Monday, July 5, 2010

Apple Ads That Launched Careers

I saw this article on Mashable recently and thought it would be good for a repost. Apple has had a great effect on a number of music careers thanks to the artist's songs being included in their television advertising. Let's look at a few.
  • Jet - "Are Your Gonna Be My Girl." Used for the iPod campaign of 2003 and 2004, the band went from unknowns to selling more than 3.5 million copies of their Get Born album thanks to this commercial.


  • Feist - "1, 2, 3, 4." Part of the iPod Nano campaign of 2007, over a half-million people searched Google to find out what the song was after it first aired. Her YouTube plays also jumped 1000%, and her digital downloads doubled. Here's the link to the music video.
  • CSS - "Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex." Talk about the ultimate in user generated content, British student Nick Haley made a fan-boy video for the iPod that caught the attention of some Apple execs. They then flew him out to the States to do the official version with their ad agency. Funny thing is that Microsoft used the same tune for a Zune commercial a year previous that did absolutely nothing. Of course, Google searches for the song and band were over the top as soon as it aired.



  • The Ting Tings - "Shut Up And Let Me Go." Used for the iPod 2008 campaign, the band had already had some success in the UK, but the commercial was their breakthrough in the States. The song eventually hit #1 on Billboard's Hot Dance club chart.



There's a school of thought that says that exposure on television doesn't necessarily help your career, but these artists have found otherwise. Of course, the musical landscape is far different in 2010 than it was in 2003 or even 2008.

For more examples see the full Mashable article.

-----------------------------------
Follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

1 comment:

Ark said...

Nice. Great repost.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...