Participants are prompted to imagine the music tracks portraying a character in a movie and subsequently to provide ratings on a seven-point scale, indicating how well the track in question would represent each attribute of the imagined character. From these ratings of the brand on one hand and of the music tracks on the other, it is possible to calculate how close each track is perceived with respect to the target brand. A distance of 0 would mean that a track is perceived as identical to the brand. In contrast, a distance of 1 indicates that the music track is maximally distinct from the brand. If several candidate tracks are assessed on the semantic differential tool, one can then see how large the differences in brand fit are between the assessed tracks and eventually pick the track that is being perceived to match the brand most closely. To sum up, the semantic differential is a simple yet powerful tool that generates an objective measure of distance between a brand profile and a particular soundtrack. The tool has been shown to be unaffected by a rater’s musical training background or sex,

704   Müllensiefen demonstrating its robustness when used with different populations (Müllensiefen et al., 2013). As a marketing instrument, it also helps to determine what a brand is and what it is not, which ensures consistency and reliability when matching brand profiles to music. For instance, an automotive brand that is trying to shift their current brand identity (e.g., built around values such as “reliable,” “gentle,” and “relaxed”) to a brand identity that resonates more with younger consumers (e.g., associating terms such as “exciting,” “fun,” and “innovative”) would be able to assess whether the music selected for a new TV advertising campaign would potentially shift viewers’ perceptions in the right direction or simply reinforce the old brand identity. The quantitative information from the semantic differential can also be used for making informed choices between music tracks while considering additional information (e.g., licensing fees and conditions). However, despite its usefulness in both academic and applied research, the semantic differential tool is severely limited by the fact that it requires a manual preselection of candidate tracks that might have a close fit to the target brand. Hence, a challenge for future research on brand-music fit is to automate the search for tracks with a close fit to a target brand in large music databases. This might be achieved by extracting features using audio analysis software and through the use of algorithmic search methods— techniques that are currently in development in the music information retrieval community.2 Though technically challenging, computer-assisted search methods present a great opportunity for music library owners, publishers, and music consultancy services to make much more efficient use of their libraries and catalogs for advertising and sync purposes.

Testing Effects of Music on Advertising Effectiveness Given that music is maximally effective in advertising contexts when processed without conscious attention, attempting to measure its effectiveness via testing paradigms that require the consumer’s attention can be problematic. The following quote, commonly attributed to David Ogilvy3—one of the most influential figures in modern a­ dvertising— best summarizes this problem: “The trouble with research is that people don’t do what they say, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t think how they feel.” Hence, traditional methods of testing advertising effectiveness that require attention and high 2  See the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR): https://www.ismir.net/ 3  This quote (and variations thereof) is widely used in the advertising research community today and there are plenty of publications that attribute this quote to Ogilvy. Several publications point to Ogilvy’s book Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) as the source for the quote. However, despite a careful manual search through a physical copy of the book, we have not been able to verify its occurrence in this book.

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   705 cognitive involvement, such as questionnaires, surveys, and focus groups, might not be sensitive to the effects of an ad’s surface features and music in particular. To properly quantify the effects of heuristic cues and surface features, measurement techniques beyond explicitly asking consumers are needed. Fortunately, many tools and techniques that have been established in the psychological sciences have been becoming available to the advertising and marketing industry in need of implicit testing. A variety of more implicit techniques explained later such as emotional tracing, reaction time measurements, the affective misattribution procedure, eye tracking, facial expression recognition, electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and skin conductance response measures do not require participants to fill out questionnaires and explicitly reason about the advertisement they have been exposed to. The relative benefits and drawbacks of these alternative testing methodologies are currently debated in the advertising research community (Noble, 2014) and have entered the arsenal of testing methods of nearly all big players in the market research community, such as Nielsen, GfK, and IpsosMori. Emotional tracing methods allow participants to move sliders or trace with a computer mouse the emotional development of an ad or a piece of music while it is being perceived. Tracing methods can reveal which parts of an ad are more emotional than others and where points of surprise or periods of emotional buildups occur. The affective misattribution procedure (MAP) is a computerized task that measures the emotional reaction to target images (e.g., a pictures of dangerous animals or pleasant sceneries) that are presented for a very short period of time (75 ms), which is below the threshold of conscious recognition and can only be perceived subliminally (Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005). After the subliminally presented target image, participants are shown a neutral image (e.g., a Chinese character that does not convey any meaning to Western participants) and have to rate its emotional association. Payne et al. (2005) were able to show that participants judge the neutral image as more pleasant after being primed by a positive compared to a negative target image. This emotional misattribution is robustly measurable, even though participants are completely unaware of the content of the target image. In market research applications (Goodall & Slater, 2010), the MAP is a principled way of disentangling pure emotional reactions to a brand from verbal and cognitive associations. As a proof of concept Schmider, Koch, and Müllensiefen (2014) applied the MAP to measure the emotional effects of music on TV advertising. With eye-tracking methods, it is possible to identify which points of a TV ad receive the greatest focus and attention by consumers without the need to ask consumers explicitly about the content of the ads. This information can be helpful during the editing and postprocessing stages of ad production. Recently, eye-tracking methods have been combined with face expression recognition technology in advertising research to enable a more detailed understanding of how ads are perceived emotionally. While participants are watching ads, the micro-movements of facial muscles are recorded through a video camera and are then automatically classified into discrete emotional expression indicative of emotional states, such as smiling, frowning, or fearful expressions.

706   Müllensiefen Electroencephalography (EEG) is a neuroscientific technique that records electromagnetic brain activity with a cap of electrodes that are attached to the scalp. EEG studies can reveal the general state of brain activity by identifying the dominant frequency band of the brain waves recorded in brain regions with different functionalities. For example, the alpha frequency band (7.5 to 12.5 Hz) is indicative of a low and relaxed mental state, while activity in the beta frequency band (12.5 to 30 Hz) usually goes along with focused mental activity. Additionally, the gamma frequency band (around 40 Hz) is commonly associated with conscious perception and the mental combination of features of a perceived object. In addition to the frequency of neural activity, the location and source of EEG signals can also be of relevance as different brain regions are associated with different mental processes (e.g., the hippocampus with memory, the prefrontal cortex with deliberate and conscious processing, the occipital cortex with visual processing, and parts of the temporal cortex with auditory processing); processing in the left versus right hemisphere can also be indicative of different types of mental processing. EEG brain signals also change in response to individual events that a person is experiencing, and the corresponding measurements are termed event-related potentials (ERPs). The precise timing and location and the strength of the ERP reaction can reveal whether a stimulus is perceived as surprising or conforms to the participants’ expectations. Hence, EEG measurements can reveal the quality of mental reactions to specific points in an ad. Information about the location, frequency, and timing of brain activity can also be combined to obtain more complex indicators potentially reflecting higher cognitive processes. For example, Bhattacharya, Zioga, and Lewis (2017) calculated the degree of frontal asymmetry (defined as the difference between the processing strength in the left frontal cortex compared to the right frontal cortex) in the alpha frequency band as an indicator of liking of ads. This indicator is in line with Davidson’s (2004) model of motivational approach and avoidance of emotion processing and is often interpreted as an “objective measure” of preference for a stimulus. Importantly, this “objective measure” of preference can differ from subjective reports of liking and preference by the same consumers. Hence, this possibility to obtain objective but implicit measures of consumers’ opinions that might not be distorted by attitudes and post hoc rationalization has made neuroscientific techniques so appealing to the marketing community in recent years. In their comprehensive study, Bhattacharya et al. (2017) compared the effect of strategic versus tactical versus no use of music in radio and TV ads. Strategic use was defined as the repeated use of the same music piece across several ads and campaigns for the same brand. In contrast, tactical use was defined as using different pieces for different commercials advertising the same product or brand. Bhattacharya et al. (2017) found higher activity in beta and especially gamma frequency bands for ads using music in a strategic way, which was particularly strong for music in radio advertisements. In addition, they measured strong frontal asymmetries showing that the same piece of music used consistently across subsequent ad campaigns of the same brand in a strategic way triggered neural reactions that are suggestive of positive emotional engagement.

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   707 While EEG has an excellent resolution in the time domain and is therefore ideal for observing neural reactions to individual events over the course of an ad, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has an excellent spatial resolution; that is, with fMRI it is possible to localize very precisely which parts of the brain are active during the perception and processing of ads. This includes deeper brain structures, such as the limbic system, which is heavily involved in emotional processing. fMRI signals are recorded with large brain scanners in which participants need to lie still while they are shown ads and their brain activity is recorded. fMRI scanners are very expensive measurement devices and typically owned and operated by hospitals for medical purposes. This makes fMRI studies usually very expensive and time-consuming to run. Hence, for an individual study, it is necessary to weigh up in advance the costs associated with fMRI experiments against the quality of insights that can be gained from fMRI (Venkatraman et al., 2015). The high costs of fMRI studies and the difficult access to scanners might be among the reasons that fMRI investigations on music and advertising are very rare to this date. fMRI has been used to address more general advertising and marketing questions (e.g., Plassmann, O’Doherty, Shiv, & Rangel, 2008; Venkatraman et al., 2015) and has been a central technique in the new field of neuromarketing (Ariely & Berns, 2010; Plassmann, Ramsøy, & Milosavljevic, 2012; Ruanguttamanun, 2014). But rigorous fMRI studies on the effects of music on advertising effectiveness are still effectively lacking in the academic literature.

Reaction Times and Skin Conductance Responses in Advertising Music Research In this section I will discuss two implicit testing methods—first, reaction time measurement, and subsequently, skin conductance response measurement—in greater detail. Both of these techniques have the advantage that they require only inexpensive technical equipment and are comparatively easy to implement and administer. Additionally, the data generated from these methods are usually straightforward to analyze and interpret. Hence, these techniques have substantial practical advantages when compared to EEG or fMRI methods and can be employed by practitioners already working in the advertising research community. This section presents example applications of reaction time and skin conductance measurements from studies conducted with the London-based advertising agency adam&eveDDB, where I served as scientist in residence from 2010 to 2016. The scientist-in-residence collaboration between the psychology department at Goldsmiths, University of London and advertising agency adam&eveDDB was initiated in 2010 as a bidirectional knowledge transfer scheme. On one hand, academic theory on human perception and decision making is provided to the agency to inform the development of new business pitches and campaigns. Psychological paradigms for testing different aspects of advertising perception and effectiveness are explored together with the agency’s strategic planning and econometrics departments. On the other hand, business

708   Müllensiefen knowledge and specific application demands from industry (as described in the chapter by Kupfer in the “Production” section of this volume; see also Harte in the appendix) regularly inspire the exploration of new scientific research questions. Here, academics and students benefit greatly from the collaboration with advertising practitioners and from the opportunity to work with advertising materials that have been launched to the commercial market. This makes it possible to assess mechanisms of ad effectiveness not only in the research lab but also in real-world scenarios. Due to Goldsmiths’ great expertise in the psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and music, many of the collaborative studies have a focus on music and advertising, often exploring novel paradigm techniques for investigating the effects of music in advertising.

Reaction Time Measurement and the Implicit Association Test Reaction time measurements have been an established method in psychology since the first psychological laboratory established by Wundt in Leipzig in 1879. Reaction times (RTs) can be used to measure implicit attitudes toward questions of interest, for example, via the Implicit Association Test (IAT) devised by Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz (1998). The IAT works on the basis that “if two concepts are highly associated, the IAT’s sorting tasks will be easier when the two associated concepts share the same response, than when they require different responses” (Greenwald & Nosek, 2001, p. 85). In one of the initial experiments reported by Greenwald et al. (1998), expected combinations of terms (flower names + pleasant words) yielded significantly shorter RTs than less expected combinations (insect names + pleasant words). In the context of advertising, the IAT method works by pairing positive and negative terms with attributes of a brand. Hence, comparing RTs for pairings of positive and negative terms with brand attributes should reflect positive versus negative consumer attitudes toward the brand. More specifically, participants in an IAT experiment have to press one of two buttons as quickly as possible to decide whether a word presented on a computer screen is associated with the target brand versus a competitor brand or whether it represents a negative versus a positive term. For example, for an orange juice brand with a positive brand image, words such as “squeezed” and “tasty” should be closely associated with the brand and therefore trigger faster responses compared to words like “mineral” or “still.” The same should be true for positive words such as “superb” and “delightful” compared to negative words like “lousy” or “terrible.” Because participants are required to give speeded responses, using conscious processing on the IAT is a very unlikely response strategy. Therefore, the IAT can potentially provide insights on implicit attitudes of consumers, which might not be measurable via traditional questionnaire or focus group methods. In fact, the IAT has been shown to be effective for measuring implicit preferences toward consumer brands (Maison, Greenwald, & Bruin, 2004) and is offered as an alternative research technique by most large market research and advertising pretesting companies.

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   709 Müllensiefen et al. (2013) adapted the original IAT (Greenwald et al., 1998) for testing the effects of music on the effectiveness of TV ads. They used four TV ads for an orange juice brand, each in combination with one of four soundtracks that were either congruent or incongruent with the brand profile. Participants were asked to take the IAT twice to assess the attitude toward the target brand before and after seeing a TV ad with congruent, incongruent, or no music. However, Müllensiefen et al. (2013) did not find any significant changes in RTs from pre- to post-ad exposure that could be attributed to the type of soundtrack. Nonetheless, they found a significant positive effect of the type of soundtrack on ad effectiveness as measured by an industry-standard explicit questionnaire tool. This failure of the IAT to detect any effect of soundtrack was presumably due to the complexity and length of the original IAT protocol (40 attributes on each run), which requires several runs of the speeded-response procedure before and after exposure to the ad, all tested within a single session. The long testing procedure leads to noticeable fatigue effects with participants, a significant number of dropouts, and a large variability in the reaction time data. Hence, in a subsequent study Binet, Müllensiefen, and Edwards (2013) used a simplified variant of the IAT developed by the market research company Hall & Partners. For the simplified procedure, participants are only required to make speeded agree/disagree decisions for a series of 20 attributes that are displayed individually on the screen together with a visual brand logo. Thus, on each trial participants only read and responded to one new term (as opposed to two different word pairs presented across the screen as in the original IAT). From the data of this simplified RT test, an explicit measure of brand attitude can be derived by calculating the rates of at­trib­ute agreement to positive attributes. In addition, the RTs of the agreement decisions serve as an implicit measure of brand attitude. In their study Binet et al. (2013) used this simplified RT task to assess the effect of the presence versus absence of music in a TV commercial for a car brand. Participants had to make speeded agree/disagree decisions for three car brands on day 1 to obtain baseline data for the target brand as well as two competitor brands. Immediately after the baseline measurement, participants were shown a TV commercial for the target brand. For half of the participants, the music was removed from the soundtrack of the ad while the rest of the participants were presented with the complete soundtrack as chosen by industry professionals to fit the brand profile. Participants were tested again on the same speeded agreement task for all three brands on the next day. Agreement responses for the 20 attributes were factor-analyzed and clustered on three factors relevant to car brands (i.e., Excitement, Trust, and Unpretentiousness). Agreement rates did not change significantly between day 1 and day 2, with consumers expressing very similar views on the three brands on both days. However, the RT data showed a significant decrease in RTs from day 1 to day 2 only for the target brand, while the changes for the two other brands were nonsignificant. This decrease in RTs suggests that viewing the TV ad did change implicit attitudes of consumers and that the positive factors Excitement, Trust, and Unpretentiousness were more closely associated with the target brand after watching the ad. For the no-music

710   Müllensiefen version of the ad this change in RT was −85 ms (standard error of measurement [SEM] = 27 ms), while for the version that included music the mean decrease in RT was −142 ms (SEM = 26 ms). This difference of 57 ms corresponds to 67% of 85 ms in the no-music condition and can be considered a strong effect that is due to the presence versus absence of the musical soundtrack. This clear result hints at the potential of simple RT measures to reveal differences between musical soundtracks that differ in their closeness to the target brand. Certainly, the strong effect in the study by Binet et al. (2013) also warrants further research on the effects of music on advertising perception using RT tasks that are simpler and shorter than the original IAT paradigm. In summary, RT tasks akin to Greenwald’s IAT can serve as a useful measurement technique for assessing the effects of music on brand attitudes. In comparison with an explicit questionnaire measure, the RT task presented here proved to be more sensitive to brand attitude changes induced by music as part of advertising communication. However, as the previous example has demonstrated, established RT measurement protocols from academic research might require adaptations and simplifications, in particular when used in marketing research environments and with online panels of participants. An important challenge for future research in this area is the standardization of the core aspects of RT methodology when used to assess advertising effectiveness. This concerns (1) the selection and structure of attribute items suitable for brands in different product categories on RT methods, (2) the general protocol for the testing sessions before and after the ad exposure, and (3) the analysis of RT data in a standardized way. In addition, it is still necessary to validate that changes in RT measures are valid indicators of changes in consumers’ attitudes, which will eventually give rise to changes in consumer behavior. Real progress with RT methods in advertising research will only be possible if a gold standard can be established for conducting RT experiments and analyzing the resulting data.

Measuring the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising From Skin Conductance Responses According to dual-process models of advertising perception, music should have the strongest effects on advertisement effectiveness when it is processed along the low route, strengthening and supporting emotional processing of the advertised content. While RT tasks can measure a change in consumers’ implicit brands attitudes, RT tasks cannot directly pick up the degree to which music increases emotional perception of advertising. However, through measuring skin conductance responses (SCRs) from participants who are watching TV ads, it is possible to assess emotional effects of ad perception as they occur in real time. Skin conductance responses are just one of several psychophysiological signals that can be used to investigate emotional responses generated by audiovisual stimuli. SCR measurement works by measuring momentary differences in sweat levels on the

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   711 inside of the hand, which are markers of the sympathetic (i.e., arousing) activity in the autonomous nervous system. This activity is very difficult to suppress or to manipulate and it is directly related to the processing of emotions in the brain (Boucsein, 2012). The measurement of SCRs has been a standard technique for researching emotions in psychophysiology for more than 60 years (Cacioppo, Tassinary, and Berntson, 2016). SCRs are also known as galvanic skin responses (GSRs) or electrodermal activity (EDA). The method earned some early fame as the core technique used in lie detectors in forensic psychology. Since the 1960s, SCRs have been employed in marketing research as well (Cacioppo et al., 2016). SCRs have been used in clinical psychology as well as in the study of judgment and decision making, where its primary purpose is to indicate the strength of the emotional arousal that a person is feeling in response to an emotional stimulus or a piece of marketing communication (Figner & Murphy, 2011). Compared to other biopsychological methods such as EEG or fMRI, measuring SCRs has some practical advantages. They are quick and easy to measure, inexpensive, and very nonintrusive, and they do not require conscious judgments from participants. Skin conductance responses are also a common measure to evaluate the emotional responses to music. For example, Craig (2005) found a strong correlation between changes in the SCR signal and the experience of “chills” (i.e., strong emotional responses that trigger physiological responses such as shivers down the spine) when listening to music. Similarly, Salimpoor, Benovoy, Longo, Cooperstock, and Zatorre (2009) reported a strong positive correlation between emotional arousal as measured by SCRs, high ratings of pleasure, and the experience of “chills” during music listening. Thus, SCRs can indicate the strength of the emotions that participants experience in response to a piece of music or a TV ad. But their key advantage is that the measurement is nonverbal and entirely passive; that is, it does not require participants to talk about their emotions, press buttons, or move sliders. Müllensiefen, Arcidiacono, Rupprecht, and Vercammen (2015a, 2015b) carried out a series of studies using SCR measurement in collaboration with adam&eveDDB and Sensum, a company specializing in emotional measurement techniques for market research (for a brief summary see Binet, Müllensiefen, & Morrison, 2015). The focus of these studies was on the calibration of SCR measures for investigating the effects of music in TV ads and to compare these effects to how the same TV ads performed commercially. For the studies reported in Müllensiefen et al. (2015a, 2015b), a measurement system provided by Sensum was employed that consisted of a sensor device worn on the wrist and two electrodes attached to two fingers of the nondominant hand, measuring the electrical signal that varies according to the participant’s momentary micro-sweat levels. The sensor was connected via Bluetooth to a tablet device sending the physiological data through a Wi-Fi connection to a central server where emotional reactions can be displayed in real time. The tablet also served to display TV ads, which were synchronized to the SCR measurements, such that emotional reactions can be linked back to the events on the screen that might have triggered them.

712   Müllensiefen The first experiment (Müllensiefen et al., 2015a) was designed to validate the new SCR recording system with established visual and auditory stimuli that are known to elicit emotional responses in most participants. The experimental validation of new recording equipment and procedures is highly important (but far too often skipped in market research practice), because only if the expected responses are successfully identified in the SCR signal can the new measurement system be trusted to pick up differences in emotional responses caused by the musical soundtrack of the ads. In this first experiment the SCR measurement system was evaluated using 20 images (10 high-arousal and 10 low-arousal images) taken from the International Affective Picture System, or IAPS (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008), and 20 sounds (10 high arousal, 10 low arousal) from the International Affective Digital Sounds collection, or IADS (Bradley & Lang, 1999). In addition, participants listened to 13 musical excerpts that had shown to be highly emotional musical pieces in a previous SCR study (Mas-Herrero, Zatorre, RodriguezFornells, & Marco-Pallarés, 2014). Results indicated significant differences between high- and low-arousal images and sounds according to an event-related analysis that compared SCRs occurring within a window of 3 to 7 seconds after the onset of the image or sounds. For the musical stimuli, event-related analysis methods are less suitable, since the timing of emotional responses to music shows large individual differences, and responses only rarely correspond directly to individual musical events. Hence, a common solution (Bach, Friston, & Dolan, 2010) is to analyze the number and mean amplitude of spontaneous SCRs during a time window while the music excerpt is playing. Using the quantity and intensity of SCRs as indicators of emotional arousal to music excerpts, Müllensiefen et al. (2015a) obtained a list of the 13 music excerpts ordered by their potential to evoke emotional responses, with Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe’s duet “Barcelona” producing the strongest emotional reactions across participants. Taken together, the results of the first experiment show that a nonintrusive wireless SCR measurement system developed for market research applications is able to detect expected differences between validated low- and high-arousal audio and video stimuli. In addition, the same system allows the differentiated measurement of emotional responses to continuous audiovisual stimuli such as TV ads and music tracks. The objective of the second experiment (Müllensiefen et al., 2015b) was to compare the emotional potential of TV ads that had performed very well in commercial terms to those that had performed less well in the market. A second aim was to determine the degree to which music directly contributes to the emotional effect of a TV ad. For this experiment, 20 TV ads were selected from several different product categories, including finance, drinks, retail, and food. Ten of the ads had been highly effective in business terms (i.e., they had won an IPA effectiveness award and reported very large business effects in terms of revenues and profit for the advertised brand). These effective ads were matched to another 10 ads from the same categories and comparable brands but where the ads were less effective according to the same criteria. The ads were embedded into a TV documentary with three other ad breaks to create a realistic viewing situation.

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   713 In this study, each of the 33 participants was shown the ads in a different, random pres­en­ta­tion order. Ten out of the 20 ads (from across the effective as well as the ineffective set) used a musical soundtrack as a very prominent feature. The music soundtracks were identical to the original soundtrack chosen by industry creatives to fit the visual, target brand and product as closely as possible. The soundtracks varied substantially in terms of genre, style, instrumentation, etc. Of the 10 musical ads, each participant saw five in their original form and five with the music track muted. Participants were divided into two groups, and music tracks that were muted for Group A were shown in their original form to Group B, and vice versa. Participants’ emotional responses to the ads were measured by counting the number of spontaneous SCRs during each ad viewing. In addition, participants were also asked to rate each ad using an established advertising pretesting questionnaire measuring memory recall, relation to the brand, and communication of the advertising message. Finally, participants also provided emotional ratings for each TV ad on a nonverbal rating scale for subjectively experienced arousal and valence (Bradley & Lang,  1994). Random effects regression models of the experimental data showed three clear results. First, commercially effective ads triggered significantly stronger emotional reactions than commercially less effective ads. Second, the same ads shown with music were experienced as significantly more emotional than with the music track removed. Lastly, ­longer ads and ads positioned later in the viewing session were associated with stronger emotional reactions. The results from SCR measurement were confirmed by participants’ subjective emotions ratings, which also differed significantly between effective and ineffective ads. In contrast, the scores from the established advertising pretesting questionnaire did not differ significantly between effective and ineffective ads. This shows how an implicit testing method such as SCR can pick up relevant differences in emotional processing of TV ads and that traditional questionnaire measures are much less sensitive to the emotional content of ads. Overall, the results from this experiment suggest that emotional responses are significantly associated with ad effectiveness in commercial terms. In fact, it is not unreasonable to assume that one factor responsible for the real-world commercial success of the effective ads was their potential to trigger emotions in consumers. The results also demonstrate that an important feature contributing to the effectiveness of TV ads is a suitable music track that elicits emotional responses in viewers. It is worth noting that in our experimental design, the emotional effect of music was independent of the general effectiveness level of the ads and music can generally enhance already strong ads as well as weaker ads. The future challenges for SCR measures in research on advertising effectiveness and the effects of music are similar to the challenges for RT measures. While it is generally agreed that SCR measures are a valid indicator of emotional arousal, it is necessary to establish also that arousal is a suitable predictor of future change in consumer behavior. In addition, future research also needs to clarify whether strong negative emotions have the same positive effect on buying behavior as strong positive emotions evoked by an ad.

714   Müllensiefen Another challenge for future studies on SCR measurement in music and advertising research concerns the analysis of recorded SCR data that still requires further standardization. While the simple counting of spontaneous SCR bursts above a certain threshold produced meaningful results in the experiments reported here, it is by no means certain that this practice represents the most efficient and sensitive way of analyzing SCR data to detect advertising and music effects. Other SCR data analysis routines in the pretesting industry also consider the shape, timing, and synchrony of SCR bursts across the duration of the ad and across different viewers. Again, establishing a standard protocol for data analysis is very much needed to mine the full potential of SCR methods for advertising and music research.

Conclusions and Future Directions This chapter outlined dual-process models of advertising perception and advocated them as a general theoretic framework for understanding and investigating the effects of music on advertising perception. According to dual-process models, music is mainly processed subconsciously as a surface feature of advertising communications. Surface features in general and music in particular may be able to trigger emotional processing of ads, which in turn has been shown to be most effective for long-term brand building advertising strategies. Because of its close connection to emotions, music can play an important role for advertising effectiveness with respect to long-term business effects. However, as several studies discussed in this chapter have shown, the effects of music depend to a large degree on its fit with the target brand. The brand-music fit can be assessed using a simple tool (i.e., the semantic differential attribute rating list, described in this chapter) that projects core values of the brand and salient attributes of candidate music tracks into the same mathematical space of emotional perception. Relying on emotional perception as a core mechanism is in line with assumptions of dual-process models, suggesting that the effects of music on changes in brand attitude also work via emotional processing. For the same reason, it seems appropriate that the evaluation of musical effects on advertising perception is carried out using implicit research methods that do not require explicit reasoning on behalf of the consumer but assess emotional processing as well as other subconscious and low-attention mechanisms. Two suitable candidate methodologies are RT measurements akin to the IAT (Greenwald et al., 1998) and SCRs taken during ad exposure. The overall framework described in this chapter assumes a central role of emotional processing for the theoretical account of advertising effects in general, for the assessment of brand-music fit, and for the evaluation of ad effectiveness and the impact of music in particular. While there is empirical evidence for the central role of emotions with regard to the three aspects of the framework, there is also a clear need for further rigorous research on each of the three aspects.

Testing the Emotional Effects of Music in Advertising   715 Despite the significant impact that Kahneman’s work and especially his popular book (2011) has had on the advertising research community, the engagement with the wider academic literature on the role of heuristics in human judgment and decision making has been very slow. Hence, future theoretical work on the role of music in advertising perception needs to explore alternative accounts of human decision making (e.g., Fiedler & von Sydow, 2015; Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996) and assess their potential to guide empirical research on advertising effectiveness. A second area for future research is the development of tools for the assessment of brand-music fit. While the link of these tools with models of emotional perception has a solid theoretical basis, it is still necessary to show that assessing brand-music fit can be done in a comprehensive way (i.e., across most product categories and brand types) and is robust against quirks that might arise from specific target audiences or types of music. There is no guarantee that a single tool will serve all brands, target audiences, and types of music equally well. But the use of adaptive assessment methods (Harrison, Collins, & Müllensiefen, 2017) is an option that can provide solutions for application scenarios where a one-size-fits-all methodology does not produce appropriate results. In any case, the incorporation of automated feature extraction and search procedures and the use of music information retrieval technology is an imminent next step in the development of tools for assessing brand-music fit (e.g., Steffens et al., 2017). Finally, the evaluation of advertising effectiveness and impact of music is another highly important area for future rigorous research, which needs to be openly published and publicized toward practitioners and academics alike. There is no doubt that several commercial and academic labs are currently using valid and effective evaluation procedures based on RT and SCR measurements (among other implicit testing methods). However, as long as the details of their testing and analysis protocols are kept secret and are not exchanged among both research communities, no real progress can be made with regard to the validity and reliability of implicit testing methodologies. Intellectual property concerns on behalf of commercial testing companies are a serious obstacle in this respect. However, the text retrieval, natural language processing, econometrics, and music information retrieval communities can serve as good examples for research communities that have been highly successful both academically and commercially, not despite but because of their willingness to exchange research results, establish common standards, and agree on common testbeds and relevant research challenges. It appears obvious that the advertising research community could benefit from these positive examples that represent a good balance between the protection of intellectual property and the open sharing of technology and research insights. Moving the advertising research community forward in this respect appears necessary because the status quo of advertising and music research is not fully satisfactory, at least not for brand clients who are paying not only for the costs of advertising communication but also often for pretesting and ad effectiveness research with unknown validity and reliability. Hence, establishing common research standards for implicit testing methods should be a prime item on the advertising research community’s agenda for the coming years,

716   Müllensiefen to substantially advance the field and gain the trust of clients who—like John Wannamaker—want to know which half of their budget is spent on effective advertising.

Recommended Reading Allan, D. (2007). Sound advertising: A review of the experimental evidence on the effects of music in commercials on attention, memory, attitudes, and purchase intention. Journal of Media Psychology, 12(3), 1–35. Binet, L., & Field, P. (2013). The long and the short of it. London, UK: IPA. Fennis, B. M., & Stroebe, W. (2016). The psychology of advertising. London, UK: Routledge. Fiedler, K., & von Sydow, M. (2015). Heuristics and biases: Beyond Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) judgment under uncertainty. In M. W. Eysenck & D. Groome (Eds.), Cognitive psychology: Revisiting the classical studies (pp. 146–161). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. London, UK: Penguin. Müllensiefen, D., Davies, C., Dossman, L., Hansen, J. L., & Pickering, A. (2013). Implicit and explicit effects of music on brand perception in TV ads. In K. Bronner, R. Hirt, & C. Ringe (Eds.), Audio branding academy yearbook 2012/2013 (pp. 139–154). Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos.

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Cognitive and Affective Responses to Music and Advertising

chapter 35

Com m erci a l Sou n d A Review of the Effects of Popular Music in Radio and Television Advertising David Allan

Whether you believe that “advertising is the new radio” (Rutledge & Barnhard, 2009) or that “advertising killed the radio star” (Sanburn, 2012), music is certainly “the unsung hero of advertising” (Birkner, 2015) and has “a commercial advantage” (Martín-Santana, Reinares-Lara, & Muela-Molina, 2015). When Nielsen looked at the effectiveness of over 600 television commercials—of which 500 contained music—it was found that those with music performed better for “creativity, empathy, emotive and information power” than those without music (Nielsen, 2015). Music in advertising is popular. It continues to be the most used executional cue, or performance stimulus, in commercials (Yalch, 1991). Dunbar (1990) suggested it was because music “adds an emotional dimension to the consumer response to the brand” (p. 200), and Huron (1989) argued that it can contribute to advertising “entertainment, structure/continuity, memorability, lyrical language, targeting, and authority establishment” (p. 560). Music in television advertising has certainly grown in the United States since it first helped facilitate the creative shift from testimonial to artistic text in the 1960s (Rodman, 2010). Stewart and Furse (1986) observed music in only slightly more than 40% of 1,000 U.S. television commercials from 1981 to 1983 for 356 brands of mostly consumer packaged goods (CPGs) from a random sample provided by the Research Systems Corporation (RSC). Similar frequencies were observed by Stewart and Koslow (1989) for commercials from 1980 to 1987 also from the RSC. By 1993, Appelbaum and Halliburton found music in 89% of 218 television commercials from France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Furnham, Abramsky, and Gunter reported in 1997 that music was present in 88% of U.S. advertisements on children’s weekend television (81% in United Kingdom). Allan (2008) analyzed 3,456 U.S. prime-time television commercials and found that 94% of the total ads contained some type of music and 14% contained popular music. In 2016, Allan and Tryce determined that the amount of commercials with popular music in the Super Bowl had grown from 34.6% in 2005 to

Commercial Sound   723 41.1% in 2014. Some brands use more music than others. Anisimova, Mullern, and Plachkova (2014), in a sample of 110 Levi’s commercials, found 96 (87%) had popular lyrics or instrumentals. While the cognitive and affective effects of music on advertising have been researched but have received less attention than the topic deserves (Oakes, 2007), there have not been many comprehensive reviews of theory and research. Bruner (1990) provided an early collection of relevant research involving music and advertising as part of the literature review for his “Music, Mood and Marketing” review. Hung and Rice (1992) followed Bruner’s typology (time, pitch, and texture) in their content analysis. North and Hargreaves updated the list as part of a larger chapter (“Music and Consumer Behaviour”) on the commercial and industrial uses of music (advertising, shops, and the music industry) in their book The Social Psychology of Music (1997), and later in their chapter on “Music, Business, and Health” in their subsequent book entitled The Social and Applied Psychology of Music (2008). Allan (2005b) completed a comprehensive review of the literature up to that point in time. Shevy and Hung (2013) updated the most relevant studies of music in television and extended it to other persuasive media (such as public service announcements, edutainment, and online shopping sites). More recently, Graakjaer and Jantzen (2009) provided a survey of experimental research on music in television commercials. This chapter is another step in this direction and serves as a review of important empirical studies on the reception of popular music in advertising in television and radio on attention, memory, attitudes, and purchase intention. A wide range of relevant experiments are summarized and discussed. It begins with the most relevant definitions, followed by a summary of relevant theories and models (Table 35.1), and ends with a summary of effectual research involving advertising and music (Table 35.2). Hopefully, this review will provide a solid foundation for future research into the commercial use of sound.

Literature Review This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part is a discussion of the most widely cited theories and models, including the terms and concepts. The second part is an analysis of relevant empirical studies of the effects of music on advertising including some content analysis. This provides a wide-angle lens into the past as a sound foundation to visualize the future.

Theories and Models Advertising and music have been investigated through the testing of many variables, leading to a wide range of outcomes. An analysis of these studies begins with a discussion of some examples of the most widely used theories and models in this area to date.

724   Allan Table 35.1  A Summary of Some Relevant Theories and Models in Music and Advertising Theory

Description

Citation

Attitude theory

Suggests that beliefs are the only mediators of attitude formation and change and that a person’s attitude is a function of salient beliefs at a particular moment.

Fishbein (1963)

Classical conditioning

The process of behavior modification by which a subject (dog) comes to respond in a desired manner to a previously neutral stimulus (bell) that has been repeatedly presented along with an unconditioned stimulus (food) that elicits the desired response.

Pavlov (1927)

Elaboration likelihood model (ELM)

Assumes that once an individual receives a message, processing begins. When the consumer gives the message a high degree of attention because it is relevant, there is high involvement and thus a central (active) processing route. When the consumer gives the message a low degree of attention because it is not relevant, there is low involvement and a peripheral (passive) processing route.

Petty and Cacioppo (1986)

Hierarchy of advertising effects

The processes of attending to a commercial, learning and remembering its content, developing attitudes, and generating conative (tendency to move toward) responses occur in a sequential causal chain.

Thorson et al. (1992)

Involvement

The number of conscious bridging experiences, connections, or personal references per minute that a viewer makes between his or her own life and a stimulus. Recall of information is improved when cued with the melody of a well-known song. The melody of a song can facilitate recall in certain environments. There is a correlation between music, emotion, and memory.

Krugman (1965)

Music theory

Rubin (1977), Wallace (1994), Schulkind et al. (1999)

These theories and models (summarized in Table  35.1) provide the foundation of research on music in advertising and include attitude theory, classical conditioning theory, involvement theory (especially the elaboration likelihood model, or ELM), hierarchy of advertising effects model, and music theory. Attitude Theory. Fishbein’s (1963) attitude theory, which posits that a person’s attitude is a function of salient beliefs activated from memory at a point in time in a given situation, is the primary consideration, with all research dealing with attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand. As will be apparent in the section of this chapter focusing on results, many researchers have studied music’s effect on attitude toward the brand in regard to product preference (e.g., Allen & Madden,  1985; Gorn,  1982; Kellaris & Cox,  1989; Middlestadt, Fishbein, & Chan,  1994; C.  W.  Park & Young,  1986; Pitt & Abratt, 1988; Vermeulen, Batenburg, Beukeboom, & Smits, 2014; Zhu, 2005) and purchase intention (Brooker & Wheatley, 1994; Morris & Boone, 1998), with mixed results. Others have considered music’s effect on attitude toward the ad and product preference (Macklin, 1988; Schutz & Stefanucci, 2019; Shen & Chen, 2006) and purchase intention

Commercial Sound   725 (Morris & Boone, 1998; North, MacKenzie, & Law, 2004), also with mixed results. The music variables and processes with regard to attitude toward the brand and the ad that have been studied most extensively are indexicality, or “the extent to which the music arouses emotion-laden memories” (MacInnis & Park, 1991, p. 162), and musical fit, or “the music’s relevance or appropriateness to the central ad message” (MacInnis & Park, 1991, p. 162). For example, music in advertising has high “indexicality” when it triggers memories and high “fit” when it relates to the narrative in the commercial and may influence central-route (message-based) and peripheral (non-message-based) processing of both high- and low-involvement consumers. Classical Conditioning Theory. Pavlov’s classical conditioning, as it relates to advertising, suggests that positive attitudes toward an advertised product or a conditioned stimulus, usually the brand, might develop through its association in a commercial with stimuli that are reacted to positively, such as music, celebrities, or pleasant colors. But research has yielded conflicting results. Gorn (1982) concluded that positive attitudes toward an advertised product, in this case colored pens, might develop through its association in a commercial with other stimuli like music (he used the theme from Grease and classical Indian music). The results of two experiments supported the notion that the simple association between a product and another stimulus such as music can affect product preferences as measured by product choice. Furthermore, an individual who is in a decision-making mode when exposed to a commercial is more affected by the information therein than an individual who is not in a decision-making mode. Many researchers have attempted to extend Gorn’s study but have been unable to replicate his findings (Allen & Madden,  1985; Alpert & Alpert, 1990, Kellaris & Cox, 1989; Pitt & Abratt, 1988, Vermeulen et al., 2014). As it stands, classical conditioning appears to occur unreliably (Kellaris & Cox, 1989) and then only in case of low-involvement consumers (as described in the next segment on involvement theory). Involvement Theory. Krugman (1965) defined involvement as “the number of conscious bridging experiences, connections, or personal references per minute that a viewer makes between his or her own life and a stimulus” (p. 356). Zaichkowsky (1986) viewed involvement as having three characteristic factors: person, stimulus, and situation. Salmon (1986) added that “involvement, in any form, seems to mediate both the acquisition and processing of information through activating a heightened state of arousal and/or greater cognitive activity in an interaction between an individual and a stimulus” (p. 264). Music in advertising can affect the high or low involvement of ad processing facilitating central or peripheral routes to persuasion (see H.  H.  Park, Park, & Jeon, 2014). Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) concept of elaboration likelihood refers to “the likelihood one engages in issue-relevant thinking with the aim of determining the merits of the arguments rather than the total amount of thinking per se in which a person engages” (p. 674). ELM assumes that once an individual receives a message, processing begins. Depending on the personal relevance of this information, the receiver will follow one of two “routes” to persuasion: “central” and “peripheral.”

726   Allan When the consumer gives the message a high degree of attention, there is high involvement and thus a central (active) processing route. When the consumer gives the m ­ essage a low degree of attention, there is low involvement and a peripheral (passive) processing route. Petty and Cacioppo suggested that high involvement was the result of a message with high personal relevance. Researchers that have studied involvement with regard to advertising and music have found that it can positively affect message processing in lowinvolvement conditions (MacInnis & Park, 1991; C. W. Park & Young, 1986). As has been previously mentioned, “fit” (song matches the ad narrative) and “indexicality” (music generates a memory) can lead to central or peripheral ad processing. Hierarchy of Advertising Effects. Thorson, Chi, and Leavitt (1992) suggested that the processes of attending to a commercial, learning and remembering its content, developing attitudes, and generating conative (tendency to move toward) responses occur in a sequential causal chain. Thus, a commercial must get the consumer’s attention, then be recalled, then involve some type of attitude change (create new, enhance positive, fix negative) to be successful and lead to conation (purchase intention). Music Theory. The idea that music has the potential to enhance attention (stimulate awareness) and memory (recall) has been widely speculated and researched (Adorno,  1941,  1976; Bartlett & Snelus,  1980; Bower & Bolton,  1969; Galizio & Hendrick, 1972; Hecker, 1984; Macklin, 1988; Rothschild, 1987; Rubin, 1977; Schulkind, Hennis, & Rubin, 1999; Wallace, 1994; Zhu & Meyers-Levy, 2005). Macklin (1988) found that messages that were sung in a produced, original jingle that sounded like a nursery rhyme yielded the same recall from children as spoken messages. Bartlett and Snelus (1980) found that cued recall of lyrics of popular songs and hymns from 1921 (“When Francis Dances with Me”) to 1974 (“Morning Has Broken”) was higher in response to melodies. Similarly, Schulkind et al. (1999) observed a positive correlation between emotion induced by the music and autobiographical, long-term memory of older adults and songs from their youth when testing the Top 20 from 1935 (“On Treasure Island”) to 1994 (“That’s the Way Love Goes”). Some researchers have also observed the enhancement of recall by music. For instance, Rubin (1977) found that recall of information is improved when cued with the melody of a well-known song (“Star Spangled Banner”). Wallace (1994) found that the melody of a song (using three ballads from “The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore”) could facilitate recall of text by providing it with musical structure for learning and remembering. Serafine, Crowder, and Repp (1984); Serafine, Davidson, Crowder, and Repp (1986); and Crowder, Serafine, and Repp (1990) suggested an integration effect, whereby the melody or text of a song (using folksongs from Erdei) is better recalled with original text than with different text. These results suggest that music in ads has the potential to stimulate emotion, attention, and recall, but not all studies support this theory. For instance, Galizio and Hendrick (1972) did not find that memory for verbal information was enhanced by presenting the information in the form of a song (the musical accompaniment of a guitar). Music theorists have distinguished between two types of meanings that music can influence: (1) embodied meaning, which is purely hedonic, context independent, and

Commercial Sound   727 based on the degree of stimulation the musical sound affords, and (2) referential ­meaning, which is context dependent and reflects networks of semantic-laden, external world concepts (Meyer, 1956). Bode (2006) suggested a more interpretive approach to music in advertising looking at its cultural potential rather than just an affective stimulus. In two studies, Zhu and Meyers-Levy (2005) investigated which (if any) of these background music meanings influence perceptions of an advertised product and under what conditions they do so. Findings suggest that people who engage in nonintensive processing are insensitive to either type of meaning. However, more intensive processors base their perceptions on the music’s referential meaning when ad message processing requires few resources, but they use the music’s embodied meaning when such processing is relatively resource-demanding. Meyers-Levy and Zhu (2010) further reasoned that consumer characteristics such as one’s gender and need for cognition can affect which meaning(s) of ad background music people use when forming product perceptions. Need for cognition (NFC) is defined as a “need to structure relevant situations in meaningful ways” (Cohen, Stotland, & Wolfe, 1955). Yet, are such meanings and their use unique to music, or could they extend to other forms of aesthetics? Two studies explore these issues, revealing parallel outcomes when background materials contain either music or graphic art designs: high NFC males are sensitive to only referential meaning, whereas high NFC females use both embodied and referential meanings.

Variables Whereas the amount of consumer behavior theories and models used in the investigation and explanation of music’s effect on advertising may be relatively little, the variables have been many and varied. The following is a summary of the most widely observed independent and dependent variables as employed in research on the use of popular music in television and radio ads thus far, followed by a review of the key findings in this area. Independent Variables. The impact of music on advertising has been observed with a variety of behaviors when mediated either individually or through the interaction of certain variables. Music appeal (like or dislike) has been observed in relation to product preferences (Allen & Madden, 1985; Gorn, 1982; Kellaris & Cox, 1989; Pitt & Abratt, 1988). The effect of music arousal or mood (a temporary feeling or state) has also been studied with purchase intention (Alpert & Alpert, 1990; Alpert, Alpert, & Maltz, 2005; Kellaris & Mantel, 1996). Musical fit has been observed in relation to message processing (MacInnis & Park,  1991; North et al.,  2004; Shen & Chen,  2006, Yeoh & North,  2009,  2010a, 2010b, 2012). Different types of music treatments (vocals, instrumentals, jingles, etc.) and recall have also been examined (Allan,  2006; Roehm,  2001; Wallace,  1991,  1994; Yalch,  1991). Music presence has positively affected product preference and purchase attention when interacting with attitude (Macklin,  1988; Morris & Boone,  1998; Middlestadt et al., 1994; C. W. Park & Young, 1986; Wheatley & Brooker, 1994) and recall

728   Allan (Macklin, 1988; Olsen, 1995; Wheatley & Brooker, 1994). Further, music tempo (speed or pace), texture (timbre and orchestration), modality (e.g., major, minor), and tonality (key) have been shown to have the potential to enhance pleasure and arousal, resulting in a greater purchase intention (Brooker & Wheatley,  1994; Kellaris & Kent,  1991,  1994; Kellaris & Rice, 1993). Finally, even the sound qualities of a single tone (for instance, whether the offset of the tone is gradual or abrupt) have been shown to influence preference and perceived value of a product (Schutz & Stefanucci, 2019). These are examples of independent variables that have been used and continue to be used in popular music in advertising research. Dependent Variables. The effects of music in advertising on a variety of consumer responses has been examined using a number of different dependent variables. For example, attitude toward the ad can be positively influenced by the presence of music (Macklin,  1988; Morris & Boone,  1998; North et al.,  2004; Shen & Chen,  2006). Perception of the time duration of an ad can be decreased by arousing music (Kellaris & Mantel, 1996). Attitude toward the brand can be improved by appealing music (Allen & Madden, 1985; Brooker & Wheatley, 1994; Gorn, 1982; Kellaris & Cox, 1989; Kellaris & Rice, 1993; Middlestadt et al., 1994; Morris & Boone, 1998; C. W. Park & Young, 1986; Pitt & Abratt, 1988; Zhu & Meyers-Levy, 2005). Brand and message recall can be increased by personally relevant and significant music (Allan, 2005b; Zander et al., 2010; Brooker & Wheatley, 1994; Kellaris, Cox, & Cox, 1993; MacInnis & Park, 1991; Macklin, 1988; North et al., 2004; Olsen, 1995; Roehm, 2001; Shen & Chen, 2006; Wallace, 1991, 1994; Wheatley & Brooker,  1994; Yalch,  1991). Music attitude can be positively affected by tempo (Kellaris & Kent, 1994; Kellaris & Rice, 1993). Pleasure/arousal can be affected by not only the tempo but also the tonality and t­ exture of the music (Kellaris & Kent, 1994). Finally, purchase intention can be affected by the interaction of music and mood (Alpert & Alpert, 1990; Alpert et al., 2005; Brooker & Wheatley, 1994; Kellaris & Kent, 1991; Morris & Boone, 1998; North et al., 2004). These are examples of dependent variables that have often been used in studies pertaining to popular music in advertising, but ongoing studies continue to expand this range (for instance, see the chapter by Müllensiefen in this volume for examples of implicit methods).

Results There is still much to learn about the effective use of music in advertising since it was first used in commercials in the early days of radio. Through a survey of experimental literature and their theoretical underpinnings, a better understanding of the interaction of independent and dependent variables, or, more conversationally, how music affects the processing of the ad, and how much it is being used in advertising, is being achieved. What follows is a brief summary of the results, accompanied by a table. Attitude Toward the Ad. In 1981, Shimp argued that attitude toward the ad (ATTA) is an important mediator when a consumer makes a choice. Since then, music’s potential to affect the consumer’s ad attitude has received some attention, with conflicting results.

Commercial Sound   729 Table 35.2  Overview of Some Relevant Effectual Research Involving Advertising and Popular Music Independent Variables

Dependent Variables

Music appeal

Brand attitude

Hearing liked or disliked music while being exposed to a product can directly affect product preferences.

Allen and 60 under­ Madden (1985) graduates

Music appeal

Brand attitude

Hearing liked or disliked music while being exposed to a product did not directly affect product preferences.

C. W. Park and Young (1986)

120 women

Music presence/ absence, involvement (high/low) (TV ads)

Brand attitude/ information

Music had a facilitative effect on brand attitude for subjects in the low-involvement condition and a distracting effect for those in the cognitive involvement condition.

Sewall and Sarel (1986)

200 mall shoppers/832 radio ads

Music background

Brand recall

Background music had no significant effect.

Pitt and Abratt 172 under(1988) graduate students

Music appeal

Brand attitude

Hearing liked or disliked music while being exposed to a product did not directly affect product preferences.

Macklin (1988) 75 preschoolers

Music background presence

Ad attitude Brand attitude Brand recall

Music did not enhance outcomes.

Stout and Leckenby (1988)

1,498 mall shoppers/ 50 TV ads

Music tempo; mode; volume; presence

Cognitive/ affective responses

Music had only minor effects.

Kellaris and Cox (1989)

302 undergraduates

Music appeal

Brand attitude

No evidence that product preferences can be conditioned through a single exposure to appealing or unappealing music (classical conditioning).

Alpert and Alpert (1990)

48 under­ graduate students

Music

Mood Purchase intention

Music had a significant effect on moods and purchase intention.

Music format

Brand recall

High-involvement formats positively affect recall.

Citation

Sample

Gorn (1982)

244 under­ graduates

Sullivan (1990) 80 in sample under­ graduates

Results

(Continued)

730   Allan Table 35.2  (Continued) Independent Variables

Dependent Variables

Citation

Sample

Results

Kellaris and Kent (1991)

180 undergraduates

Music tempo/ modality

Music evaluation Purchase intention

Tempo and modality influenced arousal and intent.

MacInnis and Park (1991)

178 undergraduate women

Music fit/ indexicality (TV ads)

Message processing

Indexicality and fit affect the processing of both high- and low-involvement consumers, influencing message- and non-message-based processing.

Wallace (1991) 120 subjects

Music placement: Brand recall sung/spoken words (jingles/ ballads)

Music provides a retrieval cue. Music acts as a frame in which the text is tightly fit.

Yalch (1991)

103 undergraduates

Music placement: Brand recall slogans with and without music (jingles)

Music enhances memory for advertising slogans when the slogans were incorporated into an advertisement in the form of a jingle or song.

Kellaris and Rice (1993)

52 under­ graduates

Music tempo, loudness, gender

Music responses

Gender moderates the influence of loudness, resulting in females responding more positively to music at lower volumes.

Kellaris et al. (1993)

231 undergraduates

Musicmessage fit, attention-gaining value

Brand recall/ recognition of brand name and messages

Increasing audience attention to music enhances message reception when the music evokes message-congruent thoughts.

Brooker and Wheatley (1994)

100 participants

Music tempo/ placement (radio ads)

Ad attitudes Brand attitudes Purchase intention Brand recall

Tempo had effects on perception of music but no effect on DVs. Placement had stronger effect on DVs.

Kellaris and Kent (1994)

288 under­ graduates

Music tempo/ tonality/texture

Pleasure/arousal Tempo affected pleasure/ arousal. Tonality affected pleasure/ surprise. Texture moderated tempo/ tonality on pleasure.

Middlestadt et al. (1994)

97 under­ graduates

Music presence

Brand attitude

Music resulted in a beliefbased (cognitive) rather than affective (attitude) change.

Commercial Sound   731

Wallace (1994) 64 under­ graduates

Music melody

Brand recall

Text is better recalled when it is heard as a song than as speech, provided the music repeats so that it is easily learned.

Wheatley and 144 underBrooker (1994) graduate students and their parents

Music presence/ absence Spokespersons (radio ads)

Brand recall Cognitive response

Music hindered message recall and did not enhance attention.

Olsen (1995)

144 undergraduate students

Music presence/ absence (music/ silence)

Brand recall/ attribute importance

Silence effectively increases listener retention of ad information, especially when the highlighted information was the last item of a series.

Kellaris and Mantel (1996)

85 under­ graduate students

Music arousal/ congruity (radio ads)

Ad time

Arousal was found to moderate the influence of stimulus congruity on perceived time such that congruity contributed positively to retrospective duration estimates among subjects exposed to soothing (vs. arousing) music.

Morris and Boone (1998)

90 under­ graduates

Music presence/ absence (print ads)

Emotional response Brand attitude Purchase intention

Music affected emotional response of print ads. No effect on brand attitude or purchase intention.

Roehm (2001)

Music placement 48 MBA versus vocals students/ 44 community (radio ads) people

Brand recall

Instrumentals resulted in greater message recall with familiar song. Vocals resulted in greater message recall with unknown song.

North et al. (2004)

162 participants

Music/voice fit

Attitude toward ad Brand recall Purchase intention

Music/voice fit resulted in better recall of claim, attitude toward ad, and purchase intention. Music fit also resulted in better recall of product/brand.

Alpert et al. (2005)

75 students

Music mood

Purchase intention

Music used to evoke emotions congruent with the symbolic meaning of product purchase increases purchase intention.

Zhu and Meyers-Levy (2005)

77/96 students

Music meaning (embodied/ referential)

Product perception

Processing more sensitive to referential meaning. (Continued)

732   Allan Table 35.2  (Continued) Independent Variables

Dependent Variables

Citation

Sample

Results

Allan (2006)

111 students

Music/ significance

Attention Brand recall

Popular music can be personally significant to some individuals and when used in advertising can affect attention and memory.

Shen and Chen (2006)

130 students

Music fit

Ad attitude

Music that doesn’t fit can have an adverse effect on attitudes toward the ad.

Lavack et al. (2008)

397 students

Music fit

Brand/ad attitude

Music fit positive for both.

Allan (2010)

82 students

Product placement/music

Brand recall

Brands recall better in narrative than in song.

Meyers-Levy and Zhu (2010)

47 males/ 51 females

Music meaning (embodied/ referential)

Product perception/ gender

Females sensitive to embodied/ referential meaning. Males only sensitive to referential meaning.

Apaolaza et al. (2010)

540 students

Music emotion

Brand/endorser perception

Music positively affects both.

Chou and Lien (2010)

276 students

Music nostalgia/ relevance

Ad attitude

Music nostalgia and relevance positively affect ad attitude.

Sharma (2011)

148 students

Background music

Ad recall

No background in talk program positively affects recall.

Ziv et al. (2011) 62 students

Background music

Ad attitude

Music can manipulate/bias mental judgment.

Yeoh and North (2012)

90 in sample under­ graduates

Music fit

Brand preference

Music fit raises product salience.

Oakes and North (2013)

366 students

Music genre (dance/classical)

Brand image

Dance: modern, exciting, and trendy image. Classical: sophisticated image.

Vermeulen et al. (2014)

439 students

Music appeal

Brand attitude

Hearing liked or disliked music while being exposed to a product did not directly affect product preferences.

MartínSantana et al. (2015)

987 sample (18–55)

Background music

Bhattacharya et al. (2017)

16 sample (18–53)

Background music (strategic/ tactical)

Spokesperson credibility/ advertising effectiveness Ad attitude

Music shows potential to positively affect source credibility and ad effectiveness. Strategic music ads liked more than tactical or no music at all.

Commercial Sound   733 For instance, the presence of music was shown to affect how a viewer feels when looking at print ads (Morris & Boone, 1998). Musical fit (e.g., how well the music fits the ad message or the brand) resulted in a better attitude toward the ad (North et al., 2004; Shen & Chen, 2006). Chou and Lien (2010) found that music nostalgia and relevance can positively affect ad attitude. Brooker and Wheatley (1994), however, reported no effect of music placement on attitude toward the ad. Likewise, Macklin (1988) reported no effect of music presence on attitude toward the ad with children. In an electrophysiological study that monitored electrical brain responses of participants watching/listening to TV and radio ads, Bhattacharya, Zioga, and Lewis (2017) observed an increased and sustained neural effect of “strategic” (same background music used across different ads for the same brand) versus “tactical” (different background music used across different ad campaigns for the same brand) or no music in both types of ads. Attitude Toward the Song. Allan (2014) found high likeability for song, artist, and brand in television ads in general, and in particular, when the song and artist were considered in terms of being a favorite with preference toward original vocal integration. This study also found high likeability for song, artist, and brand in television ads in general, and in particular, when song and artist were a favorite especially when an original vocal. Further, it was also found that favorite song genres were evenly divided between classic rock, pop, and hip-hop and that autobiographical memory triggered by one’s favorite song was overwhelmingly positive. (For more research on listener preferences for popular music and song, see also Léveillé Gauvin’s chapter in this volume, especially Table 39.1). Attitude Toward the Brand. Mitchell and Olson (1981) argued that a consumer’s attitude or “internal evaluation” of a brand has always been an important consideration in marketing research. It is not surprising, then, that a considerable amount of investigation into music’s effect on attitude toward the brand (ATTB) has been undertaken with a variety of variables and results. Gorn (1982) observed that hearing liked or disliked music can affect product preferences, but his results have not been replicated (e.g., Allen & Madden,  1985; Kellaris & Cox,  1989; Pitt & Abratt,  1988). The presence of music (Blondie’s “Tide Is High”) had a facilitative effect on brand attitude (shampoo and its functional performance) in the low-involvement condition and a distracting effect for those in the cognitive involvement condition (C. W. Park & Young, 1986) and can positively affect brand perception (Apaolaza-Ibáñez, Zander, & Hartmann, 2010). Yeoh and North (2012) observed that musical fit can influence product choice when consumers do not have a brand preference. Music genre can also influence brand image. For instance, Oakes and North (2013) observed that when used in an ad for a fictitious university, dance music was viewed as modern, exciting, and trendy, while classical resulted in a more sophisticated perceived image for the learning environment (and higher fees!). Music presence, however, was also shown to have either no effects (Morris & Boone, 1998) or negative effects (Shen & Chen, 2006) on attitude depending on its fit. As to how the process of attitude change toward the brand occurs, it has been suggested that it might be a belief-based rather than an affect-based change (Middlestadt et al., 1994). Brooker and Wheatley (1994) reported no effect of placement of the music on attitude toward the brand. Macklin (1988) also reported no effect of the presence of music on attitude toward the brand with children.

734   Allan Attitude Toward the Spokesperson. Spokespersons are widely used in advertising. The combination of spokesperson and music are not as common and even less commonly researched in combination with music. Wheatley and Brooker (1994) examined cognitive response toward, and recall of, a radio advertisement for a low-involvement product (ice cream) with the objective of determining the effects of two peripheral, non-content message cues (music and spokesperson) in a distraction situation (watching a silent driver training film). The results indicated “a negative impact of the music on the recall of the advertisement but more positive cognitive response [attitude] to the advertisement if they liked the music” (pp. 197–199). In a more recent study, Martín-Santana et al. (2015) analyzed the influence of music and congruency with the radio advertising message on spokespersons’ credibility and advertising effectiveness. The results from a sample of 987 radio listeners suggested the potential of music in terms of advertising effectiveness and spokesperson credibility. Music appeared to have enhanced cognitive advertising effectiveness (attention and recall) and affective advertising effectiveness (attitude toward ad and brand). Brand, Message, and Ad Recall. Recall of the brand name and message is obviously a primary consideration in the evaluation of the effectiveness of music in advertising. When the music fit, some studies have shown that the message processing of the ad was enhanced (e.g., MacInnis & Park, 1991; North et al., 2004). Highly involving music formats (genres) have been shown to improve recall in radio advertising (Sullivan, 1990), but recall has been observed to be higher for radio commercials containing no background music in a talk program compared to commercials with no background in a music program (Sharma, 2011). Different music treatments (original and altered vocals, instrumentals, jingles, silence) have been shown to affect recall differently under varied conditions (Allan, 2005b; Olsen, 1995; Roehm, 2001; Wallace, 1991, 1994; Yalch, 1991). The presence or absence of music has also been shown to be both attention-getting (Park & Young, 1986) and distracting (Wheatley & Brooker, 1994). The placement (Brooker & Wheatley, 1994) or the presence (Macklin, 1988) of music was not observed to affect recall. Sharma (2011) found ad recall better without background in a talk program. Musical fit, however, was shown to stimulate better recall of brands (North et al., 2004; Shen & Chen, 2006). For further discussion on background music and brand and message recall, see Fraser’s chapter in this volume. Ad Time. It has been argued that, under some circumstances, there is a disparity between objective time and perceived duration of the ad and that the latter is affected by external stimuli like music (Kellaris & Mantel, 1994, 1996). Arousal was found to moderate the influence of stimulus congruity on perceived time such that congruity contributed positively to retrospective duration estimates among subjects exposed to soothing (vs. arousing) music (Kellaris & Mantel, 1996). While not a lot of attention has been given to the perceived duration of an ad, it is an important topic to study because of the high cost of advertising time for radio and television ads. The implications of objective time versus perceived time involve the potential benefits to the advertiser of increasing memory for the ad while reducing its length (60-second vs. 30-second commercial).

Commercial Sound   735 Pleasure and Arousal. It has been argued that music is an especially powerful stimulus for affecting moods (Bruner, 1990). Thus, it is maybe a bit surprising that music’s potential in advertising to affect moods primarily through pleasure and arousal garnered a significant amount of attention in the 1990s but not much since. During that time, it was observed that arousing music was found to produce greater degrees of mood enhancement, thus positively affecting purchase intention (Alpert & Alpert,  1990; Alpert et al., 2005; Kellaris & Mantel, 1996; Morris & Boone, 1998). Music tempo (fast), which has often been shown to be arousing, was also shown to have positive effects on behavioral intent (Kellaris & Kent, 1991). Purchase Intention. Since purchase intention or conation was first defined as “behavior directed toward action” (Shanteau & Ptacek, 1983, p. 149), it has been one of the most difficult advertising effects to research but arguably the most important. With regard to purchase intention and music, the results are mixed, with some studies finding significant effects (Alpert & Alpert, 1990; Alpert et al., 2005; Kellaris & Kent, 1991) and others yielding no significant effects (Brooker & Wheatley, 1994; Morris & Boone, 1998). The placement of music was shown to invite attention to the message and motivate consumers to process the message and facilitate the potential to purchase (Brooker & Wheatley, 1994). More specifically, placement of music in the commercial had significant effects on information recall and purchase intention with directional effects on attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand. The effect of music tempo was shown to have had contradictory results, with some reporting an indirect effect on purchase intention (Kellaris & Kent, 1991) and some reporting no effect (Brooker & Wheatley, 1994; Morris & Boone, 1998). Lastly, the combination of music interspersed with silence has also been shown to be attentiongetting, resulting in the enhancement of purchase intention (Olsen, 1995). Popular Music and Lyrics. Music lyrics in advertising can be used to reinforce the advertising message, narrative, or both. In a content analysis of 1,000 TV commercials, Stewart and Furse (1986) observed that only 12% used lyrics to directly convey the advertising message. Allan (2008) found that popular music lyrics were more likely to be relevant to the narrative in the commercial than the product or service in 3,456 TV ads. In another study, Allan (2010) looked at brands in lyrics and found that the recall of a familiar brand in a song was not as effective as the brand in the advertising message. Anisimova et al. (2014) analyzed 96 Levi’s TV commercials and suggested that music and lyrics in advertising should go beyond merely informing consumers about products but also communicate clear advantages to differentiate the brand and enhance brand equity. Three strategies were recommended: evoking feelings, identification, and storytelling.

Conclusion Music in advertising is ubiquitous. Past, present, and future favorite songs can as easily be found in ads. Popular brands continue to make their way into songs by favorite bands. Music has been shown to capture attention, to be remembered, to facilitate attitude

736   Allan f­ormation and fruition, and to increase the likelihood of purchase. Popular culture has seen the inclusion of music and advertising into its exclusive club, although often without invitation. It is clear that music in advertising will continue to be cheered or jeered. For some it is the happy marriage (Allan, 2005), for others it is an arranged one (Burns, 1996), and still others have come to accept it as a compromise for artists in the digital age (Klein, Meier, & Powers, 2017) as the antagonisms between popular music and advertising fade (Eckhardt & Bradshaw, 2014). Most do agree that it is unethical when it causes harm to either artist or consumer (Primack, McClure, Li, & Sargent, 2014). As popular as music may be as a cue, there is still much more advertising research to be conducted. While the platforms of television and radio have been quite well researched, technological advances have provided many new delivery systems for songs and ads. Generations get a lot of attention, with each new one becoming more and more receptive to the integration of popular music in commercials, but many variables such as gender and culture need further investigation. There is still a large research gap in the use of music genres in ads, with little known as to why there is a majority of classic rock and contemporary music in commercials. It does appear that the relationship between band (music) and brand can be mutually beneficial. The volume of commercial sound continues to increase and so does the need for future research. Music in advertising is here to stay, and play.

Author Note This chapter is an expanded and updated version of a shorter article that appeared online only until 2014 as “Sound Advertising: A Review of the Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Music in Commercials on Attention, Memory, Attitudes, and Purchase Intention,” on Dr. Stuart Fischoff ’s media psychology research site at California State University. The author retained the rights to the text and tables, and they appear in this chapter for the first time in print.

Recommended Reading Allan, D. (2015). This note’s for you. New York, NY: Business Experts Press. Graakjaer, N. J. (2015). Analyzing music in advertising. Milton Park, Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Klein, B. (2010). As heard on TV: Popular music in advertising. Milton Park, Abingdon, UK: Ashgate. Levitin, D. J. (2006). This is your brain on music. New York, NY: Penguin.

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chapter 36

M usic W ith th e M essage i n Mi n d Cognitive Responses to Background Music in Advertising Cynthia Fraser

Multimedia advertisements are designed with at least three primary goals. An advertisement should capture attention, viewers should process the brand and message, and that brand and message should be remembered long term (Wedel & Pieters, 2000). To attract the attention of potential consumers or to create a positive brand image (Bruner, 1990), advertisers add background music. Though background music can encourage audience focus on an advertisement and support a favorable brand image, some research in marketing shows that the background music also distracts viewers, diverts attention away from brand and message processing, reduces message elaboration, and lowers message recall (Olsen,  1995,  1997), and that the degree of these effects varies across particular music backgrounds (Fraser,  2014; Fraser & Bradford, 2013). This chapter traces advances in our knowledge and understanding of how background music influences consumers’ learning and memory of brand and message elements in ads. First, early models focusing on comparison of brand message recall with and without a music background are reviewed. Next, research documenting the preattentive processing of background sound changes is presented. Following this is a review of recent research on brand message recall comparing music backgrounds differing along structural characteristics and frequency of change in backgrounds. Then, recent work on music-evoked images, influenced by Leonard  B.  Meyer’s (1956) research on the meaning in music, is reviewed. Finally, directions for future research are suggested.

Music with the Message in Mind   743

Background Music Distraction and Reduced Brand Message Recall Early empirical research in marketing focused on comparison of brand and message recall from ads with and without music elements. Park and Young (1986) compared message element recall from a shampoo television commercial with and without background music with lyrics. The background was a popular hit song by Blondie, “Tide Is High,” with lyrics unrelated to shampoo or message elements. They found that the music background tended to distract viewers and reduced information processing of message elements. In another study, Sewall and Sarel (1986) compared 31 commercials for a diverse set of products, some with and some without music backgrounds. Shoppers at a mall were approached and interviewed while three of the commercials played in the background. The next day, unaided and aided recall of the ads were assessed by phone interviews. (First, without specific prompts, unaided recall of ads was requested; then, aided recall was requested after prompting participants with the mention of the brand category and then the mention of the advertised brand.) Message recall required respondents to play back some specific and correct ad claims. Analysis of the variation in message recall, which controlled for other differences across the ads, suggested a negative impact of music backgrounds on brand recall, though this impact was not significant. Further, Anand and Sternthal (1990) compared thoughts (including message elements, counterarguments, and other unrelated thoughts) recalled during three, five, or eight ad exposures for a message read condition and a message sung with piano accompaniment condition for a radio advertisement for Mountain Dew. They found significantly fewer thoughts reported when the message was sung with accompaniment. This result was taken as evidence that the addition of music increased processing demands, distracting from message processing. These three early studies are built on the assumption that the addition of music to an ad overtaxes working memory, making processing of brand, message, and music elements difficult. Taken together, this research suggests that music elements (either with lyrics unrelated to the brand or message, with the message sung, or with presence of a music background) increase processing demands, distract, and reduce message recall. Gorn, Goldberg, Chattopadhyay, and Litvack (1991) compared message recall and recognition following exposure to a television ad for apple juice, either with or without music composed for the commercial. This was the first study to hold the advertised product and message constant, varying only the presence or absence of an instrumental music background. The results showed that adding music to the ad reduced both message recall and recognition. Olsen (1995) used a similar design, which held the advertised product and message constant, manipulating the absence or presence of music background, either throughout the ad or only during moments when the message was not being read. In an ad for cellular phones, a rock music background faded to silence when message elements were read, then faded back in. The combination of music with

744   Fraser silence during a verbally delivered message was most effective and reduced music distraction from the brand and message: The contrast highlighted message elements and produced greater message recall. Results of these two studies suggest that adding background music to an ad creates distraction, reducing brand message recall. Tavassoli and Lee (2003) compared distraction from background music with distraction from visuals. Text in ads was either in Chinese characters or English words, and the sample was composed of Singaporean bilinguals. In an implicit learning context typical of multimedia advertising exposure, they compared distraction from advertising messages posed by “irrelevant sound” (Jones, 1995 Salame & Baddeley, 1989) with distraction from visuals. Respondents were asked to recall ad claims for a tennis racket. The presence of fast-tempo rock background music, unrelated to the brand or message with no visual images, was more distracting than the presence of visual images with no music when text was presented in English. (Since there was no condition with both visuals and background music, the main effect of background music was not assessed.) Kellaris, Cox, and Cox (1993) were the first to suggest that not all music backgrounds are alike and to focus on congruency between the music and the message of the ad. They compared multiple music backgrounds and a control without music, holding constant the advertised brand and message. Specifically, radio ads for multiple brands (including an adventure park, restaurants, and a bar) were accompanied by music thought to be congruent with, or to fit, the ad’s message; music thought not to be congruent, not to fit; or no music. (As an example, soft Latin music would be congruent with a romantically themed Spanish restaurant, but rock music would not be congruent.) No differences were found in message recall, though both brand recall and message recognition were higher when music fit than when it did not. For example, using Chinese music in the background of an ad for a Chinese restaurant was more effective than using new age music. Poor choices for background music add distraction, further reducing brand recall.

Working Memory Research in psychology led to a better understanding of working memory, which in turn has led to advances in research in marketing on advertising brand message recall. Recent models of working memory assume that task processing is vulnerable to involuntary distraction, but that attention can be consciously reoriented away from the distraction and back to task processing (Cowan, 1995, 1999; Oberauer, 2002). Such models describe how processing of an advertised brand and message works. In a given moment, a limited number of sensory stimuli, such as brand, ad message, and background music elements, as well as related elements from long-term memory, are available for processing and integration, before decaying or being replaced by different incoming stimuli (Cowan, 2001; Lewandowsky & Oberauer, 2009; Oberauer, 2005). Some of these elements capture attention and are integrated, compared, or updated (Oberauer & Lange, 2009).

Music with the Message in Mind   745 In any given moment, processing is limited to a single chunk, or small set, of elements (Cowan, 2001; Oberauer & Bialkova, 2009). While working memory is virtually unlimited, it is limited at any particular moment. In the context of an advertisement presenting message elements set to background music, changes in the background music may be a source of involuntary distraction, drawing attention away from the brand and message. Surprising changes in the music background are compared with the brain’s model of expected sound, and that model of expected sound may be updated to reflect what has been recently heard (and what to expect to hear next). This distraction caused by surprising background music changes thus occupies and consumes the limited processing capacity, leaving elements of brand and message information unprocessed. Every second occupied with the processing of background music changes is a second that cannot be devoted to integration of brand and message elements for subsequent storage in long-term memory and later recall. Greater frequency of unexpected music background changes (such as key modulations or entry or exit of instruments) potentially distracts more often during the course of an ad, more frequently preventing the effective processing of brand and message elements and reducing message recall. Either brand message elements or background music elements can be processed in that moment, but not both.

Preemptive Processing of Changes in Background Music Research in cognitive psychology on the preemptive processing of background sounds (Berti & Schröger,  2003; Escera, Alho, Winkler, & Näätänen,  1998; Näätänen & Winkler,  1999; Schröger & Wolff,  1998) offers a critical explanation as to why background music changes influence message recall. Working memory stores incoming information to be understood and integrated before moving to long-term memory. However, working memory does not work in isolation of unrelated information, including unexpected threats that might require a reaction (Näätänen, 1992) as the brain preattentively screens the surrounding environment for relevant information. Thus, a balance exists between the processing of a task at hand, the involuntary switching of attention away from the task toward distractions from stimuli unrelated to the task, and the return of attention to the task. In other words, working memory and attention are closely linked (Cowan, 1999). Because the processing of auditory stimuli in the environment has biological relevance, it evolved, out of necessity, to become preattentive, automatic, and adaptive (Näätänen & Winkler, 1999), disrupting the ongoing processing of other stimuli (Berti & Schröger, 2003; Escera et al., 1998; Schröger & Wolff, 1998). Though this hard-wired response to sound changes evolved in our ancestors to ensure survival, it is observed for background sound changes of all types, whether threatening or benign.

746   Fraser Using electroencephalography (EEG), researchers have documented detection of changes in background sound. Those signs of detection are observed when background sound differs from the brain’s model of expected sounds, whether or not respondents are aware of the background changes, and even when they are absorbed in an unrelated task (Escera et al.,  1998; Koelsch & Jentschke,  2008; Näätänen & Winkler,  1999; Schröger, 1997; Winkler, Schröger, & Cowan, 2001). For example, Koelsch and Jentschke (2008) played background music with infrequent, unexpected harmonies while participants viewed a silent movie with subtitles, a scenario that bears some similarity to television advertising. Even though participants were watching the movie, they responded unconsciously to the surprising chords, and EEG evidence of distraction was observed. This neuroscientific literature provides clear evidence that the processing of nonthreatening changes in background music is obligatory and occurs without awareness. Background sound changes are automatically processed first, before visual brand and message stimuli. In any given moment, processing capacity in working memory is limited. In a contest for processing in a moment, background music changes win over brand and message elements, because our brains have developed to detect and process sound changes due to their importance to survival. This research was a game changer in the study of background music influences on brand message recall. Given the higher priority of background sound changes, the potential distraction from brand message processing became clear.

Quantifying Cognitive Responses to Changes in Diverse Backgrounds Recent models of working memory formulated by cognitive psychologists and work in neuroscience that revealed automatic, preattentive brain responses to surprising changes in background sound influenced researchers studying brand message response to background music in advertisements. Fraser and Bradford (2013) compared distraction levels from backgrounds that differed with respect to a number of surprising changes. More surprising background changes led to increased levels of distraction. Less distracting, more effective backgrounds could then be identified by their structural music characteristics. Distraction due to music background elements is the consequence of changes created by composers to capture and hold listeners’ attention. (See Léveillé Gauvin’s discussion on compositional practices and the attention economy in this volume.) When hearing music with harmonic changes or the entry and exit of instruments, listeners necessarily process those audio changes rather than processing the brand message elements. The proportion of processing time diverted away from brand message elements to process the changes in the music background depends on the background music change frequency. Sudden changes in sound are recognized by the brain as deviations, following

Music with the Message in Mind   747 their comparison with the brain’s synthesized model of expected sound, the ingenious product of auditory scene analysis (Bregman, 1990). Bruner (1990) identified three categories of structural music characteristics that could potentially influence brand message recall: pitch or harmony, texture (number and type of instruments), and tempo. Changes in harmonic, textural, and temporal music background characteristics are the tools used by the composer to convey meaning to audiences (Meyer, 1956, 1973). Composers create scores that feature harmonic changes and entry and exit of a variety of unique instruments to capture listeners’ attention by violating expectancies (Meyer, 1956, 1973). When expectancies are violated by changes in the music, processing of nonmusical stimuli, such as brand and message elements, may be disrupted.

Harmonic Changes Composers often modulate from one key to another, sometimes only briefly, introducing unexpected tones from a new key, triggering cognitive processing of the unexpected new tones (Janata et al., 2002). Hearing the first several notes of a piece, listeners quickly (and often unconsciously) identify musical keys and expect to hear the notes in that key (Tillmann, Bharucha, & Bigand, 2000). Reaction to notes heard outside a certain scale or key may be automatic and preattentive (Brattico, Tervaniemi, Näätänen, & Peretz, 2006), and children as young as five years old detect key changes (Trainor & Trehub, 1994). It is not unusual to hear half a dozen key modulations in a 60-second excerpt, creating frequent distraction. In background music with more key modulations, there are potentially more interruptions of message processing and reduced recall.

Textural Changes An instrument’s sound is uniquely identified by its timbre. Even without training, most listeners easily recognize that notes from a cello differ from sounds made by a trombone, a piano, or a clarinet. Listeners sort sounds by their timbres, grouping together sounds with similar timbres into a common stream assumed to emanate from a common source, as shown in both cognitive and neuroscientific studies (Bregman, 1990 Singh & Bregman, 1997; Tervaniemi, Winkler, & Näätänen, 1997). Following the principles of auditory scene analysis (Bregman, 1990), when background music includes a variety of instruments with distinct timbres, harmonic changes heard from each distinct instrument tend to be processed as a separate, unique stream. Since the brain must track each of the multiple changing streams, more timbres potentially multiply distractions. An EEG study by Fujioka, Trainor, Ross, Kakigi, and Pantev (2005) demonstrated that untrained listeners are able to track changes heard in one of several instrumental parts, and that their brains respond to changes in any of the instrumental parts. Saupe, Koelsch, and Rübsamen (2010) also found that untrained listeners could detect changes

748   Fraser in one of several parts with distinct timbres. Combining contrasting instruments with distinct timbres adds variety and interest to music (Sloboda, 2005), yet each additional unique instrument may multiply distractions from harmonic changes, as each change is heard from each instrument, increasing the frequency of change and potential distraction.

Temporal Influence on Change Density Tempo also governs the rate of distraction from background changes. Faster tempos produce denser stimulation and more frequent changes. At faster tempos, there are fewer opportunities for brand and message processing since processing is occupied by the background music changes. Hahn and Hwang (1999) argue that lower recall at faster tempos is attributable to increased workload; however, their results are more likely due to more frequent distraction. There, message recall from a TV ad with orchestral background was higher when tempo was moderate (90 beats per minute [bpm]) rather than faster (120 bpm). (Recall was also higher at the moderate tempo than at a slower tempo [60 bpm]. The orchestral background music used at all three tempos may have sounded peculiar at both the slower and the faster tempos, which may have contributed to distraction.) Oakes and North (2006) report that brand (but not message) recall from a radio ad was higher when a pop music background was played at a moderate tempo (90 bpm), relative to a much faster tempo (170 bpm). A single music background was also used in that study to compare tempos. (To accomplish their tempo manipulation, the faster background treatment consisted of more repetitions of a four-bar clip.) Results were attributed to better congruence of the slower music with the ad rather than the reduced distraction from the reduced rate of background change, though the latter would be an alternative explanation for results.

Temporal Influence on Sound Streaming Elucidating on principles of auditory scene analysis, Bregman (1990) demonstrated that streaming of background sounds into segregated streams associated with unique sources depends on the time elapsing between similar sounds. Similar sounds heard in close proximity become associated with a common source, or stream. Future sounds heard from an identified stream are then less distracting. Faster tempos reduce the time between similar sounds, enabling streaming and reducing distraction. Mayfield and Moss (1989) found that students perform financial calculations faster when the background music is faster. Amezcua, Guevara, and Ramos-Loyo (2005) also found that task response improves when music is faster. Auditory streaming provides an explanation for the results found by Hahn and Hwang (1999), which were not well explained by workload: Recall was higher at a moderate tempo relative to a slower tempo. More opportunities to stream background changes at faster tempos should reduce distraction,

Music with the Message in Mind   749 improving recall. Whether message recall response to faster tempos in an advertising background follows a U shape or an inverted U shape would depend on the relative strength of the two opposing tempo influences, increasing change density, versus increased streaming opportunities, with faster tempos. Moving beyond marketing studies that used a single music background, Fraser and Bradford (2013) compared brand message recall response to multiple music backgrounds (classical and popular) for a set of six ads for product or service brands (a car, athletic shoes, an AIDS charity, a cellular service, a cat food, and a fitness water). Ad messages and visuals, presented in animated PowerPoint slides, were held constant. The backgrounds differed with respect to number of harmonic modulations, entry and exit of instruments with distinct timbres, and tempo. Backgrounds chosen from a larger sample were those considered good fits with the advertised brands in a pretest. A control condition employing brief sound effects was included as a baseline. We found that ad brand and message recall was lower with music backgrounds, compared to sound effects, and was influenced by key modulations, entry and exit of instruments with unique timbres, their interaction, and tempo. The number of key changes in a background reduced brand message recall, and that effect was magnified when more instruments were heard, multiplying key changes heard. For very slow- to moderate-paced backgrounds, the increased frequency of background changes at faster, moderate tempos reduced message recall. For moderate to faster backgrounds, message recall was reduced less at faster tempos, providing evidence that changes from similar sounds were being streamed, reducing distraction. Thus, brand message recall declined with increasing change frequency at faster tempos but improved with more streaming opportunities at faster tempos. Both marginal tempo influences depended on the number of key modulations and the number of distinct timbres. Background change distraction was compounded when harmonic changes were heard from multiple distinct instruments, requiring audience members to track and process each unique timbre stream, reducing recall. At faster tempos, changes were heard more frequently, increasing distraction frequency and reducing recall. However, faster tempos enabled streaming of similar changes, making repeated changes within a stream less distracting, reducing recall less. In more potentially distracting, denser backgrounds, with more key modulations and more timbres, message recall quickly eroded with increasing tempo, and only fast tempos enabled effective streaming to offset distraction. Fraser and Bradford (2013) further demonstrated that reducing the change frequency in a background improves brand message recall. Two of the music backgrounds used in their first experiment were altered to reduce the change frequency and improve recall. A piano background replaced an orchestral excerpt, reducing the number of distinct timbres from 11 to one. In the second background, a second artist’s slightly faster interpretation of one of the excerpts replaced the original, slightly slower recording. With either fewer timbres or the faster tempo and more streaming opportunities, background distraction was reduced, and brand message recall improved.

750   Fraser

Quantifying Cognitive Responses to Music-Evoked Images While structural characteristics influence distraction and brand message recall, other aspects of music are also influential. Building upon the contributions of Meyer’s (1956) seminal work, Fraser (2014) documented differences in distraction, as well as capacity to cue later brand and message recall between backgrounds prompting music-evoked images (MEIs). Meyer (1956,  1973) refers to meaning that listeners derive from music as either embodied or referential. Referential meaning refers to associations from music listening contexts, whereas embodied meaning refers to images prompted by structural aspects of the music. For music written to be enjoyed with others or listened to as background during daily routines, composers write “easy listening” homophonic music (in which a single instrument delivers the melody, with additional instruments providing harmony). Such simple homophonic structure enables referential meaning from associations with the context to emerge (Meyer, 1956, 1973). When heard again, referential MEIs emerge, prompting memories of the context in which the music was heard earlier, as well as the people who shared the listening experience. For example, after hearing Vivaldi’s Spring at a wedding, associations would be forged between that melody, the special occasion, and friends and family present. Hearing Spring again is likely to prompt images of the wedding and friends and family who were present. In a study of a large number of familiar popular music excerpts, Janata, Tomic, and Rakowski (2007) found that 30% of those excerpts prompted referential associations or MEIs. For music intended for consumption in concert halls, composers’ goals are often different. The music is typically written to provide cues that are more likely to evoke embodied MEIs through polyphonic music, in which the melody is passed from one instrument to another, and melodic layers form harmonies. The unique timbres of particular instruments conjure images of characters, sometimes good, other times evil; the environment, which might be stormy or peaceful; or events, perhaps, joyful, sorrowful, or frightening. Such polyphonic music features entry and exit of a variety of unique instruments, and numerous key modulations, to capture listeners’ attention by violating expectancies (Meyer, 1956, 1973). Processing of changes in the music leads to the formation of embodied MEIs. In the context of background music in an advertisement, a switch from processing of brand and message elements to the processing of MEIs from unexpected background sound creates an attentional postponement effect (Lewandowsky & Oberauer,  2009). Processing of MEIs occupies attention, delaying message processing and consuming the limited time available for refreshing of brand and message associations. The greater the capacity for a background to evoke MEIs, the smaller is the proportion of processing time remaining for message elements. More interesting music is, thus, likely to be more distracting.

Music with the Message in Mind   751 Reorienting the attention back to brand message representations, following a switch to the processing of MEIs from unexpected background change, can restore brand message processing. Reorienting, though, depends on an individual’s motivation (Escera & Corral, 2007; SanMiguel, Corral, & Escera, 2008). The processing of ad messages is voluntary and not usually highly motivating (Krugman, 1977). Only with sufficient interest would an ad viewer redirect attention back to brand and message elements to be integrated and stored, long term. Referential MEIs, which include memories of a past era or event with friends or family, are likely to be more interesting than brand or message elements. Referential MEIs invite self-referencing and elaboration (Meyer, 1956, 1973), which is more likely when information processed is autobiographical and related to personal experience (Burnkrant & Unnava,  1995), as would be the case for familiar music formerly enjoyed with others. If the MEIs evoked by familiar backgrounds are positive nostalgic memories, audience members may be distracted further from processing the brand and message elements as they reminisce on scenes from their past experiences, reducing the chances of reorientation of attention back to brand and message elements. While the good feelings triggered by referential MEIs may sometimes transfer to positive feelings about an advertised brand, the connection between brand name and message may not occur, and the intended learning from ads with a message component would be lost. Background music that evokes referential MEIs is prone to elaboration and can distract and reduce the processing of brand message elements and their recall. Associations between background music elements and brand message elements form during moments in working memory when they are processed together. Those linkages may then be stored in an associative network in long-term memory (Conway & PleydellPearce,  2000; Janata, Tomic, & Rakowski,  2007). Music backgrounds in ads create opportunities for new linkages between the music, MEIs, and the advertised brand and message, even if the music is unfamiliar and unrelated to the brand or message (Tavassoli & Lee, 2003). If brand elements are processed and linked to the music, hearing the same music later may cue recall of those brand elements (Tavassoli & Lee, 2003). With familiar backgrounds, the potential for long-term music cued recall may be even greater. This is because familiar backgrounds are less distracting as changes in the music are anticipated and less surprising. MEIs evoked by familiar backgrounds may facilitate later music cued recall if brand and message associations are linked to an existing network of nonbrand associations. Fraser (2014) compared 12 music backgrounds that evoked images congruent with one of five brands, and which differed with respect to characteristics expected to prompt either referential or embodied MEIs. Half were homophonic and half were polyphonic; five were familiar and seven were unfamiliar to the majority of respondents. Each of those backgrounds was paired with one of five product or service brands (hotel reservation service, cellular service, fitness water, a car, and a cat food) in an ad delivered with animated PowerPoint slides, holding message and visual elements constant, varying only the music backgrounds.

752   Fraser After viewing a set of ads for the five brands and completing a battery of lifestyle and demographic questions, respondents reported brand and message elements recalled, aided by a list of product or service categories, including the five categories advertised. One week later, respondents returned, listened to eight background music tracks (including the five that they had heard before in an ad), and reported images evoked. When a brand was mentioned, they were prompted to recall message elements from that brand’s ad. Factor analysis of those message elements revealed three MEI dimensions: two referential (autobiographical era or event, and special people) and one embodied of imagined scenes. Four of five music backgrounds high along the embodied factor, imagined scenes (e.g., a busy avenue in a bustling city, a tranquil forest), were polyphonic. Simpler, homophonic backgrounds prompted more referential MEIs of special people (e.g., my brother, my best friend). Short- and long-term recall were inversely related, illustrating the tradeoff that exists in choosing more effective backgrounds. Specifically, those backgrounds that produced higher-than-average short-term brand message integration and recall produced lowerthan-average long-term music cued brand message recall. Familiar backgrounds, which prompted referential MEIs, were more distracting and produced lower short-term recall; however, those were more successfully linked to the advertised brand and were more likely to cue later, long-term brand message recall. The reverse was found for unfamiliar, polyphonic backgrounds that prompted more embodied MEIs. While distracting less, resulting in higher short-term brand message recall, later long-term recall cued by those backgrounds was lower. (The single background with both higher short-term and long-term recall was the background that evoked no MEIs, Copland’s Fanfare to the Common Man.) Therefore, advertisers must make a choice: Select backgrounds that evoke embodied MEIs to maximize short-term brand and message integration and recall, or choose backgrounds that evoke referential MEIs to maximize later music cued brand and message recall.

Conclusions and Directions for Future Research With this recent evidence, it is clear that not all music backgrounds are alike. The structural background music characteristics—including key modulations, entry and exit of distinct timbres, and tempo, as well as music-evoked images (MEIs)—influence the level of distraction created by backgrounds, as well as short- and long-term brand message recall, as a consequence. Simpler familiar homophonic backgrounds that are more likely to evoke referential MEIs are most distracting but are more easily linked to advertising brand and message elements and better cue later recall. More complex polyphonic backgrounds are more likely to evoke embodied MEIs. Those with relatively fewer changes in key and timbres per beat per minute are less distracting, reducing short-term recall less, but are less capable of cuing later, long-term recall. There are clearly vast

Music with the Message in Mind   753 ­ ifferences between congruent music backgrounds, based on structural characteristics d of the music and familiarity, as well as their power to manifest MEIs. Advertisers can now screen potential music backgrounds, increasing chances of higher short-term or long-term brand message recall, depending on campaign goals. There remains research to be done to extend our knowledge and understanding of music background influences on brand message learning and recall. Three directions are apparent: the impact of ad exposures, differences in cognitive responses across cultures, and the influence of structural characteristics that have not yet been examined. First, future researchers ought to vary the number of exposures to ads, including multiple and diverse background music tracks. It would be valuable to learn whether or not more exposures lead to habituation of changes in the music backgrounds, lessening surprises inherent in the structural music characteristics composing backgrounds, potentially reducing distraction and preserving brand message recall. Repeated exposure may also potentially increase later, long-term recall cued by the background music. Second, few studies have compared responses of consumers outside the United States. While background music is expected to distract any audience member, the level of distraction may differ across cultures. In cultures in which the spoken language is tonal, changes in the background may be more easily detected, which could potentially increase distraction, lowering recall. For instance, some studies have shown that speakers of tonal languages have enhanced musical pitch perception (e.g., see Pfordresher & Brown, 2009). Conversely, it is also possible that consumers whose native language is tonal may more quickly habituate to background music changes, reducing distraction and enhancing brand message recall. Third, there are other structural music characteristics that have, thus far, been ignored. Those include rests built into music by composers to emphasize a musical line; type of key, major or minor; and instrumentation. Brief pauses during rests could serve to highlight ad message elements, like the silence programmed into ads by Olson (1995), perhaps enhancing brand message recall. There are likely to be differences in MEIs stemming from use of a major versus minor key. Type and extent of percussion may also influence distraction, recall, and MEIs. While our knowledge and understanding of cognitive responses to background music have grown with advances in research, much remains to be learned. What is clear from the extant research is that all background music is not alike, and all listeners are not alike. Future research must address these points and consider the diverse backgrounds of consumers of advertisements that employ music backgrounds.

Recommended Readings Bregman, A. S. (1990). Auditory scene analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fraser, C. (2014). Music-evoked images: Music that inspires them and their influences on brand and message recall in the short and the longer term. Psychology & Marketing, 31(10), 813–827.

754   Fraser Fraser, C., & Bradford, J. A. (2013). Music to your brain: Background music changes are processed first, reducing ad message recall. Psychology & Marketing, 30(1), 62–75. Meyer, L. B. (1956). Emotion and meaning in music. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Oberauer, K. (2002). Access to information in working memory: Exploring the focus of attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 28(3), 411–421.

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756   Fraser Pfordresher, P. Q., & Brown, S. (2009). Enhanced production and perception of musical pitch in tone language speakers. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 71, 1385–1398. Salame, P., & Baddeley, A. D. (1989, February). Effects of background music on phonological short-term memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Experimental Psychology, 41, 107–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640748908402355 SanMiguel, I., Corral, M., & Escera, C. (2008). When loading working memory reduces distraction: Behavioral and evidence from an auditory-visual distraction paradigm. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(7), 1131–1145. Saupe, K., Koelsch, S., & Rübsamen, R. (2010). Spatial selective attention in a complex auditory environment such as polyphonic music. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 127(1), 472–480. Schröger, E. (1997). On the detection of auditory deviants: A preattentive activation model. Psychophysiology, 34, 245–257. Schröger, E., & Wolff, C. (1998). Behavioral and electrophysiological effects of task-irrelevant sound change: A new distraction paradigm. Cognitive Brain Research, 7, 71–87. Sewall, M.  A., & Sarel, D. (1986, January). Characteristics of radio commercials and their recall effectiveness. Journal of Marketing, 50, 52–60. Singh, P. G., & Bregman, A. S. (1997). The influence of different timbre attributes on the perceptual segregation of complex-tone sequences. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 102, 1943–1952. Sloboda, J. A. (2005). Exploring the musical mind: Cognition, emotion, ability, function. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Tavassoli, N. T., & Lee, Y. H. (2003, November). The differential interaction of auditory and visual advertising elements with Chinese and English. Journal of Marketing Research, 60, 468–480. Tervaniemi, M., Winkler, I., & Näätänen, R. (1997). Preattentive categorization of sounds by timbre as revealed with event-related potentials. NeuroReport, 8, 2571–2574. Tillmann, B., Bharucha, J., & Bigand, E. (2000). Implicit learning of tonality: A self-organizing approach. Psychological Review, 107(4), 885–913. Trainor, L. J., & Trehub, S. E. (1994). Key membership and implied harmony in Western tonal music: Developmental perspectives. Perception & Psychophysics, 56(2), 125–132. Wedel, M., & Pieters, R. G. M. (2000, Fall). Eye fixations on advertisements and memory for brands: A model and findings. Marketing Science, 19, 297–312. Winkler, I., Schröger, E., & Cowan, N. (2001). The role of large-scale memory organization in the mismatch negativity event-related brain potential. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13(1), 59–71.

chapter 37

M usica l Congru it y i n A dv ertisi ng Established and Emerging Themes Steve Oakes and Morteza Abolhasani

Music is considered to be one of the most important executional cues in advertisements. It is ubiquitous in the context of television and radio advertising, with more than 94% of advertisements incorporating music (Allan, 2008). Music accounts for a significant commercial advantage in the context of advertising by producing favorable associations with the product or brand (Gorn,  1982), contributing to the message (Hecker, 1984; Hung, 2000), and attracting consumers’ attention and enhancing message recall (Yalch, 1991). As Hecker (1984) points out, when appropriately employed, “music . . . is the catalyst of advertising. It augments pictures and colors words, and often adds a form of energy available through no other source” (p. 7). It is commonly used as a background feature to create memorable advertisements capable of altering consumers’ attitudes and evaluations, which may in turn result in enhancing consumers’ purchase intent (Lavack, Thakor, & Bottausci, 2008). Advertising agencies and client companies spend sizeable fees for the rights to use popular songs. For example, Microsoft paid $3 million to use the Rolling Stones’ song “Start Me Up” to be used in launching their advertising campaign (highlighting the lyrical association of “Start Me Up” with the Microsoft Windows boot procedure). Such expenditure suggests that the annual fees paid for licensing music in advertising are likely to be worth billions of dollars worldwide (Oakes,  2007), thus underlining the need for increased research in this area. Nowadays, music permeates people’s everyday lives both voluntarily and involuntarily. Approximately 40% to 50% of individuals’ waking hours are spent either passively or actively listening to music (North, Hargreaves, & Hargreaves,  2004; Sloboda, O’Neill, & Ivaldi,  2001). Consequently, the omnipresence of music in people’s everyday lives, especially through exposure to advertisements, has attracted marketing researchers’ attention.

758   Oakes and Abolhasani Musical congruity is a term that is used to replace alternative but roughly similar terms such as musical fit (e.g., MacInnis & Park, 1991). It refers to the extent to which a piece of music used in an advertisement conforms to, or detracts from, the main message of the advertisement and the brand. Perceived congruity between music and the brand is a vital aspect of music in advertising. MacInnis and Park (1991) point out that music that fits the advertisement (regarding its relevance and appropriateness for the central advertising message and brand) could also affect consumers in terms of their engagement with the advertisement. They suggest that when elements of a stimulus set correspond with other items in the set, the individual parts are not perceived as separable and may not compete with each other for cognitive resources, consequently creating coherent, emergent meaning. Kellaris, Cox, and Cox (1993) propose that increased audience attention to music enhances advertising message reception when messagecongruent thoughts are evoked by the music. Moreover, Oakes (2007) argues that musical congruity may also contribute to communication effectiveness through enhancing purchase intent, brand attitude, recall facilitation, and affective response. Heckler and Childers (1992) propose a twin-component congruity framework based on expectancy and relevancy. Expectancy refers to the degree to which a piece of information falls into some predetermined pattern or structure evoked by an advertisement, whereas relevancy is concerned with the extent to which a piece of information contributes to the identification of the primary theme to be delivered by the advertisement. They propose that recall varies between congruent and incongruent information as unexpected information frequently produces better recall than expected information, while irrelevant information results in consistently inferior recall compared to relevant information. Decoding unexpected information in advertisements depends in part on consumers’ capability to resolve the incongruity. For example, for incongruity in an advertisement to be effective, consumers must be able to successfully decode the implicit advertising message and make sense of the advertisement. As Berlyne (1971) points out, cognitive elaboration as a result of unexpected relevant information may be rewarding when the cleverness of the incongruity with respect to the main advertising message is understood, while unexpected irrelevant information may lead to frustration rather than incongruity resolution. Unexpected relevant music in advertisements may direct the viewers’ attention toward the elements that the advertisers want to focus on. Discussions of incongruity in advertising acknowledge research on the incongruent perspective in film music where apparently mismatched film-music pairings may be deconstructed and interpreted in various ways. In this context, different semantic and sensory information provided by the visual and auditory components of a film may influence the interpretation of meaning (Ireland, 2015). Although the effects of music in advertising are widely acknowledged by practitioners and researchers, musical congruity in advertising is a disputed concept (Oakes, 2007; Scott, 1990). Indeed, a potential danger associated with interdisciplinary research is that different meanings may be ascribed to the same terms by different disciplines. For example, “even within psychology studies, ‘congruence’ and ‘incongruence’ are used in different ways to refer to perceived fit and/or appropriateness” (Ireland,  2015, p. 49; see also Ireland,  2018) in a

Musical Congruity in Advertising   759 musical context. Thus, there is a need for consolidation and appraisal of the extant body of literature in the area of music and advertising to identify how musical congruity influences consumers.

Music in the Context of Advertising The use of music helps create a logical and continuous flow in the advertisement. It enhances advertisement structure by connecting a sequence of visual images or episodes to each other. From a structure/continuity perspective, music can play various roles in advertisements. Alpert and Alpert (1991) propose that music can play a dominant (foreground) role by communicating brand-specific song lyrics as a distinctive element in an advertisement. It can also take a background role in the advertisement where the main message can be transferred through a voiceover or via written information. Music can enhance memorability of the advertising message as well as other components of an advertisement. It serves as an element to help recall the brand messages and advertising information. The influence of music on recall of advertising information has been extensively studied by various researchers (e.g., Guido et al.,  2016; Oakes & North, 2006). For example, Guido et al. (2016) demonstrate how background music that ends abruptly distracts consumers’ attention, reducing memory for products and advertising messages compared to music with a regular ending or fading-out ending. They show that background music with a truncated ending distracts consumer attention and reduces memory for products and messages compared to background music that ends with a note from the chord of the dominant tonality. Advertising involves delivering a persuasive message that can facilitate brand identification and influence consumers’ purchase decisions. Advertisers use music to attract potential consumers’ attention and create a positive brand image. Indeed, studies show that more than 90% of television advertisements use music as one of the main background features, indicating the great potential of music as a communication tool (Allan,  2008; Kellaris et al., 1993). Music helps advertisers convey the message more effectively and also helps make the message linger in memory. However, advertising practitioners need to be wary of the potentially detrimental effects of music on consumers’ affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses to advertisements (see the chapter by Fraser in this volume). Although music is capable of enhancing brand image and enhancing advertisement recall (Kellaris et al., 1993), it can also play a distracting role in message processing, undermining the elaboration of the message being conveyed, and reducing message recall (Anand & Sternthal, 1990; Olsen, 1995; Stewart, Farmer, & Stannard, 1990). Thus, selecting the most appropriate background music for advertisements that is congruent with the product and the brand image plays a vital role in facilitating the successful positioning of the goods or services, as well as preventing the adverse effects of using less effective music. There have been various approaches to the incorporation of music in advertising since the emergence of the artful use of sound in television and radio advertisements, as discussed later.

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Various Approaches to the Incorporation of Music in Advertising Audio Logos. One technique for integrating music into advertisements is to use an audio logo, usually playing at the start or at the end of an ad. Such sounds play a central role in branding, and distinctive audio logos such as the Windows chimes are known throughout the world. Sonic branding may be defined as “the strategic use of sound to create auditory identity for a brand, leveraging sound as information” (Krishnan, Kellaris, & Aurand, 2012, p. 275). For example, Intel uses a sonic logo that is a short threesecond piece accompanied by its visual logo at the end of television advertisements for its various products. This short sonic logo can grab consumers’ attention and enhance brand recall, acting as a sonic identification symbol that may be as powerful as their visual symbol. (For further discussion on sonic logos or “sogos,” see the chapter by Krishnan and Kellaris in this volume). Popular Music in Advertisements. Popular songs used in advertisements can shape interpretations of the visual elements. Nike was the pioneer in establishing a new approach to advertising music by licensing the Beatles song “Revolution” in 1987. Nike attempted to establish a congruent linkage between the underlying countercultural message of the song and Nike’s own corporatized version of counterculture (Abolhasani, Oakes, & Oakes, 2017). The increasing use of popular music in advertisements demonstrates how advertisers and client companies aspire to associate their products with the success and popularity of famous musicians. However, consumers have sought “to prevent the erosion of their countercultural identities through criticizing the Nike relationship with John Lennon’s idealistic social protest song ‘Revolution’ ” (Abolhasani et al., 2017, p. 479). This demonstrates resistance to the way in which intrinsically mismatched “cultural symbols are co-opted by the mainstream,” thereby devaluing these cultural icons through the commodification process (Schiele & Venkatesh, 2016, p. 4). Instrumental Versions of Popular Songs. Lyrics of pre-existing songs used in advertising may distract and add to consumers’ cognitive load if the lyrics appear irrelevant and do not apply to the scenario in the ad or to the product or brand. In contrast, the advertisement message may be communicated more effectively if lyrics appear to have relevance. Original instrumental music composed by advertising agency–commissioned musicians can convey desired emotions without triggering recall of potentially distractingly irrelevant lyrics. Previous research has also considered the value of instrumental versions of well-known songs. For example, Roehm (2001) reveals how the verbal recall of lyrics containing the advertising brand message was greater with an instrumental version of a popular song, compared to the vocal version, for respondents who were familiar with the original song. When the popular song is presented without its accompanying lyrics, it may be considered as incongruent with expectations. Consequently, while the instrumental version of the song is played, respondents try to resolve this incongruity through singing (or imagining) the relevant but absent lyrics, thus enhancing recall.

Musical Congruity in Advertising   761 An advertising stimulus includes the advertising message along with a number of interacting executional elements such as setting, characters, narrator, and plot or storyline, as well as the music (Lantos & Craton, 2012). Advertisers typically seek to select elements that demonstrate congruity between the music and brand message. As previously discussed regarding Nike’s attempt to co-opt the Beatles song “Revolution,” linking the right piece of music to a brand is important as consumers’ impressions can be manipulated by musical congruity. YouTube comments regarding Nike’s use of the song “Revolution” suggest that it degrades the “authenticity and value of the music as such songs carry meaningful, deeply felt social and political messages and are not created to sell goods” (Abolhasani et al., 2017, p. 483). It is therefore important to be aware of the detrimental effects of using incongruent music in advertising. As North, Mackenzie, Law, and Hargreaves (2004) point out, absence of music is often better than using a type of music that is not congruent with the advertised brand. Musical Taste (Dis/liking). Positive feelings created by liked advertising music can be transferred to the advertised brand (Hahn & Hwang, 1999; see also chapter by Craton in this volume). Various studies demonstrate how musical liking may influence consumers’ responses to advertising. In an experiment by Broekemier, Marquardt, and Gentry (2008) , subjects exposed to videos of an unfamiliar store accompanied by several musical treatments were willing to pay more for items when hearing liked pieces of music. In a service environment context, North and Hargreaves (1996) report a positive correlation between liking the music and customers’ willingness to return to a cafeteria. Park and Young (1986) selected a number one chart hit as the epitome of liked music and revealed how a liked chart hit enhanced brand attitude in a low-involvement condition (in which brand attitude does not require focused mental processing). In this study, music had a facilitative effect on brand attitude for low-involvement participants, and a distracting effect for participants in the cognitive involvement condition. It is important to note that even a liked piece of music could be considered as incongruent in certain contexts, which inevitably could diminish its positive values and effects (Oakes, Dennis, & Oakes, 2013). Indeed, personal preferences and cultural attitudes toward a musical genre or subgenre may influence brand attitude, irrespective of whether the music is liked or disliked.

Congruity and Its Components Mandler (1982) proposes that incongruent music can be divided into mildly incongruent and severely incongruent categories. The theory suggests that mildly incongruent music evokes a moderate level of arousal and severely incongruent music produces an extreme degree of arousal compared to congruent music, which evokes minimal arousal. Mandler suggests that individuals find satisfaction in resolving incongruity. They enjoy the challenge of identifying the underlying purpose of incongruity (e.g., the

762   Oakes and Abolhasani inclusion of an unexpected musical genre in an advertisement). The process of achieving a solution to resolve incongruity may subsequently lead to positive evaluation. However, in the case of extreme incongruity, consumers are unable to resolve the incongruity, which is not a satisfying and enjoyable experience for them. Incongruent information appears to elicit a more complicated set of cognitive connections as consumers attempt to identify the purpose of incongruent stimuli to which they are exposed. Unlike incongruent information, congruent information is easier to understand and integrate with our prior expectations.

The Application of the Associative Network Concept in Advertising Music Research MacInnis and Park (1991, p. 162) define musical fit as “the consumer’s subjective perception of the music’s relevance or appropriateness to the central ad message.” Using music that fits the brand being advertised, as well as the content and the purpose of the advertisement, typically results in enhancing consumers’ perception of the advertisement and brand. Park and Young (1986) suggest that researchers should investigate how the relationships between music and the central advertising message may influence the way the advertisement is processed. This idea was later followed up by other researchers who demonstrated how a higher level of congruity between music and the main message of the advertisement results in greater recall of the advertising information (Tom, 1990) and induces positive feelings (MacInnis & Park, 1991; Lord, Lee, & Sauer, 1995). The concept of music-message congruity (the fit between the ad copy and instrumental music) developed by Kellaris et al. (1993) suggests that attentiongaining music with high music-message congruity has a positive effect on brand name and message recall. Lavack et al. (2008) examined the effects of brand congruent and incongruent background music on consumers’ attitude toward the advertisement and the brand when the music accompanied verbal messages requiring different levels of cognitive processing. Their study reveals how in high-cognition ads, congruent music may produce a more positive attitude to the brand and advertisement when compared to incongruent music or no music. High-cognition ads typically involve types of advertising copy that are more demanding and require greater depth of cognitive resources. However, these effects were not found with low-cognition ads, as attitude to the brand and advertisement were found to be similar for all three conditions of congruent, incongruent, and no music. Recent research (Herget, Schramm, & Breves, 2018) has developed an applicable instrument to identify different levels of musical fit in audiovisual advertising. The authors designed a classification system for relating music to three key reference points in an advertisement: the narration, the product, and/or the target group. (See also Müllensiefen’s chapter in this volume for another tool for assessing degree of musical fit.)

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Different Types of Congruity The following section aims to identify different variants of musical congruity in the context of service settings (see also Hultén in this volume) and advertising, to provide a review of previous findings. Genre Congruity in Service Settings. Congruity of musical genre could have implications in service and retail (see Oakes & North, 2008) as well as advertising contexts. For example, a study by North, Shilcock, and Hargreaves (2003) played either classical music, pop music, or no music in a restaurant setting. The findings showed a significant difference between musical genre conditions, as classical music resulted in higher restaurant spending than both pop and no-music conditions. Similarly, Areni and Kim (1993) examined the effects of classical and Top 40 music on consumers’ shopping behavior in a wine store and found that classical music led to customers purchasing more expensive wines. This could have been due to classical music being associated with sophistication and prestige, and hence, customers may have been primed to buy more expensive brands as classical music has relevant upmarket associations. Similarly, Baker, Grewal, and Parasuraman (1994) report how congruently matched classical music and soft lighting led to expectations of higher levels of service and merchandise quality, compared to pop music and bright lighting. In an advertising context, the use of congruent musical genres typically has an underlying marketing purpose. For example, the urban advertising campaign of tire brand Pirelli “demonstrated a high level of congruity between the advertising message and the contemporary hip-hop subgenre by using rap music to target youthful tire buyers. The benefits of genre congruity were evident as hip-hop reinforced perceptions of the streetwise, urban credibility of the Pirelli brand” (Oakes, 2007, p. 46). Tzanetakis and Cook (2002, p. 293) define musical genres as “labels created and used by humans for categorizing and describing the vast universe of music.” Further, as Widdess (2012) points out, ethnomusicologists believe that musical structures and meanings are culturally determined, and therefore, the meaning, function, or significance of a particular genre of music can only be understood in relation to its structural properties and specific cultural context. For instance, genre of music in advertisements may influence consumers’ perceived brand image and purchase intent. It may reinforce specific advertising messages in various advertising contexts. Using real and fictitious universities in television and radio advertisements featuring various background music genres, Oakes and North (2013) showed how dance music enhances the desired image for a university as modern, exciting, and trendy, while classical music creates a more sophisticated perceived image for the learning environment and an anticipation of higher university fees. This study reveals how dance music increased the desire to apply for a place at the advertised university when compared to classical music. Each musical genre may have a discrete form of relevance (utilitarian or hedonic) for the advertising message. For example, dance music is usually associated with hedonic

764   Oakes and Abolhasani messages, while classical music is often associated with more sophisticated, functional, or utilitarian advertising messages. Selecting the appropriate musical genre is also important because studies (e.g., Oakes, 2003a) suggest that different genres (e.g., jazz and pop music) may differ extensively based on their appeal to various demographic segments (e.g., age, gender, education). Previous research has examined the links between musical preferences and personality (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). Examination of the relationship between individuals’ musical preferences and their personality and identity reveals that people frequently prefer musical genres that underpin and reflect strands of their personal identities. For instance, sensation-seeking individuals may favor stimulating and intense genres (e.g., metal, rock), extroverts may prefer energetic party music (e.g., dance music), while individuals seeking challenging experiences may prefer complex and sophisticated musical genres such as contemporary classical and jazz music. When a piece of music is perceived as belonging to a particular genre, the cultural meanings associated with that genre may become associated with the advertised brand. However, although genre (like tempo) may be regarded as an objective aspect of music (see Oakes, 2003b), it could also be considered to be a subjective judgment (Aucouturier & Pachet, 2003). The reason is that consumers listening to the same piece of music may classify it into different genres or subgenres of music, depending on their distinctive interpretation of what makes a composition “pop,” “classical,” or “jazz.” The categories and classifications of musical genres are often too broad and not clearly defined. It may also be possible to refer to a piece of music as belonging to more than a single genre, thus making the assessment of the individual preferences somewhat loose and imprecise. Moreover, it is believed that consumers do not make choices merely based on products’ features and utilities, but also based on their symbolic meanings. For example, musical taste and knowledge of genres such as classical music may potentially communicate status, distinctiveness, and class (Bourdieu, 2010). Therefore, it is important to identify the associations and symbolic meanings people draw from the music and apply them effectively to meet the goals of a specific advertisement. The use of different genres of music in various advertising contexts may assist marketers in better positioning their products or brands, and may even be appealing to consumers who identify themselves with a particular genre of music, musician, or band. Consumers may connect with a particular piece of advertising music because it is their favorite genre, and subsequently be attracted to the advertised brand. Hung (2001) investigated how background music in advertisements can influence consumers’ perceptions by superimposing contrasting musical genres (classical and rock) over an advertisement. Congruently up-market classical music reinforced the desired upmarket brand image of an advertised shopping mall. Furthermore, participants who watched the classical music version reported more imagery of success when asked what images were evoked by the advertisement. In the case of visual advertisements, music has the ability to maintain viewers’ attention by smoothing out scene changes and binding together sequences of discrete visual images (Oakes, 2007). Studies show that musical cues tend to be more effective than verbal cues in eliciting recall of visual imagery (Stewart et al., 1990).

Musical Congruity in Advertising   765 Music and Country of Origin Congruity. Various studies reveal that individuals prefer artistic objects that are prototypical of the class in question (e.g., Martindale & Moore, 1988). This suggests that typical exemplars of a certain category may be preferred to less typical exemplars. However, although the purpose of the preference-for-prototypes model is to explain preferences between aesthetic objects, it may be highly relevant to consumer research as it puts forth the role of knowledge activation in consumers’ response to music. This model contends that the human mind is composed of densely interconnected cognitive units in a way that a specific piece of music is capable of activating related knowledge structures. This theoretical framework may be parallel to Areni and Kim’s (1993) arguments around musical fit (genre congruity) and product choice. Therefore, for example, music that is stereotypically Italian should activate related knowledge structures concerning Italy, which may in turn result in more positive cognitive and behavioral responses in consumers (e.g., enhanced recall and product choice). On the other hand, music that is stereotypically Chinese should activate related knowledge structures concerning China, which may prime the selection of Chinese products. Music is viewed as a carrier of culture (Cheng & Schweitzer, 1996), and hence, the use of music in advertising may involve congruity related to cultural meanings. Certain styles of music can be associated with specific nations, so that music can be identified as “Chinese,” “Italian,” “French,” etc., even by listeners with otherwise limited knowledge of the corresponding culture (Boer et al., 2013). In the postmodern era where different styles proliferate and meanings change at an ever faster pace, advertisers and consumers alike become active agents who substitute different meanings on to a consumption symbol (Hirschman, Scott, & Wells, 1998). For example, particular types of music that were once a powerful expression of the culture of African Americans (e.g., rap music) have become dominant in the mainstream popular culture, selling sneakers and soft drinks to young consumers around the world (Blair & Hatala, 1992). Furthermore, national music styles may evoke concepts and images congruent with cultural stereotypes of that country. For example, while German music might make consumers think of beer and bratwurst, French music might evoke images of wine and the Eiffel Tower (North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 1997). Previous studies on atmospheric cues in retail stores have investigated the effects of congruity between the country of origin of music and the product upon consumers’ product choice. North, Hargreaves, and McKendrick (1999) played French and German music on alternate days alongside French and German wines in the alcoholic beverages section of a supermarket. They examined the effects of stereotypically French and German background music on supermarket customers’ selection of French and German wine. The researchers found that playing French music resulted in higher sales of French wine and playing German music resulted in selling more German wine. This study indicates how music can prime relevant knowledge and the choice of certain products if they match that knowledge. It demonstrates that music can activate knowledge structures associated with a specific country, which may in turn result in the selection of products that are congruent with those knowledge structures. Previous research has provided evidence that music primes semantically related concepts in an advertising setting (Oakes, 2007). For example, in a television advertisement

766   Oakes and Abolhasani for coffee, Hung (2000) reports how a high level of congruity between the country of origin of the music (Brazil) and the advertising subject matter produces desired decoding of brand attributes. In this context, the Brazilian samba music reinforces perceptions of the authenticity of the Brazilian coffee ingredients of the advertised brand, thus enhancing likelihood of purchase. Such musical congruity can reinforce the connecting cultural context to communicate meaning. In contrast, Shen and Chen (2006) reveal how advertisements that use culturally incongruent background music strengthen consumer recall of the advertisement in comparison to the same advertisement containing culturally congruent music. Using either Asian or Western music, they demonstrate how East/West cultural tone incongruity between the music used and an advertisement’s message enhances consumer recall for the target advertisement (although they show how it can also have an adverse effect on consumers’ attitudes toward the advertisement). Such findings confirm the prediction of Heckler and Childers (1992), who suggest that unexpected incongruity may attract attention and lead to better recall. Semantic Congruity (Song Lyrics and Product/Brand). Semantic congruity in advertising is typically concerned with the extent to which the lyrics of a song (although not composed for advertising purposes) may have associations with the features or benefits of an advertised brand. According to Murray and Murray (1996) , song lyrics can have many functions in advertisements, such as developing empathy, gaining attention, communicating product attributes and information about benefits, and conveying cultural values. MacInnis and Park (1991) found that high congruity between song lyrics in an advertisement and the advertising message resulted in more positive emotional responses, thus enhancing attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand. Semantic congruity (Oakes, 2007) is evident when advertising agencies use famous songs that have highly relevant lyrics to highlight positive associations with the brand. For example, Microsoft licensed the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” for Windows 95 to correspond to the bootingup process. Likewise, the “Ray of Light” advertisement featuring Madonna was used for the Windows XP operating systems launch. This advertisement highlighted the congruent image of rays of sunlight beaming through windows. However, there have been many criticisms regarding the commodification of music in advertising. For example, Nike’s use of the John Lennon song “Revolution” in their advertising campaign was perceived by many music fans as a serious case of semantic incongruity (Abolhasani et al., 2017). The lyrics of the idealistic social protest song were perceived by some to have been devalued by the commercial association with Nike footwear.

Repetition and Memory Evocation Repetition of tunes used in advertisements may enhance the level of consumers’ brand recall through association of particular pieces of music with specific brands. However, it may be extremely harmful for the advertised brand if consumers are irritated by excessive

Musical Congruity in Advertising   767 repetition of an advertisement involving the same piece of music. Furthermore, although musical repetition may provide security through its daily predictability, excessive musical repetition may trigger resistance to the homogenizing routines of the market, resulting in disliking the music and advertising. The earworm metaphor has been used to highlight the annoying and intrusive nature of some repetitive pieces of music. Beaman and Williams (2010, p. 637) define the earworm phenomenon as “the experience of an inability to dislodge a song and prevent it from repeating itself in one’s head.” Furthermore, Kellaris (2003) refers to an earworm as a “cognitive itch,” explaining the way these songs get stuck in our head. He points out that we tend to repeat these songs again and again in our minds because this is the only way to scratch and gain temporary relief from a cognitive itch. In terms of memory evocation, Oakes (2007) suggests that consumers’ past experience with a piece of music can influence the effectiveness of musical communication in advertisements. Although using widely known songs in advertisements may lead to higher attention gain and transferring positive effects, different consumers may have positive or negative memories of that particular piece of music. MacInnis and Park (1991) explore “indexicality” (the potential for music in advertisements to be associated with previous emotion-laden experiences). Music associated with positive memories or experiences is likely to enhance brand attitude. However, advertising music associated with negative or sad memories may negatively influence the brand evaluation of consumers (Blair & Shimp, 1992).

The Role of Product Involvement: Central Versus Peripheral Processing Involvement can be defined as the extent to which a purchase decision has perceived personal importance, relevance, and consequences for the consumer (Greenwald & Leavitt,  1984; Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann,  1983). High-involvement products are believed to be very important in terms of their acquisition, ownership, and consumption. Consumers are willing to make significant prepurchase commitments such as spending considerable time carrying out an extensive search for information about the brand, quality, and price before they actually make the purchase in high-involvement conditions. On the other hand, low-involvement products are those that are purchased more frequently, with minimal level of thought and effort, and are considered to be relatively insignificant in terms of the factors mentioned earlier (Gnepa, 2012). The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion developed by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) has provided a comprehensive theoretical explanation for change and formation of attitude. Based on the ELM, the process of elaborating upon advertising information can take place via two different routes, namely the central and peripheral routes. The theory suggests that individuals may elaborate on the advertising message

768   Oakes and Abolhasani through the central route when the level of involvement is high. In this situation, persuasion may occur by means of the rational messages presented by the advertisement. On the other hand, in a low-involvement condition, the influence and the persuasion typically take place through simple decision criteria by means of cues such as celebrity endorsement or the attractiveness of the sender of the message (Angst & Agarwal, 2009). Previous studies in the area of advertising music focus almost exclusively on investigating the effects of background music related to low-involvement goods (e.g., Hung, 2000; Olsen, 1997; Park & Young, 1986). For example, Park and Young (1986) show how liked background music enhances brand attitude, but only for participants with low advertising involvement. Under low-involvement conditions, musical liking seems to enhance brand attitude because there is limited need for cognitive processing of advertising messages. According to Petty and Cacioppo (1986) , an executional cue such as background music in advertisements has its prevalent effects on low-involvement consumers’ attitude formation process. Based on this, in the case of a simple product having few complex attributes, persuasion may be more successful by using background features such as music or visual imagery. On the other hand, under high-involvement conditions, consumers may ignore these peripheral cues in their attitude formation process and focus more on careful evaluation of the advertising message and how they react to it (Petty et al., 1983). It is believed that consumers may engage in deeper cognitive processing when a product is more important, has higher personal relevance, and has a higher number of distinctive features.

Netnographic Research Into Music in Advertising Previous music and advertising research has focused on following an almost exclusively positivist approach in investigating consumers’ responses to advertising music. However, with the rapid development of technology, online communities have become an increasingly important marketing research resource (Kozinets, 2002a). Nowadays, it is common practice for internet users all over the world to check and post reviews about different products or brands they are exposed to in various online communities. These communities “have a ‘real’ existence for their participants” (Kozinets, 1998, p. 366); help marketing researchers to enhance their knowledge of the needs, motivations, and subsequent behavior of consumers (Oakes et al., 2013); and help develop understanding of the ways in which consumers may achieve a sense of emancipation from the overarching influence of advertising (Kozinets, 2002b). More recent, contemporary research into music and advertising acknowledges how online or virtual communities constitute a growing category of social groups of consumption in which participants express and exchange their opinions and information about various goods or services.

Musical Congruity in Advertising   769 The development of virtual communication tools has changed the way consumers communicate among themselves in reviewing products, which ultimately affects the way they make their choices. Analyzing user-generated content is becoming increasingly important for marketing purposes as companies can use the information to convey their advertising messages more effectively. Consumer postings and subsequent discursive interaction are valuable for organizations in terms of monitoring and improving the effectiveness of advertising (Kozinets, Wojnicki, Wilner, & De Valck,  2010). Ethnographic research has an established history of nurturing personal engagement with participants to gain a deeper understanding of specific cultures and social settings. More recent developments in online ethnography have been designated as digital ethnography, virtual ethnography, web ethnography, and mobile ethnography ­ (Kozinets, 2015). Such qualitative research has been broadly labeled as netnography. A recent netnographic study (Abolhasani et al.,  2017) involves analysis of 472 YouTube postings to identify themes related to consumers’ experience of music in advertisements. It demonstrates consumers’ frequent resistance to the use of their favorite music by advertising agencies. Such usage is often perceived to undermine the musical authenticity of consumers’ favorite bands. Findings in the study show how emotional responses to advertising music may be due to the evocation of autobiographical memories, perhaps involving significant milestones in a consumer’s life that are associated with a particular piece of music. Abolhasani et al. (2017) discuss how the involuntary and repetitive exposure to a piece of music used in an advertising campaign may provide security through its predictability but show that it can also elicit consumer irritation and resistance. From a phenomenological perspective, netnographic research seeks to examine consumers’ lived experiences of music and the role of music in helping to shape their responses to advertising. It strives to uncover the personal relevance of music for consumers. Advertising research from a positivist perspective may sometimes blur the difference between emotions represented and felt, highlighting findings referring to the identification of emotions rather than the authentic experience of them (Bode, 2006). However, netnographic research may demonstrate authentic experience and sensitivity to music, frequently involving the evocation of emotionally charged memories for the consumer exposed to music in an advertisement. Consequently, netnographic research provides a fascinating opportunity to develop our understanding of the influence of music in advertising.

Future Avenues for Research Future neuroscience research could measure brain activity to examine responses to congruent and incongruent music in advertising. Such future research could attempt to incorporate and link different musical pieces in an advertisement by using segues to provide smooth transitions between musical sections. Such smoothness of transition

770   Oakes and Abolhasani would be important to ensure that the music does not appear distractingly disjointed. For example, images and messages denoting sophistication using congruent classical music may segue smoothly into more hedonistic images and messages using dance music. Future research in this area may build upon the findings of a study by Oakes and North (2013) examining the use of music to communicate sophistication and hedonistic experiences in the advertising of universities. Experimental studies may also analyze the impact of segues from congruent to incongruent music and vice versa. However, the aforementioned proposal for future neuroscience research acknowledges an important gap in advertising music research. The overwhelming majority of studies in the field of music and advertising have used quantitative data exclusively. Although such studies provide the opportunity for the researcher to obtain objective information used to make scientific assumptions, a more interpretivist approach may frequently help to develop in-depth understanding and insight into how consumers think and feel. Consequently, future music and advertising research should address the long-standing gap associated with the shortage of qualitative studies in the field. Furthermore, productive future avenues of research could steer the design of music and advertising studies to recognize the value of mixed-methods research. Mixed methods are especially useful when either exclusively qualitative or exclusively quantitative data may be inadequate (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). In this context, a more thorough analysis of music and advertising may be possible by incorporating a combination of qualitative and quantitative research.

Recommended Readings North, A. C., Sheridan, L. P., & Areni, C. S. (2016). Music congruity effects on product memory, perception, and choice. Journal of Retailing, 92(1), 83–95. Tan, S.-L., Cohen, A. J., Lipscomb, S. D., & Kendall, R. A. (2013). The psychology of music in multimedia. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Tan, S.-L., Pfordresher, P., & Harré, R. (2018). Psychology of music: From sound to significance (2nd ed.). London, UK: Routledge.

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chapter 38

Au diov isua l A dv ertisi ng Effects of Music on Psychological Transportation and Narrative Persuasion Madelijn Strick

One of the most moving television advertisements of 2016 was the “Injured Tiger” ad released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In the ad, an ordinary family with two small children is surprised to find a full-grown tiger in the parents’ bed. They soon discover the tiger has a badly injured leg and decide to take care of it. They nurse it, feed it, and read to it until one day the tiger is strong enough to stand up and walk. In the end, the family—with the little daughter in tears—waves goodbye to the tiger as it returns to the jungle. Many viewers commented on the internet that the story had moved them, or even brought them to tears. But was it just the story that touched them? Or did the background music also play a role? Indeed, besides a moving story, the ad featured a beautiful score with piano and strings, which was moving in its own right. Yet, most viewers were not aware of the music itself; it blended into their experience of the visuals. As the example illustrates, music is often used to support the storyline of ads. Music is often heard in the background, and not experienced as separate from the visuals. But to what effect? Does the music increase the persuasive power of the ad, and if so, via which psychological mechanisms? These are the main questions addressed in this chapter.

Transportation Into a Narrative World The aim of advertising is to persuade consumers to support, like, or buy something. General persuasion models like the elaboration likelihood model (ELM; Petty & Wegener, 1999) and the heuristic-systematic model (HSM; Chen & Chaiken, 1999) are the

776   Strick leading models for describing the psychological mechanisms through which persuasive messages exert their influence. However, these models are less appropriate for describing the persuasive effect of being “lost” in a narrative advertisement such as the WWF ad. According to general persuasion models, the cognitive mechanism underlying persuasion under high involvement is elaboration, the critical thought about the persuasive arguments presented in the ad. This contrasts sharply to being lost in a story, which, albeit being a high-involvement state, is typically characterized by a reduction of critical thought (for an elaborate comparison between the two mechanisms see Slater & Rouner, 2002). In psychology and communication research, the experience of being lost in a story is referred to as psychological transportation. It is an immersive mental state in which attention, imagery, and emotions are completely focused on the events occurring in the story (e.g., Green, 2004; Green & Brock, 2000). The term transportation was coined by Richard Gerrig (1993), who compared the narrative experience to traveling. He noted that when people are immersed in a story, they mentally travel to the narrative world and temporarily lose contact with the world of origin. Eventually they return home, somewhat changed by the journey. Similar to elaboration in the context of the ELM, transportation generates long-lasting persuasive effects. The persuasive impact of transportation into a story can even increase over time. Immediately after reading or viewing a fictional story, people may discount it as “just fiction,” but the discounting effect diminishes over time, causing a delayed persuasive effect (i.e., a “sleeper effect,” Appel & Richter, 2007). Transportation resembles other kinds of immersive states. For example, it shares features with flow (Csikszentmihalyi,  1990), an immersive state that people experience when they engage in an activity that is both highly interesting and appropriately challenging to their skill level. Transportation relates to, but is broader than, specific narrative responses like curiosity (Loewenstein, 1994), identification (Mar & Oatley, 2008), presence (Lombard & Ditton,  1997), and suspense (Bezdek & Gerrig,  2017; Zillmann, 1991), and closely resembles the concept of narrative engagement (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008, 2009). However, transportation is narrower than involvement, which captures a wider range of active, in-depth processing of media content, not only stories (Wirth, 2006). The level of transportation is often measured with the Transportation Scale (Green & Brock, 2000), a questionnaire consisting of 11 fixed statements (e.g., “I was mentally involved in the narrative while reading it”), and a varying number of storyspecific statements (e.g., “While reading the narrative I had a vivid image of [story character]”), to which participants indicate their agreement on seven-point Likert scales. There is also a shorter, six-item version of the scale (Appel, Gnambs, Richter, & Green, 2015). Although most research on transportation focuses on written narratives, transportation also happens in music and in films. In line with the empirical literature in this area, I use the terms psychological transportation and narrative transportation interchangeably, referring to the same state. Transportation is an important concept for advertising because many ads have a narrative form; that is, they include protagonists, drama, and a plot line (Escalas, 1998). By now, numerous studies have shown that transportation into stories mediates important persuasive outcomes, such as changes in emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior (for

Audiovisual Advertising and Psychological Transportation   777 meta-analyses see Braddock & Dillard, 2016; F. Shen, Sheer, & Li, 2015; Van Laer, De Ruyter, Visconti, & Wetzels, 2014). For example, in one of the first studies on transportation, participants read a story about a murder by a psychiatric patient (“Murder at the Mall”). Afterward, those who had been highly transported in the story gave higher estimations of street violence and agreed more with statements implying that the freedom of psychiatric patients should be restricted than participants who were less transported in the story (Green & Brock, 2000). Hence, the study provided the first evidence that transportation into stories is associated with changes in real-world beliefs. Subsequent studies showed that stronger transportation relates to stronger emotional transformation (e.g., feeling worse after reading a scary story; Green, Chatham, & Sestir, 2012). Furthermore, transportation in audiovisual ads predicts stronger ad-consistent behavioral intentions (e.g., to donate money to the advertised cause; Strick, De Bruin, De Ruiter, & Jonkers, 2015). Transportation is also associated with reduced resistance and disbelief. Highly transported participants are less likely to identify false information in a text (Green & Brock,  2000), think critically about persuasive arguments (Escalas, 2004, 2007), and infer the advertiser’s manipulative intent (Strick et al., 2015). Interestingly, these persuasive effects emerge independently of whether the story is labeled as fiction or as nonfiction (Green, 2004; Green & Brock, 2000). Researchers have proposed various explanations for the strong persuasive impact of transportation into stories. First, transportation involves the vivid experience of the events in the story, which can lead to the erroneous remembering of fictional events as real, making them more impactful (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay,  1993). Second, people like the experience of being transported in a story, and this positive mood state creates a positive attitude toward the advertised issue or product. Paradoxically, people even enjoy being immersed in stories that elicit negative emotions, as it creates a pleasant distraction from daily activities (“the sad film paradox,” Hanich, Wagner, Shah, Jacobsen, & Menninghaus, 2014). Furthermore, when the quality of the story is high, positive aesthetic emotions may combine with negative emotions to create an overall more positive emotion (Miall & Kuiken, 2002). Third, the mental processes underlying resistance to persuasion, such as counterarguing (Green & Brock, 2000) and the validation of information (Richter, Schroeder, & Wöhrmann,  2009; Schroeder, Richter, & Hoever, 2008), require considerable cognitive resources. As transportation is an immersive state, it leaves few cognitive resources available for sustaining resistance.

The Role of Emotion in Narrative Transportation Emotional involvement is crucial for the impact of narrative ads. Indeed, one item on the Transportation Scale asks to what extent the reader (or viewer) was “emotionally affected” by the story. As the emotional involvement in a story increases, so does the

778   Strick level of transportation. For example, Green and colleagues (2012) measured participants’ mood states before and after they read a scary story. They found that when the pre-existing mood state of the participants matched the emotional tone of the story (e.g., when participants are already anxious before they start reading the scary story), the readers were more transported into the story. Transportation, in turn, predicted a stronger emotional impact of the story, that is, a larger story-consistent change from the premeasure to the postmeasure (i.e., in case of the scary story, a negative mood change). These effects were replicated for a cheerful story. Apparently, being “in the mood” for a story increases its emotional impact, and consequently the level to which perceivers are transported and transformed by it. The impact of the perceivers’ need for affect, or the motivation to approach or avoid emotion-inducing situations (Maio & Esses, 2001), further illustrates the important role of emotion in transportation. Need for affect is the emotional counterpart of the need for cognition, the extent to which people enjoy effortful cognitive activity (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). Although people generally prefer experiencing positive emotions to experiencing negative emotions, studies on the need for affect show that people also differ in their enjoyment of experiencing emotions in general. The need for affect is a stable aspect of personality that can be measured with a self-report questionnaire known as the Need for Affect Scale (Maio & Esses, 2001). The original 26-item scale consists of 13 approach-related items (e.g., “It is important for me to be in touch with my feelings”) and 13 avoidance-related items (e.g., “I do not know how to handle my emotions, so I avoid them”), but there is also a shortened, 10-item version (Appel, Gnambs, & Maio, 2012). People who have a higher need for affect tend to experience emotions more intensely and, accordingly, are more strongly transported into stories than people who are lower in the need for affect. In a study by Appel and Richter (2010), half of the participants read the “Murder at the Mall” story discussed earlier, while the other half of the participants read a control story (a lighthearted, unmoving story about a couple having dinner at a fancy hotel, which did not contain any references to homicide or psychiatric patients). Afterward, participants’ need for affect was measured. The need for affect related to stronger persuasive effects of the “Murder at the Mall” story (e.g., stronger agreement with statements implying that the freedom of psychiatric patients should be restricted). Further analysis showed that this effect was mediated by transportation. Hence, participants with a relatively high need for affect were more persuaded by the “Murder at the Mall” story than participants with a relatively low need for affect because they were more transported into the story. As expected, the need for affect did not predict transportation and agreement with the statements among participants who read the control story. A follow-up study confirmed that the need for affect only predicts stronger transportation and persuasion when stories are emotional. The researchers presented half of the participants with a highly emotional (sad) story illustrating the importance of organ donation, and the other half with a non-emotional version of that story. The results showed that participants with a relatively high need for affect were more persuaded by the highly emotional story than the participants with a relatively low need

Audiovisual Advertising and Psychological Transportation   779 for affect, and again, this effect was mediated by transportation into the story. Participants with a relatively high need for affect were not more persuaded by the nonemotional version of the story than the participants with a relatively low need for affect. Interestingly, emotional content was counterproductive for participants with a relatively low need for affect. The emotional version of the story was less persuasive to them than the non-emotional version. I will return to this potentially counterproductive effect of emotion in the discussion. In summary, the research reviewed so far shows that emotional involvement is an essential part of psychological transportation. To the extent that people are emotionally moved by a story, they experience greater psychological transportation and persuasion.

The Emotional Impact of Music Several factors that increase the emotional impact of a story have been identified in the literature, such as portraying deeply rooted human values and needs (Cova & Deonna, 2014; Seibt, Schubert, Zickfeld, & Fiske, 2017; Strick & Van Soolingen, 2018), strong identification with the characters (J. Cohen, 2001), and the artistic quality of the story (Djikic, Oatley, Zoeterman, & Peterson, 2009). The factor highlighted in this chapter, however, is the role of music in psychological transportation, particularly in advertising. Music has a privileged pathway to emotional experience. The emotional impact of music is so powerful that it can be observed physically. A physiological response that recently attracted a lot of research attention is chills, a sense of tingling or tickling that is sometimes accompanied by goosebumps (Maruskin, Thrash, & Elliot, 2012). Although chills can be evoked by a range of stimuli, varying from physical exercise to a movie scene, music has been shown to be the strongest elicitor of chills (Goldstein,  1980; Nusbaum & Silvia, 2011; Panksepp, 1995; Silvia & Nusbaum, 2011). The characteristics of chills-evoking music are not yet fully understood, but Sloboda (1991) noted that transitional points in music, such as a sudden change in harmony or dramatic crescendos, are particularly likely to evoke chills. Furthermore, a study by Panksepp (1995) suggested that chills are more prevalent for sad than happy music, particularly in women. Nonetheless, the experience of chills in response to aesthetic stimuli is generally experienced as very pleasurable (Blood & Zatorre, 2001) and tends to feel highly personally significant. As noted philosopher Jenefer Robinson put it: “It’s not just the six-four chord in D flat that I heard but the reconciliation of man and nature, the voice of God, or the cry from outre-tombe of a long-lost beloved” (Robinson, 2005, p. 406). Research shows that the occurrence of chills, in response to both music and other chills-eliciting stimuli, differs greatly between people. Although chills are a universal response found in all cultures of the world (McCrae, 2007), about half of the population never experiences them (Goldstein, 1980). This large variation between people suggests that chill responses are subject to personality differences. Indeed, recent studies suggest

780   Strick that openness to experience is a strong predictor of the ability to experience chills. Openness to experience is one of the Big Five dimensions of personality, along with conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and extraversion. It refers to a structurally larger breadth, depth, and permeability of experience, as well as to a recurrent need to expand and analyze experience (McCrae & Costa, 1997). People who are high in openness tend to be tolerant of ambiguity. They can make remote and unusual associations and are characterized as being innovative, imaginative, and curious. Openness to experience is measured with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). One item in the openness subscale is “Sometimes when I am reading poetry or looking at a work of art, I feel a chill or wave of excitement,” which already suggests overlap between openness and the capacity to experience chills. Indeed, research in 51 countries showed that this particular item is often the most diagnostic of the openness subscale, which has led researchers to conclude that chills may be a universal marker of openness to experience (McCrae, 2007). Although openness may be the most prominent Big Five correlate of chills, other researchers have found positive relationships with agreeableness, extraversion, and (more surprisingly) neuroticism (Panksepp, 1995; Rickard, 2004; Silvia & Nusbaum, 2011). One reason for these mixed findings could be that researchers often did not distinguish between different types of chills. By now, researchers have identified two fundamentally different types of chills: chills related to pleasure and chills related to aversion (Maruskin et al., 2012). It is possible that people who are high in openness to experience, agreeableness, and extraversion tend to experience pleasurable chills, while people who are high in neuroticism tend to experience aversive chills.

Music and Narrative Transportation in Advertising So far, I have discussed two fields of research that have largely led independent lives. On the one hand, there is the research on narrative transportation, which shows that transportation into stories has a strong effect on persuasion, and this particularly happens when the story is emotionally impactful. On the other hand, there is the literature on music, which shows that music has a powerful effect on emotion, which is manifested both mentally (experiencing pleasure) and physically (getting the chills). A fruitful next step would be to combine these fields of research by investigating the role of music in narrative transportation. Can music increase the emotional impact of a story? Does this increase psychological transportation and persuasion, and if so, when does this happen? Are some audiences more susceptible to this influence than others, and could it also backfire? Examining these questions is important for both scientists and practitioners in the field of advertising, as the combination of storytelling and music is very common in modern advertising.

Audiovisual Advertising and Psychological Transportation   781 A content analysis of international TV ads showed that 89% of the ads used music (Appelbaum & Halliburton,  1993), and another analysis found that 94% of U.S. prime-time TV ads contain music (Allan, 2008). The impact of music in advertising has been the topic of many scientific studies. In general, the findings indicate that music can have a positive influence on persuasion if it has a good fit with the advertising message. Previous research identified several psychological mechanisms through which this positive influence occurs, like classical conditioning (e.g., Gorn, 1982), increased positive mood (e.g., Alpert & Alpert, 1990; Alpert, Alpert, & Maltz, 2005), positive beliefs about the product (e.g., Middlestadt, Fishbein, & Chan,  1994), behavioral priming (North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 1999), and enhanced message processing (MacInnis & Park,  1991; North, MacKenzie, & Law,  2004). However, previous studies have not addressed narrative advertising specifically, or the possible role of music in psychological transportation. Experimental research has only recently started to address this possibility, and these new findings will be discussed later. First, I will discuss why music may increase viewers’ transportation into a story. Provided that the timing and emotional tone of the music fit the events unfolding onscreen, music can serve an important role in supporting the emotional impact of a story, for example, by augmenting the rising tension, illustrating the meaning of key scenes, and intensifying the climax (for a general source on the role of film music in shaping viewers' experience of story, see Tan, 2017). Given the important role of emotion in transportation, the effect is likely stronger when the music is emotionally moving rather than not moving (cf. Appel & Richter, 2010; Green & Brock, 2000). A crucial aspect is that viewers do not detect the background music as distinct from the visuals; it enhances the experience of the story by blending into the visuals (A. J. Cohen, 2001). Consequently, viewers may misattribute the emotional arousal elicited by moving music to the events occurring in the story. This misattribution of emotional arousal from the music to the story can be linked to the literature on “excitation transfer” (Bryant & Miron, 2003). This research shows that the emotional arousal elicited by one stimulus can be misattributed to another stimulus, particularly when the source of arousal is unclear (Bryant & Miron, 2003). The theory of excitation transfer has been extensively applied to media messages. For example, in a study by Gorn, Pham, and Sin (2001), participants watched an ad with a clearly positive or negative emotional tone. Before watching the ad, participants listened to music that, according to a pilot test, was either highly arousing and pleasant, highly arousing and unpleasant, low arousing and pleasant, or low arousing and unpleasant. The results showed that the emotional impact of the ad was stronger when highly arousing music preceded the ad than when low-arousal music preceded the ad. Interestingly, this effect was found independently of whether the emotional tone of the music fit the emotional tone of the ad or not. Thus, highly arousing pleasant and unpleasant music were equally effective in increasing the emotional impact of the positively-toned ad (and the same applied to the negatively-toned ad). When applied to moving music in narrative advertising, these results imply that emotionally moving music (given its highly arousing nature) should increase the emotional

782   Strick response to narrative ads. This, in turn, should lead to more transportation and persuasion. Note, however, that the research on excitation transfer does not completely map onto narrative advertising. Although the emotional fit between the music and the story was found to be unimportant for excitation transfer, it is probably highly important for music in narrative advertising. This is because in narrative advertising, the music is typically heard during ad viewing, not before ad viewing. A lack of fit between the music and the story will then become very salient and spoil the holistic experience of the ad. Presumably, then, moving music in narrative advertising needs to fit the emotional tone of the story to increase transportation and persuasion. This point will be addressed later in the chapter.

Experimental Evidence for the Role of Music in Transportation in Film Recent studies have provided initial evidence for the purported role of music in psychological transportation. Some of this research focused on absorption, a mechanism similar to transportation that is measured with a single item asking viewers how absorbed they were in the film (A. J. Cohen, MacMillan, & Drew, 2006). Cohen and colleagues used two 1-minute film clips. For each clip, three versions were produced: a version with sound effects (sounds matching the scene, e.g., running water, a ticking clock), a version with speech effects (i.e., dialogue that could be attributed to the characters on screen), and a version with a musical soundtrack. Each participant only viewed one version of each film clip. Overall, the results suggested that music elicited more absorption than sound effects or speech effects, although this effect was only found for one of the two films. In another study, A. J. Cohen and Siau (2008) examined the influence of music on absorption using a behavioral measure. They reasoned that if appropriate music increases viewers’ absorption in a film, they should be slower and less accurate in detecting a stimulus that is extraneous to the film. To test their hypothesis, they embedded 20 extraneous “Xs” in the corners of frames of a short film. The film was shown under three conditions: with appropriate music (i.e., the original score), with inappropriate music, and with no music. The film was shown twice, and on the second screening the authors found the expected effect: Detection of the Xs slowed down in the appropriate music condition compared to the no-music condition. The inappropriate music condition fell in between, likely because this music was appropriate to some parts of the film. Costabile and Terman (2013) were the first to test the hypothesis that music increases psychological transportation into film. For advertising purposes, it was very interesting that the authors went on to examine how this increased level of transportation affected viewers’ beliefs and attitudes toward the protagonist and the events in the film. Participants viewed a short film depicting a woman’s consideration and eventual decision

Audiovisual Advertising and Psychological Transportation   783 to take her terminally ill husband off life support. Sitting by his hospital bed, she ­remembers how they met, how they courted, and other intimate moments of their loving relationship. The film was shown either with the original musical soundtrack or with the soundtrack muted. In line with the authors’ predictions, the results showed that participants in the music condition were more transported into the story than participants in the control condition. Crucially, the authors also found that participants in the music condition were more persuaded by the story than participants in the control condition: They had stronger story-consistent beliefs (e.g., that removing someone from life support is acceptable), liked the protagonist more, and identified with her more than participants in the control condition.

Experimental Evidence for the Role of Music in Transportation in Advertising Although Costabile and Terman’s (2013) results were found in the context of film—not advertising—they provide important clues as to how music may work in narrative ads. The study showed that by increasing transportation into the story, music elicited storyconsistent beliefs, attitudes, and identification. Applied to advertising, the results imply that by increasing transportation, music may elicit positive beliefs and liking toward the advertised cause or product and identification with the source. It may also increase other documented effects associated with transportation, such as a reduction of critical thought. Moreover, according to transportation research, these persuasive effects should be long-lasting. An important next step, then, was to study the effects of music in the context of narrative advertising. We conducted one of the few studies addressing this issue (Strick et al., 2015, Experiment 1). We tested the assumption proposed earlier that emotionally moving (i.e., highly emotional and chills-evoking) music triggers more transportation and persuasion than non-moving music. Two narrative ads were used, one with a negative emotional tone and one with a positive emotional tone. Both ads featured an emotional story: The negative ad showed how children copy the bad behavior of their parents (e.g., smoking, littering, being rude); the positive ad depicted an adolescent boy painting a beautiful mural for his ill, bedridden sister. For both ads, a version with moving music and a version with non-moving music was created. In all cases, the emotional tone of the music matched the respective ad (i.e., positive music was chosen for the positive ad, and negative music was chosen for the negative ad). Participants watched the positive or the negative ad, either with moving or non-moving music. As expected, and as shown in Figure 38.1, participants who viewed the ad with moving music were more transported into the story than participants who viewed the ad with non-moving music. Thus, we found evidence that emotionally moving, chillsinducing music is indeed more effective in triggering transportation than non-moving

784   Strick 6.0

Narrative Transportation Range 1–7

5.5 5.0 4.5

Moving Music Non-Moving Music

4.0 3.5 3.0 Negative Ad

Positive Ad

Ad’s Emotional Tone

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Intention to Pass On the Video Range 1–7

Intention to Donate Money (%)

Figure 38.1  Mean narrative transportation for the negative and positive ad with moving or non-moving music (based on Strick et al., 2015, Experiment 1). The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the means.

Moving Music

5.0 4.5 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 Non-Moving Music

Figure 38.2  Percentage of participants who were willing to donate money (left panel) and participants’ mean willingness to pass on the video (right panel) when ads featured moving or non-moving music (based on Strick et al., 2015, Experiment 1). The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the means.

music. Furthermore, we tested whether increased transportation led to increased persuasion by measuring (among other things) participants’ behavioral intentions. Participants could indicate their willingness to donate money to the advertised cause and to forward the video to friends in their social network. As depicted in Figure 38.2, presenting the ad with moving music led to a higher percentage of participants who were willing to donate and, on average, a higher willingness to pass on the video than presenting the ad with non-moving music. These effects were similar for both the positive and the negative ad.

Audiovisual Advertising and Psychological Transportation   785 Together with the study by Costabile and Terman (2013), our study supports the complete theory about music in narrative advertising outlined in this chapter: Appropriate music increases transportation into the advertising story, which in turn increases persuasion (i.e., ad-consistent beliefs, liking, identification, and behavioral intentions). Highly emotional and chills-evoking (i.e., moving) music is more effective than nonmoving music because it increases the emotional impact of the story, which in turn increases transportation and persuasion. In a second and third experiment, we further explored the psychological mechanism underlying the relation between narrative transportation and persuasion (Strick et al., 2015, Experiments 2 and 3). We found evidence that transportation increases persuasion by reducing the amount of critical thought. As Figure 38.3 shows, while being absorbed by the chills-inducing music and visuals, viewers have fewer attentional resources available for thinking about the manipulative intent of the advertiser (see also Escalas, 2004; Green & Brock, 2000). This is an important insight for advertisers, as dealing with consumer resistance is one of their major concerns (Knowles & Linn, 2004). Importantly, the identification of this underlying mechanism also points to boundary conditions for using moving music in advertising. Our research identified three conditions in which moving music is not effective: (1) when viewers become aware of the advertiser’s manipulative intent after viewing the ad—this is because at that point, the ad can no longer distract viewers from the advertiser’s manipulative intent; (2) when the inference of manipulative intent is extremely low to start with—under these circumstances, there is no room for moving music to reduce this inference even further; and (3) when the inference of manipulative intent is extremely high to start with—under such conditions, participants may resist the ad to such extent that they will not be transported in the story at all. For advertisers, these results imply that moving music may be ineffective in combination with obvious cues of manipulation like blatant sales pitches or

Inferences of Manipulative Intent Range 1–7

3.5

3.0

2.5 Moving Music Non-Moving Music 2.0

1.5

1.0

Figure 38.3  Mean inferences of manipulative intent when ads featured moving or non-moving music (based on Strick et al., 2015, Experiment 2). The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals of the means.

786   Strick spectacular discounts. I will return to this potential mismatch between “being moved” and the obvious commercial purposes of advertising in the discussion. Finally, and perhaps more surprisingly, moving music may also be ineffective when viewers experience no manipulative intent at all, as there is no room for the music to reduce resistance further. In summary, our results imply that a highly emotional, chills-evoking (i.e., moving) musical score is a powerful strategy to increase the impact of narrative ads. It increases the emotional impact of the story and the level of transportation. It can reduce feelings of manipulative intent and increase consumers’ behavioral intentions (e.g., to donate for the advertised cause, buy products, or share the ad in their social network). Having said this, the research also pointed to important boundary effects, as described earlier. Future research may identify additional circumstances under which moving music increases or decreases the persuasive impact of narrative advertising.

Conclusions and Suggestions for Future Research Narrative audiovisual ads, like the WWF ad about the injured tiger, can really “pull us in.” In just one minute or less, we may strongly identify with the characters, imagine ourselves in their situation, and empathize with their emotional responses. Studies have shown that when we are “lost” in narrative ads, we are more likely to be influenced by them. As Gerrig (1993) noted, narrative transportation is like taking a journey, from which the traveler returns somewhat changed. In this chapter, I have presented a theory supporting the notion that background music can significantly enhance narrative transportation and persuasion. Moreover, I have advanced the argument that moving music (i.e., music that elicits intense emotions and “chills”) is particularly effective at triggering narrative transportation and persuasion, because the arousal elicited by the music can be misattributed to the events in the story. The empirical evidence suggests that moving music plays an important role in narrative advertisements as it increases viewers’ emotional response to the story, facilitates transportation, and increases various forms of persuasion. Although the basic claims have been supported in studies reviewed in this chapter, several important questions remain that need to be addressed in future studies. This chapter highlighted the importance of emotional involvement in narrative transportation. This does not mean, however, that transportation is a purely emotional experience, nor that music fails to affect attentional and cognitive aspects of the narrative experience. Transportation is defined as a holistic experience involving attentional absorption, emotional involvement, reduced cognitive activity, and—in the case of written material—vivid imagery (Gerrig, 1993; Green & Brock, 2000). Recent findings support the view that the cognitive and emotional components of transportation are strongly correlated (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Costabile & Terman, 2013). If this is true, music may increase not only emotional involvement but also cognitive aspects of

Audiovisual Advertising and Psychological Transportation   787 transportation, such as attentional absorption and reduced cognitive activity. Some recent findings already support this view (Strick et al., 2015). However, it would be illuminating if future research would further address the relationship between the emotional and cognitive components of transportation and explore how music impacts each of them in the context of narrative-based audiovisual ads (and other forms of au­di­o­vis­ ual advertising involving stories, such as cinematic trailers and television trailers [see chapters by Watts and by Deaville in the “Production” section]). Another question that remains is whether the emotional tone of the music should match the emotional tone of the story. Research on excitation transfer suggests that arousing music can increase the emotional impact of an ad, independently of whether the emotional tone of the music fits the ad or not (Bryant & Miron, 2003; Gorn et al., 2001). This implies that, for example, highly arousing sad music can increase the persuasive impact of a cheerful ad, and vice versa. In contrast, most research on music in advertising suggests that music is only effective when it fits the emotional tone and content of the advertising message (e.g., Kellaris, Cox, & Cox, 1993; MacInnis & Park, 1991; Morris & Boone, 1998; North et al., 2004; Y. C. Shen & Chen, 2006). It is important to keep in mind that in research on excitation transfer, the music is usually played before viewing the ad. In that case, the emotional arousal elicited by the music lingers for some time after the music has stopped (with the listener being typically unaware of it), after which the unconsciously experienced arousal is misattributed to the emotional content of the ad (see also Tan, Spackman, & Bezdek, 2007, on priming effects of emotional music presented before or after a target event in film). In contrast, in research on music in advertising, the music is typically played while viewing the ad. In such a case, incongruences between the music and the ad message become highly salient and may cause a negative response or distancing from the narrative. Hence, when music and visuals are presented simultaneously, music likely needs to be matched with the visuals to increase transportation (Wallengren & Strukelj, 2018; see also the Congruence-Associationist Model by A. J. Cohen, 2001, 2013). Looking to the future, it would be interesting to further explore the role of incongruent music. Some filmmakers intentionally create incongruities between music and story. For example, the cheerful melody of the song “Stuck in the Middle With You” was highly incongruent with one of the most violent scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs (in which a gangster brutally cuts off a cop’s ear). Based on the reasoning earlier, it is likely that such incompatible music creates emotional distance in the viewer and lowers transportation. On the other hand, given that the incongruence is highly salient, it may also spark viewers’ interest and compel them to cognitively elaborate on the apparent incongruity (Heckler & Childers, 1992; Houston, Childers, & Heckler, 1987; see also Ireland, 2018). To the extent that viewers succeed in solving the incongruity, coherence of the working narrative is restored, and the viewers may have awakened to a new sense of meaning (e.g., in Reservoir Dogs, a viewer may interpret the cheerful music as embodying the gangster’s aloof attitude about the physical torture, and hence, his cold-bloodedness). This could add complexity and depth to the aesthetic experience. Alternatively, well-placed incongruities can lead to a comic effect, which may also increase ad appreciation and persuasion (e.g., Strick, Holland, Van Baaren, Van Knippenberg, & Dijksterhuis, 2013).

788   Strick How incongruences affect transportation remains an interesting question for further study. On the one hand, it may reduce narrative transportation, as it interrupts the coherence of the working narrative. On the other hand, as Gerrig (1993) has also postulated, it may increase narrative transportation because it allows viewers to fill in parts of the story themselves. Future research may also further explore how personality characteristics of viewers, such as need for affect and openness to experience, affect the persuasive influence of music. Studies have shown that people who are high in the need for affect are more likely to be transported into stories and more likely to be persuaded by them (Appel & Richter, 2010). In line with these findings, it may be the case that people high in the need for affect are also more susceptible to moving music and are more likely to experience chills. Consequently, moving music may exert a stronger influence on them than on people low in the need for affect. At the same time, openness to experience is a strong predictor of getting the chills from moving music (McCrae, 2007). An obvious next step would be to investigate whether people who are high in openness to experience are more susceptible to the impact of moving music on transportation and narrative persuasion than people low in openness to experience. It is also important to note that moving music may backfire under some circumstances (cf. Appel & Richter, 2010; Strick et al., 2015). One approach to elucidating these circumstances would be to look at demographic variables. People who are high in need for affect and openness to experience tend to be female, young, intelligent, politically liberal, and open to diversity (Leone & Chirumbolo,  2008; Maio & Esses,  2001; McCrae, 1996; Moutafi, Furnham, & Crump, 2006). This suggests that other types of audiences (e.g., males of older age) may resist being emotionally moved, and hence, that moving music in advertising may not work for them. Another interesting avenue for further research is to investigate whether being moved (by music) is more effective for nonprofit than commercial advertising. Current findings and theorizing suggest that “being moved” is a distinct emotion that involves the experience of deep-seated motives like love, courage, and beauty (Seibt et al., 2017; Strick & Van Soolingen, 2018; Zickfeld, Schubert, Seibt, & Fiske, 2019). Consequently, when people are moved, either by music or another stimulus, they feel that the experience is somehow personally significant, as if they are suddenly reminded of their core values (Cova & Deonna, 2014). Indeed, being moved has been found to stimulate pro-social behaviors like helping, consolidating, and being generous (e.g., Fukui & Toyoshima, 2014; Stel, Van Baaren, & Vonk, 2008; see also Steffens, 2020). From this perspective, there may be a mismatch between the “sacred” experience of being moved and the “secular” goal of making profit via commercial advertising. One could therefore hypothesize that moving music generally matches better with nonprofit advertising than for-profit advertising, as the former is inherently higher in morality (see Strick et al., 2015, for some preliminary evidence). Alternatively, one could hypothesize that, for moving music to be effective, the advertising message needs to be sufficiently “deep” or inspirational to match the profound experience of being moved. In summary, music clearly has an important role in narrative advertising, and the research so far has confirmed that music can increase transportation and narrative

Audiovisual Advertising and Psychological Transportation   789 ­ ersuasion. Yet, numerous important questions remain to be answered in future studies, p some of which have been highlighted in this chapter. Transportation is currently a thriving field in communication and psychology research. I hope this chapter will spark further exploration on the role of music in this fascinating phenomenon.

Author Note The author is grateful to Hans Hoeken, Professor of Communication and Information Studies at Utrecht University, for his helpful feedback on this chapter.

Recommended Readings Appel, M., & Richter, T. (2010). Transportation and need for affect in narrative persuasion. A mediated moderation model. Media Psychology, 13, 101–135. Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 701–721. McCrae, R.  R. (2007). Aesthetic chills as a universal marker of openness to experience. Motivation and Emotion, 31(1), 5–11. Strick, M., De Bruin, H.  L., De Ruiter, L., & Jonkers, W. (2015). Striking the right chord: Emotionally moving music increases psychological transportation and narrative persuasion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 21, 57–72. Zickfeld, J. H., Schubert, T. W., Seibt, B., & Fiske, A. P. (2019). Moving through the literature: What is the emotion often denoted being moved? Emotion Review, 11, 123–139. https://doi. org/10.1177/1754073918820126

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chapter 39

M usic as A dv ertisem en t Capturing and Sustaining Attention in the Attention Economy Era Hubert Léveillé Gauvin

We live in a world where information is abundant but attention is scarce. New information is constantly being generated in a variety of forms, including books, web pages, movies, and songs. But as Nobel laureate Herbert Simon put it, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (1971, pp. 40–41). The scarcity of attention in an information-rich world has yielded the concept of “economy of attention” (e.g., Davenport & Beck, 2001; Goldhaber, 1997), an economic theory suggesting that human attention, being both scarce and valuable, can be thought of as a currency requiring its own supply-and-demand model. Indeed, even the language we use to talk about attention echoes this perspective. As Kahneman points out, “[t]he often-used phrase ‘pay attention’ is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail” (2011, p. 23). Attention has a scarcity-based value (as opposed to a cost-determined value), meaning that its value is driven by demand. Because information generation is constantly increasing, so is the value of attention. My representation of this theoretical model discussed by Goldhaber (1997), Davenport and Beck (2001), and others is illustrated in Figure 39.1. Historically, the main product populating the attention marketplace has been advertising. Modern advertising began in the 17th century, and for three centuries, advertising was closely associated with print media (e.g., newspapers, periodicals, posters). By the 20th century, however, the attention marketplace had expanded to include a variety of new venues, such as radio shows and television programs. As consumers, we tend to think of radio stations as a means for delivering music entertainment, but from a

Music as Advertisement   795

Information

Increasing value of attention

Human Attention

Time (in years)

Figure 39.1  The attention economy model discussed by Goldhaber (1997), Davenport and Beck (2001), and others predicts that, as the disparity between available human attention and information content increases, so does the value of attention. In this visual representation, the scarcity-based increasing value of attention is represented by the darkening of the shaded area.

c­ommercial perspective, “commercial radio stations exist to broadcast adverts, not music” (North & Hargreaves, 2011, p. 914). The same is true for television channels. In 2004, Patrick Le Lay was the chairman and CEO of France’s TF1 Group, the holding company of France’s most popular television channel. He created a national controversy when he candidly stated that TF1’s main job was to help Coca-Cola sell its product by selling “available human brain time” to the multinational corporation (Le Lay, 2004, p. 92). While Le Lay’s comments might have been culturally insensitive, his observation nevertheless perfectly describes the attention economy framework in which we live. Perhaps one of the most important manifestations of the attention economy model is the striking growth in popularity of online streaming platforms (Ingram, 2015). Music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music make little sense when thinking in terms of traditional currencies. However, when one considers attention as a currency, online streaming becomes a significant tool to reap attention. Since every information product aspires to engage attention in some way or another, it is useful to think of information products in terms of advertising. Viewed from this perspective, popular songs can be thought of as advertisements promoting an artist’s personal brand. Of course, this phenomenon was not caused by online streaming. When a song is played on broadcast radio, it similarly acts as an advertisement for the artist. The principal difference between the two media is the extraordinary competitiveness

796   Léveillé Gauvin that characterizes online streaming. With millions of songs available instantaneously for free, technological changes in recent decades have made the war for attention more intense than ever. Huron (1989) identified six basic ways in which music can enhance advertising: (1) entertainment, (2) structure/continuity, (3) memorability, (4) lyrical language, (5) targeting, and (6) authority establishment. These six categories are summarized in six seminal questions:

1. On what basis is the music entertaining or engaging? 2. How is the music structured and what role(s) does this structure serve? 3. How does the music achieve memorability? 4. How does the use of language contribute to the music’s poetic or emotive appeal? 5. To whom is this music aimed? 6. How does the music establish its credibility or authority? (Huron, 1989, p. 572).

Using these six questions as an analytic framework, this chapter examines the advertisement function of popular music through the lens of attention economy theory. The attention economy theory is based on a commodification of the human capacity for attention. It relies on the idea that information is plentiful and that attention is the scarce resource. Like other economies based on scarcity, the attention economy has markets (e.g., traditional media and the internet), currencies and measurement systems (e.g., time), producers and consumers, and laws of supply and demand (Davenport & Beck, 2001). In this chapter, it will be argued that this new economic reality has amplified the selfadvertising nature of popular music in recent years by encouraging popular music makers to adapt their compositional practices in a way that favors attention grabbing. For each question raised by Huron, a survey of the relevant literature on the topic will be offered, with emphasis on the attention economy theory. Some implications of these findings for the use of popular music in advertisements will also be drawn, discussing how personal data might be used in the near future to help marketers capture and sustain users’ attention.

The Advertising Function of Popular Music in the Attention Economy Era On What Basis Is the Music Entertaining or Engaging? Arousal Studies have shown that arousing stimuli engage our attention, which in turn helps the human brain identify information as being important through subjective experience and neural activation of sympathetic nerve fibers that liberate epinephrine or norepinephrine

Music as Advertisement   797 (Storbek & Clore, 2008). Similarly, studies have shown that arousal can facilitate memory by enhancing attention during the encoding process (Christianson & Loftus, 1991) and that increased arousal supports slower forgetting (Sharot & Phelps, 2004). Exposure to audio stimuli with faster tempi has been linked with increases in listeners’ levels of arousal (e.g., Husain, Thompson, & Schellenberg,  2002; Kellaris & Kent, 1993). All other things being equal, songs with faster tempi should be more engaging. An increase in the average tempo of popular songs in the last decades would thus be consistent with the attention economy theory. Empirical research on the topic shows mixed results, with a general decrease in average tempo from the 1960s to 1990s, followed by a general increase in tempo between the 1990s and the 2000s (Schellenberg & von Scheve, 2012; Léveillé Gauvin, 2018). Another way to increase arousal is through increased loudness. Serrà, Corral, Boguñá, Haro, and Arcos (2012) used an auditory model to estimate the perceived loudness from audio signals for more than 450,000 distinct popular recordings from 1955 to 2010. The results showed growing levels of loudness over time (the so-called loudness war), a phenomenon that is also consistent with the attention economy theory.

Predictability Meyer (1956) argued that the secret to composing engaging music was to strike a balance between predictability and surprise. Similarly, Berlyne (1970, 1971), inspired by the Yerkes-Dodson hypothesis (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908), proposed that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between the complexity of a stimulus and how pleasurable it is perceived. Huron (2013) suggests the effect arises from two well-known psychological phenomena: “processing fluency,” where easily processed stimuli are experienced as positive, and “habituation,” where redundant stimuli lead to reduced responsiveness and subsequent boredom. Hence, we might imagine an inverted U-shaped curve where the upper part represents a “sweet spot” between predictability and surprise. North and Hargreaves (1995) tested this conjecture by asking 75 participants to rate excerpts of popular music for liking, subjective complexity, and familiarity. As predicted, they observed an inverted-U relationship between liking and subjective complexity, suggesting that listeners prefer songs that balance predictability and surprise. A similar study was conducted by Miles, Rosen, and Grzywacz (2017), this time using information content instead of participants’ subjective perception of complexity. The authors analyzed the harmonic content of over 500 songs popular between 1958 and 1991 to determine whether the popularity of a song is correlated with the predictability of the chord progression it uses. Their results suggest that the most popular songs tend to feature more surprising harmonic events. Moreover, the most popular songs also tend to feature unpredictable verses followed by predictable choruses. Though not decisive, these studies, along with others (e.g., Heyduk, 1975; Tan, Spackman, & Peaslee, 2006; Vitz, 1966), are broadly consistent with the idea that listeners prefer music that strikes a balance between predictability and surprise.

798   Léveillé Gauvin

How Is the Music Structured and What Role(s) Does This Structure Serve? AABA and Verse-Chorus Forms Two main formal structures have dominated popular music throughout the 20th century: the AABA form and the verse-chorus form. The AABA form is closely associated with the first half of the century and was a ubiquitous vehicle for Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood songwriters. Von Appen and Frei-Hauenschild have referred to the AABA form as “the pop song form par excellence” during this period (2015, p. 14). The A-section verses often, though not always, end with a refrain, a recurring line of text—often the title of the piece—usually supported by a cadential progression. To this day, the AABA form is still widely associated with the so-called Great American Songbook. Of interest is the abrupt shift in popularity of the AABA form in favor of the verse-chorus form between 1964 and 1965, with a drastic and quasi-steady decline in frequency of the AABA form over the latter half of the 1960s, paired with a rise in frequency of the verse-chorus form (Léveillé Gauvin,  2015). Von Appen and FreiHauenschild (2015) suggest that the verse-chorus form evolved directly from the AABA form, with the embedded refrain becoming the chorus, a fully independent section. The obvious advantage of this shift from refrain to chorus is drawing greater attention to the chorus of the song, which typically includes the so-called hook of the song. Although the verse-chorus form affords opportunities to emphasize the hook of a song, one must ask: What happened in the 1960s to motivate this paradigmatic shift? The attention economy theory offers a possible explanation. In 1949, RCA Victor introduced the vinyl seven-inch 45-rpm record. Unlike shellac 78-rpm discs, the seven-inch single was light, portable, and durable. Moreover, this new technology was more affordable, making it a better format for millions of postwar baby boom teenagers. In effect, the seven-inch single increased accessibility to a larger collection of music, increasing competition, and consequently encouraging artists to make songs that are more attention grabbing.

Instrumental Introductions Between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s, another important structural change that happened is the near disappearance of the instrumental introduction. A corpus study from Léveillé Gauvin (2018) reported that instrumental introductions dramatically shortened between 1986 and 2015, from an average of 23 seconds to just five seconds. Corpus studies use statistical methods to investigate trends and patterns in a group of individuals or items (usually referred to as a population) based on a smaller sample. For example, in the study conducted by Léveillé Gauvin, a sample of 303 U.S. top 10 singles was analyzed to identify trends in popular music. Considering that vocal music is more attention grabbing than instrumental music, this change is consistent with the attention economy theory. Furthermore, results from the same study suggest that the title hook appears earlier than in previous decades, which is also consistent with the attention economy theory.

Music as Advertisement   799

How Does the Music Achieve Memorability? Repetition and Memory Arguably, the most memorable part of a pop song is the hook. From a research perspective, the term is problematic since what “hooks” one listener might not “hook” another listener (Traut, 2005). Nevertheless, the term is often used to refer to the portion of a song whose lyrics relay the title of the song (Davis, 1985). Since the rise in popularity of the verse-chorus form in the 1960s, the hook has often been associated with the chorus of a song. Corey et al. (2017) asked participants to rate their continuous enjoyment of eight popular songs using sliders. The results suggest that enjoyment depends on the formal section, with choruses being rated as more enjoyable than other sections. Chorus repetition also seems to play a role in the popularity of a song. Nunes, Ordanini, and Valsesia (2015) showed that greater repetition of choruses within a song increases both the likelihood of a song becoming a number one hit and the speed at which it reaches this position in the charts. In discussing the role of climaxes in popular music, Osborn (2013) suggests that climactic sections such as choruses often feature, among other things, repeated lyrical and melodic hooks, modulations, simple harmonic progressions, and a “laid-back” rhythmic section. Osborn’s model echoes Temperley’s “loose verse/tight chorus” (LVTC) form (2007), in which choruses are more tightly knit than verses in terms of rhythm, texture, and tonality. Biamonte suggests that, in the LVTC model, “the chorus functions both as a contrast to the verse and a resolution of it, and is often repeated multiple times at the end of the song to create a de facto coda” (2014, par. 7.7). Research shows that the interaction between rhythm and pitch affects memorability such that melodies are easier to parse and remember when tones occur on metrically accented moments (Dowling, 1990; Dowling, Lung, & Herrbold, 1987; Jones, Boltz, & Kidd, 1982). In addition to being repeated within a song, the tight interaction between rhythm and tonality in choruses might be expected to contribute to their memorability. Although systematic longitudinal research has yet to investigate this, a tightening of choruses in the last decades would be consistent with the attention economy theory. Another important aspect of popular music that uses repetition as a driving force is lyrical content. Nunes et al. (2015) analyzed lyrical repetition in hit songs from 1958 to 2012 and observed that greater lyrical repetition increases the likelihood of a song becoming a number one hit, the speed at which a song reaches this position in the charts, and the likelihood of debuting in the Top 40 charts. One caveat, however, is that the positive effect of a chorus repetition on a song (see earlier) is negated if the lyrical repetition is too high (Nunes et al., 2015). This effect is consistent with the existence of a “sweet spot” concept balancing predictability and surprise discussed in the section on predictability. The work of Nunes and colleagues (2015) raises the question of whether pop lyrics are getting more repetitive. Morris (2017) conducted a corpus-study analysis of 15,000 lyrics from songs that charted on the Billboard’s Year End Hot 100 charts between 1958 and

800   Léveillé Gauvin 2017. The data showed an increasing use of lyrical repetition over time. Furthermore, there appears to be a clear distinction between songs reaching the top 10 of the charts and other songs, with top 10 songs exhibiting more lyrical repetition. Once again, these changes in writing practices are consistent with the attention economy model.

Earworms Music can be tenacious in human memory, perhaps more than any other types of stimuli. From an advertising perspective, this cognitive stickiness potential can represent an important asset for music makers. In popular discourse, this is commonly discussed under the rubric of “earworms,” where a person imagines a musical sound or passage in the absence of any actual sound. A large survey conducted in Finland (Liikkanen, 2008) suggests that 90% of the population experience earworms on a weekly basis, and 33% on a daily basis. Other researchers have also pointed out that people who consider music to be important in their life tend to experience longer and stickier auditory imagery (Beaman & Williams, 2010; Levitin, 2006). In one of the first empirical works aiming to identify musical properties associated with earworms, Kellaris (2001; reviewed in Kellaris, 2008) suggested that features such as simplicity and repetitiveness might contribute to the cognitive stickiness of a passage. (See also Krishnan and Kellaris in this volume on repetition in sonic logos.) Beaman and Williams (2010) also speculated that simple and repetitive tunes were easier to overlearn, and thus more likely to become earworms. Similarly, Williamson and Müllensiefen (2012) compared 29 songs frequently identified as earworms to 29 control songs and found that songs that are easier to sing (i.e., songs containing longer notes and smaller pitch intervals) are more likely to be identified as earworms. Building on this work, Jakubowski, Finkel, Stewart, and Müllensiefen (2017) analyzed a set of 100 songs commonly identified as earworms and compared them with a control sample of 100 songs with matching popularity and style. Their results suggest that songs featuring common melodic contours (i.e., arch-shaped phrases; see Huron, 1996) are more likely to be identified as earworms. Moreover, songs with unexpected leaps and repeated notes are also more likely to create involuntary musical imagery. They also observed a difference in tempo between the two groups, with songs commonly identified as earworms featuring, on average, faster tempi than the songs in the control group. More generally, song choruses are more likely to be the part of a song involved in musical imagery (Bailes, 2007; Beaman & Williams, 2010). From the attention economy perspective discussed in the introduction, it would make sense to observe earworms becoming more frequent in recent years. That is, if songs are considered advertisements in and of themselves, we would expect artists to go out of their way to make songs more memorable. Sacks (2007) hypothesized that the omnipresence of music in modern lives, both in public spaces (e.g., background music at restaurants) and in private spaces (e.g., portable music players), has increased the incidence of earworms. Similarly, Margulis notes how recent technologies afford “a degree and pervasiveness of repetition that was previously unheard” (2014, p. 77). We know that earworms are almost always existing melodies that are familiar to people

Music as Advertisement   801 (Beaman & Williams, 2010), that songs heard aloud are more likely candidates (Hyman et al., 2013; Liikkanen, 2012), and that recent exposure seems to trigger auditory imagery (Bailes,  2015; Floridou & Müllensiefen,  2015; Jakubowski, Farrugia, Halpern, Sankarpandi, & Stewart, 2015; Williamson et al., 2012). However, no longitudinal study has yet been conducted to track the incidence of earworms over long periods of time.

How Does the Use of Language Contribute to the Music’s Poetic or Emotive Appeal? Self-Focus, Narcissism and Antisocial Behavior Self-congruity theory (Johar & Sirgy, 1991; Sirgy, 1986; for summary, see Klipfel, Barclay, & Bockorny,  2014) suggests that individuals are driven by self-consistency motives when purchasing goods, favoring products that reflect the way they perceive themselves (Cisek et al., 2014). Recent research in sociology and psychology also suggests that individualistic personality traits in U.S.  culture have been increasing in recent decades (Roberts & Helson,  1997; Twenge & Campbell,  2001,  2008; Twenge & Foster,  2010; Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008), and that people scoring high in private self-consciousness scales (i.e., scales measuring one’s tendency for introspection) tend to recognize self-relevant words more quickly (Eichstaedt & Silvia, 2003). DeWall, Pond, Campbell, and Twenge (2011) analyzed lyrics of popular songs from 1980 to 2007. Their findings suggest an increasing use of self-focused (e.g., I, me, mine) words in the studied period, consistent with the self-congruity theory. However, a replication study by Léveillé Gauvin (2018) investigating popular songs from 1986 to 2015 failed to replicate these findings. DeWall et al. (2011) also observed that words in lyrics related to anger and antisocial behavior have also increased over time, mirroring increases in narcissism and social rejection (Bushman & Baumeister,  1998; DeWall, Twenge, Gitter, & Baumeister, 2009; Twenge & Campbell, 2003). Napier and Shamir (2018) also observed that the expression of anger in popular music lyrics increased between 1951 and 2016.

Seriousness and Meaningfulness The environmental security hypothesis (ESH; for a review see Nelson, Pettijohn, & Galak, 2007) suggests that what we find most desirable depends on social and economic conditions, such that fun and carefree themes are preferred during stable times, whereas more substantive and meaningful themes, traditionally associated with safety and security, are preferred during uncertain times. Pettijohn and Sacco (2009a, 2009b) analyzed lyrics from songs popular between 1955 and 2003 to see if social and economic conditions are reflected in lyrical content in a way that is consistent with the ESH. Their results suggest that, when social and economic times are more threatening or uncertain, songs tend to be longer in duration, have more words per sentence, and have less carefree lyrics (i.e., more future references and more coverage of social processes). In addition, songs with

802   Léveillé Gauvin more comforting and romantic lyrics also tend to be more popular during threatening times. Recall that the ESH predicts that what we find most desirable depends on social and economic conditions. The results of Pettijohn and Sacco’s studies are in line with the predictions of the ESH. Similar trends have also been observed in popular television shows (McIntosh, Schwegler, & Terry-Murray, 2000), as manifested by the greater popularity of meaningful television programming during times of societal threat.

Sexual Content Another important theme often explored in popular music lyrics is sexual desire and lust. The axiom that “sex sells” is supported by numerous studies. In general, there is agreement that sexual content draws consumers’ automatic attention (e.g., Aaker & Stayman,  1990; Brown & Stayman,  1992; Lang, Greenwald, Bradley, & Hamm,  1993; Schroeder & McDonagh, 2006; Wolin, 2003), although this effect is moderated by culture (Sawang,  2010). Considering that using sexual content in advertisements can increase the advertising effectiveness, and considering further the main thesis of this chapter that popular music also has a self-advertisement function, we might expect to witness an increase in sexual content in popular lyrics. Madanikia and Bartholomew (2014) investigated love and lust content in lyrics for Top 40 songs from Billboard’s Year End Hot 100 singles spanning 1971 to 2011. While the first three decades (i.e., 1970s through 1990s) featured most commonly lyrics about love without sexual references (and, to a lesser extent, lyrics combining love and sex), the authors observed a shift from 2001 onward, with songs alluding to sex in the absence of love becoming more common. These findings parallel an increase in sexual imagery in recent decades in the visual and verbal content of other media forms, such as TV programming and films (Farrar et al., 2003).

To Whom Is This Music Aimed? Style and Genre In marketing, a target market is a group of people toward whom marketing efforts and products are aimed. When viewed from an advertising perspective, musical styles and genres can act as targeting tools. Schellenberg, Iverson, and Mckinnon (1999) found that participants exposed to 100-ms and 200-ms music excerpts were able to identify popular songs by name, and Gjerdingen and Perrot (2008) found that participants could identify specific styles listening to 250-ms excerpts. Building upon these studies, Plazak and Huron (2011) proposed a chronology of the musical knowledge acquired by participants upon hearing excerpts ranging from 50 ms to 3,000 ms. The stimuli were collected from genre-specific radio stations available via XM-Sirius Radio. The results suggest that it takes less than 3,000 ms for listeners to identify the instrumentation, genre, mood, density, pleasantness, geographic origin, and tempo. What all three studies indicate is that style or genre is highly salient and that broader musical categories based on

Music as Advertisement   803 instrumentation, geographic origin, and mood (e.g., “Piano Music,” “Country,” “Portuguese Music,” “Indie Instrumentals,” “Sunday Morning,” “Party Hits”) are very quickly identified—between 2.5 and 3 seconds. Since genre and style are the most salient demographic markers, these musical features can be used as targeting tools and, as such, might be expected to be indicated soon after the music begins (though see also Kupfer, 2017). Lamere (2014) analyzed music listening habits on Spotify for billions of plays and observed that one out of five songs was skipped within the first five seconds and one out of three within the first 20 seconds. Lamere’s observations, in conjunction with the studies mentioned earlier, suggest that listeners may be using a screening approach when listening to music. Based on this information, I am proposing a cognitive model of music listening choice behavior (MLCB) featuring a three-stage screening process, illustrated in Figure 39.2. In the first, familiarity-related stage (zero to one second), listeners may recognize a specific musical work and decide whether the given work is of interest. If the answer is yes, the song passes the familiarity-related screening process and the listening continues, starting the style/genre-related screening process; if the answer no, the song fails to pass the familiarity screening process and the skip button is pressed. In the second, style/genre-related stage (zero to five seconds), listeners quickly recognize the style/genre and assess their interest in listening to music of that style/genre. For example, a listener might acquire the following knowledge after a five-second excerpt: banjo, violin, female voice, twang, country and western, and Texas. Based on that knowledge, they might form a mental category, such as “American Country Music.” They then assess whether they want to listen to a song belonging to that category. If the answer is yes, the song passes the style/genre-related screening process and the listening continues, starting the third, song-related screening process (five to 20 seconds); if the answer no, the song fails to pass the style/genre-related screening process and the skip button is pressed. Finally, in the third, song-related stage, listeners assess characteristics that are specific to this song, such as the melody, the harmony, and the lyrics. Since there is a high probability of a song being skipped within the first five seconds, artists wishing to clearly target their audience might be expected to begin their song with material that is representative of the overall song. As discussed earlier, the disappearance of the instrumental introduction in favor of beginning with the chorus (Léveillé Gauvin, 2018) is consistent with this conjecture.

Personality Traits Targeting can also be done in terms of music preferences and personality traits. Groundbreaking work by Rentfrow and Gosling (2003) and subsequent analyses by Rentfrow, Goldberg, and Levitin (2011) suggest that musical preferences can be analyzed using a five-dimension model: Mellow (e.g., pop, soft rock, and soul/R&B); Unpretentious (e.g., country and singer-songwriter); Sophisticated (e.g., classical, jazz, and world); Intense (e.g., heavy metal, punk, and rock); and Contemporary (e.g., rap and electronica music). Music listeners also tend to prefer songs that correspond to their emotional state (Rentfrow & Gosling, 2003). For example, fans of heavy metal, rock, and

Play

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Figure 39.2  Proposed cognitive model of music listening choice behavior (MLCB) featuring a three-stage screening process. The last stage should be approximately three times the length of the first two stages combined but was spliced for space considerations (as indicated by the two oblique slashes). Although visually illustrated as three independent stages, the screening processes presented in the MLCB model are likely to temporally overlap with one another.

Music as Advertisement   805 other arousing music tend to have higher resting arousal (e.g., resting heart rate and blood pressure), tend to be more sensation seeking, and are more likely to have antisocial personality traits (Litle & Zuckerman, 1986; McNamara & Ballard, 1999). Similarly, when listening to heavy metal, fans of this genre show increasing arousal levels beyond those of country music fans (Gowensmith & Bloom, 1997). Other musical preferences tend to be associated with personality dimensions. For example, individuals scoring high on extraversion and psychoticism tend to prefer rap and dance music (McCown, Keiser, Mulhearn, & Williamson, 1997), while those associated with openness to experience and empathy are more likely to enjoy sad music (Vuoskoski, Thompson, McIlwain, & Eerola, 2012).

Tasks and Activities Finally, targeting can be achieved by considering what listeners are doing while they are listening to music. The Yerkes-Dodson hypothesis (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) states that the optimum arousal when performing some task depends on task complexity, and that the optimum arousal for complex tasks is lower than for simple tasks. In terms of popular music, the Yerkes-Dodson hypothesis suggests that highly arousing music (e.g., fasttempo music in a major mode, with easy listening harmony; see Juslin, 2001) should be preferred for simple activities such as exercising, cleaning, or dancing, whereas lowarousing music should be preferred for complex activities, like reading or studying. Experimental studies are consistent with the Yerkes-Dodson hypothesis; while listeners generally tend to prefer happy music (i.e., fast tempo and major mode) over sad music (i.e., slow tempo and minor mode), this distinction disappears when participants are asked to complete a demanding task while listening to the music (Schellenberg, Peretz, & Vieillard, 2008). Online streaming platforms rely on the Yerkes-Dodson hypothesis when designing activity-based playlists by selecting low-arousal music for task-oriented playlists like “Reading” and “Studying” and high-arousal music for playlists like “Working Out” and “Running.”

How Does the Music Establish Its Credibility or Authority? Guest Appearances Celebrity endorsement is another common marketing strategy. In a meta-analysis of the literature on the topic, Amos, Holmes, and Strutton (2008) identified that trustworthiness and expertise play a significant role in celebrity endorsement effectiveness. Expert endorsements also solidify the link between memory and preference, and improve product recall by modifying the encoding process (Klucharev, Smidts, & Fernández, 2008). We observe an analogous phenomenon in popular music, where artists often team up with one another in the hope of generating excitement from the public (Edwards, 2007). If guest appearances in popular music (sometimes referred to as “featuring credits”) function as a way to draw listener attention, then the attention economy

806   Léveillé Gauvin theory proposed in this chapter would predict an increasing use of this practice in the last decades. Indeed, Tang (2015) analyzed Billboard’s Year End Hot 100 charts between 1990 and 2014 and observed an increasing use of guest appearances, consistent with this interpretation.

Musical Quotation and Sampling Another way to establish authority is through musical quotation. Musical quotations can take the form of a topical thematic reference (e.g., patriotic, nationalistic, religious) or of a musical borrowing. Topical thematic references are used to create a specific atmosphere and do not rely on the listener’s familiarity with the sources. Musical borrowings, however, rely on the listener’s familiarity with the cited material. As Keppler suggests, “The very existence of such hints [i.e., musical borrowings] is . . . that the composer is offering to play a game with anyone who knows the rules” (1956, p. 478). These types of quotations are often intellectually appealing to the listeners who can aptly identify them, as they suggest a shared cultural experience between the listener and the composer. A specific type of musical borrowing common in popular music is sampling. Generally, sampling can be defined as “the use of a recognizable musical figure from another recording” (Boone, 2013, par. 3.1). Sampling is especially important in hip-hop music, where shared background knowledge is often necessary for a proper semantic interpretation, thus acting as a social bonding agent within a community (Schloss, 2014).

Implications for Advertising This last discussion on how popular music establishes its credibility or authority serves as a nice segue into the last topic of this chapter: music in advertisement. In a 2002 article published in New York Times Magazine, founding editor of Wired Magazine Kevin Kelly predicted that, “[in the future,] the most popular band in the world [will] produc[e] only very good ‘jingles,’ just as some of the best directors today produce only very good commercials” (2002, n.p.). The main thesis of this chapter argued that, at least figuratively speaking, Kelly was right: If popular music has a self-advertisement function, then popular songs act as “jingles” promoting an artist or band. But literally speaking, Kelly was also right. In 1998, roughly 12% of 30-second ads on television made use of a jingle. That number had shrunk to a mere 3% by 2011 (Stanley, 2016). Instead, the advertising industry now favors licensing deals that allow them to use genuine popular songs instead of commissioned jingles. Considering how expensive a licensing deal can be, one must ask: What is there to gain? Previously, I discussed six basic ways in which music can enhance advertising: (1) entertainment, (2) structure/continuity, (3) memorability, (4) lyrical language, (5) targeting, and (6) authority establishment. While the first five ways can as equally be achieved by the use of a jingle or a genuine pop song (one might even argue that memorability is more easily achieved through a jingle), the anonymity associated with jingles makes authority establishment, if not impossible, at least much harder. As such, when

Music as Advertisement   807 choosing a song to be featured in an ad, advertisers should not only favor music that is attention grabbing but also consider how the celebrity—or the notoriety—of an artist might influence the general reception by the public. In addition to these broad principles, one might also consider how technological changes might affect how music is used in advertising. As we share more and more personal data online, marketers can create content specifically tailored for each listener (e.g., Lynn, Lynham, Kenny, & Jaramillo, 2015). As such, we might predict that in the near future, music used in advertisements will be different for each individual. For example, we discussed how listeners prefer songs that concur with their personality traits and emotional states. By adapting the musical content of commercials based on a listener’s preferences, marketers are likely to increase their chances of sustaining users’ attention (see also chapters by Fraser and Allan in this section, and the chapter by Rodman on jingles and popular songs in Part II). Similarly, personal biometric data from fitness tracking devices such as Apple Watch and Fitbit could be used to estimate what a user is doing as they are watching or listening to a commercial and adapt the musical content of ads accordingly. Obviously, this raises serious ethical issues: What is the value of privacy? And how much of it are we willing to sacrifice to improve automated recommendation systems? These are difficult but important questions that academics, researchers, philosophers, and ultimately legislators will have to address in the near future.

Conclusions In this chapter, it has been argued that the attention economy has exerted a profound impact on popular music in recent decades. Specifically, it was proposed that technological changes have dramatically increased the volume of music available, effectively forcing music makers to modify their compositional practices in a way that favors attention grabbing. In effect, songs can be thought of as advertisements promoting an artist’s personal brand. A survey of the empirical literature on popular music suggests that these changes can be profitably understood from the perspective of attention economy theory. A summary of this survey is presented in Table 39.1 (see also Table 35.2 in Allan’s chapter in this volume). Technological changes in the last decades have yielded a dramatic increase in the volume of information products being created and distributed. Music has been especially affected by these technological changes, with music listening media changing every decade or so. The attention economy theory offers a compelling perspective from which to reinterpret much of the existing empirical literature on popular music. However, as with any post hoc analysis of the literature, caution is warranted. More studies employing a priori attention economy hypotheses are needed to better understand how technology affects compositional practices. This cautionary note notwithstanding, the attention economy theory offers an exciting new lens through which popular music compositional practices may be analyzed.

808   Léveillé Gauvin Table 39.1  Overview of Research Literature Discussed in Chapter, Listed by Topics Relevant to Attention Economy Category

Summary of Findings

Source(s)

Arousal

Schellenberg and von Scheve (2012) General decrease in tempo of popular songs between 1965 and 1995, followed by increase in tempo between 1995 and 2009.

 

General increase in tempo of popular songs between 1986 and 2015.

 

General increase in loudness of popular Serrà et al. (2012) songs between 1956 and 2010.

 

 

 

Predictability

Listeners prefer popular songs that balance predictability and surprise.

North and Hargreaves (1995)

 

The most popular songs tend to feature Miles et al. (2017) more surprising harmonic events and unpredictable verses followed by predictable choruses.

 

 

Form

Von Appen and Frei-Hauenschild AABA was the most popular formal (2015); Léveillé Gauvin (2015) structure between 1920 and 1949 but was replaced by verse-chorus form in the 1960s.

 

Reduced duration of instrumental introductions between 1986 and 2015.

Léveillé Gauvin (2018)

 

 

 

Repetition and memory

Choruses tend to be more enjoyable than other sections and therefore contribute to the popularity of a song.

Corey et al. (2017)

 

Melodies are easier to parse and remember when tones occur on metrically accented moments.

Dowling (1990); Dowling et al. (1987); Jones et al. (1982)

 

Nunes et al. (2015) Greater lyrical repetition increases the likelihood of a song becoming a number one hit, the speed at which a song reaches this position in the charts, and the likelihood of debuting in the Top 40 charts.

 

Lyrical repetition increases between 1958 and 2017.

Morris (2017)

 

Simplicity and repetitiveness may contribute to the memorability of a passage.

Beaman and Williams (2010); Kellaris (2001, 2008)

Léveillé Gauvin (2018)

 

Music as Advertisement   809

Jakubowski et al. (2017); Williamson and Müllensiefen (2012)

 

Earworms are more likely to feature longer notes, smaller pitch intervals, common melodic contours, unexpected leaps, repeated notes, and faster tempi.

 

Choruses are more likely to be the part of Bailes (2007); Beaman and Williams a song involved in auditory imagery. (2010)

 

 

Self-focus, narcissism, and antisocial behavior

Increase in frequency of anger-related DeWall et al. (2011); Napier and Shamir lyrics since the 1950s, and of antisocial- (2018) related lyrics between 1980 and 2007.

 

 

Seriousness and meaningfulness

During threatening social and economic Pettijohn and Sacco (2009a, 2009b) times, songs tend to be longer, have more words per sentence, and have less carefree and more comforting and romantic lyrics.

 

 

Sexual content

Madanikia and Bartholomew (2014) Lyrics concerning love without sexual references were most common between 1971 and 2001. Lyrics concerning sex in the absence of love were most common between 2001 and 2011.

 

 

 

Style and genre

Listeners can recognize specific genres, styles, instrumentation, and tempo and identify popular songs by name within three seconds.

Gjerdingen and Perrot (2008); Plazak and Huron (2011); Schellenberg et al. (1999)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personality traits Listeners prefer songs that concur with their personality traits and emotional states.

Rentfrow et al. (2011); Rentfrow and Gosling (2003); Litle and Zuckerman (1986); McCown et al. (1997); McNamara and Ballard (1999); Vuoskoski et al. (2012)

 

 

 

Tasks and activities

Schellenberg et al. (2008) Usual preference for happy music disappears when listeners must complete a demanding task while listening to the music.

  Guest appearances

    Increase in frequency of guest musician Tang (2015) appearances between 1990 and 2014.

810   Léveillé Gauvin

Recommended Readings Davenport, T., & Beck, J. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new economy of business. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Huron, D. (1989). Music in advertising: An analytic paradigm. Musical Quarterly, 73(4), 557–574. Léveillé Gauvin, H. (2018). Drawing listener attention in popular music: Testing five musical features arising from the theory of attention economy. Musicae Scientiae, 22(3), 291–304. Wu, T. (2016). The attention merchants: The epic scramble to get inside our heads. New York, NY: Knopf.

References Aaker, D. A., & Stayman, D. M. (1990). Measuring audience perceptions of commercials and relating them to ad impact. Journal of Advertising Research, 30(4), 7–17. Amos, C., Holmes, G., & Strutton, D. (2008). Exploring the relationship between celebrity endorser effects and advertising effectiveness: A quantitative synthesis of effect size. International Journal of Advertising, 27(2), 209–234. Bailes, F. (2007). The prevalence and nature of imagined music in the everyday lives of music students. Psychology of Music, 35(4), 555–570. Bailes, F. (2015). Music in mind? An experience sampling study of what and when, towards an understanding of why. Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 25(1), 58–68. Beaman, C. P., & Williams, T. I. (2010). Earworms (stuck song syndrome): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts. British Journal of Psychology, 101(4), 637–653. Berlyne, D.  E. (1970). Novelty, complexity, and hedonic value. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 8(5), 279–286. Berlyne, D. E. (1971). Aesthetics and psychobiology. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Biamonte, N. (2014). Formal functions of metric dissonance in rock music. Music Theory Online, 20(2). Boone, C. (2013). Mashing: Toward a typology of recycled music. Music Theory Online, 19(3). Brown, S. P., & Stayman, D. M. (1992). Antecedents and consequences of attitude toward the ad: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consumer Research, 19(1), 34–51. Bushman, B. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 219–229. Christianson, S.-Å., & Loftus, E. F. (1991). Remembering emotional events: The fate of detailed information. Cognition and Emotion, 5(2), 81–108. Cisek, S. Z., Sedikides, C., Hart, C. M., Godwin, H. J., Benson, V., & Liversedge, S. P. (2014). Narcissism and consumer behaviour: A review and preliminary findings. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 232. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00232 Corey, J., Conrad, F., Reichert, H., Goldstein, S., Ostrow, J., & Sadowsky, M. (2017). Moment to moment listening experience for popular songs. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, San Diego, CA. Davenport, T., & Beck, J. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new economy of business Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Davis, S. (1985). The craft of lyric writing. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books.

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Music and Sound i n (M u lt i) Se n s ory Marketing

chapter 40

Sensory M a r k eti ng i n A dv ertisi ng a n d Serv ice En v ironm en ts Bertil Hultén

Sensory Marketing During the last decade, sensory marketing has received a great deal of attention in both theory and practice (Achrol & Kotler,  2012; Hultén,  2015; Hultén, Broweus, & van Dijk,  2009; Krishna,  2010,  2012; Spence, Puccinelli, Grewal, & Roggeveen,  2014). The Harvard Business Review (2015) stated that “we’re about to enter an era in which many more consumer products companies will take advantage of sense-based marketing” (p. 1). The former CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz (2011), has been widely recognized as one of the pioneers in sensory marketing. To define the overall brand experience of Starbucks, the coffee shops feature sensory triggers such as visual design (e.g., warm color tones), aromas, the sounds of the coffee machines—and, of course, carefully chosen music. In sensory marketing, the emphasis is shifted from goods and services to sensory experiences (Achrol & Kotler,  2012). Sensory marketing “engages consumers’ minds and affects their perception, judgment, and behavior” (Krishna, 2012, p. 332). One reason for the paradigm shift is that marketers today aim to satisfy not only basic physiological needs but also the need for self-actualization (Maslow, 1943). Marketers create multisensory brand experiences to engage consumers intellectually, behaviorally, and affectively. Sensory experiences tap into consumers’ conscious and unconscious desire for identity and self-fulfillment (Hultén, 2011). I define sensory marketing as a firm’s service process that focuses on sensory strategies and stimuli with the goal of creating multi-sensory brand experiences, in supporting the individual’s identity creation through the mind and the five senses to generate consumer value, c­ onsumer experiences, and the brand as image  (Hultén, 2015, p. 106)

Sensory Marketing in Advertising and Service Environments   819 By developing sensory strategies—appropriate stimuli targeted toward all five senses—companies can influence consumers’ images, experiences, and values with respect to a given brand. Consumers participate as active coproducers of experience by interacting with a service provider’s environment, technology, and personnel. These interactions are mediated by the human senses (as shown in Figure 40.1). By involving one or more of the senses, experiences may be created on a deeper, more emotional level than would otherwise be possible. Each sense has an impact on consumers’ cognitions, emotions, and purchasing behaviors (Helmefalk & Hultén,  2017, Hultén, 2015; Spence et al., 2014). The sense of sight affords recognition of a brand’s identity through visual cues such as color, design, and logos expressed through advertising, website design, and the store interiors. The sense of smell makes possible cues of scent, fragrance, and odor to create awareness of a brand’s identity in a given product or at­mos­ phere. Thanks to the sense of touch, a brand’s identity can be expressed through cues of texture and temperature. The sense of taste (cooperatively with smell) makes flavors and aromas available as cues can be associated with a product or context. There is, of course, one more sense to account for: sound. I will use the term “sense of sound” rather than the more common sense of “hearing” to convey the idea that we respond to sound with more than just our ears. Our sense of sound includes emotional responses, cultural and personal connotations, and many other nuances that are not picked up by the auditory system alone. The phrase sense of sound is intended to evoke this wider meaning. Indeed, given its emotional and sensitive nature, sound may play the biggest role of all in consumers’ quest for self-actualization, and it is the subject of the present chapter. Particularly relevant to the sense of sound in sensory marketing is music, which is the particular focus here. I begin by summarizing the ubiquitous role of music, focusing on the emotional responses it evokes. In the main part of the chapter, I describe the influence of music in advertising and in service environments. How do consumers perceive and respond to music in different types of encounters? I argue that the concepts of congruency and symbolism are central for understanding how music shapes consumers’ experience of branding and products. Finally, suggestions for future research will be presented. Firm

Senses

Individual

Vision Service processes

Sensory strategies

Sensory experiences

Consumer value Sound Smell Touch

Consumer experiences

Brand as image

Taste

Figure 40.1  The firm, the five senses, and the individual.

820   Hultén

The Influence of Music Humans experience sound through the physical process of hearing, as the eardrums are set vibrating by sound waves propagated in the air. The size of the pressure wave is experienced as loudness, which can be measured in decibels (dB). The lowest level of sound an individual can perceive is set at 0 dB, while the pain threshold of what humans can tolerate is around 120 dB. The most organized or structured form of sound is music. For centuries, music has played an important role in evoking emotions and building solidarity between people in social (religious, political, familial) contexts. From time immemorial, melodies and songs have been passed on from one generation to the next. In the late 1800s, German researchers such as Stumpf (1883) and Helmholtz (1885) began carrying out empirical studies. Early in the 20th century, companies began using music to help consumers recall brand names. In 1926, General Mills was the first to launch a radio jingle for Wheaties breakfast cereal. By the 1930s, it was recognized that sound arouses strong emotions (Gundlach, 1935). Sound contributes to unpleasant experiences, warning us of dangers and surprises (fire alarms, ambulance sirens); sound (especially music) also contributes to pleasant experiences, creating quietness and peacefulness in the soul. Empirical research on music and emotion picked up pace in the 1980s and has flourished ever since (Juslin & Sloboda, 2011) as a very active area within music psychology research (Tan, Pfordresher, & Harré, 2018), clearly demonstrating that music can influence our emotional state. Throughout the day, we are enveloped in music: Many wake up to a jingle on the alarm clock radio or to the sound of chimes on their cell phone. During breakfast, TV commercials on the news play catchy songs; on the way to work, music from radio ads flows through the car. While shopping, you hear in-store music; while making a phone call to a business, waiting for an open line, you are serenaded by Muzak. At home in the evening, we turn on the TV to watch favorite programs, with frequent breaks for commercials using instrumental music and songs. The programs themselves feature theme and background music that supports the dramatic action. Today, songs and other music are easy to access through global streaming services from Apple, Google Play, Hype Machine, Pandora, and Spotify. Altogether, the consumption of paid music streaming had 176 million users around the world in 2017, with a revenue growth of 41.1%, as reported by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Global Music Report of 2018. The global recorded market grew by 8.1% to a total revenue of US $17.3 billion, the highest rate since tracking began by the IFPI in 1997. Digital income of 54% represented more than half the global music industry’s annual revenue for the first time, and streaming supported growth in developing music markets such as Latin America by 17.7% and Asia and Australasia by 5.4% (http://ifpi.org/news/IFPI-GLOBAL-MUSIC-REPORT-2018).

Sensory Marketing in Advertising and Service Environments   821 Music can be provided worldwide in different cultures and consumed in a highly capricious way at the same time by many people. This development opens up new and challenging opportunities for firms using music in sensory marketing.

Music in Advertising A melody or an entire song can create a memorable sensory experience for the consumer. Well-known music personalities are often used to help promote a brand’s identity. For Coca-Cola’s “Taste the Feeling” campaign of 2016, the Swedish artist and musician Avicii produced and the soulful singer Conrad Sewell recorded a new anthem. The campaign also featured a new audio signature: the pop of the cap, the fizz, refreshment. As we have seen, music has played a role in radio and television advertising for nearly 100 years. Today, the internet—especially Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube—has led to an even higher exposure to advertising that uses music. This raises the question: What is the evidence that music influences consumer emotion and behavior? Research studies have clearly demonstrated that music—as well as helping to create an overall brand image—contributes to positive mood and strengthens favorable attitudes to a brand. Gorn (1982), for instance, showed that background music in commercials had more impact than product information. When consumers evaluated two types of colored pen, their preferences were determined not by the pen’s color but by the music associated with it: They preferred the pen associated with their preferred music. One possible explanation is that through classical conditioning, the product becomes associated with the positive feelings induced by music they like. In another study, Gorn, Goldberg, and Basu (1993) examined the impact of music on evaluation of stereo speakers. Participants listened to music they either disliked or liked, which thereby induced a bad or a good mood. The researchers also manipulated the respondents’ awareness of the music as the source of their mood; source awareness was high or low. It was found that when participants were under low music-as-source awareness, they evaluated the products more positively in a good mood than in a bad mood. On the other hand, in the high-music-awareness condition, no differences were found in product evaluation. Gorn and colleagues concluded that music influences consumers’ preferences, at least when they are not aware of it as the source of their mood. Gorn, Pham, and Sin (2001) found that especially when the affective tone of an ad is unclear, music can tip the balance. In their experiment, exciting music caused participants to subsequently evaluate an ad more favorably than they did when less exciting music was played, but only when the ad’s emotional tone was ambiguous. The implication is that music can indeed help create an unpleasant or pleasant frame of mind among consumers in relation to advertising messages, and it was found that this is mediated by arousal.

822   Hultén A common assumption is that background music in ads has a positive effect on consumers’ attitudes toward the brand (Alpert & Alpert, 1990). Music, in other words, is a “persuasive stimulus” in advertising (Park & Young, 1986). However, it is also possible that music can serve as a distractor, adding cognitive load and thereby diminishing a person’s ability to process the ad’s message. MacInnis and Park (1991) explored this possibility in a widely cited study. Their experiment included a manipulation in which participants were induced to have either a high or low involvement in a shampoo ad. For individuals with low involvement, music facilitated cognitive processing: They attended to the message of the ad. For individuals with high cognitive involvement, however, the music was a distraction: It triggered memories and associations, making it difficult to pay full attention to the message. High and low involvement are also affected by the goodness of fit between the music and the ad, a topic addressed later in this chapter. (See also the chapter by Fraser in this volume for more on how music may enhance or detract from an ad’s message.) It has been suggested that music in advertising can create moods and emotions, influence attitudes, evoke brand perceptions, and trigger memories (Krishna, 2010; MacInnis & Park, 1991). Some argue that these responses are due to music’s embodiment in physical states and interactions with the external world (Barsalou,  2008; Niedenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005). For example, imagine listening to the latest song from Beyoncé in a TV commercial. The music—upbeat tempo, rhythmic drive, melodic hooks, fairly high register, joyful lyrics, etc.—is experienced not just in the mind but in the body: You may feel like getting up and dancing, or you may even do so. (In general, faster pace and higher pitch are associated with more positive emotions; Bruner, 1990; Kellaris & Kent, 1993.) Such embodiment of music does not depend, however, on training or experience (Meyer, 1994; Rigg, 1937; Zhu & Meyers-Levy, 2005).

Music in Service Environments Many retailers today are using music as part of the sensory atmosphere—everything from classical flute sounds in old city malls in Europe, to electronic dance music in trendy fashion stores, to lounge music in Starbucks. But what is the evidence that music can influence how the environment is experienced by shoppers? There is in fact some empirical support for the claim that in-store music (either as background or foreground) positively influences consumers’ cognitions, emotions, and purchase behaviors (Oakes & North, 2008; Spence et al., 2014). Cognitive factors (e.g., product perceptions, assessment of service quality), emotional factors (arousal, joy), and behavioral factors (money and time spent, customer duration and pace) can all be influenced by in-store music (Bruner, 1990; Oakes, 2000; Turley & Milliman, 2000). A meta-analysis by Garlin and Owen (2006) yielded the general conclusion that popular, familiar background music positively influenced consumers. Customers stayed in the store marginally longer given slower paced, lower volume, and more familiar music. On

Sensory Marketing in Advertising and Service Environments   823 the other hand, among young fashion shoppers, loud music in combination with aroma had a positive impact on pleasure (Morrison, Gan, Dubelaar, & Oppewal, 2011). Tempo seems to be an especially influential variable in service environments. In a medium-sized American store, fast background music led to a faster pace of shopping and greater sales volume, whereas a slower tempo induced consumers to slow down, resulting in a more relaxed shopping experience (Milliman,  1982; though see also Knoeferle, Spangenberg, Herrmann, & Landwehr, 2011, as this may be moderated by musical mode). In a restaurant, slow background music led to longer visits and more money spent on drinks (Milliman, 1986) but did not influence money spent on food, serving time, or number of guests who left before getting a seat. Fast music leads many people to react with excitement, and the faster the music, the greater the excitement (Dubé & Morin,  2001). In a bank environment, fast music had a positive effect on patrons’ attitudes toward the staff: They were more likely to chat, say hello, or smile at the employees (Hui, Dube, & Chebat, 1997). The type or genre of music can influence shoppers’ product choices through the associations elicited. Areni and Kim (1993) examined the effects of classical versus Top 40 background music in a restaurant with a wine cellar. It was possible for visitors to go down to the cellar to taste or buy wine. No influence of the music was found regarding the number of purchased goods, products handled, or wine tasted. But when classical music was played, money spent increased, as customers bought more expensive wines. Musical genres can also influence perceptions of service and merchandise quality (Baker, Levy, & Grewal, 1992; Grewal, Baker, Levy, & Voss, 2003). In particular, the influence of classical music has received much attention in laboratory and field experiments over the years. As noted earlier, classical music has been shown to induce consumers to buy more expensive products (North & Hargreaves,  1998; North, Shilcock, & Hargreaves, 2003). Famous (widely recognized) music has a negative impact on shoppers’ cognitions (i.e., ability to process messages and be attentive to promotions), perhaps because it serves as a distractor, as we have seen earlier. On the other hand, famous music enhances arousal and positive feelings, which in turn influence shoppers’ patronage (Petruzzellis, Chebat, & Palumbo, 2014). In a field experiment that took place in the coffee section of a Swedish supermarket, I examined the effect of background music on shoppers’ emotions and behavior (time spent in the store). My main interest was to compare three musical genres (classical, epic, and lounge). I found that when there was music of any type, shoppers perceived a more positive atmosphere and reported feeling more relaxed, satisfied, and happy; the increase was approximately 20 percent to 30 percent as shown by 300 respondents on a series of seven-point rating scales. Behaviorally, time spent in the coffee department increased by more than 30 percent, and walking around increased by 10 percent. Of the three genres, lounge music contributed most to positive feelings and perceived duration of visit (Hultén, 2017b). Some research has taken consumer age into account. Yalch and Spangenberg (1990) wondered if “background” music (instrumental music played by studio musicians) and “foreground music” (typically featuring original artists and lyrics, and therefore

824   Hultén

Figure 40.2  There is increasing interest in the question of how music may shape shoppers’ perceptions of the myriad brands and products available to them, and more generally how music may influence shoppers’ cognitions, emotions, and behaviors (Creative Commons).

c­ ommanding more attention) would have different effects on customers of different ages. In a field experiment, the researchers found that younger shoppers reported f­ eeling as if they had spent more time shopping under the condition of background music, whereas older shoppers felt they had spent more time when foreground music was playing. Yalch and Spangenberg reasoned that consumers’ perceptions were understandable from the perspective of familiarity, the type of music we choose to listen to in our daily lives. Foreground music was likely more familiar to younger listeners, and background music was closer to the listening repertoire of the older adults. Thus, both groups found the unfamiliar genre more trying. The cultural associations of music can also play a role in consumer choice. North, Hargreaves, and McKendrick (1999) played French or German background music in a wine store. More French wines were sold when the French music was played, and more German wines were sold with the German music playing in the background. The researchers speculated that the music primed ideas associated with France or Germany and thus made wine from that country more salient, leading to a preference for it. In a service environment, customers often have to wait in line. What effect, if any, does music have on queuing behavior or experience? Hui et al. (1997) examined the influence of background music on perceived waiting time, emotional response to queuing, and overall evaluation of the service environment of a bank. When background music was played, customers endured longer wait times and evaluated the service environment more positively. Similarly, background music—especially classical—improved

Sensory Marketing in Advertising and Service Environments   825 the mood of shoppers queuing in a supermarket (Cameron, Barker, Peterson, & Braunsberger, 2003). However, some studies show that music that exerts greater cognitive load may lead to overestimating amount of waiting time, such as in the case of more complex, fast, or loud music (e.g., Kellaris & Altsech, 1992). Finally, there are at least anecdotal reports that environmental music can alter people’s behavior. When opera and other classical music was played outside a McDonald’s in Australia, crowds of teenagers reportedly no longer loitered outside, presumably because they found this genre of music repellant (reported by Pearlman,  2013). Another example is the use of classical music in some London subway stations to deter theft (reported by Reynolds, 2018). In 2003, for instance, robberies were reportedly reduced by 33 percent, assaults on staff by 25 percent, and vandalism by 37 percent, which could be attributable to fewer youths congregating in these areas. It should be pointed out, though, that music was only one of a number of changes the authorities made (e.g., better lighting and additional security cameras were also installed). Music cannot take all the credit for these results. In one of the few academic studies in this area that singled out music, shop enjoyment (based on music and store layout as environmental factors) led to greater impulse buying (Saad & Metawie, 2015). However, more controlled academic studies are needed to examine whether music influences more than consumers’ cognitions and emotions, and actually influences behaviors such as purchasing.

Music Congruency and Service Environments A key theme that has emerged in the research on music and service environments is the notion of music congruency (or musical fit). To illustrate, consider a study by Demoulin (2011), who investigated music congruency in a trendy French restaurant. Music that was either congruent (“modern, pop and dynamic”) or noncongruent (“old-fashioned”) with the restaurant’s atmosphere was played in the background. The results showed that congruent music induced in patrons a low degree of arousal, resulting in a high degree of pleasure, which in turn positively influenced the evaluations of the environment and the service. Demoulin concluded that music influenced consumers’ perceptions and experiences on an emotional level, affecting attitudes toward the whole service environment. Similarly, it has been found that background music can influence product choices linked to primed memory concepts when the products are congruent with the activated semantic networks (North, Sheridan, & Areni, 2016). Dubé and Morin (2001) were also interested in congruency. They investigated the effects of background music at a clothing store that specialized in trendy clothes for young people. Music was chosen that was appropriate to the atmosphere and design of the store, selected from a pool of musical excerpts. The results showed that manipulating

826   Hultén the levels (high or low) of pleasure intensity conveyed by the background music ­influenced customers’ attitudes toward the sales staff and the service environment. This, in turn, created positive emotions that had an impact on customers’ perceptions of the store. In other words, the mood elicited by congruent music mediated consumers’ attitudes toward the staff and service environment, leading to more positive perceptions toward both. The effects of music on people’s cognitive processes (e.g., memory and reasoning) have also been investigated. For instance, Chebat, Chebat, and Vaillant (2001) showed that calm music (positive in valence, low in arousal) facilitated cognitive processes: It led to increased cognitive activity as measured by the number of thoughts and depth of level of information processing. In particular, when the level of involvement with the product was low or when the sales staff ’s arguments about the product were weak, music more strongly influenced shoppers’ attitudes toward the product. Discussing these results, Chebat and colleagues emphasized the role of using music that is congruent with the store’s character. As we have seen, music plays a role in consumers’ cognitive processes as well as in their emotions, all of which impact purchase behavior. But beyond making shopping more pleasant, can music play a role in brand awareness? If so, is there a natural link between the brand and the music? Many studies have shown that when music is congruent with the meaning of an ad, it facilitates understanding the message. (For related research, see Oakes and Abolhasani’s chapter on musical congruity in this volume.) In a service environment, the music should therefore fit the atmosphere, the interior, the products, and the overall image of the mall, store, or restaurant. Theoretically, congruency should make it easier for individuals to receive and process the message about a given brand or service environment, and to remember it better. In an advertising context, it is easy to see that music may help attract consumers’ attention, but does it help them receive or remember the message? In one study, Park and Young (1986) found some disquieting results: Background music actually interfered with respondents’ attention to the ad message. Presumably, the distraction was less for participants with low involvement in the brand, but it is still a result that sounds a cautionary note. Again, congruence is key. For instance, Kellaris, Cox, and Cox (1993) examined listeners’ reception of the message of a radio ad. The researchers teamed up with experts to develop the ad and 40 pieces of music, encompassing instrumental, vocal, well-known, and not-so-well-known selections. Participants ranked the music on attention value and familiarity. Listeners were found to recognize and receive a message more easily when the music was congruent with the message. Message reception was especially enhanced when both music and voice fit the brand. Compared to noncongruent music, congruent selections were associated with superior ad recall, brand awareness, and purchase intentions. Other studies have shown that a brand could be negatively affected by inappropriate music (e.g., North, Hargreaves, MacKenzie, & Law, 2004).

Sensory Marketing in Advertising and Service Environments   827

Sensory Marketing, Brands, and Products Beyond service environments, sensory marketing is also a subject of interest in shaping consumers’ perceptions of brand identities and products (Hultén, 2017a). Audio branding refers to how various types of sound can help create brand identity. Brand sound refers to how sound can symbolize a given brand through the sound of its advertising, jingles, soundscapes, brand music, songs, or voice, and sonic logos (for more on sonic branding, see Krishnan and Kellaris’s chapter in this volume). Product sound refers to how the sound of the product itself can be communicated via touch points such as the internet (including social media), radio, TV, and service environments (Treasure, 2011). A brand sound (where branding elements are used in ambient music), together with a product sound (linked to the physical characteristics of a product, e.g., the sound of a motor), might indirectly enhance brand image (Keller, 2012). Compared to a jingle, a brand song is often more commercial. Its purpose is to create symbolic associations with certain target groups to build brand relationships. A brand voice is used to evoke feelings and create associations, whether as a singing or speaking voice, or both. A single human voice, in all its uniqueness, is used to convey the personality of the brand. Corporate anthems may also be used to express the character of the brand. Sound symbolism refers to the association between a particular sound and certain stimulus characteristics (Spence,  2012). Research shows that sound symbolism can affect consumers’ perceptions of brands and products. For instance, Lowrey and Shrum (2007) compared participants’ responses to brand names created from nonsense words differing only in one vowel (e.g., tiddip vs. toddip). Brand names with front vowels (e.g., tiddip) were associated with attributes such as small, fast, and bright (e.g., small convertibles), whereas brand names with back vowels (toddip) were associated with attributes such as large, slow, and dark (e.g., sturdy four-wheel drives). Product evaluation was more positive when the language sounds of the product’s name were congruent with its attributes. Music and other auditory stimuli influence how people experience products, and this has been a subject of study, especially with respect to food and drink (Spence & Shankar,  2010). For instance, Zampini and Spence (2005) asked participants to bite potato chips (crisps) with their front teeth. They found that when participants wore headphones that boosted the loudness of the crunch, they perceived the chips to be crisper and less stale than when they heard a softer crunch. The sound of a product may even come to symbolize the brand. For instance, the “crunch” sound of the hard chocolate shell of Magnum ice cream bars has long been used as a sonic signature in their advertising campaigns, not to mention the iconic “snap, crackle, and pop” of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. (For more on multisensory marketing, see Knoeferle and Spence’s chapter in this volume.)

828   Hultén

Concluding Remarks The present chapter has addressed the role of music in various areas of sensory marketing, with a focus on music in ads and music in service environments. Music contributes to pleasure and positive attitudes, which can influence consumer behaviors such as purchasing frequency and the amount of time or money spent. For a fuller understanding of the role of music, future research should explore the emerging landscape of digitalization, individualization, and social media, as well as the increasingly global nature of consumer culture. First, there is a need for more empirical work concerning the influence of music in online settings with respect to brands and service environments. Although a good start has been made (e.g., Cheng, Wu, & Yen, 2009; Guéguen & Jacob, 2014; Lai, Wu, Hsieh, Kung, & Lin, 2011; Wu, Cheng, & Yen, 2008), we need to learn more about how shoppers react to online music in advertising through digital and social media. Second, we need greater understanding of music’s influence on product evaluation and brand preference in the new digital technologies. Third, the congruency concept remains under-investigated. We need to extend studies of congruency to other settings, both physical and online. Fourth, and finally, there is need for more knowledge about the influence of music in various cultures and subcultures of society. As the world continues to hurtle toward globalization, the place of music as a sensory trigger becomes more problematic. Is music universal, or do different cultures value and respond to it differently? Clearly, there is still much to explore in the realm of “sound” sensory marketing.

Recommended Readings Eroglu, S. A., Machleit, K. A., & Chebat, J. (2005). The interaction of retail density and music tempo: Effects on shopper responses. Psychology & Marketing, 22(7), 577–589. Hultén, B. (2015). Sensory marketing: Theoretical and empirical grounds. New York, NY: Routledge. Krishna, A. (2012). An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to affect perception, judgment and behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 332–351. Michel, A., Baumann, C., & Gayer, L. (2017). Thank you for the music—or not? The effects of in-store music in service settings. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 36, 21–32. North, A. C., Sheridan, L. P., & Areni, C. (2016). Music congruity effects on product memory, perception, and choice. Journal of Retailing, 92(1), 83–95.

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Sensory Marketing in Advertising and Service Environments   829 Areni, C.  S., & Kim, D. (1993). The influence of background music on shopping behavior: Classical versus top-forty music in a wine store. Advances in Consumer Research, 20, 336–340. Baker, J., Levy, M., & Grewal, D. (1992). An experimental approach to making retail store environmental decisions. Journal of Retailing, 68(4), 445–460. Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645. Bruner, G. C., II. (1990). Music, mood, and marketing. Journal of Marketing, 54(4), 94–104. Cameron, M.  A., Barker, J., Peterson, M., & Braunsberger, K. (2003). The effects of music, wait-length evaluation, and mood on a low-cost wait experience. Journal of Business Research, 56(6), 421–430. Chebat, J., Chebat, C. G., & Vaillant, D. (2001). Environmental background music and in-store selling. Journal of Business Research, 54(2), 115–123. Cheng, F.-F., Wu, C.-S., & Yen, D. C. (2009). The effect of online store atmosphere on consumer’s emotional responses: An experimental study of music and colour. Behaviour & Information Technology, 28(4), 323–334. Demoulin, N. T. M. (2011). Music congruency in a service setting: The mediating role of emotional and cognitive responses. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 18(1), 10–18. Dubé, L., & Morin, S. (2001). Background music pleasure and store evaluation intensity effects and psychological mechanisms. Journal of Business Research, 54(2), 107–113. Garlin, F. V., & Owen, K. (2006). Setting the tone with the tune: A meta-analytic review of the effects of background music in retail settings. Journal of Business Research, 59(6), 755–764. Gorn, G. J. (1982). The effects on music in advertising on choice behavior: A classical conditioning approach, Journal of Marketing, 46(1), 94–101. Gorn, G.  J., Goldberg, M.  E., & Basu, K. (1993). Mood, awareness and product evaluation. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2(3), 237–256. Gorn, G.  J., Pham, M.  T., & Sin, L.  Y. (2001). When arousal influences ad evaluation and valence does not (and vice versa). Journal of Consumer Psychology, 11(1), 43–55. Grewal, D., Baker, J., Levy, M., & Voss, G. B. (2003). The effects of wait expectations and store atmosphere evaluations on patronage intentions in service-intensive retail stores. Journal of Retailing, 79, 259–268. Guéguen, N., & Jacob, C. (2014). Congruency between instrumental background music and behavior on a website. Psychology of Music, 42(1), 29–34. Gundlach, R. H. (1935). Factors determining the characterization of musical phrases. American Journal of Psychology, 47(4), 624–643. Harvard Business Review. (2015). The science of sensory marketing. Retrieved from https:// hbr.org/2015/03/the-science-of-sensory-marketing Helmefalk, M., & Hultén, B. (2017). Multi-sensory congruent cues in designing retail store atmosphere: Effects on shoppers’ emotions and purchase behavior. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 38, 1–11. Helmholtz, H. L. F. (1885). On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music (2nd English ed.; A. J. Ellis, Trans.). London, UK: Longmans, Green. Hui, M. K., Dube, L., & Chebat, J.-C. (1997). The impact of music on consumers’ reactions on waiting for services. Journal of Retailing, 73(1), 87–104. Hultén, B. (2011). Sensory marketing: The multi-sensory brand-experience concept. European Business Review, 23(3), 256–273. Hultén, B. (2015). Sensory marketing: Theoretical and empirical grounds. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Sensory Marketing in Advertising and Service Environments   831 North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., MacKenzie, L., & Law, R. (2004). The effects of musical and voice “fit” on responses to adverts. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34, 1675–1708. North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., & McKendrick, J. (1999). The influence of in-store music on wine selections. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(2), 271–276. North, A. C., Sheridan, L. P., & Areni, C (2016). Music congruity effects on product memory, perception, and choice. Journal of Retailing, 92(1), 83–95. North, A. C., Shilcock, A., & Hargreaves, D. J. (2003). The effect of musical style on restaurant customers’ spending. Environment and Behavior, 35, 712–718. Oakes, S. (2000). The influence of musicscape within service environments. Journal of Services Marketing, 14, 539–556. Oakes, S., & North, A.  C. (2008). Reviewing congruity effects in the service environment musicscape. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 19(1), 63–82. Park, C. W., & Young, M. S. (1986). Consumer response to television commercials: The impact of involvement and background music on brand attitude formation. Journal of Marketing Research, 23(1), 11–24. Pearlman, J. (2013, November 21). McDonald’s restaurant turns to opera to drive out loitering teenagers. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10464764/McDonalds-restaurant-turns-to-opera-to-drive-outloitering-teenagers.html Petruzzellis, L., Chebat, J.-C., & Palumbo, A. (2014). “Hey dee-jay let’s play that song and keep me shopping all day long”: The effect of famous background music on consumer shopping behavior. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 8(2), 38–49. Reynolds, J. (2018, January 11). Subway symphonies: Is classical music just pleasant background or does it deter crime? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved from https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/ music/2018/01/11/T-station-music-crime-fighting-port-authority-q-wqed-transit-subwayclassical-music-opera-pittsburgh-toronto-7–11-london/stories/201801020122 Rigg, M. (1937). Musical expression: An investigation of the theories of Erich Sorantin. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 21(4), 442–455. Saad, M., & Metawie, M. (2015). Store environment, personality factors and impulse buying behavior in Egypt: The mediating roles of shop enjoyment and impulse buying tendencies. Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 3(2), 69–77. Schultz, H. (2011). Onward: How Starbucks fought for its life without losing its soul. New York, NY: Rodale. Spence, C. (2012). Managing sensory expectations concerning products and brands: Capitalizing on the potential of sound and shape symbolism. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(1), 37–54. Spence, C., Puccinelli, N. M., Grewal, D., & Roggeveen, A. L. (2014). Store atmospherics: A multisensory perspective. Psychology and Marketing, 31(7), 472–488. Spence, C., & Shankar, M. U. (2010). The influence of auditory cues on the perception of, and responses to, food and drink. Journal of Sensory Studies, 25(3), 406–430. Stumpf, C. (1883). Tonpsychologie (Vol. 1). Leipzig, Germany: Hirzel. Tan, S.-L., Pfordresher, P., & Harré, R. (2018). Psychology of music: From sound to significance (2nd ed.). London, UK: Routledge. Treasure, J. (2011). Sound business: How to use sound to grow profits and brand value. Gloucestershire, UK: Kemble Management Books. Turley, L. W., & Milliman, R. E. (2000). Atmospheric effects on shopping behavior: A review of the experimental evidence. Journal of Business Research, 49, 193–211.

832   Hultén Wu, C.-S., Cheng, F.-F., & Yen, D. C. (2008). The atmospheric factors of online storefront environment design: An empirical experiment in Taiwan. Information & Management, 45(7), 493–498. Yalch, R., & Spangenberg, E. (1990). Effects of store music on shopper behavior. Journal of Services Marketing, 1, 31–39. Zampini, M., & Spence, C. (2005). The role of auditory cues in modulating the perceived crispness and staleness of potato chips. Journal of Sensory Studies, 19(5), 347–363. Zhu, R., & Meyers-Levy, J. (2005). Distinguishing between the meanings of music: When background music affects product perceptions. Journal of Marketing Research, 42(3), 333–345.

chapter 41

Sou n d i n th e Con text of (M u lti)Sensory M a r k eti ng Klemens Knoeferle and Charles Spence

Sound constitutes an omnipresent component of many marketing communications. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, there has been a long-standing tradition in marketing research to study its effects on consumers in diverse domains, including advertising jingles/music (e.g., Gorn,  1982; Zhu & Meyers-Levy,  2005), in-store music (e.g., Knoeferle, Paus, & Vossen,  2017; Milliman,  1982; Spence, Puccinelli, Grewal, & Roggeveen, 2014), and the phonetic symbolism associated with specific brand names (e.g., Klink, 2000; Kuehnl & Mantau, 2013; Spence, 2014; Yorkston & Menon, 2004). Recently, the study of sound in marketing has been transformed by three important developments: First, it has been integrated into the wider field of (multi)sensory marketing, which has been defined as “marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affects their perception, judgment, and behavior” (Krishna, 2012, p. 332; Krishna & Schwarz, 2014; see also the chapter by Hultén in this volume). Second, researchers in the fields of both psychology and marketing have increasingly come to realize that interactions between the senses (e.g., between vision, audition, touch, taste, and smell) play a key role in consumer behavior. Consequently, they have started to examine how sound and music interact with these other sensory cues in the context of marketing communication, and how auditory stimuli contribute to consumers’ multisensory impressions and experiences of products, ads, and even environments (see Spence, Puccinelli, et al.,  2014; Spence,  2021, for a review). And third, recent technological innovations have enabled firms to design increasingly sophisticated multisensory advertisements and experiences. Many of these new experiences include sound and/or music as key components and are thereby pushing the frontiers of how sound is used in advertising.

834   Knoeferle and Spence In 2011, for instance, car maker Audi developed the Audi Sound Studio—an extensive online toolbox defining how the brand should sound across all customer touch points. The Audi Sound Studio contains every imaginable sound made by each Audi model. Media producers around the world are encouraged to use customized instrument samples whenever they design auditory and audiovisual content for this brand. More recently, the car manufacturer Ford teamed up with advertising agency Kinetic Worldwide to use multisensory billboards to advertise the Ford Mustang at airports in India (McEleny, 2016). Not only did the motion-activated billboards play the sound of the car’s engine to passersby, but also they emitted smoke to mimic the look and smell of burning tire rubber. A third example comes from Seoul, South Korea, where Dunkin’ Donuts installed “smart” scent dispensers on city buses. The dispensers recognized when the Dunkin’ Donuts jingle was playing over the buses’ radio and responded each time by releasing an appealing coffee scent into the air (Garber, 2012). Complex multisensory advertisements are also increasingly being made possible by the advent of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR, AR, and MR, respectively). For instance, late in 2017, Guinness offered consumers a multisensory VR experience at selected branches of Tesco’s supermarkets across the United Kingdom. Customers were able to try three different beers matched to customized audiovisual VR experiences (Glenday,  2017). Meanwhile, entertainment giants such as Disney and Time Warner now regularly promote their new productions with immersive VR experiences (“Hollywood Studios Dip Their Toes in Virtual Reality,” 2017). Elsewhere, travel agencies (e.g., Thomas Cook), airlines (e.g., Lufthansa, Qantas, Virgin Atlantic), and hotel chains (e.g., Marriott Hotels) have started to enable their (prospective) customers to “pre-experience” destinations, airport lounges, plane cabins, and hotel rooms in VR and spatialized audio (Deighton, 2016; Yerman, 2015). While many of these examples would seem to constitute relatively short-term marketing tactics rather than necessarily longterm strategies (see Spence, 2019), they nevertheless do reflect the enthusiasm among a growing number of marketers as far as exploring the engaging opportunities offered by new multisensory technologies is concerned. Furthermore, they also hint at the possibility that such innovations may mark the start of a “multisensory revolution” (what Aradhna Krishna referred to as a “sensory explosion” back in an industry briefing in 2013) in the practice and science of marketing. In this chapter, we review the growing body of research on audition in the context of (multi)sensory advertising. Several different types of sound are used by marketers in multisensory advertising—including incidental sounds, jingles, and music scores, as well as the sounds of speakers’ voices and the sounds made by the product being advertised (or its packaging). While music and voices are the most widely used and studied sounds in advertising, product-related sounds can be (and, more importantly, already have been) used as powerful advertising stimuli too.1 What all of these 1  One example of such deliberate use of product sound in marketing is a cinema spot by JWT Brazil, Dolby, and Coca-Cola that focused on the pouring sound of Coke recorded from very close to the drink itself, giving the viewer the impression of being “inside the glass” (McMains, 2015).

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   835 different types of sound have in common is that they can easily be included and edited in advertisements. In this chapter, several of the most important ways in which advertising sounds may influence consumers and their subsequent behavior are discussed. Taking a multisensory perspective, the discussion will focus not on unisensory auditory studies (which have been discussed at length elsewhere) but instead on those studies that have examined interactions, or links, between the senses (i.e., audition and taste, audition and vision, audition and touch, audition and smell). We start by discussing how sounds in advertising (e.g., music, soundscapes, voices, and product sounds) can become associated with products and brands through conditioning and associative learning. Next, we explore how advertisers may harness the principles of multisensory learning to enhance consumers’ memory. The following three sections investigate how marketers can shape consumers’ product expectations through meanings conveyed by product sounds and music and through so-called crossmodal correspondences. We extend the discussion of crossmodal correspondences by considering some of their possible downstream consequences on consumers, such as increasing their liking of multisensory ads and the products presented therein, as well as guiding their spatial attention. We conclude by discussing a potential risk linked to marketers’ increasing use of multisensory stimulation in advertising—namely sensory overload (cf. Malhotra, 1984).

Associative Learning and Conditioning According to the traditional view in marketing, sounds in advertising influence consumer behavior via associative learning and conditioning. Sounds, in other words, are thought of as affective cues that may initially have no obvious link to the advertised product or brand. Over time, however, these sounds become associated in the mind of the consumer with the product or brand through their repeated coexposure (e.g., Gorn,  1982; but see Kellaris & Cox,  1989; Vermeulen, Batenburg, Beukeboom, & Smits, 2014). Once a sound-brand association has been established, the sound itself may then serve as a memory cue for, and/or imbue the product or brand with, affective value (via sensation transference or affective ventriloquism; cf. Cheskin,  1957; Spence & Gallace, 2011). While this mechanism has mainly been studied in the case of advertising music (Gorn, 1982; Gorn, Pham, & Sin, 2001), it may be applicable to voices and product sounds too (although these have not been quite as thoroughly studied to date). For instance, the rattling sound of a bag of crisps or chips may elicit a conditioned response by increasing one’s appetite for the snack food inside (Spence, Shankar, & Blumenthal, 2011). According to the traditional view in marketing, sound is primarily an incidental, affective advertising element that shapes consumer behavior through its positive or negative valence and its arousal value.

836   Knoeferle and Spence

Enhancing Memory Through Multisensory Learning Advertisers can facilitate consumers’ associative learning and thereby enhance their memory for products and brands by harnessing the principles of multisensory learning. For instance, studies have shown that advertisements in which products are presented together with their characteristic (usage) sounds may make it easier for people to recognize the advertised product later on (e.g., when placed on the store shelf). Several studies have demonstrated that people visually recognize an object (e.g., a product) more quickly after they have been exposed only once to its visual image and typical sound, compared to an initial presentation that was only visual (Matusz, Wallace, & Murray, 2017; Thelen & Murray, 2013; Thelen, Talsma, & Murray, 2015). With consumers often making split-second decisions while out shopping (Mormann, Koch, & Rangel, 2011), such a recognition advantage may give marketers with a basic knowledge of consumer neuroscience something of an advantage. Importantly, however, the extant basic laboratory research shows that sound cues only facilitate subsequent object recognition, or contribute to associative learning, if the visual and auditory stimuli happen to be semantically congruent during initial exposure (i.e., if both the visual and sound denote the same object). This suggests that it is important for advertisers to match sounds to advertised products and brands carefully.

Priming Meaning Through Product Sound The effects of advertising sounds are not limited to conditioning consumers’ affective responses and enhancing their memory for the product or brand. Because sounds carry meaning (e.g., regarding the physical properties of the sound source), including the “right” product sounds in advertising may enable marketers to convey specific associations and set up or bias product expectations. This signaling function of sound becomes especially evident in the case of technological products such as cars and consumer appliances, but also in the food and beverage sector. (See also the chapter by McLeod on this topic in the “Production” section of the book). In the domain of technological products, product sound designers have for a long time attempted to master the “sound of quality” (e.g., Kuwano, Fastl, Namba, Nakamura, & Uchida, 2006; Spence, 2020a) and to design sounds that manage to convey the impression of luxury (Lageat, Czellar, & Laurent, 2003). In some cases, sound engineers have tried to all but eliminate product sound (Wolkomir, 1996)—often with adverse consequences. For instance, because consumers expect vacuum cleaners to make a certain

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   837 amount of noise to signal effective cleaning, it is perhaps not so surprising that anecdotal evidence suggests that silent models have failed in the marketplace. Appliance maker Dyson, formerly producing some of the noisiest vacuum cleaners, has therefore chosen to reduce the loudness of its models, while attempting to imbue the device’s sound when in operation with a distinctive note that connotes high quality (Byron, 2012). So, while product sound has traditionally been considered mainly in the context of product design (i.e., sound engineering and psychoacoustics; see Spence & Zampini, 2006), it is crucial for advertisers to realize that they can use carefully designed and/or digitally altered product sounds to convey specific impressions not only of quality and luxury but also of a range of other features and attributes (e.g., power, effectiveness, efficiency). Beyond conveying a general sense of quality, product usage sounds can also prime more specific product expectations. Priming refers to the phenomenon that the perception of external stimuli can activate related mental representations in an individual (Weingarten et al., 2016). For example, several studies have examined the role of car engine sounds on driving behavior and experience: In one study, the loudness of car engine sounds influenced drivers’ perception of speed in a driving game (Hellier, Naweed, Walker, Husband, & Edworthy, 2011). In another similar study, this time using prerecorded driving scenes, overall lower in-car noise (a reduction of 5 decibels) led participants to underestimate an actual speed of 60 km/h by roughly 5 km/h (Horswill & Plooy, 2008). These effects may be driven either by the car’s sound serving as a seemingly diagnostic cue for the estimation of speed or by the sound directly affecting how visual cues of speed, such as the speed with which the visual scenery passes by, is perceived (as a result of multisensory integration and predictive coding). Irrespective of the underlying mechanism, the results of these studies nevertheless carry potentially important implications. They are informative for branding (i.e., which sounds make a car appear fast and powerful), but also for the area of consumer safety (i.e., which sounds best reflect the true speed of the vehicle—not to mention the vexed question of what exactly virtually silent electric cars should sound like). Furthermore, they are applicable to both product design (e.g., when designing engine sounds) and to advertising (e.g., when “sculpting” the engine sounds for use in a commercial). In the food and beverage category, the sounds of food preparation and consumption play an important, if little-recognized, role in shaping consumers’ taste expectations and experience (for reviews, see Spence, 2012; Spence & Wang, 2015). For instance, the perceived carbonation of sparkling water can be modulated by manipulating the auditory feedback. Zampini and Spence (2005) amplified carbonation sounds (i.e., the sound of bubbles forming and bursting in the beverage), particularly the high-frequency components, leading to an increase in how carbonated people expected a beverage to be.2 2  Importantly, however, this effect was only obtained when participants observed water samples in a drinking receptacle, but not when they held them in their mouth. In the latter case, oral-somatosensory and nociceptive cues (i.e., the feeling of the carbonated water in the mouth) apparently outweighed any influence of the manipulated auditory feedback (Zampini & Spence, 2005). Even the sounds of opening, think cork popping versus screw-cap has been shown to modulate consumers’ wine-drinking experience and mood (see Spence & Wang, 2017).

838   Knoeferle and Spence Crisper 100

Perceived crispness (magnitude estimation)

80

Softer

60

0 dB –20 dB

–40 dB

40 20 0

Amplify Attenuate Normal Frequency manipulation

Figure 41.1  People’s average crispiness rating of potato crisps as a function of overall sound level (0 dB, −20 dB, −40 dB) and frequency manipulation (high frequencies attenuated, amplified, or unchanged). Error bars represent the between-participants standard errors of the means (Zampini & Spence, 2004; reprinted with permission from Wiley).

Sounds can also be used to convey information about a beverage’s temperature: Because a liquid’s temperature is inversely related to its viscosity, and pouring sounds provide information about viscosity, such sounds may indirectly communicate a beverage’s actual, or ideal, consumption temperature to whoever hears them (Velasco, Jones, King, & Spence, 2013). Elsewhere, mastication (chewing) sounds have been shown to affect perceived texture and overall product experience. In a seminal study, boosting the overall loudness and/or just the high-frequency crunching sounds when people bit into a potato chip (with their front teeth) increased the rated freshness and crispness of the potato chips (Zampini & Spence,  2004). This effect is illustrated in Figure  41.1. Subsequently, it has been shown that apples are also judged as less crisp and hard if either the overall loudness or the high-frequency components of the biting sound was reduced (Demattè et al., 2014). Carefully designing mastication sounds in ads for food products may therefore be used to help establish expectations of desired haptic properties (e.g., firmness) or product freshness. Consumers’ expectations are shaped not only by the sounds of the food and/or drink itself or its consumption but also by the sounds of its preparation. For instance, empirical findings suggest that the sounds of coffee machines can modulate the consumers’ taste expectations and experiences. In particular, hearing a more pleasant coffee machine sound often results in a more pleasant taste and greater liking for the coffee than hearing a less pleasant machine sound does (Knoeferle, Sprott, & Herrmann, 2012). This effect is illustrated in Figure 41.2. Finally, across many different product categories, sound can be used to influence the perceived material properties and qualities of products (and/or their packaging). Handling different textures (e.g., rough vs. smooth or wet vs. dry surfaces) produces

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   839

Mean Liking of the Coffee

10

5

0

–5

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Sound Rating Sound Type Unpleasant Pleasant

Figure 41.2  Coffee machine sound modulates consumers’ liking of coffee. The effect obtained irrespective of participants’ attention to the sound (manipulated through a sound rating task). Error bars represent 95% between-participant confidence intervals (Knoeferle et al., 2012).

­ ifferent sounds. People have learned these crossmodal associations (i.e., correlations d between percepts across sensory modalities) over a lifetime of experience. Consequently, as a result of multisensory integration, the perceived smoothness and wetness of a material (or surface) can be increased by attenuating the high-frequency contents of the manual interaction sounds. One version of this crossmodal effect is known as the “parchment skin illusion,” in which the perceived dryness of one’s palms is modulated by varying the sounds of rubbing them together (Guest, Catmur, Lloyd, & Spence, 2002; Jousmäki & Hari, 1998; Stanton & Spence, 2020). The findings discussed previously suggest that marketers can systematically alter product sounds in their advertisements (e.g., by boosting or reducing their overall volume or specific frequencies) to shape consumers’ (multisensory) product-related expectations prior to purchase. (Think, for example, of the crisp, cracking sound that is such a prominent feature of the ads for Unilever’s Magnum ice cream.) By combining such careful sound design with conditioning, companies can design “signature” product sounds that are firmly associated with their products in the mind of the consumer and hopefully convey the desired meaning. For instance, Snapple’s famous “popping” opening sound was designed to convey a sense of freshness and safety, which not only enabled the company to do away with plastic seals but also turned out to be a valuable sonic advertising signature (Byron, 2012; Spence & Wang, 2015; Wang & Spence, 2019). Another example is the unmistakable sound of Harley-Davidson

840   Knoeferle and Spence motorcycles, or the attempts of car manufacturers to create unique branded engine sounds (e.g., the sound of an Audi, Porsche, Ferrari, etc.). While the potential usefulness of signature product sounds seems undeniable from a marketing and psychological perspective, their legal status is often unclear, and companies like Harley-Davidson have not been able to register their sounds as trademarks (Sapherstein, 1998).

Priming Meaning Musically Just like product sounds, music can also be used to convey meaning and shape people’s product expectations. The question of what musical meaning is has been vigorously discussed in music theory for more than a century. Music theorists (e.g., Meyer, 1994) proposed that music carries different types of meaning: embodied meaning constituted by the inherent emotional character of the music (e.g., the listeners’ expectations triggered by harmonic progressions), and referential meaning based on relationships between the music and concepts/attributes from the real world (e.g., contemporary pop music might express youthfulness). The referential meaning of music is especially relevant to marketers because studies suggest that even if a piece of music has not been paired with a product or brand previously, it may nevertheless still trigger various associations and be linked to semantic meaning that is (either weakly or more strongly) stored in people’s memory (Watt & Ash, 1998; Watt & Quinn, 2007). Often, such associations are widely shared, at least among members of the same culture. For instance, the Western participants in the studies reported by Watt and his colleagues systematically matched different pieces of music to different extramusical concepts (i.e., male vs. female; good vs. evil; young vs. old). What this means, in practice, is that marketers can use music to prime or activate specific meanings or associations. One example of such priming involves the robust associations that people hold with different musical genres (e.g., classical music), which can activate associated concepts in memory (e.g., sophisticated, educated, wealthy). This may, in turn, influence the consumers’ willingness to pay for those products that happen to be presented simultaneously with the music (see, e.g., North, Sheridan, & Areni, 2016). In their attempt to answer the question of the circumstances under which consumers are influenced by the referential meaning of advertising music, Zhu and Meyers-Levy (2005) examined how the embodied and referential meaning embedded in background music for a product advertisement differentially influenced viewers’ subsequent product evaluations. The results of two experiments indicated that the extent to which product evaluations were influenced by either type of musical meaning depends on (1) the viewers’ motivation to process the ad and (2) the availability of cognitive resources. Specifically, participants with (experimentally induced) high motivation to process the target ad were more influenced by referential meaning if ad message processing was

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   841 made easy but relied on absolute meaning if ad message processing was made effortful. Participants with (experimentally induced) low motivation to process the target ad were not influenced by either type of musical meaning (Zhu & Meyers-Levy, 2005). In other words, because consumers need more motivation and cognitive resources to decode referential than embodied meaning, marketers should carefully consider when to use which type of meaning in their advertising music.

Shaping Multisensory Product Expectations Using Crossmodal Correspondences While the aforementioned research primarily examines the meaning that relies on learned associations between sound and semantic concepts, the question arises as to whether sounds also “carry” (or convey) meaning that does not rely on such preestablished semantic associations. Indeed, the most recent (and perhaps exciting) way in which advertising has been shown to communicate meaning and set up product expectations is by harnessing the various “crossmodal correspondences” that have been shown to exist between audition and the other senses such as vision, olfaction, taste, and touch (Spence, 2012). In the field of cognitive psychology/neuroscience, the term crossmodal correspondences refers to a phenomenological feeling that seemingly unrelated features, or stimulus dimensions, in different sensory modalities belong together. In other words, crossmodal correspondences can be described as feelings of “fit” between the basic properties of sensory stimuli that are physically experienced (or else merely imagined) in different modalities. By now, a large body of empirical research shows that presenting one such stimulus can prime notions of related (i.e., corresponding) attributes in other modalities, thus facilitating responses to the latter (Spence, 2011, 2014). For instance, the research shows that people will associate high-pitched (relative to lowpitched) sounds with the concepts of smallness, lightness, brightness, and sourness (Eitan & Timmers, 2010; Spence & Sathian, 2020). Over the last few years, the rather more surprising crossmodal correspondences that exist between audition and taste have also been studied by researchers. The findings published to date in this field have, for instance, demonstrated that people (i.e., regular consumers) consistently match specific sounds to particular tastes—with most people associating a sweet taste (either physically present or merely imagined) with higher pitched sounds and bitter taste with lower pitched sounds (Crisinel & Spence, 2009). Subsequent research has identified many such correspondences between basic auditory and gustatory attributes—systematically linking sweet, sour, bitter, and salty taste (not to mention creamy and spicy mouth sensations) on the one hand to higher or lower values of pitch, loudness, sharpness, roughness, and speed, on the other (for a review, see Knöferle & Spence, 2012).

842   Knoeferle and Spence Importantly, the latest findings demonstrate that designing the auditory features of background music in accordance with the aforementioned crossmodal correspondences can then be used to influence people’s sensory expectations concerning the basic taste/flavor/mouth feel of food and beverage products—thus making this new area of research potentially highly relevant to marketers. For instance, in a series of experiments conducted by Knoeferle and his colleagues, participants listened to several pieces of music that had been specifically designed to differ only in terms of basic sound properties (e.g., pitch, roughness, consonance, abruptness of note onset) and then matched the music to basic tastes. Intriguingly, both European and Indian participant samples matched the music with the “correct” (or consensual) basic taste words at a level that was significantly higher than chance, indicating that the effect is at least somewhat ­in­de­pend­ent of any culturally learned associations (Knoeferle, Woods, Käppler, & Spence, 2015). Elsewhere, the expected taste of a product whose packaging was presented visually was shown to be modulated by the pitch of a preceding incidental sound. Specifically, when a higher pitched sound was presented, participants expected a product to be sourer, while relatively lower pitched sounds induced expectations of sweetness instead (Velasco, Salgado-Montejo, Marmolejo-Ramos, & Spence, 2014). Moving beyond taste (i.e., gustation), recent studies have also documented a correspondence between higher pitch and fast tempo and the experience of cold (water) temperature (Wang & Spence, 2017). While the discussion thus far has focused on how sound can be used to prime or modify taste expectations, it is important to note that similar links also exist for other combinations of (multi)sensory attributes. Whereas audiovisual correspondences have been studied extensively in the field of cognitive psychology (e.g., Marks, 2004), and increasingly cognitive neuroscience (Bien, ten Oever, Goebel, & Sack,  2012; Spence & Sathian, 2020), marketers have only recently started to examine how crossmodal correspondences between sounds and visuals affect the product-related expectations and behaviors of consumers. For instance, examining the advertising implications of a known correspondence between pitch and visual size, Lowe and Haws (2017) demonstrated that those participants hearing audio advertisements with low-pitched voices or background music expected the advertised products to be larger than did those who heard the same ad with higher pitched voices or music instead. Intriguingly, however, this particular crossmodal effect depended on the ability of participants to visualize the products (i.e., it would not work if visual imagery was inhibited). In addition, the effect only occurred when the music or voice was associated with the advertised product (i.e., it would not work for background music that was not part of the ad), thus suggesting that the effect was not purely perceptual or automatic (see also Spence & Deroy, 2013a), but may rather have been based on more or less conscious inferences. Nevertheless, this finding, and others like it, do show that advertisers may select music and speakers (or edit existing voice recordings) to tailor impressions of smaller or larger product size to their goals. Crossmodal correspondences between such basic sensory properties are often hard to explain in terms of metaphorical associations, particularly because some of them

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   843 have been shown to work independently of culture and even in prelinguistic infants and nonhuman primates (Dolscheid, Hunnius, Casasanto, & Majid, 2014; Ludwig, Adachi, & Matsuzawa, 2011). Over the years, several different mechanisms have been put forward to account for their existence. One of the most popular, and wide-ranging of explanations has been to suggest that certain crossmodal correspondences are based on the brain’s internalization of the natural statistics of the environment (i.e., systematic cooccurrence of features in different sensory modalities)—presumably helping individuals to better predict the environment in which they find themselves. For instance, the oft-demonstrated association between a pinkish-red color and a sweet taste may be rooted in the co-occurrence of these attributes in ripe fruits and/or processed foods in the supermarket, and may have been especially useful in efficient foraging (Foroni, Pergola, & Rumiati, 2016). Similarly, the correspondence between low pitch and large objects may have evolved because larger adversaries generally tend to emit lower pitched sounds, and internalizing this pattern likely facilitated threat assessment and survival (even documented in dogs; Faragó et al., 2010; see also Gallace & Spence, 2006; Ratcliffe, Taylor, & Reby, 2016). Other correspondences that serve no obvious evolutionary purpose (e.g., between sweet taste and high-pitched sound) may track as-yet-unknown regularities in the environment or may have other origins (for discussions, see Knöferle & Spence, 2012; Spence, 2011). While not the focus of this chapter, it is important to note that effects of sound extend well beyond setting up taste expectations (e.g., in advertising); they may also influence a consumer’s perception during the consumption of food by acting as so-called “sonic seasoning”. In one study, the metaphorical character of background music (e.g., “powerful and heavy” or “subtle and refined”) biased people’s ratings of wine in the direction of the musical character (North, 2012). While this finding may not represent a genuinely perceptual effect but rather may be based on shared metaphors in audition and taste (for a discussion, see Spence & Deroy, 2013b), other studies have used crossmodal correspondences to affect taste and smell. Crisinel and her colleagues (2012) presented participants with music that was designed to sound bitter or sweet based on crossmodal correspondences. That is, “bitter” music was relatively low pitched, whereas sweet music had higher pitch (based on pitch-taste links identified in Crisinel & Spence,  2009). While listening to the specially composed soundscapes, the participants tasted and rated bittersweet cinder toffee. The participants evaluated the candy as tasting either more bitter or sweeter, depending on the background music. In other words, bitter music highlighted the bitterness, while sweet music brought out the sweetness of the toffee (i.e., participants assimilated the information in the soundtracks into their taste ratings). In another, large-scale experiment conducted in London as part of the Streets of Spain festival, Spence, Velasco, and Knoeferle (2014) tested more than 2,800 people over a period of four days. Everyone received a glass of red wine in a black tasting glass. While the primary manipulation involved the hue of the ambient lighting (red vs. green vs. regular white lighting), custom “sour” music was additionally shown to make wine taste fresher, while “sweet music” made the same wine taste fruitier instead. In this study,

844   Knoeferle and Spence “sour” music was higher in pitch and sharpness, more dissonant, and staccato phrasing, whereas “sweet” music was lower in sharpness, more consonant, and legato phrasing (based on the stimuli developed for and described in Knoeferle et al., 2015). In another, more recent study, specially composed background music was shown to enhance the perceived creaminess of chocolate (Carvalho, Wang, van Ee, Persoone, & Spence, 2017), while others have demonstrated that spicy music can be used to accentuate, or draw attention to, the spiciness of a dish (Wang, Keller, & Spence, 2017). Mounting evidence suggests that such sonic seasoning effects elicited by crossmodally congruent music occur on the level of perception (i.e., by priming sensory expectations or multisensory integration) rather than on the level of judgment (Wang, Spence, & Knoeferle, 2020). At the same time, however, it is worth noting that the beneficial effects on tasting of playing liked music may outweigh the effects of sonic seasoning (Reinoso-Carvalho, Gunn, Molina, Narumi, Spence, Suzuki, ter Horst, & Wagemans, 2020). In sum, a growing body of empirical research now suggests that crossmodal correspondences involving sound are experienced by consumers and may be used by marketers to set product-relevant expectations. However, it is important to note that crossmodal correspondences have primarily been studied under contrived conditions in labs, experiential events, and restaurants, while their effectiveness in real-life advertising settings is currently less well understood and documented. Another issue pertains to the boundary conditions constraining these effects: While basic research shows that crossmodal correspondences work best in tasks in which sensory features vary relative to each other (i.e., participants experience different values of pitch), the latest research in marketing has reported effects even for absolute stimulus presentation (i.e., when participants were exposed to only one pairing of crossmodal features; Hagtvedt & Brasel, 2016; Lowe & Haws, 2017; Wang, Keller, & Spence, 2017).

Increasing Product/Brand Liking Through Crossmodal Correspondences The effects of audiovisual correspondences may well extend beyond the setting, or priming, of consumer expectations to shaping their actual product preferences. Specifically, congruency between multisensory features of advertising (e.g., a bright-colored product advertised using high-pitched music) ought to increase consumers’ liking of the ad or advertised product. This prediction is based on research on processing fluency that suggests that (1) a perceived fit between stimuli or stimulus properties elicits feelings of processing ease and fluency in observers, (2) such feelings of fluency tend to be subjectively experienced as positively valenced, and (3) this positive affect often gets attributed to the stimulus, thus increasing liking (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009; see also Krishnan and Kellaris on processing fluency in sonic branding in this volume). While the majority of the processing fluency research to date has been purely unisensory (visual), its

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   845 i­mplications should, in principle, also hold in the multisensory case. That is, we might predict that multisensory advertising stimuli that are crossmodally congruent should elicit a feeling of fluent processing and should therefore be preferred over those that are crossmodally incongruent. This prediction is supported by findings in related domains. While multisensory fluency effects have not been studied in advertising, researchers have explored how the congruency between in-store music and other sensory cues influence shopper behavior in retailing (Das & Hagtvedt, 2016; Mattila & Wirtz, 2001; Morrison, Gan, Dubelaar, & Oppewal, 2011; Spangenberg, Grohmann, & Sprott, 2005; Wirtz, Mattila, & Tan, 2007). For instance, Mattila and Wirtz manipulated the arousal value of music and scents at the point of sale (e.g., slow vs. fast music; lavender vs. grapefruit scent). When the music and scent were congruent in terms of the arousal they elicited, shoppers reported higher satisfaction with the store environment and higher impulse-buying tendencies. While the study did not test a mediating effect of fluency, the results are clearly in line with the predictions of fluency theory. If sensory congruency of one type (here: arousal value) is experienced as positive, it is possible that other forms of sensory congruency (i.e., congruency based on crossmodal correspondences) may have similar effects on consumers.

Guiding Consumers’ Spatial Attention Using Sound Advertising sounds also affect low-level attentional processes. For instance, hearing the familiar sound of a product (i.e., a usage or consumption sound) will guide a consumer’s visual attention and product search. Eye-tracking and reaction time studies both suggest that consumers who look for a specific product in a cluttered supermarket shelf can locate (and fixate) the target more rapidly if they simultaneously hear the typical sound it makes (Knoeferle, Knoeferle, Velasco, & Spence, 2016). Product sounds may not only guide the consumer’s visual attention to congruent visual objects but also enhance their visual sensitivity (i.e., by making congruent objects more salient). This effect is shortlived, suggesting that sounds should be placed together with, or shortly before (< 1,000 ms), the visual objects that they are supposed to enhance (Chen & Spence, 2018). These findings imply that marketers can use product sounds to draw people’s attention toward specific, matching elements in a visual advertisement. While it may not seem surprising that hearing a sound attracts attention to congruent visual objects, research has gone a step further and revealed similar attentional effects for jingles. For instance, in one study, the participants were presented with several fictitious laundry detergent brands together with short and unfamiliar (i.e., newly created) instrumental jingles (three exposures to each brand-jingle pair; Knoeferle et al., 2016). When they were subsequently asked to locate the brands on a virtual shelf,

846   Knoeferle and Spence hearing the corresponding (i.e., paired) jingle guided their attention to the target and thus facilitated brand search (see Figure 41.3).3 Sound-induced attentional biases have been documented not only for newly learned sound-brand associations but also for pre-existing crossmodal correspondences between basic visual and auditory features. For instance, in one study, higher pitched background music in a product advertisement was shown to direct viewers’ attention to lighter colored sections of the ad, while lower pitched music guided their attention to darker colored sections instead (Hagtvedt & Brasel,  2016). Intriguingly, this effect occurred regardless of a simultaneously present semantic correspondence (i.e., a “typical” object sound), and some evidence suggests that the effect of crossmodal pitch-color lightness correspondence may occur more rapidly, and automatically, than any effects attributable to semantic correspondence (Hagtvedt & Brasel, 2016). Music can thus be used to guide a listeners’ attention toward visual features that are congruent with the music (Knoeferle et al., 2016). This mechanism may, of course, have downstream consequences at the point of sale. It is well documented that the meaning of ambient music (e.g., stereotypically French) can boost sales of meaning-congruent products (e.g., French wines; North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick, 1997, 1999; see also Spence, Reinoso-Carvalho, Velasco, & Wang,  2019; Zellner, Geller, Lyons, Pyper, & Riaz, 2017). Knoeferle and his colleagues (2016) speculated that this sales-enhancing effect of music may be mediated by attention, such that the meaning of the music first guides shoppers’ attention to the associated products, which thereby increases the likelihood of purchase. The correspondence between music and products does not need to be semantic: Related research has found that crossmodal congruency relying on lower level attributes of sound (such as pitch) can also guide consumers’ attention. For instance, the aforementioned congruency between auditory pitch and visual brightness—where higher pitched sounds correspond to brighter visual objects—can also guide a viewer’s attention inside the store. In a field experiment by Hagtvedt and Brasel (2016) , shoppers bought more products from a brighter shelf when the in-store music had a higher pitch, whereas they bought more from a darker shelf when the music had a lower pitch. Elsewhere, consumers exposed to lower pitched background music in a self-serve restaurant selected larger serving sizes than did those who heard higher pitched music (Lowe, Ringler, & Haws, 2017). Such remarkable results—should they prove generalizable to other products and contexts—would clearly have profound implications for marketing and advertising. The research reviewed previously suggests that marketers can use sound to guide consumers’ visual attention in advertising. To this end, they can use sounds that have existing associations with products/brands (e.g., typical product sounds), sounds that guide attention through crossmodal correspondences (e.g., between pitch and color lightness), and sounds that are associated with a product or brand through repeated coexposure (e.g., jingles). 3  Note that while three coexposures were shown to be sufficient to elicit this crossmodal effect, additional repetitions would likely strengthen the association between the auditory and visual stimuli and thereby facilitate brand search even further.

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   847

Figure 41.3  Participants were 35 ms (ca. 3%) faster in finding a fictitious brand of detergent on the virtual shelf if a jingle that had been learned in three brand-jingle exposures was presented again during search (see Knoeferle et al., 2016).

848   Knoeferle and Spence

(Multi)Sensory Overload The research discussed earlier suggests that (consistent) multisensory stimulation in advertising may be able to enhance both consumers’ experience and marketers’ profits. However, might there be any downside related to marketers’ increasing adoption of multisensory advertising? On a cautionary note, it seems possible that presenting too much sensory stimulation might run the risk of inducing sensory overload in consumers (Malhotra, 1984). While this idea has not been studied in advertising, it has been examined in the context of retailing: In an unpublished conference presentation, Homburg, Imschloss, and Kuehnl (2012) reported a study in which they asked 800 participants to imagine themselves browsing in a store. The description of three ambient sensory features of the store varied across participants in terms of their arousal value: The in-store music was described as either slow or fast, the scent as lavender or grapefruit, and the color as blue or red. A combination of any two of these features with high arousal had positive effects on participants’ willingness to pay, while combinations of three high-arousing features had a negative effect, presumably because they induced sensory overload. While the findings by Homburg and colleagues (2012) have yet to be published, anecdotal evidence suggests that some retailers are already sensitive to the dangers of sensory overload. For instance, retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, once famous for stores featuring thumping music, intense ambient scents, and dim “nightclub” lighting, has started to roll out its new store concept with quieter music, subtler scents, and well-lit merchandise (Lutz, 2014). Similarly, the British department store chain Selfridges temporarily introduced a silent white “chill-out” room in their Oxford Street branch to offer shoppers some relief from sensory overstimulation (Dalamal, 2013). To the extent that sensory overload affects consumers exposed to advertising, marketers should obviously take steps to limit its potentially harmful effects.

Conclusions In this chapter, we have discussed different ways in which sound may influence consumers in the context of multisensory advertising. Research in this area has evolved over the years: from construing sound as an incidental advertising cue that becomes associated with advertised products or brands via repeated exposure, through studying the effects of its metaphorical or semantic meaning, to exploring its more recently discovered, multisensory effects (e.g., multisensory learning, crossmodal correspondences, attention modulation, and sensory overload). Our discussion has outlined how sound may be used to elicit conditioned responses, enhance memory, shape multisensory product and brand expectations, create signature sounds, increase brand liking, and guide attention.

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   849 However, before getting too excited, it is important to note that in order to successfully roll out multisensory findings from the research lab to advertising or marketing practice, several further steps are required: First, much of the research reviewed here has been conducted in psychological laboratories, often using abstract stimuli and outcome variables that are primarily interesting to psychologists (e.g., memory benefits of multisensory learning). Participants in these studies were presumably mostly from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) countries (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). To verify the applicability of such findings to advertising, marketing scholars will therefore first need to replicate these effects in realistic advertising contexts and look for practically meaningful downstream consequences (e.g., improved brand recall or liking). To ensure generalizability across cultures, such replications should try to include participants from non-Western cultures. Second, future research should aim to identify additional crossmodal correspondences that may help set up consumers’ product expectations, guide their visual attention, or have other, as-yetundiscovered uses. Third, further evidence is required to better understand the boundary conditions of multisensory effects in general, and of crossmodal correspondences in particular. The search for potential boundary conditions is a particularly promising avenue for future research. For instance, what degree and type of connection are needed between sounds and products for correspondence effects to take hold (see also Spence & Deroy, 2013a)? Why do many correspondences seem to rely on contrast (i.e., people hearing low vs. high pitch), while others (thus far, admittedly fewer) appear to work even in the absence of any obvious comparison stimuli? What determines which correspondence will be primed by sound—high pitch, for instance, corresponds to “small,” “sweet,” “light,” and “high,” but which of these dimensions will be activated in any given context (Schietecat, Lakens, IJsselsteijn, & de Kort, 2018)? And, are the expectations established through product sounds and/or crossmodal correspondences any more or less robust than those established through other means (e.g., verbal information)? The Xincafe in Beijing provides an informative example. They use “sweet” music to make drinks appear sweeter and reduce customers’ sugar intake (The Stable, 2017). Would such music-induced sweetness impressions affect their customers’ taste perception for seconds, minutes, hours, or on multiple successive occasions (Spence, 2019)? And regardless of how long-lasting crossmodal influences may be, the question remains as to whether they can be used as more than a short-term intervention (e.g., like the Sound Bite menu on British Airways [Victor, 2014] or FinnAir’s recent foray into sonic seasoning [Silva, 2019]). Taken together, such work could ultimately result in a “dictionary” of crossmodal correspondences that could be used by advertisers to accurately guide consumers’ expectations and attention (see Parise, 2016). To conclude, we believe that sound is more important than any of us realize—both in advertising and in our everyday life. What is especially exciting at the current time is the emergence of various technologies that enable greater exposure to and more innovativeness in sonic cues. Sound can be attractive or pleasant in its own right but, crucially, can affect the other senses as well. Research in fields as diverse as marketing and

850   Knoeferle and Spence cognitive neuroscience contributes to a growing understanding of how sound affects consumers, which enables marketers to design better sounds. This trend ultimately leads us into the world of consumer neuroscience (but practitioners should be cautious; see Spence, 2016, 2020b).

Recommended Readings Knoeferle, K. M., Knoeferle, P., Velasco, C., & Spence, C. (2016). Multisensory brand search: How the meaning of sounds guides consumers’ visual attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 22(2), 196–210. Knöferle, K.  M., & Spence, C. (2012). Crossmodal correspondences between sounds and tastes. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(6), 992–1006. Krishna, A. (2012). An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to affect perception, judgment and behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 332–351. Spence, C. (2011). Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73(4), 971–995. Spence, C. (2012). Managing sensory expectations concerning products and brands: Capitalizing on the potential of sound and shape symbolism. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(1), 37–54.

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852   Knoeferle and Spence Jousmäki, V., & Hari, R. (1998). Parchment-skin illusion: Sound-biased touch. Current Biology, 8(6), 869–872. Kellaris, J. J., & Cox, A. D. (1989). The effects of background music in advertising: A reassessment. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(1), 113–118. Klink, R.  R. (2000). Creating brand names with meaning: The use of sound symbolism. Marketing Letters, 11(1), 5–20. Knoeferle, K. M., Knoeferle, P., Velasco, C., & Spence, C. (2016). Multisensory brand search: How the meaning of sounds guides consumers’ visual attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 22(2), 196–210. Knoeferle, K. M., Paus, V. C., & Vossen, A. (2017). An upbeat crowd: Fast in-store music alleviates negative effects of high social density on customers’ spending. Journal of Retailing, 93(4), 541–549. Knoeferle, K.  M., Sprott, D.  E., & Herrmann, A. (2012). Cross-modal influences of acoustic product cues on taste perceptions. Paper presented at the Society for Consumer Psychology 2012 Winter Conference, Las Vegas, NV. Knoeferle, K. M., Woods, A., Käppler, F., & Spence, C. (2015). That sounds sweet: Using crossmodal correspondences to communicate gustatory attributes. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), 107–120. Knöferle, K.  M., & Spence, C. (2012). Crossmodal correspondences between sounds and tastes. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(6), 992–1006. Krishna, A. (2012). An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to affect perception, judgment and behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 332–351. Krishna, A. (2013). Sensory explosion. JWT trends report. Krishna, A., & Schwarz, N. (2014). Sensory marketing, embodiment, and grounded cognition: A review and introduction. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24(2), 159–168. Kuehnl, C., & Mantau, A. (2013). Same sound, same preference? Investigating sound symbolism effects in international brand names. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 30(4), 417–420. Kuwano, S., Fastl, H., Namba, S., Nakamura, S., & Uchida, H. (2006). Quality of door sounds of passenger cars. Acoustical Science and Technology, 27(5), 309–312. Lageat, T., Czellar, S., & Laurent, G. (2003). Engineering hedonic attributes to generate perceptions of luxury: Consumer perception of an everyday sound. Marketing Letters, 14(2), 97–109. Lowe, M. L., & Haws, K. L. (2017). Sounds big: The effects of acoustic pitch on product perceptions. Journal of Marketing Research, 54(2), 331–346. Lowe, M. L., Ringler, C., & Haws, K. L. (2017). An overture to overeating: The cross-modal effects of acoustic pitch on food preferences and serving behavior. Appetite, 123, 128–134. Ludwig, V.  U., Adachi, I., & Matsuzawa, T. (2011). Visuoauditory mappings between high luminance and high pitch are shared by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(51), 20661–20665. Lutz, A. (2014, May 23). Abercrombie is killing the nightclub vibe in its stores. Business  Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com.au/ abercrombie-changing-store-design-2014–5 Malhotra, N. K. (1984). Information and sensory overload. Information and sensory overload in psychology and marketing. Psychology & Marketing, 1(3–4), 9–21. Marks, L.  E. (2004). Cross-modal interactions in speeded classification. In G.  A.  Calvert, C.  Spence, & B.  E.  Stein (Eds.), The Handbook of Multisensory Processes (pp. 85–105). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mattila, A. S., & Wirtz, J. (2001). Congruency of scent and music as a driver of in-store evaluations and behavior. Journal of Retailing, 77(2), 273–289.

Sound in (Multi)sensory Marketing   853 Matusz, P. J., Wallace, M. T., & Murray, M. M. (2017). A multisensory perspective on object memory. Neuropsychologia, 105, 243–252. McEleny, C. (2016, January 4). Ford targets luxury travelers with “sensory” billboards in India. The Drum. Retrieved from http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/08/22/ford-targetsluxury-travelers-sensory-billboards-india McMains, A. (2015, May 21). How JWT Brazil and Dolby captured the iconic sound of Coke being poured over ice. Adweek. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/ how-jwt-brazil-and-dolby-captured-iconic-sound-experience-coke-being-poured-overice-164920/ Meyer, L.  B. (1994). Emotion and meaning in music. In R.  Aiello & J.  A.  Sloboda (Eds.), Musical perceptions (pp. 3–39). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Milliman, R. E. (1982). Using background music to affect the behavior of supermarket shoppers. Journal of Marketing, 46(3), 86–91. Mormann, M. M., Koch, C., & Rangel, A. (2011). Consumers can make decisions in as little as a third of a second. Judgment and Decision Making, 6(6), 520–530. Morrison, M., Gan, S., Dubelaar, C., & Oppewal, H. (2011). In-store music and aroma influences on shopper behavior and satisfaction. Journal of Business Research, 64(6), 558–564. North, A. C. (2012). The effect of background music on the taste of wine. British Journal of Psychology, 103(3), 293–301. North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., & McKendrick, J. (1997). In-store music affects product choice. Nature, 390(6656), 132. North, A. C., Hargreaves, D. J., & McKendrick, J. (1999). The influence of in-store music on wine selections. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(2), 271–276. North, A. C., Sheridan, L. P., & Areni, C. S. (2016). Music congruity effects on product memory, perception, and choice. Journal of Retailing, 92(1), 83–95. Parise, C. V. (2016). Crossmodal correspondences: Standing issues and experimental guidelines. Multisensory Research, 29(1–3), 7–28. Ratcliffe, V. F., Taylor, A. M., & Reby, D. (2016). Cross-modal correspondences in non-human mammal communication. Multisensory Research, 29, 49–91. Reinoso-Carvalho, F., Gunn, L., Molina, T., Narumi, T., Spence, C., Suzuki, Y., ter Horst, E., & Wagemans, J. (2020). A sprinkle of emotions vs a pinch of crossmodality: Towards globally meaningful sonic seasoning strategies for tasting experiences. Journal of Business Research, 117, 389–399. Sapherstein, M. B. (1998). The trademark registrability of the Harley-Davidson roar: A multimedia analysis. Retrieved from http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/st_org/iptf/articles/ content/1998101101.html#fnB24 Schietecat, A. C., Lakens, D., IJsselsteijn, W. A., & de Kort, Y. A. W. (2018). Predicting contextdependent cross-modal associations with dimension-specific polarity attributions: Part 1-Brightness and aggression. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1), 14. Silva, V. (2019). Sound palate: Finnair’s “Hear the Taste” bisensory experience. APEX Experience Magazine, 10(3), 43. Spangenberg, E. R., Grohmann, B., & Sprott, D. E. (2005). It’s beginning to smell (and sound) a lot like Christmas: The interactive effects of ambient scent and music in a retail setting. Journal of Business Research, 58(11), 1583–1589. Spence, C. (2011). Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73(4), 971–995. Spence, C. (2012). Managing sensory expectations concerning products and brands: Capitalizing on the potential of sound and shape symbolism. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(1), 37–54.

854   Knoeferle and Spence Spence, C. (2014). Assessing the influence of shape and sound symbolism on the consumer’s response to chocolate. New Food, 17(2), 59–62. Spence, C. (2016). Neuroscience-inspired design: From academic neuromarketing to commercially-relevant research. Organizational Research Methods, 22(1), 275–298. Spence, C. (2019). Multisensory experiential wine marketing. Food Quality & Preference, 71, 106–116. Spence, C. (2020a). Shitsukan –The multisensory perception of quality. Multisensory Research, 33, 737–775. DOI: 10.1163/22134808-bja10003. Spence, C. (2020b). On the ethics of neuromarketing & sensory marketing. In J.  TrempeMartineau & E. Racine (Eds.), Organizational neuroethics: Reflections on the contributions of neuroscience to management theories and business practice (pp. 9–30). Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature. Spence, C. (2021). Sense-hacking. London, UK: Viking Penguin. Spence, C., & Deroy, O. (2013a). How automatic are crossmodal correspondences? Consciousness and Cognition, 22(1), 245–260. Spence, C., & Deroy, O. (2013b). On why music changes what (we think) we taste. i-Perception, 4(2), 137–140. Spence, C., & Gallace, A. (2011). Multisensory design: Reaching out to touch the consumer. Psychology & Marketing, 28(3), 267–307. Spence, C., Puccinelli, N. M., Grewal, D., & Roggeveen, A. L. (2014). Store atmospherics: A multisensory perspective. Psychology & Marketing, 31(7), 472–488. Spence, C., Reinoso-Carvalho, F., Velasco, C., & Wang, Q. J. (2019). Extrinsic auditory contributions to food perception & consumer behaviour: An interdisciplinary review. Multisensory Research, 32, 275–318. Spence, C., & Sathian, K. (2020). Audiovisual crossmodal correspondences: Behavioural consequences & neural underpinnings. In K. Sathian & V. S. Ramachandran (Eds.), Multisensory perception: From laboratory to clinic (pp. 239–258). San Diego, CA: Elsevier. Spence, C., Shankar, M. U., & Blumenthal, H. (2011). “Sound bites”: Auditory contributions to the perception and consumption of food and drink. In F. Bacci & D. Mecher (Eds.), Art and the senses (pp. 207–238). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Spence, C., Velasco, C., & Knoeferle, K. M. (2014). A large sample study on the influence of the multisensory environment on the wine drinking experience. Flavour, 3(8), 1–12. Spence, C., & Wang, Q. J. (2015). Sensory expectations elicited by the sounds of opening the packaging and pouring a beverage. Flavour, 4(1), 35. Spence, C., & Wang, (Q.) J. (2017). Assessing the impact of closure type on wine ratings and mood. Beverages, 3:52; doi:10.3390/beverages3040052. Spence, C., & Zampini, M. (2006). Auditory contributions to multisensory product perception. Acta Acustica United With Acustica, 92(6), 1009–1025. Stanton, T. R., & Spence, C. (2020). The influence of auditory cues on bodily and movement perception. Frontiers in Psychology, 10:3001. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03001. The Stable (2017, February 28). Beijing Dentsu: Xincafe’s sweet songs cup curbs sugar intake. Retrieved from http://www.thestable.com.au/beijing-dentsu-xincafes-sweet-songs-cupcurbs-sugar-intake/ Thelen, A., & Murray, M.  M. (2013). The efficacy of single-trial multisensory memories. Multisensory Research, 26(5), 483–502. Thelen, A., Talsma, D., & Murray, M.  M. (2015). Single-trial multisensory memories affect later auditory and visual object discrimination. Cognition, 138, 148–160.

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A PPE N DI X EDITED BY RON RODMAN

The A d Cr e ation Process From Production to Reception Lawrence Harte

Editors’ Note: Lawrence Harte is a noted author of several books on the advertising industry, written for professionals in the industry. The chapter presented here covers the business operations of advertising and how music is selected and licensed in the creation of ads for the electronic media. As such, this chapter is not a scholarly study of a single aspect of music and advertising as found in this volume, but rather a primer on how music fits into the current advertising business model in the United States. This chapter provides a glimpse into the mind of advertising professionals and offers a valuable context and backdrop for the chapters in all the sections of this volume. ­­—The Editors

The Business of Music Advertising The business of music in advertising involves searching, licensing, and producing music that enhances the awareness, influence, and memorability of advertising messages. This can be time consuming and costly, and will be less effective if done incorrectly. While the selection of music used in ads can be strongly impacted by the emotions of the advertiser, creative director, and producer, there are processes and tools that can help. The selection of music placed in ads can have a strong emotional impact on the listening audience. There are tools that the advertiser, creative director, and producer can use to maximize this response. The process starts by defining the desired music characteristics. This is critical for searching for good music candidates from sources that range from new music creation to obtaining the rights to popular songs. It is critical to know exactly what you’re looking for when it comes to creating new music or selecting from pre-existing (popular) songs.

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figure A.1  Advertising media and campaign development process with music.

The processes used to present and persuade key players in the advertising production processes are covered, along with the implementation of tools that can measure and provide objective data (see Figure A.1). The ad evaluation process may make use of social monitoring tools such as Nielsen social ratings to measure the influence, sentiment, and effectiveness of the advertising message. Social monitoring tools such as Nielsen social ratings are able to measure the influence, emotional response, and ad effectiveness by monitoring social likes, shares, and words in comment text. Nielsen social ratings tools are services that monitor media channels, gather and analyze related social show information, and provide reports that can be used to justify ad spending and/or optimize ad campaigns (Nielsen Social, n.d.). The ad creation process starts when a marketing or business manager determines a need for advertising to promote their products and increase sales. The company hires an advertising agency to create the ad and manage a set of ad activities (an ad campaign). The media agency will come up with creative concepts (messages, themes, storylines) that are reviewed and approved by the client. The media agency typically hires a video production company to produce the ad media from the campaign descriptions (storyboards, scripts, etc.). The video production company may hire a music composer to create music for the ad that meets media direction requirements (theme, genre, cue times, etc.) provided by the media agency. The musical arrangement is produced by live musicians or electronics, such as synthesizers (musical instrument digital interface [MIDI]). A music editor will arrange and adjust the music and will mix the dialogue sound, music, and sound effects to create the final advertising media (video and/or

Ad Creation Process   861 audio). The advertising agency may decide to use focus groups (people who are typical customer types who review the ad concepts) and perform limited marketing tests to identify desired changes to the media. The advertising agency will manage the ad campaigns (media buys, ad tracking), which may include music fingerprinting (identification using existing image characteristics) and/or watermarking (including hidden identifiers in the media) that can identify ad views, engagements, and conversions (desired results).

Music in Ads Music in advertisements (video, audio, and other media formats) involves music selection, music licensing, audio editing, and ad delivery (playout) measurement. The selection of music for media projects typically occurs during the end of the production phase. The priority of selecting music for advertising may be moved to the planning or preproduction stage if a specific song or sound theme is desired. The visual theme and content may be designed around a specific song. If the song usage rights cannot be obtained or they are too expensive, this can change the entire ad creation process.

Song Selection It is desirable for music in ads to be recognizable, influential, and memorable. Advertising music may come from libraries, authentic catalogs, new music composition, or licensing of popular songs.

Music Licensing For music to be used in ads, it is necessary to obtain a combined music license that authorizes use of master content (original song), permits editing (changes to arrangement, lyrics, tracks, etc.), permits synchronization rights (association with video), and identifies where and when it may be published (local, national, global, etc.) and how it may be used (formats, device types, etc.). Discovering who owns or manages the rights to music can be a complicated and timeconsuming process—from weeks to months. To get rights clearance documents that are required by TV broadcasters, ad producers will typically use a music licensing agency that identifies the composers, publishers, and synchronization rights and get permissions from other rights holders.

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Audio Editing Music in ads typically needs to be modified to align to fit with the key visual elements and dialogue. This can include rearrangement, track alteration, level control, and mixing with dialogue and sound effects (sound design).

Ad Media Ad content (video and/or audio) is created in multiple formats (resolutions, width aspect ratios) with multiple variations (broadcast, internet, TV, web video, mobile apps, etc.).

Ad Measurements Initial ad value measurements for content value and influence can be accomplished through the use of focus groups and running limited marketing tests, which can identify desired changes in ad content. Ad delivery measurements can include playout monitoring on broadcast channels (how many ads were actually played and on which channels), and it may be possible to measure the influence of delivered ads through audience engagement analysis. This can include the number of website visits, link clicks, and purchase activities that result from ad playouts.

Advertiser Objectives Commercials are usually developed by an advertising agency that converts a desired advertiser message and/or offer into creative media and an ad campaign (set of campaign publishing activities). A company’s advertising objectives include getting the attention of qualified people and influencing them in a way so as to do something (engage), which leads to a desired result (conversion). Almost all ad distribution options have tracking capabilities that can be used to optimize the campaign success and to justify the work (and cost) of media agencies, video producers, composers, music editors, broadcasters, and other services.

Attention Advertisers want their ads to stand out from other ads and distractions. This can be accomplished by using dramatic images and/or recognizable music. Popular music licensing fees can run from $50,000 to well over six figures for one year of use in national

Ad Creation Process   863 ads (Passman, 2015, p. 270). To reduce the cost, some advertisers instead use authentic music (similar genre and tempo) as popular songs.

Influence Influence happens when a viewer or listener develops an understanding of what a product offers and attributes brand value to it. Music provides information like setting and time period and stimulates emotions. As Steven Spielberg once noted, “The eye sees better when the sound is great.” Selecting music that matches the advertisement’s influence requirements can be divided into an indexing component (sound memories that generate emotions) and music fit (subjective impact of music that increases the positive emotions associated with the ad content; Hoeberichts, 2012, p. 15).

Engagement Engagement is getting a qualified audience to take action that leads them to make a purchase or take a desired action. This can range from simply viewing the ad (where it was played) to interacting with a video and registering to get additional information (submitting an online form to get additional information or calling a telephone number in the ad). When viewers watch TV commercials on broadcast channels (cable TV, satellite TV, etc.), they are viewing unscheduled promotional messages (interruption advertising). This means that for TV broadcast ads, it is important to get the attention of the viewer by taking their focus away from viewing other media or activities. They must remember the ad and where to go to respond to it. Using a popular or memorable/catchy song in an ad can effectively get their attention. Engagement on connected media (such as smart TVs and mobile apps) can have higher responses without repeated ad playouts because viewers can immediately respond using apps or web links. A second screen destination (such as a website landing page) should have a design and sound elements similar to the ad. This is why the music license needs to include multiple distribution types. If the destination has a lot of media (long format), the license for music will need to be for a longer duration.

Conversions Ad campaigns are set up to motivate people to take desired activities such as purchasing a product or submitting contact information. Some media types (such as streaming media) can allow for tracking of offers and link them to product purchases, providing measurement of return on investment (ROI). Conversion tracking can be used to justify the expense of using marketing and ad campaigns.

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Advertising Agency Campaign Projects Companies usually hire advertising or media agencies to develop and manage ad campaigns. Ad agencies take their clients’ business requirements and create multiple creative concepts. One or more creative concepts are selected/approved by the advertising client, which results in an ad media production project. Once the ad media is created, tested, and approved, it can be used in ad campaigns.

Advertising Development Project An advertising agency will set up an ad development project, which converts the advertising clients’ business objectives into media and marketing campaign activities. The advertiser will typically define their advertising objectives (message, desired actions, etc.) during the initial project phase.

Creative Concept Advertising agencies will typically create multiple media communication themes and delivery options (creative concepts), which are reviewed and approved by their advertising client. The creative concept typically includes themes (stories, characters, formats), which may include music direction notes.

Storyboard Agencies may create multiple storyboards (scene sketches), which are presented, reviewed, and approved by their advertising clients. These may be converted into a rough video animatic, which may include dialogue and sample music.

Script The script contains dialogue and notes about how and where it should be used in the  video. For advertising commercials, the choice of words can be critical to ­marketing success. Some of the words from the script may also influence the song lyrics. A high percentage of music used in commercials tends to be instrumental; 62.8% of music used in ads in 2013 was instrumental only (Dupuy, 2013). When instrumentalonly music is used, lyrics do not reinforce or interfere with the advertising message.

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Media Production Project Advertising agencies will typically use video production companies to create video and audio content. The project is initiated in the form of a deal memo or a more formal agreement that identifies production timing, deliverables, and details on how interactions will occur. Several interactive sessions usually occur between the advertising agency and video production company.

Ad Testing Ad media may be reviewed by focus groups and tested using limited campaigns that can identify what changes to video and audio should be made. Testing may include social media ratings that track, measure, and analyze media shares and comments along with sentiment analysis of words in the comments (such as “best,” “worst,” etc.).

Ad Campaigns Advertising agencies typically run advertising campaigns (paid placements) for ads for their customer clients. They set up and manage the advertising campaigns, which may include buying media on broadcast systems (TV and radio) and online systems (video ads, streaming ads). Media agencies receive discounts of about 15% when buying media advertising placements (Albarda, 2019). Ad campaigns may be managed over more than one platform such as TV broadcasts and web video (integrated marketing), which can amplify ad campaign effectiveness and provide engagement measurements, data capture, and direct sales opportunities. This is why music licensing agreements should include the ability to use the music on multiple media platforms.

Video Production Advertising agencies usually hire video production companies to create multiple ad versions with music options. When the final revisions are approved, the video production company provides the media in a ready-to-use format, along with additional media that was created but not used in the ad.

Deal Memo Production projects start with a deal memo or agreement that defines the project, media deliverables, timeline, budgets, review meetings, and other information needed to produce the ad. Once the deal memo is completed, the storyboard, script, and other materials are provided to the video production company.

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Production Plan The video production company creates a workflow process production plan that includes character casting/development, location scouting, crew teams, filming schedule, and other production steps. The production plan is typically reviewed and approved by the advertising agency, which acts as an executive producer by reviewing the steps and controlling the budget.

Video Shoot—Filming Production The filming production of a TV commercial may include the planned music or click tracks (repeated ticks) to allow cast members to coordinate their movements with the music (music cues). In some cases, music or audio may also come from sources on the set such as a band playing instruments, radios, computers, or televisions. When music comes from devices that are part of the production (i.e., the actors and the audience can hear them), it is called “diegetic music.”

Rough Cut A rough cut is a version of the ad media that does not contain special effects. It may include temporary music (temp track). The rough cut may be used for music spotting, to identify desired music characteristics and key song cue timing points. The temporary music selection by the editor can bias the director’s and executive producer’s choice of desired music. The music supervisor may insert a temporary track from their personal library. The music supervisor and team members may review several hundred music tracks before selecting a song for the ad (Williams, 2018).

Ad Music Selection The music selected for ads can be influenced by business objectives, creative desires, and cost factors. Advertisers sometimes want to have recognizable, exciting, and memorable music. Creative directors want emotional and impactful sounds that enhance the viewing experience. The producer’s budget and timing can determine if the song will be a popular song or a lower cost licensed track. Music options may be tested using focus groups or limited market testing such as a local television test or in malls on digital displays.

Music Editing Music editing involves cutting, arranging, and mixing songs so audio elements match visual cues. It also involves transitions and sound level adjustments.

Ad Creation Process   867 Keeping the original music structure (identifiable sound) is a good idea for marketing value and may be required by a music license agreement.

Final Cut The final audio cut includes a mix of dialogue, music, sound effects, and transitions (such as crossover fades). There may be multiple versions of the ad with various lengths. Different music and lyrics may be used for ads that are distributed in different parts of the world.

Ad Media Formatting Ads may be converted into multiple media formats to be used on different types of media channels. Multiple ad campaigns (from broadcast to mobile app games) require different types (mp3, mp4, etc.), lengths, resolutions, and other media variations.

Music and Ads: Selection, Licensing, and Production Ad Music Source Options Ad music source options include copyright-free music, stock library music, authentic music catalogs, score composition, and popular music licensing.

Copyright Free Music Copyright-free music is in the public domain, available for use if it has an expired copyright or never was under copyright. Some music creators or owners have released their work into the public domain (given up their rights) for various reasons. Unfortunately, the term copyright free is often misused or abused by music licensing companies to attract potential music licensors. Copyright free can really mean royalty free, which may (and typically does) require a fixed (noncommission) licensing fee. While a music score may be copyright free, the recorded performance may be copyrighted. A single song may be performed by multiple artists or bands, with each having separate licensing and performance royalty requirements. To check if a song requires performance royalties, refer to the following Professional Rights Organization (PRO) database search (for United States): • BMI: http://bmi.com/search • ASCAP: http://ascap.com/home/ace-title-search/index.aspx • SESAC: http://sesac.com/repertory/repertorysearch.aspx

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Stock Library Music Some music distribution companies provide access to songs that are available to any company (a music library). The songs may be licensed royalty free (one upfront fee) or by using a subscription service (access to any content in the library for a monthly fee). It is important to review the licensing terms for stock music libraries because the subscription services or royalty-free license use may not include use rights for film, TV shows, ads, or other types of commercial distribution. It may be necessary to contact the stock library company to get a license for use in ads, which may have additional fees.

Authentic Music Catalogs Authentic music consists of songs whose genre and mood are similar to other recognizable songs. Authentic music catalogs enable music seekers to search by themes, keywords, or related categories to search for similar songs. Authentic music catalogs typically have artists that can quickly modify or recompose their songs to meet specific music timing, lyrics, and sound emphasis needs.

Original Compositions Some ad agencies or production companies hire a music composer to create a new song or jingle for the ad. The composer hired can be a low-cost local artist or a more wellknown musician with a large fan base. Ads are typically short (30 seconds or less), and new ad music composition time can take days to weeks. It is important that sounds created in the original music do not violate the copyright of other artists. Musicians can be strongly influenced by other songs and may unintentionally create music that is a musical derivation of other songs. While the artist may sign an affidavit that he or she is the original artist, this may be of little help to the advertiser if copyright violation is detected.

Popular Music Licensing While using popular songs in ads can add significant interest and emotional value, licensing costs can be high ($100,000 to $1 million-plus) and the wait time to get clearance to use the music can be lengthy. License clearance can involve multiple companies (artist, studios, publishers, and others), which can result in licensing delays of weeks to months

Ad Creation Process   869 Licensing popular songs can take months or over a year. When I was licensing a David Bowie song “Life on Mars,” it took over eleven months because there were eight different entities that were part of the licensing decision: three publishers, three record labels, David Bowie, and David Bowie’s manager. This is one of the key reasons I set up a pre-cleared music licensing service that provides an instant license by getting tracks pre-approval for use along with fixed fees which eliminates the need for negotiation. (Ray Williams, personal communication, February 27, 2018)

Music Discovery and Selection Music discovery and selection typically starts with the advertising agency’s creative direction (ad theme). This is used by the video director to identify desired music characteristics (genre, tempo, etc.). The video editor will typically insert a desired or temporary song track to enable the ad screening process, which identifies key music and audio timing cues. Music is requested, selected, and reviewed for approval based on ad engagement, cost, and other factors. One thing that I think about that might not be obvious from an outside perspective is how interdependent the music and visuals are. I can find a piece of music that seems right but when played against the visuals creates a very different impression. For me, it’s a very intuitive process, “I know what I like when I hear it.” But once you get music into an edit, it can then strongly influence the edit. So you have a vision going in of what kinds of things you want the music to do, then you audition pieces against the footage, then edit the footage to that piece. It’s like a lot of things we do, if we’re really good at our job, the audience doesn’t really notice how the music and visuals are working together; it doesn’t draw attention to itself. But the overall effect is a much stronger piece.  (Scott Rucci, personal communication, October 2, 2018)

Creative Direction The advertising agency’s creative director may define the desired emotional and iconic requirements of a piece of music. The creative director may also consider the music and style from other ads used by the advertising client.

Temp Tracks A video editor typically inserts temporary music into an ad in development to show the creative direction. The editor may use songs from the company or from his or her own personal library; temp songs can also be taken off the internet, CDs, or other sources. Licenses for temp tracks are usually not obtained, as they are not used in public performances.

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Ad Music Spotting Ad music spotting is the process of reviewing video or media segments, selecting companion music, and identifying song and sound effect cue times. For ad media, there can be a strong interaction between the advertising message and the music and sound elements. This can result in multiple screening sessions to review and update music attributes and arrangements. Each review session has screening notes, which may be shared with composers, music editors, or other people involved with the ad music.

Music Request A music request is a document or form provided to a music library or agency that defines the desired characteristics of song/songs(s) for the ad and may include a budget. A music request may be a detailed data form with key information such as genre, tempo, mood, artist fan base, and other requirements, or it may be a simple email stating key music emotional desires. It may also include some examples of songs that would be a good fit for the project. If the budget and time permit, music composition or custom arrangements may be requested.

Music Artist Brand Value The popularity of music artists can influence the desirability of a song for use in an ad and affect its music licensing costs. Emerging artists that have an online social media presence, an established fan base, and a follower profile that matches the advertiser’s consumer base or target audience can add significant value. Brand value can be greatly increased if the artist has a strong online presence through social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Soundcloud, and music blog reviews. Additional music licensing value can increase through cross-promotion opportunities where artists may incorporate their song and the brand being advertised into their performances.

Music Budgets Music budgets include licensing and production costs. This can include composition costs, orchestration (musicians and editing), music editing and mixing, audio project management, studio rental and production, library/distributor commissions, and other incidentals.

Ad Creation Process   871 Music budgets can range from under $100 for short songs from unknown artists with local distribution to millions of dollars for popular artists with wide distribution. Songs available for licensing may have rate cards that define precleared or typical licensing fees. Specific uses of music (such as broadcast, streaming, downloaded, etc.) may not be on the rate cards, and rates may be negotiable. Licensing rate negotiations are common and can be lengthy (weeks to months). The advertiser may request the track licensing history to discover if competing or undesirable products have been associated with the song.

Ad Reviews and Approval Typically, multiple ad media screening reviews occur during the development phase, as there can be unexpected visual and audio interactions that require changes. While final ad approval is from the advertising agency’s client, they tend to go along with the recommendations provided by the advertising agency.

Ad Music Composition Music used in ads may be new compositions or modifications to existing songs. Finding ad music compositions involves selecting an artist, music composition, and music orchestration.

Bespoke Projects To create a custom song, a Bespoke composition project may be used. Bespoke projects define characteristics for the type of music, key sound(s), and time length, and there may be other requirements as well. Bespoke projects may define a fixed fee for all music development costs, called “All-In.”

Composer Selection Ideally, the composer selected is a music artist who has excellent composition skills and has experience creating music in the genre the ad music needs. A crucial factor that can help a composer to have a greater chance at being selected is if he or she already has positive existing relationships with media agencies and/or video production companies. Media agencies and/or video production companies prefer to work with composers who have proven their ability and reliability to work on composition projects.

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Ad Music Composition Ad music composition tends to be an interactive process where the composer may send sample audio clips to the director and editor to review and discuss. Compositions are often created using MIDI software programs, which can sound almost like an original band. A music composer agreement (also called music commissioning) defines the people and companies involved, the type of music to be produced, the amount of time, fees and/ or royalties that will be paid, and the rights assignments.

Review and Revision The music composition process is usually dynamic and interactive, requiring multiple reviews and revisions. It is important to agree on a revision management system and workflow to keep changes organized. A composer may put a time limit on the maximum amount of revisions. When the time limit is exceeded, additional fees may be collected. This can be important when there are multiple people involved in the decision process who can’t agree or who may continually ask for more changes.

Music Orchestration Music orchestration is the conversion of the song score into recorded music. The orchestration may use musicians or be completely created using MIDI software. The final recording may be provided in multiple tracks, allowing for the audio mixing to adjust the levels of components.

Ad Music License An ad music license provides permission to use music, identifies where and how it can be used, and assesses the costs associated with the license. Music licensing documentation is usually required by broadcasters and publishers before they will accept the ad media. The license includes the rights to the music (master license), its association with visual media (synchronization license), and how the media will be distributed and used (publishing license). If a use changes (such as longer ad campaign runtime, wider distribution), the license will need to be renegotiated and modified or amended. In general, if a license does not identify the format or how the content will be used, it is not allowed. This can become a challenge if there is a new type of format or use (such as using with an interactive hologram—yes, they do exist). If it is not specifically included in the license, renegotiation (and additional fees) may be required.

Ad Creation Process   873

Use Types The music license defines how and where media may be used such as on TV, online video, radio, apps, and other uses. Additional use options may be included in the license in case the ad is used in other ways, such as going from national to global distribution. Because ad campaigns may use multiple platforms, it is important that the use terms identify all the media channels that are expected to be used such as broadcast, streaming media, download and play, apps, and other media uses.

Territory A music license identifies where it can be played (territory). Typical location areas include local (city), region, country, and global.

License Time Duration The music license duration defines a time period to which the use permission applies. Typical music license time periods for advertising content is three months, one year, or forever (perpetual).

Music Length The music license identifies how much of a song will be used, typically in seconds. Each separate use of the music in ad media requires a new authorization and may have its own music length definition requirement.

Music Adaptation A music license may also contain the rights to alter it. This can include modified sequences (arrangements), sound or track changes, new orchestrations (recordings), lyric alterations, or other changes.

Exclusivity Music licensing may include exclusivity terms for a period of time (holdback period) where the music will not be licensed to other companies or for use with similar types of products. Advertisers and/or their agencies may not want their audiences to hear the same music on competing or distasteful products.

874   Harte Because exclusivity removes the potential of other license revenue for the music owner, exclusivity terms can be very expensive. It is possible to reduce cost by asking for exclusivity for a short period of time such as during a key portion of an ad marketing campaign.

Buyout The advertising company or their ad agency may want to purchase all rights to the music, allowing them to use and modify the music in any way they desire. This may be defined in a buyout agreement or a term in the licensing agreement. Some supporting rights such as composition and orchestration may be acquired through a work-for-hire term in an artist contract. Buyout clauses for music in ads are relatively common and typically pay substantially well—$10,000 or more is typical (Vicontrolo, 2017). Custom music creations that are 10 to 30 seconds long may only take the artist hours or days to create.

Fees and Payments License fees for music in ads can include a mix of upfronts, royalties, and other payments. Music license fees for ads typically pay higher initial (upfront) fees and pay low or no royalty fees. Licensing fees are traditionally paid to publishers, libraries, and rights owners, which are then paid to artists every three to six months. This means it can take several months or even years for artists to receive their earnings. Some publishers and distribution companies are starting to pay more often.

License Documents License documents are typically required for broadcasting and distribution of ads. This documentation is gathered by the production company and provided to the ad agency, which presents it to the broadcaster or advertising network.

Audio Synchronization Audio synchronization is the time adjustment of dialogue, music, and sound effects tracks to match the visual elements. It involves adapting the music to time points in the video (sound cues), which may involve rearranging music segments and possibly adjusting the pitch, which results in small time changes. Digital audio editors can automatically adjust the pitch when speeding up or slowing down music.

Ad Creation Process   875

Sound Cues Sound cues are the time marks where music or sounds are inserted into the advertising media. Sound cues are usually identified in screening sessions and included in screening notes, and visual markers may be included in the video content.

Song Arrangements Song arrangements are the cutting and reorganizing of song segments so they align with the visual elements (sound cues) and develop an emotional impact.

Music Time Adjustment The length of music can be adjusted by time stretching. Direct stretching of the song’s timing changes its pitch. It is possible to adjust the pitch without changing the timing by using pitch scaling or pitch shifting (may be automatically done by the audio editor). The maximum amount of time shifting (stretching) without audience perception is about 3%, which may be enough for a key visual sound cue emphasis point.

Sound Editing Sound editing is used to select, arrange, apply transitions, create emphasis, and mix the dialogue, music, and sound effects.

Measuring Music Effectiveness Ad agencies may measure the ad effectiveness (visual and sound) using polling, focus groups, and limited-reach ad campaign tests, which use ad measurement tools and social media testing.

Polling and Focus Groups Multiple ad variations may be created (different themes and music) to determine which are the most effective with the desired target audience. A qualified audience (likely target customer and consumer types) may be asked to compare and rate multiple ad choices. The sequence and selection of ads for polling and focus groups may be randomized to minimize bias that may be caused by the sequence of presentation or interaction of ad viewing.

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Limited-Reach Ad Campaign Tests Test ad campaigns with small reach areas may be set up in small towns or in video displays in malls. The test market audience typically has a high percentage of qualified customers to which the advertised product or service appeals. It may be good enough to measure the response rate (such as web page views) for the product as an indicator instead of measuring the number of actual sales. This can be important for products that have long sales cycles such as cars and vacation offers.

Automatic Music Detection Automatic music detection can be used to identify where and when ads are played and the types of people who have listened to them. Sometimes activities that occur after the ad playout (such as web page views or product purchases) can be measured.

Ad Playout Monitoring Ad playout monitoring services may be used to identify when and where ads have been played. These systems continually monitor broadcast channels (TV, radio), streaming, or other media distribution formats and use automated content recognition such as audio fingerprinting or watermarking to identify images and/or audio used in the ads. Ad playout monitoring services may be used to validate that the broadcaster or media publisher has inserted the ads according to the ad campaign rules. Monitoring services may also be used to identify the use of songs so playout royalties may be billed and collected.

Playout Royalties Songs used in ads may be registered with professional rights organizations (PROs) such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC (in the United States) and PROs in other countries. When songs are played, the musician, publisher, and others may receive music royalty commissions (backend). Music royalties for ads are typically paid on national and regional (local are typically not paid) broadcasts where the music length is over five seconds (BMI, 2018). For ad music owners to get their PRO royalties, they must file a separate form with their PRO management company (similar to but not the same as a cue sheet).

Ad Targeting When the viewer profile is known, ad targeting may be performed, allowing dynamic ad insertion. Targeted ads can be much more effective than broadcast ads and earn much

Ad Creation Process   877 higher advertising rates. The viewer profile characteristics may be known, while the actual identification is hidden (anonymized).

Music Fingerprinting A music fingerprint (segment of sound) contains a unique set of characteristics and data that is associated with a particular song or audio. Music fingerprints can identify songs without any changes to the system or media.

Audio Watermarks Audio watermarking is a process of adding information to audio by changing some of the audio media. Audio watermarking may be performed by adding audio tones above the normal frequency or by modifying the frequencies and volume level of the audio in such a way that the listener does not notice the watermarking information.

Social TV Ratings The effectiveness of advertising can be measured using social media engagement and content. Social ratings have become so important that Nielsen has created a social TV ratings service (http://www.nielsensocial.com) that is sometimes used to adjust the broadcaster advertising fees based on audience engagement that the ads create.

Social Content Ratings Social content ratings are a measurement system created by Nielsen that tracks social content on Facebook and Twitter resulting from broadcasted shows and ads. The proc­ ess starts by monitoring social networks for several hours before events. The system then monitors, gathers, and analyzes fan communication on social networks to identify audience engagement to the media that was presented.

Sentiment Value Sentiment value is a measure of the viewpoints or attitudes that people have regarding a product or service. Sentiment value analysis starts by monitoring and identifying social media posts that reference a brand or name and determine the polarity or attributes (e.g., tonality) of the comment. The number of sentiment responses and polarity (good/

878   Harte bad) along with other characteristics can be gathered and analyzed to determine the impact of the advertising message.

Recommended Readings Bell, P. (2020). Creating commercial music: Advertising, library music, TV themes, and more. Boston, MA: Berklee Press. Harte, L. (2010). TV advertising: Business, technology, and systems. New York, NY: Discover Net Publishers. Wilsey, D., & Schwartz, D.D. (2010). The musicians’ guide to licensing music: How to get your music into film, TV, advertising, digital media & beyond. New York, NY: Billboard Books.

References Albarda, M. (2019, September 21). The end of 15% agency commission? Retrieved from https:// www.mediapost.com/publications/article/325449/the-end-of-15-agency-commission.html BMI. (2018, January). U.S. audio visual royalties performance sources covered. Retrieved from https://www.bmi.com/creators/royalty/us_television_royalties DePuy, P. (2013, July 23). What role does music play in the most viral commercials? Retrieved from https://www.mainstreethost.com/blog/what-role-does-music-play-in-the-mostviral-commercials/ Hoeberichts, N. (2012). Music and advertising: The effect of music in television commercials on consumer attitudes (Bachelor’s thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam Faculty of Economics and Business Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Organization). Nielsen Social. (n.d.). About social content ratings. Retrieved from http://www.nielsensocial. com Passman, D. (2015). All you need to know about the music business. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Vicontrolo. (2017, September 1). Full buyout TV ad music fee. Virtual Instruments Composers Forum. Retrieved from https://vi-control.net/community/threads/full-buyout-tv-admusic-fee.64695/.https://www.linkedin.com/in/rucciproductions/

Index

Note: Tables and figures are indicated by an italic “t” and “f ”, respectively, following the page number. For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages AAAA. See American Association of Advertising Agencies AABA form, popular music  798 Aaker, J. L.  679, 683 Aam. See attitude toward advertising music AARP 465–6 Abbate, Carolyn  240–1 Abercrombie & Fitch  848 Abloh, Virgil  485 Abolhasani, Morteza  647, 769 Abraham, Adam  592 Abrahams, Leo  96 Absolute Beginners  474–5, 479 absorption 782 Access Hollywood 324 Ackerman, T.  656 “A Clear Midnight,”  133–4 Acrobat 164–5 AdAge 418 Adam and the Ants  454–5, 462 adam&eveDDB  707–8, 711 Ad Council  527–8, 531, 536–7 ad music spotting  870 ad playout monitoring  876 advertising agencies  145, 860–1 campaign projects  864–5 creative directors at  73–4 hiring practices of  146–7 strategists at  73 trade union negotiations with  145 advertising and advertisements. See also specific topics attention in  794–5 audio editing in  862

of audiovisual entertainment  29–30 audiovisual technology in history of  143–4 campaign development in  860f, 865 children targeted by  570, 649, 722–3, 728–33 of corporate style  29 creativity in  73–4, 442–3, 860–1, 864, 866 development project  864 effectual research on  729t framework as loop  1 future research in  5–6 musical congruity in context of  759 as musician revenue stream  436 music incorporation strategies  760–1 objectives of  862 popular music in  414–17, 437–8, 444–5, 722–36, 760, 806–7 production plan  866 psychological transportation in  783–6 racial demographic targeting in  230–3, 235 reviews and approval of  871 song selection in  861 targeting  83–4, 876–7 testing 865 text 25 typology of  8 value measurements in  862 advertising perception. See also reception attitude toward advertisement  728–33 attitude toward brand  733 attitude toward song  733 attitude toward spokesperson  734 dependent variables in  728 dual-process models for  698–700, 714–16

880   index advertising perception (Continued) effectiveness testing  704–14 emotional processing in  700–1 gender and  727 independent variables in  727–8 lyrics in  735 musical fit and  701–4 North on  733, 761 pleasure and arousal in  735 popular music in  735 purchase intention and  735 reaction times in  707–8 recall in  734 results of modeling  728–35 skin conductance responses in  707–8 theories and models of  723–7 time in  734 variables in  727–8 Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)  468 affect, need for  778 affective misattribution procedure (AMP)  705 “Affective Responses Mediating Acceptance of Advertising” (Batra & Ray)  488–9 AFM. See American Federation of Musicians AFTRA. See American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Agawu, Kofi  416, 421 musical paradigm of  420 aggrandizing mode of presentation  60–1 Aguilera, Christina  135–6 Ailes, Roger  614 “Air Blades,”  102 A is for Atom 529 Albini, Steve  270–1, 278–9 Albion One 103 Albion V  109–10, 110f Aldrich, Henry  37 Alert America  528 Alfano, Sean  212 alienation assessment 382 from labor  169–70 Marx on  169–70 Alka-Seltzer  336, 344 Allan, David  75, 567, 646–7, 733, 735 Allen, George  616 Alleyne, Archie  172n.5

Allied Artists  312 All Music Guide  122–3, 130 features on  123–4 keywords on  123 Allport, Gordon W.  348–9 all rights contracts  208–9 Almack, William  36 Alma Records  164–5 Alpert, J. I.  759 Alpert, M. I.  759 Also Sprach Zarathustra 375 the epic and  499–502 in Ford Motor Company advertisements 500 in Verizon advertisements  500–1 in Walgreens advertisements  501–2 Also Sprach Zarathustra (Nietzsche)  499 alternative rock  266–7 Amante, David  493–4 Amazon 134–5 “Amen,” 466–7 “America,” 630–1 American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA)  142–7, 154–5 foundation of  145 in negotiations  145 American Federation of Musicians (AFM)  142, 146–52, 311, 531 Canadian chapter of  172 foundation of  147–8 JWT and  152 McCann-Erickson contracts with  361 membership issues of  151 on television commercials  150–1 American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)  142, 144–5 Clarification Agreement of  152 history of  151–2 JWT and  153 negotiation with  146–7 SAG and  151–4 on television commercials  152–3 American folk revival  135 American History X 458–9 American Idol 304 American Liberty League  242–3 American Red Cross  591–2

index   881 Ames, Alan  312 Amezcua, C.  748–9 AMG 217 AMP. See affective misattribution procedure Amp.Amsterdam 217 Amusement for the Ladies 43–4 Anacreontic Society  36 Anand, P.  743 “Anarchy in The U.K.,”  453 Anderson, Tim  26 Anderson, Wes  443 “And Now an Ideology From Our Sponsor” (Rodman) 10 Andrews Sisters  459–60 anger, in political advertising  634–5 Angle Management  209 animism 683 Anisimova, T.  722–3 “Anna Begins,”  128, 129f Annie Get Your Gun 357 “Anomalies,” 112–13 Anthology (Beatles)  275–6 anthropomorphism 405–6 in automobile branding  195–6 of corporations  199–200 in sound branding  190–1 Anti-Inflation Act  177 anti-social behavior  808t in popular music  801 Ant-Man 293–4 Aoki, Steve  442 AOL 298–9 Apocalypse Percussion Ensemble  99–100, 101f Appadurai, Arjun  381 on luxury goods  381 Appel, M.  778 Appelbaum, U.  722–3 Appen, R. von  798 Apple  408, 444, 795–6 sound branding of  196 television commercials by  76 Applebee’s 493–6 “O Fortuna” in advertisements for  490–1 Apple Music  120–1 popularity of  122

appliance branding music in  188–9 sound and  196–9 appropriation of popular music  416 in “Push It: It’s What You Do,”  517–18 race and  619 “April in Paris,”  591–2 Apter, Andrew  378n.1 Aquila, Richard  569 arcade games  322–4 Arcidiacono, R.  711 Arcos, J. L.  797 Arctic Monkeys  439–40 Areni, C. S.  763, 765, 823 Argent, Mark  41 “Aria on Air,”  456 Aristotle  7, 53 Arnalds, Olafur  96, 112–13 Arne, Michael  46–7 Arne, Thomas  36, 39–40, 46–7 Arnold, Frank  340–1 Arnold, Stephen  80 Arnold Communications  458–9 arousal 729t, 808t in advertising perception  661f, 735 attention and  796 in attention economy theory  796 attitudes toward ads affected by  661f as dependent variable  728 emotion and  710–14, 781, 787 (See also galvanic skin responses; skin conductance responses) incongruity and  761–2 as independent variable  727–8 involvement theory  725 multisensory overload and  848 music in service environments and  822–6, 845 pleasure and  735 time perception and  734 Yerkes-Dodson law and  805 Arthus-Bertrand, Yann  551n.7 ASA. See Advertising Standards Authority Asai, Rika  30 As Heard on TV (Klein)  463, 567 assessment, alienation  382

882   index associational culture, in 17th and 18th centuries 36 associative learning, in multisensory marketing 835–6 associative network, in musical congruity 762–3 “As the World Falls Down,”  483 Atari advertising campaigns of  324–7 jingle-based commercials for  327–32 multigenerational commercials  323–4, 326t Atari 2600  322 Atari Jaguar  324–5 Atari VCS  30, 322 gender in marketing of  330–1 lifespan of  332 musical hook for  324–7, 325f success of  323, 332 Atlantic Records  215 The Atlantic Suite 163 atmospheric music  108, 115–16 in epic music  106–11, 113 sound design for  111–15 Atomic Alert 529 Atomic Blonde 292 attention 862–3. See also attention economy theory ad effectiveness and  704–14, 729t in advertising  81, 794–5 background music and  745–52 as currency  794 ELM and  725–6 listeners and  796–807 marketplace of  794–5 processing of ad message and  699 scarcity-based value of  794 sound branding and  845–8 spatial 845–8 on streaming platforms  795 theories and  723–7, 724t attentional postponement effect, MEI processing and  750 attention economy theory  795f, 796 arousal in  796 engagement in  796–8 music structure in  798–9

popular music in  796–807 predictability in  797 research literature on  808t attitude theory  724–5, 724t attitude toward advertising music (Aam) 660–3 Audi 195 sound branding of  189–91, 193 audio editing  862 Audio Imperia  94, 103–4 audio logos. See sogos; sound logos audiovisual entertainment, advertising of 29–30 audiovisual technology, advertising history in 143–4 audio watermarks  877 Audi Sound Studio  834 auditory bonding  199 auditory interfaces, Jackson, D. M., on  674 auditory stimuli, processing of  745 aural cues  605 Auslander, Philip  195–6, 306, 474–5 austerity 176 authenticity  266–7, 442 commodification of  342 construction of  475 Cunningham & Walsh on construction of  230 in jazz  229–30 of Nirvana  268–9 in punk rock  453–4 in television commercials  82–3 authentic music catalogs  868 automatic music detection  876 automobiles anthropomorphism in branding of  195–6 commercials 458–62 engine sounds of  194, 834 human cognition and  190–1 noise produced by  187–8 sound branding of  188–96 sound systems in  187 start-up sounds  195 turn-signal indicator of  188 autonomy  171, 580–1 cultural 440

index   883 Avatar 295 Averso, Andrew  96–7, 113–14 Avicii 821 Avil, Gordon  247–9, 256–7 Azerrad, Michael  266–70 Azor, Hurby  508–9 Bacardi 209 Baçelon, Jean Pierre  675 Bach 137–8 background music  8, 742, 823–5 change density in  747–8 cognitive responses to  746–50 Gorn on  821 harmonic changes in  747 preemptive processing of  745–6 recall reduced by  743–4 selection of  759 sound streaming of  748–50 temporal influences in  748 textural changes in  747–8 working memory and  744–5 Baker, D. J.  702–3 Baker, J.  763 Baker, Leta  74 Baker, Sarah  170–1, 179–81 on union involvement  182 Bakhtin, Mikhail  498, 626 Balaban & Kahn  310–11 Ball, Steve  693 band-brand relationships  4, 210–11 bands, branding of  208–11 Bandy, Mary Lea  569 Banet-Weiser, S.  437–8 Baptie, David  37–8 Baranowski, Alex  554 Barbarella 315–16 Barclay, Robert  55 Barkan, Ryan  80 Barnbrook 483 Barnes, Rockwell  247 “Barney Google,”  425 Barnouw, Erik  340–1 Barnum, P. T.  53 Barry, John  314 Barry, Michael  100–2 Barthes, Roland  10, 515

Bartholomew, K.  801–2 Barton, Bruce  243n.6 Basie, Count  229 Bassey, Shirley  315 Basso, Guido  163–9, 171, 173–4 Basu, K.  821 Batra, R.  488–9 Batten, Jack  165 Baudrillard, Jean  387–8 BBC  307–9, 312 the Beach Boys  458–9 Beaman, C. P.  766–7 Beard, Fred K.  352–3, 510 on disparagement humor  514–15 Beastie Boys  506 Beatlemania 438–9 the Beatles  212, 440–1, 760 “Beautiful Dreamer,”  592–3, 600–1 “A Beautiful Mine,”  214 Beautiful Monsters (Long)  491 Beck 216n.3 Beck, Jay  374, 794 Becker, George C.  363–4 Bedtime for Bonzo 313 Beech, Mark  276 “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner,”  575 Bellini, Vincenzo  628 Bellson, Louie  165 Benavie, Samuel  29, 251–7, 251n.24, 251n.25, 256n.35 score of  251–5 “Bending Light,”  114–15 Beneke, Tex  165 Benji B.  485 Bennett, Bill  272 Bennett, John  38t Benovoy, M.  711 Berio, Luciano  128, 128f Berklee College  229 Berlin, Irving  357, 421 Berlyne, D.  758, 797 Bernstein, Elmer  568–9, 573, 575n.1, 576–7 Berry, Chuck  459–60 Bertrand, Gérard  211–12 Berzerk, jingle for  329, 330n.13 bespoke projects  871 Bhattacharya, J.  706, 728–33

884   index biases 698 Bickert, Ed  166–9, 171 Bieber, Justin  130 Big Audio Dynamite  457 The Big Chill 457–8 The Big Country  570, 573 Billboard (magazine)  271, 280n.18, 309–10, 466–7 Billington, Elizabeth  42 Billy the Kid 248 Binet, Les  700 on IAT  709–10 Bingham, David  198 Bingham, Robert  339–40 Biographical Sketch 55 “Birdman Jam,”  102 Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies  348–9 Birth of a Nation 240n.1 bisexuality 476 bittersweet emotions  667 Blackburn, Sophie  554, 556 Blacking, John  9 Black Panther 297 Black people  608. See also race Blackness linked to hipness  516–17 exploitation of  27 humor and experience of  507, 515 representation of  59–60 signification in culture of  512 “Black Skinhead,”  293 Blake, Bethany  26–7 “Blam!,” 464 Blaney, Andy  108 Bleach  268, 271 anniversary reissue of  276–7 “Blitzkrieg Bop,”  465 Blitzstein, Marc  250 Blondie  439, 453–5, 467, 743 Bloom, P. J.  445–6 Blue Book 526 “Blue Jean,”  479–80 “Blue Monday,”  293 Blues Alley  235–6 “Blue Skies,”  364 BMW 195 sound branding of  193–4

Bode, M.  726–7 Bogdan, Robert  51 on presentation modes  59–61 Bogost, I.  322 Boguñá, M  797 “Bomb in the Forest,”  536–7 bomb shelters  535 “Bonaparte’s Retreat,”  575 Bond, Nelson  528 Bones 204–5 Bonime, Josef  354, 360 Bonime Collection  354, 364n.10 Bon Jovi, Jon  211–12 wine 211–12 Boorman, John  492 Born Yesterday 313 Boss Brass  167 Boston Globe 464–5 Bosustow, Stephen  592 Boumendil, Michaël  191 Bourdieu, Pierre  4–5 Bourke-White, Margaret  249 The Bourne Ultimatum 296 Bowie, David  281, 374–5, 486, 869 as icon  474–5 Louis Vuitton advertisements with  483–6 masks of  478–81 with Pepsi  474, 478–9 personae of  474–8 personal branding of  474–5 Vittel advertisements with  481–3 Boyce, William  46–7 Boym, S.  341–2 Boyz II Men  518 BPS. See Brand Personality Scale Bracken, Eddie  309–10 Bradburd, Daniel  378n.1 Brader, Ted  632 Bradford, J. A.  746, 749 Bradshaw, A.  437 brand alignment, in music licensing  441–2 brain  706–7, 728–33, 745–50, 842–3, See also EEG, fMRI, and neuroscience brand avoidance  657–8 brand expression  675–6

index   885 branding  4–5, 25–6, 28–9. See also appliance branding; sound branding and sonic branding anthropomorphism in  195–6 brand extension  390 cobranding 389 of Coca-Cola  407–9 as consecration  387–93 consumer preferences and  78, 388 crossmodal correspondences in  844–5 cross-promotion in  408 defining 210 emotions in  79–81 historical development of  387–8 identities in  211n.1 massclusive strategies  215–16 of musical identities  211–14, 389 in music supervision  203–4, 217 of “Nobody Like You,”  407–9 noneconomic value created by  388 process of  408 punk rock identities and  452–5 self-representation in  390 television commercials and  77–8 brand loyalty  205 brand-music fit  701–4, 735–6 Brand Personality Scale (BPS)  683 brand voice  827 Bray, J. R.  245–6 Bray Pictures  245–6 Breakout!  325–8, 330 BRECVEMA framework  664 Brennan, Jordan  177 Bretton Woods  177 Breves, P.  701 A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Harvey) 176–7 British Airways  456 British invasion  452–3 “British Sentiments,”  42 Broadway 308–9 Broccoli, Albert  314 Broecker, Brad  229–30 Broekemier, G.  761 Brokaw, Tom  637 Bronson, Charles  573–4 Brooker, G.  728–34

“Brother, Can you Spare a Dime,”  591–2 “Brotherhood of Man,”  596 Brown, Chris  76–7 Brown, James  508–9 Brown and Williamson (B&W)  223–30, 345 on jazz  231–6 on market segmentation  235 Bruckheimer, Jerry  204–5 Bruner, Gordon C., II  488, 686, 723, 747 Bryant, Ann  173–4 Bryden, William  258 “Buckle of Swashes,”  102 Buck-Morss, Susan  605 on cultural pedagogy  609–10 budgets for jingles  166, 174–5 for music  870–1 in television commercials  77–8, 84, 304 Bud Light  494 Budweiser  212n.2, 441 “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips,”  260 Buhler, Jim  27, 113–14 Bukszpan, Daniel  467 Burbano, V. C.  549 Burke, Kenneth  9 Burlingame, Jeff  280 Burlingame, Jon  314 Burnel, J. J.  466 Burns, Gary  419–20 Burretti, Freddie  477 Bush, George H. W.  614, 632–4 Bush, George W.  614, 629 political advertising of  632–3 business, music advertising  859–61 Butler, Burridge D.  337 buyouts, in music licensing  874 Buzzcocks  454–5, 465–7 B&W. See Brown and Williamson Byrd, William  38t Caballe, Montserrat  712 cable television  305 Cacioppo, J. T.  698, 725–6, 767–8 Cadillac 212–13 Caldwell, John  306 Callcott, John Wall  36–7 “Call of the Clans,”  100–2

886   index Camel Caravan 226 Campbell, W. K.  801 Campbell Soup  325 Canada, tax breaks for recording in  172–3 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation  163–4, 178–9 the canon  122–3, 138 Cantril, H.  348–9 capitalism  76–7, 387–8, 621 classical music and  366 consumers in  448–9 counterculture in conflict with  266 democracy under  605–6 music as commodity in  217–18 noncapitalist modes of production and  380, 393–4 popular music critiques of  447–8 prevalence of  379 public opinion orchestrated under 605 supply-chain 379–80 Taylor, T., on  611 Tsing on  380 welfare 366 Caplin, William  416, 420–1 formal function taxonomy of  420 Capon, John  177–8 Capp, Al  527 Capra, Frank  255–6 Captain Marvel 265 Carah, N.  437–8 Cardinali, Peter  164–5, 172–3, 178–80 on jazz musicians  166 on jingles  173 Carlos, Wendy  323 Carlsberg 406–7 Carlton Beer  493–4 Carlton & Smith  143 Carmina Burana  99, 375, 489–502 Carnegie Hall 360 carnivalesque 626 Carr, Leon  421, 529–30 Carroll, Carroll  144 Carroll, Nöel  459 Carson‘Fiddlin’ John  346 Carson, Rachel  557–8

Carter, Troy  88 cartoons for Armed Forces  591n.4 history of  590–1 limited animation  590n.1 music in  591 Caruso, Enrico  384, 385f, 386f Casa Modelo  580–2 “The Ecstasy of Gold” used by  583 Casino Royale 294–5 Cassidy, Hopalong  572 Castle, William  313–14 Catch Club  45–6 anthologies of  41 competitions at  38–9 concert series  42 history of  36–7 promotional practices at  37–9, 47 catches  37, 39–40, 44 Catholicism 608 Cat Power  213 Cattell, R. B.  679 Cave, Edward  43 CBC. See Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CBGB 453 CBS. See Columbia Broadcasting System celebrity endorsements  96 Chaiken, S.  698 The Champ 247 Chance the Rapper  425 Chaplin, Charlie  240–1, 254–5 Chapman, Dale  29 Charnas 517 Chattopadhyay, A.  743–4 Chebat, G. C.  826 Chebat, J.  826 Chen, S.  698 Chen, T. C.  766 Chevrolet  82–3, 241–2, 244–5, 421, 425 Chi, A.  726 Chic 478–9 Chick-Fil-A 445 Childers, T. L.  758, 766 children 345 ads targeted to  570, 649, 722–3, 728–33

index   887 behavior of  783 civil defense advertisements for  528–30 harmonic change detected by  747 play of  556–61 PSAs for  528–30 shows for  172–3 in video game advertising  331 A Child Went Forth 249–50 chills  711, 779–89 chimes 196–7 “China Girl,”  478–9 Chion, Michel  186, 287, 307, 615–16 Chiquita 678 Chiu, Remi  27 Chopin, Frédéric  135–6 Chop Shop  216 Chou, H.  728–33 Christiansen, Paul  376, 604–5 Chrysler 468 Chumbawamba 445 Cigarettes, Inc (Enstad)  226 cigarette smoking  424–5 cultural resonance of  235–6 jazz and  224, 226, 228 race and views on  226–8 CIN. See conceptual integrated networks cinematic percussion  113–14 cinema verité  614–16 Cinesample 99–102 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission 640–1 Citroën 462 “City of Light,” 355–9 civil defense advertisements  524–5 for adults  530–1 for children  528–30 music in  531–6 civil defense protocols  524–5 Civil Defense Rescue School  533 Civil Rights movement  612 Clark, Richard  37 Clark, Tena  217 Clarke, Arthur C.  323 the Clash  439–40, 454–5, 457, 464–5 classical conditioning theory  724t, 781, 821 defining 725

classical music  3, 375, 568, 764, 825 capitalism and  366 prestige of  387 on radio  353 “A Clear Midnight,”  133–4 Clem, David  375 “Cleopatra’s Prayer,”  105–6 climate change  549 Climate Change March  551 Clinton, Bill  614, 619, 630, 640–1 Clinton, Hillary  619 political advertisements of  638–9 Clio Awards  87–8, 443 Clooney, George  307 A Coach for Cinderella 245 Coal Kitchen  508–9, 512 Cobain, Kurt  29, 265–71, 273–4, 279–80 posthumous packaging of  271–80 suicide of  271 cobranding 389 Coca-Cola  245–6, 397, 406–7, 425, 442, 821 advertising history of  400–1 bottle anniversary of  397–400 cotextuality in advertisements of  403–6 gender and bottle design of  399 music in advertisements of  404–5 “Nobody Like You” as musical branding for 407–9 nonmusical sound branding of  406–7 nonmusical sounds of  402 “Open Happiness” campaign of  397 sound branding of  397–400, 409 transtextuality in advertisements of  400–3 Cochrane, Eddie  457 Cock, Gerald  308 Coen Brothers  135 cognition automobiles grafted onto  190–1 music 663–4 need for  778 cognitive load  13, 760, 822, 824–5 cognitive psychology  13, 842 cognitive responses appraisal of, to music  664–5 to background music  746–50 to music-evoked images  750–2

888   index Cohan, George M.  361–2 Cohen, A. J.  14, 782 Cohen, L.  363, 366 Cohen, Leonard  123 Cold War  226, 524, 536–7 civil defense protocols in  524–5 propaganda in  524–5 television in  525 Cole, Nat King  459–60 Collection of Catches, Canons, and Glees  37–8, 41, 43–4 A Collection of Vocal Harmony 44 collective bargaining  242n.4 Collins, Patricia Hill  62–3, 507–8, 516 Colman, Felicity J.  573 colonization 409 defining 397 The Color of Money 457 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)  308 Columbia Pictures  303, 308, 311 Columbia Records  222–3, 457–8 Colvin, Shawn  425 Colwell, Nathan P.  530–1 Combat Rock 457 “Come as You Are,”  265 comedy 7. See also humor Committee on Television and Radio Administration (CTRA)  144–7 Devine at  146–7 commodification  76–7, 373, 378–9 as translation process  393 commodity fetishism  199–200, 388 communication flow  1 Communism  591–2, 597 commutation test  132 compilations 137 composers demos by  95 imaginary of  95–8 selection of  871–2 composing with styles  9–10 Compton Advertising  146 Concentores Society  36 conceptual fluency of sogos  681 in sonic branding  676

conceptual integrated networks (CIN)  491–2, 492f conditioning. See also classical conditioning theory defining 835 evaluative  664, 667, 699 in multisensory marketing  835–6 The Conquest of Cool (Frank)  224 consecration branding as form of  387–93 of cultural commodities  378–9 consensual meanings  681–2 console games  322 console wars era  332 portrayals of  323–4 Consolidated Edison  30, 352–5, 363 King, J. R., on  367 monopoly of  366 Consolidated Edison Concert Orchestra  362 constituent music  8 construal level theory  691 Consumer Federation of America  518–19 consumerism 567 consumer packaged goods (CPGs)  722–3 consumers. See also advertising perception; reception branding and preferences of  78, 388 in capitalism  448–9 emotions of  80, 654, 664–5, 713–14, 769, 818–19, 821–3, 825–6, 836 expectations of  837–8 North on  653–4 outside of United States  753 spatial attention of  845–8 women as  26–7 contempt 627 in political advertising  635–8 contextualization. See also recontextualization in digital environment  120–1 economic premises of  134–6 marketing strategies and  134–6 meaning produced by  119–20 similarity marketing and  122–4 sociocultural implications of  136–7 contextual marketing  27 convergent advertising  215

index   889 conversions 863–4 Convito armonico (Webbe)  47 Cook, Nicholas  2–3, 9–10, 25, 329, 488–9, 567–8 Cook, P.  763 Cooke, Benjamin  36, 45 coolness, music and  6, 82, 226. See also hipness Cooperstock, J. R.  711 Coors 442–3 Copeland, Dorothy  146 Copland, Aaron  197, 250, 529, 532–3, 575–6 Coppola, Sofia  443 copyright 443–4 music free of  867–8 Corasaniti, Nick  618–19 Corday, Leo  421, 529–30 Corey, J.  799 Cornelys, Teresa  46 corporate anthems  827 corporate classicism  95, 116 corporate identity  689. See also branding corporate style, advertisement of  29 Corral, Á  797 Corzilius, Monique  609–10 Costabile, K. A.  782–3, 785 Costello, Elvis  212 Cote, J. A.  680, 682, 687 cotextuality 403–6 Coughlin, Eugene  364, 364n.10 counterculture, capitalism in conflict with  266 Counting Crows  128, 129f country music  82–3 Country Music Association  83 Covach, John  416, 425 cover photography  138 cover songs  555–6 Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads 573 Cox, A. D.  415, 744, 758, 826 Cox, Alex  457 Cox, D.  744, 758, 826 CPGs. See consumer packaged goods Craig, D. G.  711 Craton, Lincoln  645–6, 655, 664, 670 Crazy Water Crystals  342 creative concept  227, 864

creative directors  74, 859, 866, 869 at advertising agencies  73–4, 87 Creative Labour (Baker, S. & Hesmondhalgh) 170 creativity in advertising  442–3, 860–1, 864, 866 assessment of  86–9 in neoliberalism  176 Szczesniak on  168, 171 in television commercials  86–9 credibility 805–6. See also authenticity Creedence Clearwater Revival  440–1 “Creep,” 4 Crewe, Anne  44–5 Crewe, John  44–5 Crewe and Fox  315 critical listening  606 Crosby, Bing  459–60 Crosby, David  123 Cross, Charles  275 crossmodal correspondences  838–9 in branding  844–5 dictionary of  849 in multisensory marketing  841–4 cross-promotion 408 Crowder, R. G.  726 Crowe, Cameron  474–5 Cruise, Tom  457 CSI  204–6, 208 CTRA. See Committee on Television and Radio Administration cultural autonomy  440 cultural capital  416 cultural commodities circulation of  379 consecration of  378–9 creation of  380 sound recording as  383–4 value creation for  378–9 cultural contexts  763 cultural pedagogy  609–10 cultural stereotypes  83 Cunningham & Walsh  146 on authenticity construction  230 Curb Your Enthusiasm 636 curiosity 776

890   index currency 25–6 Cyrus, Miley  130–1 Dairy Queen  577 Western music used by  579–80 “Daisy,” 608–10 Dales, John  145, 152 Daltrey, Roger  206–7 Damage  99–100, 101f, 111, 114 music demos for  102 “The Dark Horse,”  113 The Dark Knight  96, 295–7 The Dark Knight Rises  96, 306, 316–17 Dark Zebra 96 Davenport, T.  794 David, Larry  636 Davidson, J.  726 Davidson, R. J.  706 Davies, C.  702 Davis, Miles  128, 129f, 455 DAWs. See digital audio workstations A Day Called X 535–6 The Day the Earth Caught Fire 313 Dead Man 573 deal memo  865–6 Death in Venice 567–8 Death to False Metal 428–9 Deaville, James  30, 286–7 deconstruction of “Lust for Life,”  462–4 of punk rock  462–7 DeFries, Tony  476–7 D’Elias, Luis  113 “Delibes,” 456 Delmas, M. A.  549 demedialization  127, 133f De Mille, Agnes  575 democracy, under capitalism  605–6 Democratic National Convention  612–15 Democratic Party  592–3, 598, 631 demos. See music demos DeNora, Tia  199 Densmore, John  442 Denton, Sandra  505–6 Depeche Mode  293 dependent variables  728 deregulation 426

Detroit, film production in  246–7 Detroit Philharmonic  250–1 Deutsch LA  460–1 Devine, John  142–7, 154 at CTRA  146–7 at JWT  144–5 Devo 455 DeWall, C. N.  801 Dewey, John  620 Dewey, Thomas  592–4, 596, 599, 601–2 DGC  267, 269–72 Diamond Dogs  476, 481, 484 Diaz, Vanessa J.  378n.1 Diaz-Balart, Lincoln  638 Die Hard  289, 291–2 digital audio workstations (DAWs) 94 digital environment consequences of  135 contextualization in  120–1 Dinah Shore Chevy Show 421 Dinerstein, Joel  226 Dionne, Nicole  215–16 disco 439 Disney  255–6, 256n.32, 256n.33, 310n.7, 590–1, 599 strikes at  591–2 disparagement humor  514–15 distinctiveness, in sonic branding  677 Ditson, Oliver  58 DIY ethos. See do-it-yourself ethos DJ Spinderella  505–6, 511–12 DMI Music & Media Solutions  217 Doane, Woody  507–8, 516 “Do Anything You Wanna Do,”  460 the Dodos  445 do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos  374, 453–5, 459–60, 465–6 in punk rock  452–5 Domino’s Pizza  495–6 donations 445 the Donnas  441 Donovan, T.  322 “Don’t Fence Me In,”  81 Don’t Panic  555, 559–61 the Doors  442 Dorsey, Jimmy  165

index   891 Dossman, L.  702 The Dover Boys 591n.4 Dow Chemical  245–6 Dowd, Matthew  616–17 Dowling, Jay  9 Drake, Nick  76, 444 “Dream Baby Dream,”  466–7 Dreamworks 272 Dr. No 314 Droga5 80 drugs 466 cultural associations with  235–6 Drums of War  99–102, 101f music demos for  100–2 Dryer, Richard  478 dual-process models  13, 646, 697–8 for advertising perception  698–700, 714–16 Dubé, L.  825–6 Duchess of Devonshire  36 Duck and Cover 528–30 Dukakis, Michael  632–3 Dunham, Sonny  165 Dunkin’ Donuts  834 Dunkirk 111 Dunlap, Orrin E., Jr.  308–9 Dunning Kruger Effect  640 Dvořak, Antonin  135 Dwight, John Sullivan  387 Dwyer, Phil  171n.4 Dyer, Richard  507–8, 515 “The Dying Cowboy,”  573 Dylan, Bob  82–3, 121–2 Dyson, Frances  186 Earle, Jack  51 Earl Robinson 597 earworms defining 766–7 memorability and  800 in popular music  800, 808t East, Anderson  82–3 East West  99–100 Eastwood, Clint  584–5 Eaton, Oline  537 Ebony 226–7 Eccles, John  37

Echoes of New York  352, 354–60, 362, 367 cavalcade format of  360 early episodes of  359–60 Edisoneers on  363–7 pacing of  359 segments on  357–9 structure of  355–7, 356t Echoes of New York Town 352 Eckhardt, G. M.  437 Eclipse 98–9 Eco, Umberto  10, 120–1, 484 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (Marx)  169 economic value  379 sound recording and changes in  382–7 in supply-chain capitalism  379–80 “The Ecstasy of Gold,”  580–5 Bandini remix of  581–2, 582f Casa Modelo using  583 Lamborghini using  583 melody of  581f Nike using  582 EDA. See electrodermal activity Edinburgh Musical Miscellany 46–7 Edison, Thomas  382–3 the Edisoneers  359, 362, 367–8 on Echoes 363–7 eDonkey 121 EDS. See Electronic Data Systems Edwards, P.  709 EEG. See electroencephalography “The Effects of Music in Advertising on Choice Behavior” (Gorn)  488–9 the Effies  87–8 Ehlert, Dick  102 8tracks  121, 132n.21, 133–4, 134f, 136, 138, 139f Eight Glees Expressly Composed for Ladies (Stevens)  41, 45–6 Eisenhower, Dwight  607, 629 Eisler, Hanns  250 elaboration likelihood model (ELM)  13, 698, 724t, 767–8 defining 725–6 Elafros, Athena  508 electrodermal activity (EDA)  711 electroencephalography (EEG)  646 and 88, 706, 746–8

892   index Electronic Data Systems (EDS)  576 Ellington, Duke  171n.4 Elliott, Sam  575 Ellis-Petersen, Hannah  276 ELM. See elaboration likelihood model embodied meaning  726–7, 750, 840 Eminem 506 emotional brand building  80, 700 emotional tracing methods  705 emotions  12–13, 373 in advertising perception  700–1 bittersweet 667 in branding  79–81 of consumers  80, 654, 664–5, 713–14, 769, 818–19, 821–3, 825–6, 836 emotional contagion  666 film and television trailers cueing  611 lyrics and  801 misattribution of  781 mixed 658–60 modeling 626–7 in musical experience  627 music impacting  779–80 negative 656–8 processing 699 in psychological transportation  777–80 recognition of, in musical responses 664 skin conductance responses for measurement of  710–14 in television commercials  79–81 empirical approach  10–12 encoding defining 2 Wharton on  2 “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse,” 1 encoding/decoding model  1 The Enemy 240–1 engagement 863 engine sounds  194, 196 English Teeth  213–14 Enstad, Nan  226 Entertainment Tonight 324 Entwhistle, John  206–7 environmentalism 375

environmental security hypothesis  801–2 the epic and epic music  7, 98–103, 115–16 Also Sprach Zarathustra and  499–502 atmosphere in  106–11, 113 etymology of  493 historical significance in  496 “O Fortuna” and  489–502 percussion for  102 sample libraries for  100, 103–8 virtual instruments for  98–103 Esch, Jim  635–7 ESM. See evaluative space model Esposito, John  390 Este, Michael  38t ethics 212 Europe (band)  518 evaluative conditioning  664, 667, 699 evaluative space model (ESM)  662–3, 669 Everett, Walter  416 Everitt, Snowy  466–7 “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays,”  465–6 “Everything in Its Right Place,”  550–1 “Everything Is Awesome,”  375, 543, 553–7. See also “LEGO: Everything is NOT Awesome” evolutionary biology  668 Ewen, Stuart  606 Excalibur 492 excitation transfer  781 exclusivity, in music licensing  873–4 exnomination 516–17 exotic mode of presentation  59–60 expectancy, in musical congruity  758 The Expendables 292 expert practice  136 eye-tracking methods  705, 845 the Factory  456 Facts about Fallout 527 the Fall  464 Fallon, Jimmy  122n.8 “The Fallout Clears,”  102 false recognition  680 Fanning, John  121 Fanning, Shawn  121 FAQs. See frequently asked questions Farrell, Ray  268–9, 271

index   893 Farwell, Carol  150–1, 154 Fast Five 295 fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG)  692 FCC. See Federal Communications Commission FCDA. See Federal Civil Defense Administration fear, in political advertising  632–4 Federal Civil Defense Act  526 Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA)  524, 526–8, 531–3 Federal Communications Commission (FCC)  309, 414–15 Feist  76, 444 Feld, Steven  9 Feldhann, Peter  362 “Fell in Love with a Girl,”  547 femininity of McKoy  62–3 race and  62–3 Ferrell, Will  213–14 Field, P.  700 The Fight for Life 249 filesharing  121, 124–5 film funners  600n.27 film industry  30, 135, 611 in Detroit  246–7 during New Deal  249–50 psychological transportation in  782–3 punk rock in  459–60 television advertisement for  303–5 Film Score Guide 581 film scores  250n.23 for Master Hands 251–3 music appropriation in  240 repurposing of  568 silent period  240–1 film trailers. See also television trailers and spots action in  288–9 cause and effect in  288–9 coda of  290–1 emotional cueing in  611 formal structures of  289–98, 290f history of  286, 289, 298, 307–8, 312–14, 317–18 on the Internet  298–9

LLS  297–8, 300–1 LSMS  296–7, 296f, 300–1 MMMS  295, 295f, 300 montage in  289 naming of  299 narrative exposition of  291 “O Fortuna” in  494–5 popular music in  291–2 on radio  307–8 SLLS  294–6, 294f, 300 SSLS  293–4, 300 SSSL  292–3, 299–300 structures of  288, 290–1, 299 synch points in  287–8 in YouTube  289–90, 299 Fincher, David  443 Fine, Jason  463–4 Finkel, S.  800 FinnAir 849 Fischer, Marie-Anne  102 Fishbein, M.  724–5 Fisher, Kitty  41 Fiske, J.  578–9 A Fistful of Dollars 573–4 Flanagan, Ralph  165 Flannery, Mel  619 Fleischer, Max  247 Fletcher, Winston  78 Flint Sit-Down Strike  259–60 Flip Records  272 Florida, Richard  175–6 flow 776 defining 415 of television commercials  431 Floyd, Keith  466 The Flying Dutchman 240 FMCG. See fast-moving consumer goods fMRI. See functional magnetic resonance imaging focus groups  87, 860–1, 875–6 Fogerty, John  212, 440–1 Foote, Cone & Belding  310–11 For a Few Dollars More  573–4, 578 Ford, Glenn  535–6 Ford, Henry  242 Nazis connected to  257 promotional films of  244–5

894   index Ford, John  572 Ford, Phil  516–17 Ford, Thomas  38t Fordism 204 post-Fordism and  204 Ford Motor Company  194, 249, 834 Also Sprach Zarathustra in advertisements for 500 The Ford Television Theatre 143–4 foregrounded music  8 “Die Forelle,”  198 “Forever,” 76–7 “Forever Young,”  82–3 The Forgotten Village 249–50 Forte, Allen  416 on popular music structure  420–1 “Fortunate Son,”  440–1 fossil fuel industry  541, 544, 548, 561 Foster, Mark  618–19 Foster, Stephen  421, 573, 592–3, 600–1 Foster the People  618–19 Fournet, Jules  55–8, 61, 65 Fowler, Mark  414–15 Fox, Harry  145 Fox, Kevin  178–9 Fox, Michael  315 Frank, Thomas  6, 224, 517 “The Frank Hunter,”  105–6 Fraser, Cynthia  646–7, 746, 749, 751 Fraser, Dave  112–13 Frazier, Camille  378n.1 Frazier, Nancy  605–6 freak shows  51–2 defining 52 historical study of  52–3 Freddie Mercury  712 freelance work  179 Freeman, Nicholas  38t free trade  177–8 Frei-Hauenschild, M.  798 frequently asked questions (FAQs)  72–3 Freud, Sigmund  58n.7 Fried, Mark  207–8 Friedman, Milton  176 Fripp, Robert  693 Frith, Simon  453–4, 476 “Frolic,” 636

From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah 273–4 Frozen 494–5 Frye, Northrup  7 Fu, Linda C. L.  515 Fugees 297–8 Fujioka, T.  747–8 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 707 Furano, Dell  389 Furse, D. H.  722–3, 735 “Futuristic Sleigh Ride,”  108 Gaffney, D. R.  690 Galizio, M.  726 Gallodoro, Al  356–7 Galloway, Kate  375 galvanic skin responses (GSRs)  711, 713. See also skin conductance responses Gamero, Mercedes  205–6 “Garageland,” 454 Gardner, Eric  619 Gardner, Maurice  362 Garel, John  364 Garlin F. V. 822–3 Garrett, Charles Hiroshi  506, 510 Gary Sanchez Productions  213–14 Gavin, Jerry  427 Gavras, Romain  483 Gaye, Marvin  457 Geertz, Clifford  9 Geffen Records  29, 265–70, 277 Nirvana on  268–71 Geico Insurance Company  514–16 campaigns of  505–6, 518 hip-hop used by  517–18 humor of  510–14, 518 Geis, M.  7 GE Monogram  196–7 gender advertising perceptions and  727 in Atari VCS marketing  330–1 Coca-Cola bottle design and  399 musical associations with  682–3 periodicals and construction of  43 race and  516 sound branding and  194 in video game advertising  330–1

index   895 General Electric  245–6 sound branding of  197–8 General Mills  820 General Motors (GM)  241, 259–60 in American economy  242 Direct Mass Selling films  244–5, 248 Nazis connected to  257–9 Parade of Progress of  243–4 public relations of  243–4 reputation of  243 Generation X  454–5 Gengaro, Christine Lee  499–500 genre  6–8, 808t. See also Western genre defining 6–7 Frye on  7 in musical advertising  8–9 in political advertising  627 of popular music  802 in sensory marketing  823 Gentleman’s Magazine 43 The Gentleman’s Musical Magazine; or Monthly Convivial Companion 44 Gentry, J. W.  761 Gen X  266 George’s Spaghetti House  168–9, 181–2 Gerald McBoing Boing 590–1 Gerbner, George  447 Germanness  254–6, 259 Gerrig, Richard  776, 786, 788 Gersh, Gary  268–72 Gershwin, George  54, 358, 421 Gessner, Conrad  54 “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66,”  459–60 Getman, Jessica  28 Gibbons, Orlando  38t Gibbons, William  30 Gibson, Greg  65 “Gigue,” 108 Gilbert, Joanne  519 Giles, Jeff  270 Gillespie, Dizzy  229 Gilt.com 577–9 “Gimme a Break,”  425 Gjerdingen, R. O.  802–3 Glazer, Jonathan  466 Glee Club  36 glees 26–7

all-male 36 arrangements of  40–1 as cultivated art song  36–9 defining 39 demographics and advertising for  35 Elizabethan madrigal compared with  37 harmonized 45–6 Ladies Nights at  37 madrigals referred to as  38t marketing of  45–6 as middlebrow culture  34–5, 45–8 as mixed-voice genre  39–40 performance practices in  45 popularity of  34 publications 39–45 repackaging of  47 serial anthologies of  42–4, 47 sheet music of  42 social class exclusivity in  46 women performers in  40–1, 46 globalization 177 GM. See General Motors “Go Down, Moses,”  596 “God Save the Brand” (Sutherland)  466–7 Godzilla: King of the Monsters 304 Goldberg, M. E.  743–4, 821 Goldberg, Michael  269 Goldberg, Neil  112–13 Golden Boy 303 “Golden Brown,”  466 Goldfinger 314–15 Goldhaber, M. H.  794, 795f Goldman, Frank  247 Goldman, R.  416 Goldwater, Barry  536, 608–10, 634 Gomez, Selena  123 Gondry, Michel  443, 547 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 573–4, 577–8, 580–2, 584 Goodman, D.  353, 366 “Good Vibrations,”  458–9 Gorn, Gerald  415, 488–9, 733, 743–4, 781 on background music  821 on classical conditioning theory  725 Gorzelany-Mostak, Dana  27 Gosling, S. D.  679, 803–5 Gossip Girl 214

896   index Gottlieb, Billy  204–5 “Go West,”  579 Graakjær, Nicolai  2–3, 373, 430, 581–2, 723 on selling out  437 Grace, Elisabeth  79–80 Gracyk, Theodore  553 Graduates Meeting  36 Grande, Ariana  122–3 graphic user interface (GUI)  94, 96–7 of virtual instruments  97 Grateful Dead  389–90 Gravity (film)  97, 307 Gravity (virtual instrument)  97 music demos for  112–13 promotional copy for  111 Gray, Bowman, Jr.  424 “Gray Eagle,”  344–5 Greasley, A.  656 Great Depression  336 The Great Dictator 240–1 Greco, Paul  74 Greeley, Horace  579 green advertising  547–53 Green Day  439–40 Greenfield, Elizabeth Taylor  62 Greenpeace  375, 541–2, 561 campaign stills  552f green advertising of  547–53 greenwashing 549 Greenwood, Jonny  550–1 Grewal, D.  763 Griffiths, D. W.  240n.1 Grohl, Dave  273–5 Groove Armada  209 Grossman, Sam  362 Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians 42 Grzywacz, N. M.  797 GSR. See galvanic skin responses Guero 216 guest appearances  808t on popular music  805 Guevara, M.  748–9 Guez, Bruno  216n.3 Guggenheim, Charles  614–15 GUI. See graphic user interface Guido, G.  759 Guild of Music Supervisors  5

guilty pleasures  667 The Gunfighter 570 Guy-Sheftall, Beverly  62–3 Haber, Bobby  268 habituation 797 Hafez, Navid  228 Hahn, M.  748–9 Haines, John  498 Hainge, Greg  187 Hall, David  65 Hall, Stuart  1, 11, 348–9 Hallelujah 248 Halliburton, C.  722–3 Hall & Partners  709 Hamlin’s Wizard Oil  346–8 The Handbook of Music and Emotion (Juslin and Sloboda)  14 Hands 249 Handy, Jamison  245–7 Nazis connected to  257–9 “Hanging Around,”  466 The Hangover 304 Hanna-Barbera 590–1 Hansen, J. L.  702 Hans Zimmer Strings  106–8, 107f, 111 music demos for  108 happiness, in political advertising  628–9 Harburg, Yip  591–2 Hargreaves, D. J.  653–4, 723, 761, 763, 765, 797, 824 “Hark! The Lark,”  45 Harley-Davidson Inc.  196, 406–7, 839–40 harmonic changes in background music  747 children detecting  747 Harmonists Society  36 harmonized glees  45–6 Haro, M.  797 Harris, Misty  216n.3 Harris, Roy  250 Harrison, George  278 Harrison, Samuel  42, 47n.7 Harrison, William Henry  606–7 Hart, Roderick  640 Harte, Lawrence  15, 31 Harvey, David  176–7

index   897 Harwood, Dane  9 “Have You Played Atari Today?,”  243–4, 323–5, 325f, 331–2 demographic targeting of  329–30 structure of  328 “Have you tried Wheaties?,”  96 Hawks, Howard  576 Hawley, Josh  633 Haws, K. L.  842 Haydn, Joseph  125 Hayek, Friedrich  176 Hayes, William  37 Haynsworth, Leslie  266–7 Hayward, Philip  315 Health 293 Heartbeats International  75 the Heartbreakers  453 Heath, R.  699 Heavyocity  94, 99–100, 102, 111 Hebidge, Dick  453–4 Hecker, Sidney  567, 585, 757 Heckler, S. E.  758, 766 Hell-Bent for Election  591–3, 602 dream sequence music in  599–600 politician music in  600–2 railroad station music in  598–9 train music in  593–8 Helmholtz, H. L. F.  820 Henderson, P. W.  680, 682, 687 Hendrick, C.  726 Henson, Christian  108 Herbert, Charlie  313–14 Herbert, Victor  352 “Herding Cats,”  576–8 “Here Comes Success,”  467–8 “Here Comes the Summer,”  462, 465 Herget, A.-K.  701 Herman, Vincent  248 hermeneutics 10 Heroes 483 Herrmann, Bernard  96 “Hersham Boys,”  462 Hershey’s 496–8 Hesmondhalgh, David  170–1, 179–81 on union involvement  182 Hess, Mickey  506–8, 515 Hettinger, Herman  340, 343

heuristic-systematic model (HSM)  698, 775–6 Hevner, K.  681 Hicks, George  358–60, 363–6 hierarchy of advertising effects  724t, 726 Higginson, Henry Lee  387 High Noon 570 high route processing  698–9 Hilberman, David  592 Hill, Joe  594 Hillside Singers  409 Hilmes 353–4 Hine, Lewis  249 hip-hop  375, 508 Geico using  517–18 hipness and  516–18 humor in  506, 510–14 race and  515 hipness Blackness linked to  516–17 hip-hop and  516–18 in indie music  82, 392–3 as noneconomic value  392–3 Taylor, T., on  517 in television commercials  82–3 Hirschhorn, Joel  419–20 Hitler, Adolf  255–7, 600–2 Hochstatter, Adam  105–6 “Hoe-Down,” 575 Hogan’s Heroes 248 Holliday, Judy  313 Holloway, Sterling  247 Hollywood 245–7 in television development  309, 311 Holmes, S.  307–8, 312 Holstrom, John  453 Homburg, C.  848 “Home on the Range,”  573 homophonic music  750 Honda 455–6 hooks 799 for Atari VCS campaign  324–7, 325f in jingles  419 Hot, Cool and Vicious 508 Hot Point  196–7 “A Hot Time in the Old Town,”  612–13 The House in the Middle 532

898   index “How Could We Be Wrong?,”  421 “How Long Has This Been Going On?,”  421 HSM. See heuristic-systematic model Hubbert, Julie  29 Hubley, John  592 Hughes, Langston  507, 514–15 Huhtamo, E.  323–4 Hui, M. K.  824–5 Hultén, Bertil  648, 818–20, 823 Human (company)  618–19 Human, A.  360 human capital  390–2 humanistic approach  10–11 hummability, perceptual fluency and 687 humor Black experience and  507, 515 disparagement 514–15 of Geico  510–14, 518 in hip-hop  506, 510–14 incongruity  510, 512 othering and  514–16 in “Push It: It’s What You Do,”  510–14 Humphrey, Hubert  612–13, 635 Hung, Kineta  2–3, 723, 764 The Hunger 479 Hunky Dory 477 Hunt, Marsha  360 Hunter, John  78, 86 Hunter, P. G.  659 Huron, David  2–3, 9–10, 488–9, 567, 647, 802–3 on music as enhancement  796 Hurt, John  551 Hurtz, William  592 Hwang, I.  748–9 hybridization  375–6, 567–8 Tota on  576 hypertextuality 128f IADS. See International Affective Digital Sounds Collection IAPS. See International Affective Picture System IAT. See Implicit Association Test IBM 1401, A User’s Manual 551 Idol, Billy  462

“I’d Rather Be High,”  483–6 IFPI. See International Federation of the Phonographic Industry “If the Kids Are United,”  462 Iggy Pop  452–3, 460–1, 467–9 “I Like Ike,”  607, 629 “I’ll Bet You Never Knew Department,” 355, 358, 363 imagination, in radio advertising  339–42 “I’m in Love with My Car,”  190 Implicit Association Test (IAT) Binet on  709–10 failure of  708–10 Müllensiefen on  709 reaction times and  708–10 Imschloss, C.  848 “I’m Sticking with You,”  464 Inception 293 Incesticide 270 income, of musicians  445 incongruity humor  510, 512 in musical congruity  758–9, 787 recall linked to  82 independent variables  727–8 indexicality  402, 724–5, 767 indie music  82, 445 fans of  392 hipness in  392–3 noneconomic value in  392 selling out in  439–40 industry research  12 inequality 224–5 “Inferno Face,”  112–13 influence 863 Ingalls, Clyde  51 “Injured Tiger,”  775 Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) 700 in-store music  13–14, 648, 667, 820, 822–3, 845–6, 848 Intel 760 intellectual property  715 interaction effects  686 interdisciplinary collaboration  14–16 International Affective Digital Sounds Collection (IADS)  712

index   899 International Affective Picture System (IAPS) 712 International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI)  820 International Heating Oil  345–6 International Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association  390 International Monetary Fund  176 International Workers of the World (IWW) 594–5 the Internet. See also digital environment; websites film trailers on  298–9 music industry changed by  204 netnographic research  768–9 interruption  423, 423n.4 intertextuality  129, 135–6, 401 “In That Good Old Country Town,”  345 In Utero  270, 273–4 anniversary reissue of  277–9 inventory 387–8 involvement theory  724t, 776 defining 725 IPA. See Institute of Practitioners in Advertising iPods 414 irony  493–4, 498 “Isle of Despair,”  113 “Isn’t This a Lovely Day,”  421 Ivens, Joris  250 Iverson, P.  802–3 IWW. See International Workers of the World Jackson, D. M.  86 on auditory interfaces  674 on sonic branding  675 Jackson, Michael  389, 408, 478–9, 486 Pepsi advertisements with  479–80 Jackson, Rebbie  234 Jacoby, L. L.  680–1 Jaeger  103–5, 104f music demos for  105–6 Jaguar 464 Jakubowski, K.  800 James, Cheryl  505–6 James, Daniel  100–2, 105–6 James, Jim  442–3

James, Robin  515 Jameson, Frederic  180–1 Jam Handy Organization (JHO)  245–7, 250, 258 output of  247 Jam Handy Picture Service Company  245–8 Janata, P.  750 Jantzen, C.  723 Jay-Z 209 jazz and jazz musicians authenticity in  229–30 B&W on  231–6 cigarette smoking and  224, 226, 228 cultural resonances of  230–3 historical discourse on  164 jingles made by  166–7 Kool relationship to  228–9 for marketing in luxury contexts  222–3 market segmentation for  234–6 session work as  168 technical craftsmanship in  166–7 on television commercials  166–7 in Toronto  164–9 Jazz Sells (Laver)  222–3 Jeffery, Anna Maria  45 Jeffery, Susan  45 Jenkins, Brad  114–15 Jenkins, Henry  205–6 “Jesse the Mind,”  628–9 Jet 444 Jhally, Sut  507–8, 515 JHO. See Jam Handy Organization Jim Crow  596 jingles  8, 189–90, 325, 374, 606–7, 820, 847f for Atari commercials  327–32 for Berzerk 329 budgets for  166, 174–5 Cardinali on  173 categorization of  417 for Chiquita  678 completeness of  417 condensation of  426, 430–1 demographics of  331–2 history of  327–9 hooks in  419 jazz musicians on  166, 168 at JWT  144

900   index jingles (Continued) Karmen on  419–20 of Liberty Mutual Insurance  425–7, 426f musical structure of  419–25 for Pac-Man 328–9 popular music related to  327–8, 416 in presidential campaign advertisements 607 Reeves on traits of  418–19 sogos differentiated from  678 Sosnik on writing of  419 standardization of  329 synthesizers on  174–5 Taylor, T., on  329 in television commercials  75, 150 in United States  421 in video game advertising  327–32 Wolfe on taxonomy of  419 Jingles and Spot Announcements Labor Agreement 150 “Joe Hill,”  591–2 Jóhannsson, Jóhann  551 Johnson, Daniel  81 Johnson, David  39 Johnson, Eric  84–5 Johnson, Helen Kendrick  606–7 Johnson, Jerry  166 Johnson, Lyndon  631, 634n.12 presidential campaign advertisements for 608–10 Johnson, Margaret  424 Johnson & Johnson  683 Johnson-Laird, Philip N.  626 Johnston, Keith  305, 312–13 Jones, Chuck  591n.4, 592 Jones, Grace  455 Jones, Mick  457 Jones, Simon Cellan  460 Juslin, P.  14, 667 “Just Like You Imagined,”  295 J. Walter Thompson (JWT) Company  12–13, 74, 142, 154–5 AFTRA and  152 Devine at  144–5 J. B. Watson and  12–13 jingles at  144

music at  143–4 Radio and Television Department at  148 SAG and  152 trade union negotiations with  142–3, 146–7 Kahneman, D.  698–9, 715, 794 Kajikawa, Loren  506–10, 512–13 Kakigi, R.  747–8 Karmen, Steve  175, 429 on jingles  175, 419–20 Kasha, Al  419–20 Kates, Mark  268–9 Kaurismäki, Aki  457 Kaye, Tony  458–9 Kazaa 121 KDKA  338, 340–1 Keep Me Singing 123 Kellaris, James J.  415, 646, 744, 758, 762, 766–7, 826 on interaction effects  686 on recognition  690 Kellogg Company  406–7, 425 Kelly, Kevin  209–10, 806 Kelly, Tori  429–31 Kendall, R. A.  14 Kenin, Herman  149 Kennedy, John F.  568–9 presidential campaign advertisements for 607–8 “Kennedy for Me,”  607 Kent, R. J.  686 Kernan, Lisa  286 Kid A 550–1 Kieślowski, Krzysztof  116 Kim, D.  765, 823 Kincaid, Bradley  340–1 Kinetic Worldwide  834 King, Ben E.  457–8 King, John Reed  352–3, 355–60 on Consolidated Edison  367 King, John T.  363–4, 365f King, Martin Luther, Jr.  612 King Kong 313 “Kings of the Wild Frontier,”  462 Kit Kat  425 kitsch  316, 326–7 Klein, Bethany  2–5, 374, 437–8, 474, 567

index   901 on “Lust for Life,”  463–4 on popular music  519 Knittel, Z.  657–8 Knittle, Johnny  102 Knoeferle, Klemens  648, 842–4 Knyvett, Charles, Sr.  42 Knyvett, William  47n.7 Koch, P.  705 Koelsch, S.  747–8 Koffman, Moe  165, 169, 171 Kool  223–4, 227. See also Brown and Williamson campaigns of  225–34 jazz related to  228–9 rebranding of  233–4 Kool City Jams  234 Kool Jazz Festivals  228–9, 232–3, 235–6 Kool Jazz Records  229 Kool Music Festivals  233 Kool Music Form Study  231–2 Kool Talent Challenge  229 Kopczyk, Przemyslaw  98 Korean War  570 Korolov, Cynthia  251n.26 Koslow, S.  722–3 Krause, A. E.  653, 665 Krause, Bernie  558 Krehm, Andy  166–8, 180 Krishna, Aradhna  834 Krishnan, Vijaykumar  646, 690 Kristallnacht 256n.33 Kristen, Dorothy  363 Kroeger, Dan  73–5, 81 Krohn, Ramble Jon  214 Krugman, H. E.  725 Krumhansl, Carol  632 Kubrick, Stanley  323, 499–500 Kuehnl, C.  848 Ku Klux Klan  242–3 Kupfer, Peter  27, 31 Kyser, Kay  247 LaBelle, Brandon  199 labor alienation from  169–70 commodification of  170 deregulation of markets for  176–7

under neoliberalism  390–2 productive  170, 180–2 productivity of  177 solidarity 172–3 unproductive  170, 180–2 labor organizations. See unions Labyrinth  479, 483 Lacey, Nick  7 The Ladies Catch Book (Webbe)  41 Ladies Concerts  46 The Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum-Book 40 Ladies Nights  37, 39–40 Ladman, Mike  80 Lady Gaga  88 The Lady’s Musical Magazine 44 Laemmar, J. W.  534 Laing, Dave  453–4 Lair, John  342–5, 347–8 Lair Collection  344–5 Lakmé 456 Lakoff, George  631 Lamar, Kendrick  281 Lambda Legal  445 Lamborghini 580–2 “The Ecstasy of Gold” used by  583 Lamere, P.  803 Lance, Leonard  636 Lancet 54–5 Landry, Jack  574–5 Langer, Susanne  9 Langlois, Leo  529–30 language, in popular music  801–2 Lantos, Geoff  654–5, 664, 670 Larsen, J. T.  658–9 Larson, Steve  416 Lavack, A. M.  762 Laver, Mark  2–3, 28, 222–3 Law, Jude  550n.5 Law, R. M.  761 Leavitt, C.  726 Led Zeppelin  212–13 Lee, Y. H.  744 Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel  499 Lefebvre, Henri  341 LEGO  375, 541, 556, 562, 562n.12 iconic status of  560

902   index “LEGO: Everything is NOT Awesome,”  541–7, 545f, 546f, 553–7 Arctic Oil Spill Playset in  557–9 play objects in  559–62 The LEGO Movie  541–2, 547, 554–5, 558–9 Lehman, Frank  99 Leinberger, Charles  581 Lennon, John  439, 760 Lenthall, B.  349 Lenzi, Lou  197 Leo Burnett Agency  425, 574–5 Leonard, Herman  235–6 Leone, Sergio  573–4, 577–8 Let’s Dance 478–81 “Let’s Dance,”  478–80 Léveillé Gauvin, Hubert  647, 798, 801 levels of valence (LOV)  664 Leventhal, R.  664 Levine, Lawrence W.  387 Levine, Michael A.  425 Levy, David  114–15 Lewis, Justin  447, 728–33 Lewis, L. R.  232 Lewis, R.  706 LG 198 LGBTQ people  445 Liberty Mutual Insurance  430–1 jingle of  425–7, 426f Liboiron, Max  561 Lien, N.  728–33 “Life on Mars?,”  479–80, 869 Lighthouse 123 “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There,”  427–9, 428f, 429f “Like a Rock,”  82–3, 442, 567 Likert-scale 660–2 LimeWire 121 limited animation  590n.1 limited-reach ad campaign tests  876 Lind, Jenny  27, 53 Ling, Pamela  228 Lipscomb, S. D.  14 listener characteristics  652–3 listening situation  652–3 listicles 122 literacy 606 “Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,”  346

the Little Ones  216 “Little Red Songbook,”  595–6 Litvack, D.  743–4 Live Nation  209 Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! 273 lobbying, of trade unions  172–3 Local Television Jingles and Spot Announcements Trust Agreement  149 “Lochaber,” 47n.7 Logic Pro X  94 Lohengrin 240 Lomax, John  573 “London Calling,”  464–5 The Lonely Island  375, 541–2, 554–5 The Lone Wolf 240–1 Long, Michael  375, 489, 491 Longman and Broderip  43–4 Longo, G.  711 long-term memory  751 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 494–5 Los Angeles  148, 172–3, 309–11 television station W6XYZ  309–10 The Lost Battalion 240–1 Louis Vuitton, Bowie working with  483–6 LOV. See levels of valence Lovato, Demi  123 Love, Courtney  274–5, 279 Love, Joanna  2–3, 6, 375, 478 “Love at First Taste,”  397 overview of  398t Low 481 Lowe, M. L.  842 Lowe & Partners  456 Lowrey, T. M.  827 low route processing  698–9 Lucky Strike Radio Hour 226 Ludig, Edwin  249n.20, 250 Lufthansa  191n.2, 692 “Symphony of Angels,”  191n.2 “Lust for Life,”  460–1, 465 deconstruction of  462–4 Klein on  463–4 luxury contexts, jazz for marketing in  222–3 luxury goods Appadurai on  381 characteristics of  381 “Lydia the Tattooed Lady,”  591–2

index   903 Lydon, John  459–60, 467 Lynn, Diana  309–10 lyrics  743, 760, 801–2, 808, 864–5 in advertising perception  735 emotive appeal of  801 recall linked to  81 repetition of  799–800 research literature on  808t semantic congruity and  766 in television commercials  81 MacInnis, D. J.  758, 762, 767, 822 Macklin, M. C.  726, 733 Madanikia, Y.  801–2 Madison Avenue  4 Mad Max: Fury Road 294–5 Mad Men 214 Madonna  135–6, 478–9, 486, 766 Pepsi advertisements with  480 madrigals  37–8, 44 glees referred to as  38t Madrigal Society  36 Madsen, Deborah  569–70 magazine format  424 The Magic of the Atom 529 Magnavox Odyssey  323–4 The Magnificent Seven  568–9, 573–7 “Mahgeetah,” 442–3 Mahler, Gustav  128, 131f, 567–8 Maidenform 571f Maier, Carmen Daniela  286 MainMan 476–7 Malkinson, Agnes  286–7 Mandler, G.  761–2 Manilow, Barry  427–9 manipulation, inferences of  785–6, 785f Man Made Music  216 Mann, Aimee  444 Manning, Dick  144 Manning, Peyton  429–30 The Man Who Fell to Earth 479 The Man Who Sold the World 481 “Man with No Name,”  577 Mapleson, Alfred J.  362 Marchand, R.  366 Marcuse, Herbert  621 Margulis, E. H.  800–1

Marich, Robert  305 on television commercials  304 marketing contextualization and  134–6 costs  78–9, 388 of glees  45–6 jazz for luxury  222–3 market segmentation  223, 234, 305 B&W on  235 history of  224 for jazz  234–6 neoliberalism and  225 psychographic methods and  225 Taylor, T., on  225 Turow on  225 Marlboro 574–5 Marquardt, R.  761 Marsalis, Wynton  222, 235–6 Martell, Joanne  64 Martin, Charles Herbert  357 Martin, Dean  278 Martin Agency  505, 508 Martínez, Raúl  638 Martino, Sergio  636 Martín-Santana, J. D.  734 Marx, Karl  180–2 on alienation  169–70 masculinity, in Western genre  578–9 mash-ups 137 massclusive strategies  215–16 mass reproduction, of sound recordings 383–4 mass songs  597, 597n.20 Master Hands  29, 240–2, 248–51, 252f, 255f, 258–60 context for  241–5, 248 credit sequence of  250 narration in  250 score for  251–4 shooting of  249 Matador Records  213 Matheson, Whitney  216n.3 Matravers, Derek  627 Matrix franchise  205–6 Mattheson, Johann  420 Maurer, Shawn Lisa  43 Max’s Kansas City  453

904   index Maxwell, House  12–13 Mayfield, C.  748–9 MC5 452–3 MCA 269 McCain, John  635 McCann-Erickson  84–5, 146, 352–5, 360 AFM contracts with  361 music department at  360–3 music directors at  361 McConnell, Rob  167 McDonald’s  325, 462, 517 McElroy, Lowell  147 McEwan’s Lager  460 McFerrin, Bobby  235–6 McGinnis, Joe  612, 614 McGovern, George, presidential campaign advertisements for  614–16 McKay, Adam  213–14 McKendrick, J.  765, 824 Mckinnon, M. C.  802–3 McKoy, Millie-Christine  27, 51, 57f, 60f advertisements for  54 aggrandizing mode marketing of  60–1, 65–6 audience reception of  58 autobiography of  64–5 cultural sophistication in representations of 61–2 early life of  51–2, 64 emancipation of  61 exotic mode marketing of  59–60 exploitation of  52, 61–2 femininity of  62–3 freakishness of  54, 62–3 handbill advertisement of  56f intellectual independence of  55–8 lived realities of  64–5 medical records of  54–5 modesty of  62–3, 65 mother Monemia  60–1 parlor songs performed by  62–3 as performer  58, 62–3 physiology of  54–5 racial identity and representation of  61–3 remuneration of  52 repertoire of  62–3, 67t

representation of  51–2 singing voices of  53–5, 58 McLaren, Malcolm  455–7 advertisements of  456 McLeod, Ken  25–6 McLuhan, Marshall  199 McNamara, Helen  168–9 McNeil, Legs  453 McQueen, Steve  572 McRobbie, Angela  2 meaning 808t contextualization producing  119–20 embodied  726–7, 750, 840 multisensory learning priming of  836–40 musical priming of  840–1 in popular music  801 referential  726–7, 750, 840 mechanical licenses  466 Mechanical Principles 250 media production project  865 Meeder, Clair  147 Meier, Leslie  3–5, 188–9, 437–8, 475 MEIs. See music-evoked images Die Meistersinger 255–6 memorability earworms and  800 of popular music  799–801 repetition and  799 memory  680–1, 808t. See also recall culture and  415 long-term 751 multisensory learning enhancement of 836 in musical congruity  766–7 recall 726 working 744–5 Men and Machines 249 “Men at Work,”  249 Mendelsohn, Carol  204–5 Mendelssohn, Felix  600–1 Men Make Steel 249 Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence 479 Messiaen, Olivier  128, 128f metacommunication defining 416 music as  416

index   905 Metallica 584 metamorphosis, nightingale as symbol of 59–63 Metropolis Ark 1 103 Metropolis Ark 2 109 Metropolitan Motion Picture Company  245 Metz, Theo  612–13 Meyer, L. B.  750, 797 Meyer, Leonard  9, 742 Meyer, Stephen  99 Meyers, C. B.  353–4 Meyers-Levy, J.  726–7, 840–1 MGA. See Musicians Guild of America MIA 4 Michelini, Luciano  636 Michelob 212n.2 Mickey Mousing  530, 600n.26 Mickleford, Tristan  364 Microsoft Windows  196n.6, 760 sound branding of  196n.6, 693 “Start Me Up” in advertisements for  757 middlebrow culture  34 the glee as  34–5, 45–8 Middleton, Richard  555 MIDI 174 Miège, Bernard  180–1 Miles, S. A.  797 Milestone, Lewis  575 Mill, John Stuart  606 Millar, W. J. L.  51–2 Miller, Leta  172 Miller, Mark  171n.4 Milli Vanilli  194 Mini Cooper  193–4 mini-drama  7, 9 mini-narratives 9 Minute Maid  456 The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek 309–10 misattribution 514 Mission: Impossible  289, 291–2 Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation 297–8 Missy Elliott  506 Mitchell, A. A.  733 Mitchum, Robert  575 Mitsubishi 460–2 Mix, Burn and R.I.P. (Röttgers)  124–5 mixed musical responses  658–60

explaining 666–8 testing for  659 MLCB. See music listening choice behavior M&M 418 mnemonic devices  325n.4 Moby  76, 444 “Modern Love,”  474, 478–9 Modern Radio Advertising 417 Modern Times 254–5 Mohaupt, Richard  362 Molen, Aldert van der  362 Momentum 112f, 113–14 music demos for  114–15 Monaco, Brian  81 Moncrieff, Diarmid  675 Monogram 197–8 Monogram Pictures  245 Monroe, Marilyn  399 Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings  265–6, 272–3, 279–80 “Montaigne,” 108 Montenegro, Hugo  577 Montfort, N.  322 Montgomery, Lee  362 Mooney, James  257 moral character  343 Moreno, Ian  216 Morgen, Brett  272–3, 279 Morin, S.  825–6 Morley, Thomas  38t Moross, Jerome  573 Morricone, Ennio  578, 580–4 Western genre shaped by  573–4, 577–8 Morris, C.  799–800 Morrison, Van  123 Morrow, Buddy  165 Moskowitz, Gary  465–6 Moss, Kate  477 Moss, S.  748–9 Mothersbaugh, Mark  541–2, 554 Motion Picture Moods for Pianists and Organists (Rapee)  240n.1, 241n.3, 620 motor vehicles  186 Mountain Dew  459–60, 743 Movado 222–3 Mozart 9–10 mp3 format  121

906   index MPTF. See Music Performance Trust Fund MTV 455 Mukerji, Chandra  381 Müllensiefen, Daniel  12, 646, 705, 711, 800 IAT used by  709 on musical fit  702–3 Mullern, T.  722–3 multidisciplinary approach  14–16 multimedia advertisements, goals of  742 multisensory learning  836 multisensory marketing  848–50 associative learning in  835–6 conditioning in  835–6 crossmodal correspondences in  841–4 defining 833 meaning primed in  836–40 overload in  848 reception and  648 research on  834–5 sound design in  833–50 spatial attention in  845–8 Murphy, Audie  570 Murphy, Eddie  577n.2 Murray, Anne  173 Murray, Iain  468 Murray, N. M.  766 Murray, S. B.  766 Music, Thought, and Feeling (Thompson)  14 “Music, Mood, and Marketing” (Bruner)  488 musical analysis  119 musical congruity  13, 15. See also musical fit in advertising context  759–61 approaches to  760–1 associative network in  762–3 components of  761–3 culture and meaning in  763–5 defining 758 expectancy in  758 genre and  764 incongruity in  758–9, 787 memory in  766–7 musical taste in  761 netnographic research into  768–9 North on  763 psychological transportation and  785 relevancy in  758 repetition in  766–7

semantic 766 in service environments  825–7 types of  763–6 musical fit  13, 15, 647, 727–8. See also musical congruity advertising perception and  701–4 measurement of  701–4 Müllensiefen on  702–3 semantic differential tools for  702–4, 703t musical identities, branding of  211–14 musical preference  72, 653–4. See also Short Scale of Musical Preferences branding and  78, 388 musical production, texts layered in  391t musical quotation, in popular music  806 musical representation  9–10 musical responses  652–3 BRECVEMA framework for  664 cognitive appraisal in  664–5 complexity in  663–9 describing 655–63 emotion recognition in  664 ESM for  662–3, 669 feature analysis in  664 mechanisms of  664–5 mixed  658–60, 666–8 models of  661f negative  656–8, 665–6 utilitarian theory of  654, 668–9 musical stimulus  652–3 musical taste, in musical congruity  761 music appeal, defining  655 music artist brand value  870 music catalogs, authentic  868 music composition  871–2 Music Dealers  212 music demos  93, 95, 102 for Damage 102 for Drums of War 100–2 for Gravity 112–13 for Hans Zimmer Strings 108–9 for Jaeger 105–6 for Momentum 114–15 for Natural Forces 112–13 for virtual instruments  95 music directors, at McCann-Erickson  361 music-evoked images (MEIs)  752–3

index   907 attentional postponement effect and  750 cognitive responses to  750–2 embodied 750 referential 751 music fingerprinting  877 Musicians Guild of America (MGA)  148, 151 music industry demise of  173–80 the Internet changing  204 neoliberalism and  76–7, 173–80 television commercials as staple of  213 Music in Films on the Middle Ages (Haines) 498 music libraries  103, 360–1 stock 868 music licensing  76, 78–9, 207, 213–14, 861–2, 872–3. See also synchronization adaptations in  873 arrangements in  875 audio synchronization in  874–5 benefits and risks of  443–6 brand alignment in  441–2 buyout in  874 documentation in  874 editing in  875 exclusivity in  873–4 fees and payments in  78–9, 874 income boosts from  445 length in  873 for popular music  868–9 selling out and  440–1 sound cues in  875 stigma of  446 territories in  873 time adjustments in  875 time duration of  873 music listening choice behavior (MLCB)  803 modeling of  804f music orchestration  872 Music Performance Trust Fund (MPTF)  147–8, 154 contention over  149 music production software  27, 93. See also virtual instruments websites for  94–5 Music Publishers Association  464 music request  870

music source options,  867 music supervision  28, 75–6, 214–18 branding in  203–4, 217 music theory  724t defining 726 Schenkerian 423n.4 Muzak 820 Myers, Fred R.  378n.1 My Morning Jacket  442–3 Myspace 130–1 naive practice  136 NAM. See National Association of Manufacturers Napster 121 misattribution on  121–2 narcissism 808t in popular music  801 Naron, Ted  77–9, 83–4, 87 narrative ads  647 future research on  786–9 music in  783–6 psychological transportation in  775–7 narrative engagement  776 narrative structure, Worboys on  7–8 narrative transportation. See psychological transportation The National  392–3 National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) 242n.5 National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) 290n.1 National Barn Dance  336–7, 342 advertising on  342–4 National Broadcasting Network (NBC)  243–4, 303, 308, 336n.1 National Industrial Relations Act (NIRA) 242 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) 152 National Retail Merchants Association 525–6 National Screen Services (NSS)  310–11 National Television Jingles and Spot Announcements Agreement of 1959 146–7 “Nationwide Is on Your Side,”  429–30

908   index Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company 429–31 Native Instruments  94 Native Land 249 Natural Forces  111–12, 112f music demos for  112–13 Nazis 240–1 Ford, H., connected to  257 GM connected to  257–9 Handy connected to  257–9 in United States  255–9 NBC. See National Broadcasting Network Need for Affect Scale  778 need for cognition (NFC)  727 Needham, Harper & Steers  427 needledrop music, in television commercials 75 negative musical responses  656–8 explaining 665–6 studies on  656–8 negotiated readings  11 neoliberalism 2 creativity in  176 defining 175–6 globalization under  177 implementation of  176–7 labor under  390–2 market segmentation and  225 music industry and  173–80 precarity under  179 Nestlé 425 Netflix 122 netnographic research, into musical congruity 768–9 neuroscience  88, 669, 769–70, 836, 842 See also brain, EEG, fMRI Nevada Proving Ground  532–3 “Never Get Old,”  481–3 Never Let Me Down 478–9 Nevermind  266, 268, 279 anniversary reissue of  277–8 recording of  268–9 success of  269 New Deal  242–3, 259–60 films from  249–50 Newell, Laura  361 The New Family in Town 535

Newman, M. Z.  323–4 New Moon 215–16 Newport Jazz Festival  228 New York  310, 456, 509–10 television station WPIX  310 New York Dolls  462 The Next Day 485 NFC. See need for cognition Nichols, Wanda  480 Nickelback 209 Nielsen  72, 88, 722, 877 Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience  88 Nietzsche, Friedrich  499 Nightingale as metamorphosis symbol  59–63 as metaphor  52–3 as nickname  53–4 polyvalent meanings of  54 “Nightingale Music,”  63 Nike  5, 416, 440–1, 456, 580–2, 761 “The Ecstasy of Gold” used by  582 Nimmons, Phil  163, 166, 168–9, 177, 180 Nimmons “N” Nine Plus Six  163–4, 166–7, 171, 180 Nine Inch Nails  295 Nintendo 332 NIRA. See National Industrial Relations Act Nirvana  29, 265–6, 439–40 anniversary reissues  276–9 authenticity of  268–9 on Geffen Records  268–71 legacy of  265–6, 274–6 posthumous packaging of  271–80 Nissan  441, 465, 577 Nixon, Richard  177, 179–80, 610, 614, 634 political advertising of  634–5 presidential campaign advertisements for 611 Nixon, Rob  549 NLRB. See National Labor Relations Board “Nobody Like You,”  400–1 as musical branding  407–9 noise 187 automobiles producing  187–8 Nokia  81, 678–9, 690–1

index   909 No Name on the Bullet 570 noneconomic value branding and  388 co-optation of  393–4 creation of  379, 387 hipness as  392–3 in indie music  392 nonmusical sound branding  406–7 nonverbal aural identity  676 Nordica, Lillian  400–1 Norma 628 Norman, Monty  314 North, A. C.  723, 748, 765, 769–70, 797, 824 on advertising perception  733, 761 on consumers  653–4 on musical congruity  763 nostalgia  25–6, 341–2, 667 in punk rock  457–62 Nöth, Winfried  10 Nothing Has Changed 481 “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,”  445 Novoselic, Krist  270, 273–5 Le nozze di Figaro 9–10 NSS. See National Screen Services nuclear weapons PSAs and  528–30 televised tests of  527 Nue Creative Music Agency  75 Nunes, J. C.  799–800 Nussbaum, Martha  376, 639–40 on political advertising  625–6 Oakes, Steve  647, 733, 748, 758, 763, 767, 769–70 Oatley, Keith  626 Obama, Barack  4, 630–1, 635 presidential campaign advertisements for 616–17 The O.C. 214 OCDM. See Office of Civil and Defense Management Odom, Leslie, Jr.  429–31 “O’er the Waves We Float,”  58 Office of Civil and Defense Management (OCDM) 531 “O Fortuna,”  375 in Applebee’s advertisements  490–1

in Domino’s Pizza advertisements  495–6 the epic and  489–502 in film trailers  494–5 in Hershey’s advertisements  496–8 Ogilvy, David  704–5 “Oh Nanny! Wilt Thou Gang With Me,” 47n.7 O’Keeffe, John  46–7 Olafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions 112–13 O’Leary, Chris  481 Olinger, Jonathan  618–19 Olsen, G. D.  743–4, 753 Olson, J. C.  733 Olympia 256n.33 Once Upon a Time in the West 573–4 O’Neill, Dan  209 One Tenth of Our Nation 249 online music distribution  134–6 history of  121–2 the Only Ones  467 “On the Streets of New York,”  352, 359, 367 “Oodles of Noodles,”  357 Opel 257 openness to experience defining 779–80 measurement of  780 open work  120–1 opera 628 Operation Alert  528 oppositional readings  11 Orbit  96–8, 97f Orchestral Tools  103, 109 Orchestrating Public Opinion (Christiansen) 604–5 Ordanini, A.  799 Oreo 213 Orff, Carl  99, 375, 489–502 “Oribital Drift,”  98 original music  868 for television commercials  65, 75 Original Recordings Group  277 Osborn, Brad  550–1, 799 Osgood, C. E.  702 “O Strike the Harp in Praise of Bragela,”  45 “O Susannah!,”  421 otherness 514–16 Oursler, Tony  485

910   index “Outfit Showdown,”  578–9, 579f Outhit, Allison  178–9 overlapping registers  502f Ovid 59 Owen, K.  822–3 Oxford English Dictionary  438, 493 Oxford Music Online 39 Pacific Rim 103–4 Pacific Rim Uprising 299 Pac-Man 322 jingles for  328–9 Paisley, Brad  429–31 Panassié, Hugues  170 Pandora 122 Panksepp, J.  779 Pantev, C.  747–8 “Paper Planes,”  4 Papson, S.  416 Paramount  245, 309–10 Parasuraman, A.  763 paratextual information  129f Pareles, Jon  271, 275–6 Park, C. W.  415, 743, 758, 761–2, 767–8, 822, 826 Parker, Sean  121 parlor songs  62–3 parody 375 “Part 5/The Sun’s Gone Dim and The Sky’s Turned Black,”  551 partsongs 40 “Part-Time Punks,”  454 “The Passenger,”  460–1, 465, 467–8 Patch, Justin  376 patriotism 626–7 in political advertising  629–31 Patsavas, Alexandra  214–16 Patti Smith Group  453 Paulin, Scott  240–1, 241n.3 “Peaches,” 466 “Pedal to the Metal,”  114–15 Peirce, Charles  402 Penn, Mark  625 Pennebaker, D. A.  477 People of the Cumberland 249 Pepsi  82, 406–7, 417, 425, 474, 478, 482, 517

Bowie working with  474, 478–9 “Choice of a New Generation” campaign  408, 480 “Creation” campaign of  474 Jackson, M., in advertisements for  479–80 Madonna in advertisements for  480 “Pepsi Cola Hits the Spot,”  417 perception. See advertising perception; reception perceptual fluency hummability and  687 repetition and  687 of sogos  681 in sonic branding  676 Pere Ubu  458 “Perfect Day,”  465 periodicals, gender identity construction and 43 peripheral route  13 Perlstein, Rick  610 Perrott, D.  802–3 Perry, Katy  123 Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall 143–4 personal branding  475, 795–6 of Bowie  474–5 personality popular music targeting and  802 on radio  343–4 “Personal Jesus,”  293 persuasion 822 psychological transportation and  785 Peter, Paul and Mary  135 Peterson, Marina  170, 172 Petrillo, James Caesar  147–8, 155 Pettijohn, T. F.  801–2 Petty, R. E.  698, 725–6, 767–8 Petty, Tom  212 Peugeot, sound branding of  192–3 Pham, M. T.  781, 821 Philip Morris Company  574–5 phonographs 382–3 Physio Sport  462 The Piano-Forte Magazine 44 Pickens, Jane  356–8 Pickering, A.  702 “Pilgrim’s Chorus,”  240 Pineapple Express 4

index   911 Pinex Merrymakers 344 Pink, Daniel  175–6 Pinochet, Augusto  176–7 Pirelli 763 Pitt, Brad  457 the Pixies  213 placement music  409–10 risks of  444 Plachkova, T.  722–3 Plantation Party  345 Plasketes, George  267, 555–6 play 553–4 of children  556–61 in “LEGO: Everything is NOT Awesome,” 559–62 Play 444 playlists  120–1, 125–6, 133–4 playout royalties  876 Plazak, J.  802–3 pleasurable sadness  667 pleasure, in advertising perception  735 The Plow that Broke the Plains 249–50 poetic appeal  801–2 Polanski, Roman  458–9 polar bears  559–62 political advertising  376, See also presidential campaign advertisements anger in  634–5 of Bush, G. W.  632–3 contempt in  635–8 fear in  632–4 genres invoked in  627 happiness in  628–9 negative 625 of Nixon  634–5 Nussbaum on  625–6 opera in  628 patriotism in  629–31 of Reagan  629 sadness in  631–2 of Sanders  630–1 of Schaeffer  633–4 of Udall  631–2 uncategorizable 638–9 The Political Brain (Westen)  625 polling 875–6 PolyMedia 390

Pond, R. S., Jr.  801 popular culture, repurposing of  348–9 popular music  620–1 AABA form  798 in advertisements  414–17, 437–8, 444–5, 722–36, 760, 806–7 in advertising perception  735 anti-social behavior in  801 appropriation of  416 in attention economy theory  796–807 capitalism critiqued through  447–8 climaxes in  799 credibility of  805–6 defining 438–9 earworms in  800 in film trailers  291–2 Forte on structure of  420–1 guest appearances on  805 instrumental introductions in  798 instrumental versions of  760 jingles related to  327–8, 416 Klein on use of  519 language in  801–2 licensing 868–9 meaningfulness in  801 memorability of  799–801 musical quotation in  806 narcissism in  801 personality traits in targeting of  803 poetic appeal of  801–2 predictability in  797 sampling in  806 self-focus in  801 selling out and  438–40, 447 sexual content of  802 structure of  798–9 style and genre in  802 target demographics for  802–5 tasks and activities in targeting of  805 Taylor, T., on  437 in television commercials  75–7 verse-chorus form  798 Porter, Cole  81, 421 The Positive Man 46–7 Poster, Randall  212–13 posthumanism 195–6 postproduction 74

912   index “Poverty,” 631 The Power of the Land 249 PowerPoint 749 Powers 437–8 Powers, D.  437–8 The Prairie Farmer 338 “The Preacher and the Slave,”  594 precarity, under neoliberalism  179 predictability 808t in attention economy theory  797 in popular music  797 pre-existing music  75 preferred reading  11 Preisner, Zbigniew  116 Prelinger, Rick  241–2, 248n.18 Presbrey, Frank  385–7 presence 776 presidential campaign advertisements  604, 629 digital 616–20 early history of  606–7 in early television age  606–8 jingles in  607 for Johnson, L.  608–10 for Kennedy  607–8 for McGovern  614–16 after 1960’s  608–11 for Nixon  611 for Sanders  617–19 user-generated content in  617 web videos  616–17 “Pressure Drop,”  465 Preston 43–4 Preston, Marion  142, 149–51, 154–5 Primal Scream  215–16 Prime Music  122 priming  676, 699, 781, 787, 836–41 Prince 281 Printer’s Ink 339 PRIZM system  224–5 processing fluency  13, 797 design characteristics of  689 mediating role of  686–8 multisensory 844–5 of sogos  680–4, 688–9 in sonic branding  676–7

producers 4–5 defining 25 production 16–17. See also music production software; video production film, in Detroit  246–7 libraries 75 media production project  865 noncapitalist modes of  380, 393–4 of sound recordings  382–3 of television commercials  73–6 texts layered in  391t product sound  827 propaganda 532 in Cold War  524–5 prosumers  120, 124, 137–8 recontextualization  126, 126f, 139f proto-punk 452–3 PSA. See public service announcements Psychic TV  458–9 psychological transportation in advertising  783–6 defining 776 emotion in  777–80 excitation transfer in  781 in film  782–3 future research on  786–9 musical congruity and  785 music and  780–6 in narrative ads  775–7 persuasion and  785 states resembling  776 Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance (Tan, Pfordresher, and Harré)  14, 770, 820 The Psychology of Music in Multimedia (Tan, Cohen, Lipscomb, and Kendall)  14, 16, 649, 674, 770 public opinion  605 public service announcements (PSA)  375, 524–5 for children  528–30 music in  531–6 nuclear weapons and  528–30 “Pulse Adrift,”  108 punk rock  374 advertising in  455–7

index   913 anthems 454 authenticity in  453–4 as branded identity  452–5 deconstruction of  462–7 DIY ethos in  452–5 in film industry  459–60 history of  452–3 in 1990s  457–62 nostalgia in  457–62 recontextualization of  459 selling out in  454–5 Thomas on  458 in 2000s  462–7 “Punkrocker,” 467–8 Purcell, Henry  37 purchase intention, advertising perception and  724–5, 727–8, 729t, 735 Pursuit Communications  164–5 “Push It” (song)  505–6, 508–10 “Push It: It’s What You Do” (advertisement)  56f, 57f, 505–6, 508–10 appropriation in  517–18 humor in  506–7, 510–14 othering in  514–16 Quango 216 Quantum Leap Storm Drum 99–100 Quantum Leap Storm Drum 2  99–100, 101f Quartet Productions  164–7 Queen 190 The Quick and the Dead 578 Quin, Sara  213 Rabinowitz, Josh  75, 78–9, 82, 212–13 race advertisement demographic targeting  230–3, 235 appropriation and  619 cigarette smoking and  226–7 femininity and  62–3 gender and  516 health disparities in  226–7 hip-hop and  515 humor and  507 McKoy representations and  61–3 singing voice and  62 sound branding and  194

United Auto Workers on relations of 596n.17 whiteness 516 Rachmaninoff, Sergei  135–6 racism 242–3 radio  30, 149, 354 classical music programming on  353 domestic isolation of listeners to  348–9 film trailers on  307–8 monetization of  338–9 music on  339 personality conveyed on  343–4 scholarship on  353–5 structural format issues  354–5 variety formula  355–60, 367 after World War I  338 radio advertising audience in  340 for barn dances  342–4 domestic dilemmas of  338–9 history of  338–42 imagination in  339–42 mediated sociality of  347–9 music in early  417 Radiohead  4, 550–1 Rain 250 Rakowski, S. K.  750 Raksin 254–5 the Ramones  453–5, 465 Ramos-Loyo, J.  748–9 “Ramshackle Shack,”  345–6 randomization 133f Ranger, Claude  171n.4 Rapee, Erno  240n.1, 241n.3, 620 “Rapture,” 467 Ravenscroft 38t Raw Power 460 Ray, M. L.  488–9 “Ray of Light,”  766 reaction times (RTs) in advertising perception research  707–8 IAT and  708–10 Read, Cecil  148 “Ready or Not,”  297–8 Ready Player One  296, 299 Reagan, Ronald  176–7, 313, 414–15, 614, 632–3 political advertising of  629

914   index Reality 481 The Real Jazz (Panassié)  170 “Rebel Yell,”  462 Reber, R.  675, 681 recall in advertising perception  734 background music reducing  743–4 incongruity linked to  82 lyrics linked to  81 structural characteristics influencing  747 reception 10–17 cognitive and affective responses in  646–7 models of  645–6 multisensory marketing and  648 Wharton on  11 reciprocal feedback model (RFM)  653–4 recognition 680–1 false 680 Kellaris on  690 true 680 Recollections (Stevens)  42 recontextualization  119–20, 135, 137 prosumer  126, 126f, 139f of punk rock  459 via streaming platforms  120–1 on YouTube  127–8, 130 recording. See sound recording Redes 249 The Red Mill 352 The Red Pony 575 Red Seal  384–5, 387–8 Reed, Katherine  374–5 Reed, Lou  444, 455–7, 465 Reeves, Rosser  418, 424–5 on jingle traits  418–19 referential meaning  726–7, 750, 840 Reinhard, Keith  427 relevancy, in musical congruity  758 Renfro Valley Barn Dance  342, 344–6 Rentfrow, P. J.  679, 803–5 R.E.O. Motor Company  533 repetition 808t of lyrics  799–800 memorability and  799 in musical congruity  766–7 perceptual fluency and  687 in sogos  684

Replay (Donovan)  322 Repp, Bruno  726 representation of Black people  59–60 of McKoy  51–2, 61–3 musical 9–10 naturalistic modality of  402, 403n.3, 404 self-representation in  390 Republican Party  631 Rescue Street 533–4 Reservoir Dogs 787 Resident Evil: The Final Chapter 293 Resor, Helen Landsdowne  143, 145 Resor, Stanley  145 response dimensions, of sonic branding  677 Revival 123 “Revolution,” 760–1 Reyland, Nicholas  95, 116 Reynolds, Simon  485 RFM. See reciprocal feedback model Rhapsody 121 Rhapsody in Steel 249–50 Das Rheingold 253–4 Rice, M. D.  723 Rice-a-Roni 425 Rice Krispies  425 Richardson, Bill  627 Richter, T.  778 “Ride of the Valkyries,”  240 Riefenstahl, Leni  255–6, 256n.33 Riemann, Hugo  420 Ries, Al  72, 80 Rightnour, Nathan  96–8 Rihanna 291 Riney, Hal  629 Ring cycle  253–4 Ringling Brothers  51 Rings, Michael  555 Riotto, Charles  390 Riswold, Jim  456 The River 249–50 RJD2 214 RJ Reynolds  233, 424 RKO 310–11 Roberts, Kevin  80 Robinson, Blake  100–2, 108 Robinson, Earl  591, 591n.7, 593, 595n.16, 597–8

index   915 Robinson, Jenefer  627 Robyn 213 Rock, Mick  476–7, 477n.1, 481 “Rock and Roll,”  212–13 Rockefeller Foundation  250 “Rock the Casbah,”  465 Rodeo 575 Rodgers, Nile  478–9 Rodman, Ron  6, 10, 327–8, 374, 604, 627 Rodrigo, Joaquin  128, 129f Roeg, Nicolas  479 Roehm, M. L.  760 Rogers, Roy  572, 584–5 Rolling Stone  207, 266–7, 269–71, 274–5, 463–4 the Rolling Stones  439, 757, 766 Rolls Royce  193–4 Romanticism 438 Romney, Mitt  635 Rona, Jeff  96–7 Ronnie Scott’s  235–6 Roosevelt, Eleanor  242–3, 591–2 Roosevelt, Franklin D.  242, 259–60, 376, 591, 602 fireside chats of  243–4 re-election of  591–3 Sloan on  242–3 Rooty Toot Toot 591 Roper, Deidra. See DJ Spinderella Rose, Tricia  508–9 Rosen, Craig  272 Rosen, D. S.  797 Rosenblatt, Eddie  268–9 Ross, B.  747–8 Ross, Kristine  389–90 Röttgers, Janko  124–5 Roust, Colin  534 Royal Caribbean  462–3 Royal Dutch Shell  541–3, 553 RTs. See reaction times Rubin, D. C.  726 Rubin, Emanuel  47 Rubio, Marco  619 Rübsamen, R.  747–8 Rucker, Doug  81 Ruiz, Jone  130n.17 Rupprecht, D.  711

Rural Radio 340 Ruth, N.  15 Ruttman 250 Saatchi and Saatchi  80 Sacco, D. F., Jr.  801–2 Sacks, O.  800–1 Saddle the Wind 570 sadness, in political advertising  631–2 Saenger, Alfred  362 SAG. See Screen Actors Guild sales activation messages  700 Salimpoor, V. N.  711 Salmon, C.  725 Salt-N-Pepa 505–12 as provocateurs  516 Saltzman, Harry  314 sample libraries  103–6 sampling  110, 131 in popular music  806 Samsung 198 Samuels, Ellen  64 Sanchez, Livio  81 Sanders, Bernie political advertisements of  630–1 presidential campaign advertisements for 617–19 Santiago, Joey  96 Sarel, D.  743 Sargent, Dwight S.  366 Sarvur, Gandhar  213 Saunders, D. R.  679 Saupe, K.  747–8 “Save the Arctic” campaign  547–53, 560, 562 SCAPE framework  680–1 Scarpato, Mark  464–5 Scary Monster (and Super Creeps) 481 Schaeffer, Kurt  633–4 Schafer, R. Murray  558 Schellenberg, E. G.  802–3 Schenker, Henrich  420 music theory of  423n.4 Schmider, A. L.  705 Schmitz, Homay  108 Schoemer, Karen  273 Schoenberg, Arnold  420 Schramm, H.  701

916   index Schubert, Franz  198 Schudson, Michael  515 Schultz, Howard  818 Schur, Jordan  272 Schutz, Alfred  347–8 Schwartz, Josh  216n.3 Schwartz, Zachary  592 Schwarz, N.  675, 681 Scoggin, Lisa  376 Score a Score  75 Scorsese, Martin  457 Scott, Linda  9, 415, 417 Scott, Walter Dill  12–13 scratch tracks  74 The Screaming Skull 313 Screen Actors Guild (SAG)  142, 145, 147 AFTRA and  151–4 Agency Letters of Adherence  152–3 history of  151–2 JWT and  152–3 negotiation cycle of  146–7 screen pedagogy  605 scripts 864–5 SCRs. See skin conductance responses “Search and Destroy,”  460 Sears  173, 338 “The Secret of Steel,”  102 Seducing America (Hart)  640 Seehafer, G. F.  534 “See the USA in Your Chevrolet,”  421–4 linear diagram of  422f, 423f Sega 332 Seger, Bob  10, 82–3, 442, 567 segment tagging  131 self-focus 808t in popular music  801 Selfridges 848 selling out  76, 374, 408, 436 as cliche  438 cultural autonomy in  440 defining 438–9 as fiction  446–9 Graakjær on  437 history of, as phrase  438 in indie music  439–40 music licensing and  440–1 popular music and  438–40

in punk rock  454–5 Taylor, T., on  446–7 television commercials and  212–14 “Selling Records or Selling Out?,”  212 “Selling the American President” (McGinnis) 612 semantic congruity  766 semantic differential tools  702–4, 703t semiotics  10, 373 sense of sound  819 sensory marketing  818 defining 818 genre in  823 music in  820–2 products and  827–8 senses in  819 in service environments  822–5 sensory overload  848 Sensum 711 sentiment value  877–8 Sentinels of the Republic  242–3 Serafine, M. L.  726 serial anthologies  42–4, 47 Serrà, J  797 service environments  837–8. See also in-store music musical congruity in  825–7 sensory marketing in  822–5 Sewall, M. A.  743 Sewell, Conrad  821 the Sex Pistols  453 sexual content  808t of popular music  802 Sexy Beast 466 Shaffer, Bob  637 Shakespeare, Frank  614 Shakira 209 Sham 69  462, 466–7 Shapiro, David  176 Sharma, A.  734 sheet music, of glees  42 Sheinkop, Eric  4, 212 Sheller, Mimi  190–1 Shen, Y. C.  766 “A Shepherd Once Had Lost His Love,”  46 Sher, Danny  619 Sheridan, L. P.  763

index   917 Shevy, Mark  2–3, 723 Shilcock, A.  763 Shimp, T. A.  728–33 shock technique  311, 459 Shore, Dinah  421 Shortle, Tina  468 Short Scale of Musical Preferences (STOMP) 682–3 “Should I Stay or Should I Go,”  457–9, 465 Shrum, L. J.  827 The Shuffle Demons  178–9 Shuldman, Ken  425 Shulkind, M. D.  726 Siau, Y.-M.  782 Sicart, Miguel  553 Sidereel 122–3 Siegfried 251–5 Silent Spring (Carson, R.)  557–8 Silver, Marisa  457 similarity marketing, contextualization and 122–4 Simon, Herbert  794 Simon, Paul  123 Simpkins, J. D.  415 Simpson, Frances  42 Simpson, Maria  42 The Simpsons Movie 494–5 Sin, L. Y.  781, 821 Sinatra, Frank  247, 637 Sisario, Ben  215 Sister Sledge  234 Six Glees (Webbe, Sr.)  41 Sixième Son  191–2 skin conductance responses (SCRs). See also galvanic skin responses in advertising perception research  707–8 emotions measured by  710–14 results from  713 “Skip to My Lou,”  424 slavery 61 Slayer 137–8 Sledge, Percy  457–8 “Sledgehammer,” 291 Sleeping Beauty 313 slice of life  7, 9 Slick, Grace  445 Sloan, Alfred P.  242–3

promotional films of  244–5 on Roosevelt, F. D.  242–3 Sloboda, John  14, 779 slogans 418 Slotkin, Richard  569 Smart, George  44–5 Smith, J. A.  415 Smith, Jeff  578, 580–1 Smith, John Stafford  36 Smith, Mrs.  61, 64 Smith, Robert  268–9 Smith-Connally Act  600n.25 “Snap, Crackle, Pop!,”  425 SNCF. See Société nationale des chemins de fer français social class  235, 516 glees and exclusivity of  46 sound branding and  193–4 social content ratings  877 sociality, mediated  347–9 social media  392 The Social Network 4 social psychology  13–14 applied 13–14 The Social Psychology of Music (North & Hargreaves) 723 social TV ratings  877 Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF), sound branding of  191–2 software. See music production software sogos (sonic logos)  646, 678–9 affective outcomes of  681 conceptual fluency of  681 consensual meanings of  681–2 defining 678 design characteristics of  684–6 effective 680–2 false recognition of  680 jingles differentiated from  678 melodic contour of  685 perceptual fluency of  681 processing fluency of  680–4, 688–9 range of  682 repetition in  684 in sonic branding  679 sonic personality in  682–4 subjective familiarity of  682

918   index sogos (sonic logos) (Continued) texture of  686 tonality of  686 true recognition of  680 variables in  685f solidarity labor 172–3 union 182 Soltvedt, Merethe  105–6 Sombart, Werner  381 Song of the South 362 song selection  861 Sonic branding. See Sound branding and sonic branding. sonic personality, in sogos  682–4 Sonntag, Gottfried  241n.3 Sony 462 Sony Music  389 Sony Signature Music (SSM)  389–90 Sosnik, Harry  424–5 on jingle writing  419 Sotto 109 Soulsby, Nick  280n.17 sound appliance branding and  199 consumer expectations and  837–8 defining 186–7 of engines  194, 196 as medium  186 taste linked to  841–4 in Western genre  573–4 sound branding and sonic branding  189–96, 204–6, 604, 674–5, 677, 692–3, 827 anthropomorphism in  190–1 of Apple  196 appliances and  196–9 appropriateness of  691–2 attention and  845–8 of Audi  189–91 of automobiles  189–96, 199 of BMW  193–4, 197–8 of Coca-Cola  397–400, 409 conceptual fluency  676 conceptual framework for  679–91, 688f connection establishment in  406–7 defining 674–9 design characteristics in  676 distinctiveness in  677

gender and  194 of General Electric  197–8 Jackson, D. M., on  675 of Microsoft Windows  196n.6, 693 nonmusical 406–7 perceptual fluency  676 of Peugeot  192–3 processing fluency in  676–7 propagation 691f race and  194 response dimensions of  677 roles of  679 of SCNF  191–2 social class and  193–4 sogos in  679 ubiquity of  199–200 SoundCloud comment functions on  131–2 content creation on  130–2 sound cues, in music licensing  875 sound design. See also sogos (sonic logos); virtual instruments for atmosphere  111–15 for automobiles  188 in multisensory marketing  833–50 for television trailers  306 Soundiron 99–100 sound libraries  99–100 sound logos  189–90, 216, 426, 760. See also sogos (sonic logos) sound placements  206–8 sound recording advent of  382 commercial 383 as cultural commodity  383–4 economic value forms changed by  382–7 mass reproduction of  383–4 production of  382–3 technology 383–4 The Sounds of Capitalism (Taylor, T.)  329 The Sounds of Commerce (Smith, J.)  578 sound streaming, of background music 748–50 sound symbolism  827 sound systems, in automobiles  187, 195 “Sound Work” (Peterson)  170 “Space Oddity,”  476–7

index   919 Spangardt, B.  15 Spangenberg, E.  823–4 spatial attention of consumers  845–8 in multisensory marketing  845–8 Spears, Britney  135–6 specialty lines  384 Spence, Charles  648, 827, 837–8, 843–4 Spigel, Lynn  224 Spirit Music Group  207–8, 217–18 Spitfire Audio  74, 103, 109, 110f spokespeople 74 attitude toward  734 Spotify  120–1, 795–6 content creation on  124–7 interactivity on  125–7 popularity of  122, 124–5 Springsteen, Bruce  212 Sprite 517 Sproule, Simon  464–5 SRI International  225 SSM. See Sony Signature Music Stagecoach 578–9 stage waits  415 stagflation 176 Das Stahltier 249 Stand By 348 Stand By Me 457–8 Starbucks 818 Starship 445 Stars Zorishi  196–7 “Start Me Up,”  766 in Microsoft advertisements  757 Star Trek Beyond  288–9, 291 Star Wars franchise  568 Stastny, B. J.  659 State Farm Insurance  427–31 Statista 6 Stealers Wheel  121–2 Steinberg, Brian  505 Steiner, Ralph  249–50 stems 93n.1 Stender, Linda  636 Stepp, William H.  575 Sternthal, B.  743 Steve Miller Band  457 Stevens, Richard John Samuel  41–2, 45

Stewart, D. W.  722–3, 735 Stewart, L.  800 “Sticky Song,”  464 Stimeling, Travis  548 Sting  76, 212–13 stock library music  307, 868 Stoehr, Kevin  569 STOMP. See Short Scale of Musical Preferences Stone, Fred  171n.4 Stoner, Brie  81 the Stooges  452–3, 460 Storm Choir 1 108–9 storyboarding 864 storytelling 7 Stowe, Dorothy  547–8 Stowe, Irving  547–8 Stranger to Stranger 123 the Stranglers  454–5, 466 Strank, Willem  27 Strauss, Neil  271 Strauss, Richard  375, 499–502 streaming platforms attention on  122, 795 content creation on  124–7 recontextualization via  120–1 “Streets of New York,”  355 Strezov Sampling  108–9 Strick, Madelijn  777, 783, 785 strikes, at Disney  591–2 Strong, C.  276 Strummer, Joe  457 “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,”  121–2 “Stuck in the Middle with You,”  121–2, 787 StumbleAudio 132 content creation on  132–3 interface 133f Stumpf, C.  820 subjective familiarity, of sogos (sonic logos) 682 Sub Pop  270, 276–7 Successful Television and Radio Advertising 525–6 Suci, G.  702 Suicide  453, 466–7 Suisman, David  385–7

920   index Summers, Tim  106 “Summertime,” 358 Summit Entertainment  215 “Sunrise,” 375 “Sunset Reckoning,”  98 Super Bowl  495–6, 576 Super-Breakout 328 Super Furry Animals  442 supply-chain capitalism, economic value in 379–80 Survival 531 Susman, W.  343 suspense 776 Sutherland, Marc  466–7 “Sweet Poll of Plymouth,”  46–7 “Sweet Spirit Hear My Prayer,”  53 Swell Maps  464 Swiftcover 468 Swinton, Tilda  477 Switched-On Bach 323 Symphony in F 249 sync fees  445 synchresis 287 synchronization music catered for  409 timed 408 sync licenses  14–15, 214–15, 458 as revenue stream  466–7 sync points  287 defining 307 in film trailers  287–8 synthesizers  550–1, 860–1. See also virtual instruments on jingles  174–5 Szczesniak, Tom  166, 174–5, 180 on creativity  168, 171 on unions  172–3 Tagg, Philip  400 Talking Heads  453–5, 467 Talmadge, Eugene  242–3 Tan, Siu-Lan  12, 14, 16, 649, 674, 770, 781, 787, 797, 820 Tannenbaum, P.  702 Tannhauser 240 Tarantino, Quentin  787 Target 441

Tarrant, M.  653–4 taste, sound linked to  841–4 Tavassoli, N. T.  743–4 Taylor, Ian  46 Taylor, Timothy  2–3, 5, 80, 88, 173–4, 176, 192, 373, 606 on capitalism  611 on hipness  517 on jingles  329, 417 on market segmentation  225 on popular music  437 on selling out  446–7 Ted Bates Advertising Agency  418–19 Teddybears 467–8 Teenage Dream 123 “Teenage Kicks,”  462 Tegan & Sara  213, 375, 541–2, 554–5 television in Cold War  525 Hollywood in development of  309 narrative structures and commercial breaks in 415 networks  146, 305 presidential campaign advertisements in early age of  606–8 Television (band)  453 The Television Code of National Association Broadcasters 525 television commercials  72–3 AFM on  150–1 AFTRA on  152–3 by Apple  76 Atari VCS jingles in  327–32 audience engagement with  415 brand and product in  77–8 budgets in  77–9, 304 challenges in  84–5 creativity in  86–9 directors of  443 early history of  525–6 electronic transcription in  150 emotions in  79–81 ethics of musicians in  212 for films  303–5 flow of  431 growth of music in  722–3 hipness and authenticity in  82–3

index   921 impact of  80–2 incongruous music selection in  82 intertextuality of  489 jazz musicians on  166–7 jingles in  75, 150 lyrics in  81 Marich 304 as music industry staple  213 music selection process in  83–6 needledrop music in  75 new models for  76–7 original music for  65, 75 popular music in  75–7 power of  310 pre-existing music in  75 production of  73–6 selling out and  212–14 shoots for  74 structural paradigms of  431 for videogames  322 videotaped 152–3 Television Personalities  454 television trailers and spots  303–4, 304n.2 aesthetic considerations for  312–14 cinematic trailers contrasted with  305, 318 emotional cueing in  611 history of  307–9, 312–14, 317–18 interpretation of  305–7 music in, since 1950s  314–17 in 1950s  311–14 site of consumption of  306 time constraints of  305–6 in United Kingdom  312 voiceovers in  305, 313 during war years  309–11 on YouTube  317 televisuality 306–7 Tell Me You Love Me 123 The Tell-Tale Heart 591 Temperley, D.  799 temp tracks  869–70 Terman, A. W.  782–3, 785 territories, in music licensing  873 Terry, Lee  635–6 Tesla 194–5

texture in background music  747–8 of sogos  686 thank u, next 122–3 Thatcher, Margaret  176–7 “They Say It’s Wonderful,”  357, 421 Thirteen Ghosts 313–14 This Is Civil Defense 526–7 “This Note’s for You,”  440 Thomas, David  458 Thompson, Garland  61, 64 Thompson, J. Walter  12–14 Thompson, Kristin  298–9 Thompson, Paul  108 Thomson, Virgil  250 Thorson, E.  726 “Thou Swell,”  421 300  294–5, 494–5 360 deals  208–9, 390–2 Throbbing Gristle  458–9 “Tide Is High,”  743 Time 255–6 The Time  508–9 Time of Disaster 534–5 TIMM. See Totally Integrated Music Marketing Tin Pan Alley  337, 348, 419, 421, 423 The Tin Star 570 Tiomkin, Dimitri  573–4 tobacco industry documents  223 Tomic, S. T.  750 Tomkins, Silvan  626 tonality, of sogos  686 tonic  420–1, 420n.3 Tonight 478–9 Top of the Pops 439–40 Toronto  164–5, 181 Golden Age of  172–3 jazz in  164–9, 172 music business in  163–9 studio work in  168–9 Tota, Anna Lisa  375–6, 567–8, 573–4 on hybridization  576 Totally Integrated Music Marketing (TIMM) 389 Total Recall 297 Toth, Jerry  166–7

922   index Townshend, Pete  206–8, 217–18 Toyota  461–2, 467–8 tragedy 7 Trahan, T.  702–3 trailers. See film trailers; television trailers and spots “Train in Vain,”  457–8 Trainor, L. J.  747–8 Trainspotting (film)  460, 463 “Traitor’s Motif,”  108 transcription companies  145 Transformers 292 transmedia storytelling  205–6, 542n.3 Transport Workers Union of America  366 transscansion 325n.5 transtexuality  120, 120n.4 in Coca-Cola advertisements  400–3 defining 400 Traugott, Erich  167 Treleaven, Harry  614 T-Rex 457 tritone substitution  423, 423n.5 Triumph of the Will 255–7 Troup, Bobby  459–60 Trudeau, Pierre  177, 179–80 Trudel Productions  164–5 true recognition  680 Truman, Harry S.  526 Trump, Donald  640–1 Tsing, Anna  379–81, 392–3 on assessment  382 on capitalism  380 Tundra 111 Turner, Steve  476–7 Turner, Tina  479–81 Turow, Joseph  223 on market segmentation  225 Tversky, A.  698 TV Jingle Labor and Trust agreements  150–1 TVtropes.org 489–90 Twenge, J. M.  801 20th Century  311 “20th Century Boy,”  457 Twilight Saga 214–15 Twitchell, James  606 Two-Headed Nightingale. See McKoy, Millie-Christine 2001  323, 499–501

Tyler, James  606–7 Tzanetakis, G.  763 U2  209, 213 Udall, Tom  633 political advertising of  631–2 the uncanny  58, 58n.7 Underhill, Richard  178–80 “Understanding Jingles and Needledrop” (Scott) 9 the Undertones  462 Underwood, Carrie  425 unions  363, 592–3 AAAA negotiations with  145 advertising agency negotiations with 145 attacks on  178–80 Baker, S., and Hesmondhalgh on  182 codes 145–6 decline in participation in  178–9 JWT negotiations with  142–3, 146–7 lobbying of  172–3 organization of  594–6 revitalization of  182 solidarity in  182 strikes 176–7 Szczesniak on  172 unique selling proposition (USP)  418–19, 505, 513 United Artists  310, 310n.6, 575n.1 United Auto Workers  259–60, 592–3, 595–6 on race relations  596n.17 United Kingdom  312 United Productions of America (UPA) 590–1 influence of  591, 602 music in works of  591 United States consumers outside of  753 jingles in  421 Nazis in  255–9 Wagner in  255–9 Universal Music Group (UMG)  267–8, 272–3, 277–8, 280–1 unknown artists, exposure for  408 Unplugged  271, 273–4 anniversary reissue of  277 UPA. See United Productions of America

index   923 UPA Jolly Frolics Collection 591n.6 Urban, Alexander  190 Urban Dictionary 493 Urry, John  195–6 user-generated content  617, 619 use types  873 USP. See unique selling proposition utopianism 488 Vaillant, D.  826 Valavanis, George  113 Vallen, Marc  464 Valley Town 249 Valsesia, F.  799 VALS I typology  225 value chains  392 Van Buren, Martin  606–7 VanderHamm, David  30 Van Ronk, Dave  135 Varvatos, John  468 Vega, Alan  466–7 Vegt, Emar  193 Velasco, C.  843–4 Velvet Underground  452–3, 458–9, 464 Venice Biennale  255–6 Ventura, Jesse  628–9 “Venus in Furs,”  458–9 Vercammen, M.  711 Verizon 500–1 Vernallis, Carol  553 verse-chorus form, popular music 798 vibration 187 “Vicious Circle,”  551, 551n.7 Victor  384, 385f, 386f, 387–8 video game advertising  30 children in  331 demographics of  330–2 gender in  330–1 generational appeal of  323–4 history of  322 jingles in  327–32 television and  322 video production  865–7 editing in  866–7 final cut in  867 media formatting in  867 music selection in  866

rough cut in  866 shoots in  866 Vidor, King  248, 255–6 Vietnam War  612–13 Vig, Butch  277–8 vignettes 9 vinyl records  277 sales of  203–4, 276 Virgin Records  275–6 virtual instruments. See also specific instruments defining 93–4 for epic music  98–103 GUIs of  97 music demos for  95 presets on  96 success imagery and  95–8 virtual showroom  94–5 Visa International  456 Visconti, Luchino  567–8 Visconti, Tony  485 Vittel 481–3 Vivaldi 750 The Vocal Pocket Companion 44–5 Voice of the Wild (Krause, B.)  558 voiceovers 313 Volkswagen  458–9, 584 Von Glahn, Denise  557–8 “Vote Together,”  617–19 Waelrant, Huberto  38t Wagner, Richard  25, 29, 240, 251–5, 259 in America  255–9 in cartoons  260 music of, during silent period 240–1 Waitrose 466 Waits, Tom  135–6, 212 “Wake Up and Drive,”  460–1 Walden, W. G. Snuffy  204–5 Walgreens 501–2 Walker, Nancy A.  507–8, 516 Walker, Rob  464–5 Walker Music Supervision & Sound Company 75 the Walkmen  444 “Walk on the Wild Side,”  444, 456 Die Walküre.  240, 253–4

924   index Wallace, Andy  277–8 Wallace, W. T.  726 Walton, Aaron  480–1 “Waltzinblack,” 466 Wanamaker, John  697, 697n.1 Ward, Beth  427 Warhol, Andy  456 Warner Brothers  317, 590–1 Warren, Edmund Thomas  36, 38–9, 38t, 43–6 “Watching the Daylight Fade,”  58 Waters, Muddy  457 Watson, J. B.  12–13 Watt, R.  840 Watts, Catrin  29–30 Waugh, Evelyn  484 Wayne, John  572 Webbe, Samuel, Jr.  36, 41–2, 47 Webbe, Samuel, Sr.  41, 46–7 websites. See also digital environment; the Internet layout of  94 for music production software  94–5 Weeks, Samuel  378n.1 Weezer 428–31 Wein, George  228, 233 Weiner, Matt  216 welfare capitalism  366 Well-Tempered Clavier 137–8 West, Elliott  570–2 West, Kanye  293 West, Mae  399 Westen, Drew  625 “The Western” (Colman)  573 Western genre  568–70, 584–5, 627 advertising and  570–3 Dairy Queen using  579–80 in “Herding Cats,”  576–8 masculinity in  578–9 Morricone shaping  573–4, 577–8 music of, in advertising  574–6 soundscape of  573–4 Westrup, Laurel  29 Wharton, Chris  1, 10 on encoding  2 on reception  11

WHAS-Louisville  339–40, 342 “What Do I Get,”  461–2, 465–6 “Whatever It Takes,”  629 “What Medicine Can Soften,”  46–7 “What Pleasing Pains,”  46–7 Wheaties 820. See also “Have you tried Wheaties?” Wheatley, J. J.  728–34 “The Whip-poor-will’s Song,”  58, 59f Whirlpool 198 White, Jack  213 White Flood 249–50 Whitehouse, K.  680–1 White Stripes  547 “White Wedding,”  462 Whitman, Walt  133–4 Whitmer, Mariana  375–6 the Who  204–7, 278 “Who Are You?,”  204–5, 207–8 The Whole Earth Catalog 209 A Whole New Mind (Pink)  175–6 Why We Fight 255–6 Widdess, R.  763 Wide Blue Sound  96–9 Wieden & Kennedy  455–6 Wilkins, Rick  165–9, 171, 173–4 Wilkinson, James  39 William Esty Company  424 Williams, Jay  463 Williams, John  135, 639 Williams, Raymond  4, 415, 515, 869 Williams, T. I.  766–7 Williamson, Judith  507–8, 515 Will VDC  98 Wilson, William  63 Wingstedt, Johnny  2–3 Winkielman, P.  675, 681 Winkless, N. B., Jr.  425 Winston 424–5 “Winston Tastes Good, Like a Cigarette Should,” 424–5 Winter, Ari  112–13 Wissner, Reba  375 With the Lights Out 275–7 WJZ 352 WLS  336–7, 342–4, 346, 348 WLW-Cincinnati  342, 344

index   925 Wolf, Mark J. P.  323, 555 Wolfe, Charles Hull  417 on jingle taxonomy  419 women. See also gender as consumers  26–7 as glee performers  40–1, 46 Wonder Woman  296–7, 299 “Won’t Get Fooled Again,”  204–5, 207–8 Wood, Tim  84 Worboys, Hannah  7–8 working memory  744–5 World Wildlife Fund (WWF)  775 Wrangler 440–1 Wright, Michelle  173 Wrigley Chewing Gum  76–7 WWF. See World Wildlife Fund Yalch, R.  823–4 “Yankee Doodle,”  600–2 Yates, Francesco  397–400, 405–6, 410 Yeoh, J. P. S.  733 Yerkes-Dodson hypothesis  805 Yessian Music, Sound Design, & Mix Company 75 Yonge, Elizabeth  44–5 Yonge, George  44–5 Yorke, Thom  550–1, 550n.5

Young, Lester  226 Young, Neil  212, 267, 440, 573 Young, S. M.  415, 743, 761, 768, 826 Young & Rubicam  464–5 YouTube  127, 207, 554–5, 769 content creation on  127–30 covers on  130n.17 recontextualization on  127–8, 130 television spots on  317 You Want It Darker 123 Zaichowsky, J. L.  725 Zampini, M.  827, 837–8 Zapp 234 Zatorre, R. J.  711 Zatorski, Ernie  247 Zbikowski, Lawrence  491–2 Zhu, R.  726–7, 840–1 Zielke, Willy  249, 249n.21 Zimmer, Hans  96, 106–8 Zioga, I.  706, 728–33 “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” 362 Zizek, Slavoj  494n.4 Zoolander 483 Zorn, John  137–8, 137n.22 Zuckerkandl, Victor  9 Zwerin, Michael  235–6