Music as a Vehicle

Music and car advertising have had a long and illustrious working career together. Those that have stuck in my memory include the 1988 VW Golf ad with Alan Price crowing about 'Changes', which was followed a few years and an upgrade later with the one hit wonder of the Bluebells proclaiming the Golf to now be 'Young at Heart' following those Changes. Also the Peugeot 406 using Berlin to 'Take My Breath Away' while burning a sugar platation followed by the beautifully dreamy 'Dream a little Dream of Me' by the Mama's and Papa's while dreaming of waking next to the equally dreamy Kim Basinger.

However the only sophistication shown my car manufacturers use of music for years seemed to be Renaults 100 odd remixes of 'Johnny & Mary' by Robert Palmer, where they fit model, target audience, visuals, media choice all to music across many different territories (only the Clio launch in the UK) Clink this link to hear a montage of some;

http://www.box.net/shared/mzg8groo4c

All this brings me to cars and music now, because the relationship seems to have matured. While there are still examples of car ads as music videos flogging us a dream - the new Jaguar ad springs to mind - a few have used music as the vehicle for expressing the brand concept. The obvious recent and rather blunt example of this is the Ford Focus's 'Beautifully Arranged' ad.

I'm sure this is the sort of ad that has a warmer reception from the public than from the industry, but I do agree with the Scamp's commentary that the pun 'Beautifully Arranged' is a claim rather than a truth and that the music is "as dull as dishwater". Music is all about emotion, excitement, dispair whatever its magic, and we all have an extensive memory of beautiful arrangements when this peice fails to compare to those the Truth is lost and the Claim is born.

I was drawn to a car that does succeed to use music as a vehicle, that is the new Audi TT (not personally as I think they are all driven by hairdressers) But the original TT proclaimed to be "Designed under the influence of Jimi Hendrix", something I could believe when I first saw it and before the Nicky Clarke wannabe's got their hands on them. So when it came to the upgraded model the truth was it had been remastered, and seeing as music had been the original influence it was music that was used again by remastering classic tracks by modern artists. The website is down now but there was nice link ups with Xfm's remix show to release the tracks and this Observer music monthly feature all about classic cover versions, all good. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/ttremastered/story/0,,2166706,00.html