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Combatting The Mute Button
Aug. 21st, 2009 08:58 amI posted this on a Blackbeard Blog comment thread; the subject was Tom's commentary regarding ads on Spotify, and this was my largely off-topic analysis of an old phenomenon:
There was - to my mind - a big rise in the quality of TV commercials in the mid '80s, when, among other things, rock and other forms of popular music began to be used in the commercials. The commentary among critics tended to be "Oh, noes! Our music has been irreparably violated, everything is cross-promotion, and music as a democratic project is finished." Whereas actually what was finished were various broad associations between musical styles and social divides (class and generational). Not that music stopped being a social marker - that will never happen - but it was less a marker of Sides In The Great Battles Of The Sixties (And Seventies); hence in using rock and soul and modern pop in commercials one's risk of alienating a large segment of potential customers was now far smaller. But even more important, on a practical level, was that, given the ever-increasing ownership of remote devices for controlling the TV, the watcher could hit mute, change channels, or hit fast forward (if watching a program she'd prerecorded). Previously, advertisers had a captive audience, and their goal was to hammer their message into the consumer's brain; but they could disregard whether the viewer was having a good time during the commercial, as long as the message got embedded. Now, however, commercials had to compete almost as programming. (One of the stupider beliefs about music videos was that they were fundamentally advertising, and whoah! and woe! here was a channel, MTV, devoted to nothing but advertising. Whereas obviously, if people were watching MTV on their own volition, they were treating the music videos as programming.) Not that people turned on a regular program for the commercials, but the commercials now really had to appeal. The music was one way to make them appeal, and to combat the mute button.
There was - to my mind - a big rise in the quality of TV commercials in the mid '80s, when, among other things, rock and other forms of popular music began to be used in the commercials. The commentary among critics tended to be "Oh, noes! Our music has been irreparably violated, everything is cross-promotion, and music as a democratic project is finished." Whereas actually what was finished were various broad associations between musical styles and social divides (class and generational). Not that music stopped being a social marker - that will never happen - but it was less a marker of Sides In The Great Battles Of The Sixties (And Seventies); hence in using rock and soul and modern pop in commercials one's risk of alienating a large segment of potential customers was now far smaller. But even more important, on a practical level, was that, given the ever-increasing ownership of remote devices for controlling the TV, the watcher could hit mute, change channels, or hit fast forward (if watching a program she'd prerecorded). Previously, advertisers had a captive audience, and their goal was to hammer their message into the consumer's brain; but they could disregard whether the viewer was having a good time during the commercial, as long as the message got embedded. Now, however, commercials had to compete almost as programming. (One of the stupider beliefs about music videos was that they were fundamentally advertising, and whoah! and woe! here was a channel, MTV, devoted to nothing but advertising. Whereas obviously, if people were watching MTV on their own volition, they were treating the music videos as programming.) Not that people turned on a regular program for the commercials, but the commercials now really had to appeal. The music was one way to make them appeal, and to combat the mute button.
