If there’s any silver lining to the collapse of record sales, it’s that TV jingles got way better. National brands with advertising dollars are the new best option for a great song that must be heard by the world. And the creative team at BBDO New York recently hit a musical home-run by building an entire campaign around this market reality for their client, Lowes home improvement stores.
Check out the amazing songs below around which executive creative director Wil Boudreau and his Lowes team built visuals. The core human value expressed by all the spots, and the official title of the campaign, is “Never Stop Improving.”
“Naked Eye” performed by Oxford
“The ‘Never Stop Improving’ campaign was always conceived as a music-driven campaign.” explained Boudreau. “The idea was to differentiate the brand with breakthrough, category-busting creative and surprising music that you’d seek out and download. The music helps us position Lowes as an innovator and trend setter. Our initial presentations literally had our clients dancing in the aisles.”
“I Make My Own Sunshine” performed by Alyssa Bonagura
“None of the songs were commissioned. They were are all existing songs discovered by BBDO’s in-house music department who reached out to various contacts they have in the music publishing world.”
“Typically, we searched for two things: 1. A relevant lyric that supported our commercial (ie “Don’t Stop” or “Tear It Down Then Make It Beautiful”) and 2. A tone and tempo that matched the mood of the creative.”
“Make it Beautiful” performed by The Phantoms
Just as recording artists historically have had to balance the perceived needs the record-buying public against their own vision, so will artists of the future contend with they’re being told is “what’s hot in the licensing world right now.” I’ve funtioned as the middle-man in these transactions and would offer this nugget of wisdom to the musician seeking a major advertising sync: Make sure your music smiles. If you’ve got something dark to say, save it for the bonus tracks. What major corporate brands, and arguably the whole world, needs right now is some positivity……that’s all you, man.
A big thanks to Wil and his creative team for making TV commercials as cool as the TV shows.
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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace with over 18,000 tracks online where media producers, video producers, filmmakers, game developers, businesses and other music buyers can license high-quality, affordable royalty-free music from an online community of musicians mbielenberg@musicrevolution.com. 
