In season 2 of Mad Men, Sterling Cooper advertising agency brings in two young creative superstars to help Martinson Coffee – an old iconic brand – reach a younger audience. Here’s the dialog:
“We don’t want to be told what to do,” says the hip, twenty-something copywriter. “That’s over. We want to find things for ourselves. We want to feel. Martinson is a great coffee. It’s delicious. It’s hot and it’s brown. That’s all you need to say. We don’t need more than that.”
The client is then presented with a breezy, bossa nova jingle that brilliantly transports any listener to South America (*We couldn’t find it on YouTube. Sorry).
Client: It’s a jingle right?
Young Hip Copywriter: It’s a song. It’s a mood. It’s a feeling.
Client: Where are the pictures that go with this?
Don Draper: If you sign, we’ll show you.
The client signed. And they were wise to do so. Cheerios recently made the same good decision when they launched this infectious, life-affirming TV commercial jingle (sorry….song) performed by Boston-based rapper Latrell James:
Cheerios Commercial: Good Goes Round Anthem
It’s awesome when brands muster their massive resources to just remind us we’re ok. Or to quote Don Draper in
Mad Men‘s pilot episode as he pitches a feel-good campaign to Lucky Strike cigarettes:
“Advertising is based on the one thing. Happiness. You know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the ride screaming with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is ok. You are ok.”
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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace with over 50,000 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. 
