Although many people are burying TV - just as they buried radio - it would be too early to celebrate. The power of TV, and especially the advertising broadcast on it, is still enormous. Not only can you use it to sell products and convey messages, but you can also bring almost forgotten songs back into the public spotlight, and onto the hit lists.
Here are five commercials that might not have had the desired effect with stock music, but they did... and even the performers did well.
That is, win-win.
Diet Coke - Etta James (1996)
The original song was performed by Muddy Waters in 1959, but a year later came Etta James , and the version that Coca-Cola's agency unearthed in 1996 became the perfect "soundtrack" for what the company wanted to communicate about diet cola:
Chanel No. 5 - Nina Simone (1987)
The original version of this song was composed in 1930 (!) by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson for the film Whoopee!, and it became a true standard, meaning that almost every major singers performed it over the years, but Nina Simone's 1957 version became the best known one. However, its "second coming" only happened in 1987. The advertisement for the legendary French perfume not only brought the song back, but also gave the artist's career a new boost.
Levi's - Steve Miller Band (1990)
This song was also long overdue for a second hit: originally released in 1973, it reached number two on the charts thanks to radio airplay, and then TV. In 1990, the song was re-released as part of Levi's Great Deal campaign, and the commercials helped it reach number one in several countries.
Cadburry ''Gorilla'' - Phil Collins (2007)
Phil Collins' song was first released in 1981, and was remixed and re-released in 1988 by Ben Liebrand. In 2007, British ad agency Fallon London produced a one-and-a-half-minute - exceptionally long in the advertising category - ''clip'' for Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate, in which the gorilla plays drums and feels just as good as the customer consuming the chocolate.
Levi's - Marvin Gaye (1985)
The jeans company has always been smart in utilizing pop/rock songs for their campaigns. And here they are again: originally the 1967 Gladys Knight & The Pips classic, that Marvin Gaye sang to great success one year later, it was "I Heard It Through The Grapevine ." Marvin's version became much more successful, which is why Levi's chose it for their laundry commercial almost 20 years later.
"BONUS": Coca-Cola - The Hillside Singers (1971)
This is a longer but interesting story. In 1971, McCann-Erickson recorded a song with the New Seekerz called I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing . This was then turned into a radio commercial entitled I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke , but in this case, the TV version earned the big shot. The clip was recorded on a mountain near Rome (hence the name Hillside ), the project was extremely expensive by the standards of the time, at around $250,000 (produced in several languages, and even in a Christmas version). The spot became one of the most successful commercials of all time, but when the idea came up to release a version without Coke, the New Seekerz were no longer interested, so the producer released the song with other singers under the name The Hillside Singers . Later the original artist was also feeling the urge to release their version, so they were two on the chart at once: New Seekerz reached #7 while The Hillside Singers' peaked at #13.
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