Okay, time for an omnibus response:
Several reasons: 1) because, given the intricacies of music copyrights and the mendacity of the music biz, it isn’t always a safe assumption that a band still controls those rights, or indeed ever did. Some musicians get screwed, and most of the rest get royally screwed… and some screw each other over when they break up or experience roster turnover or whatever. 2) Because after years of being screwed over, if the artists get an offer to sell out for a commercial or movie placement, who am I to say they shouldn’t? Maybe they’ve got some hospital bills to pay… 3) Because even if said long-screwed artist tries to evaluate the placement (for its coolness quotient, integrity or artistic merit), it can be vexingly difficult for them to do so, even if they’re lucky enough to sell out to people who try to accomodate their concerns half-way; and 4) because I still adore EW&F and just felt like cutting them some slack. Just as I did with respect to the corporate minions who do the grunt work to craft the CGI graphics… I pitted the Chase executives (“the suits”) and the overpaid ad execs, image consultants, etc., who I feel are responsible for that shitty commercial on a conceptual level, and who oversaw its development and greenlit it for regional consumption.
I don’t recall seeing that [magazines, mostly?] ad before. But now that you mention it, I may be inviting more ridicule, but those blades of grass do look rather blocky and rectangular, don’t they? If the Starbucks ad was meant to remind people of the WTC (and it very well may have been), then at best it’s a clumsy homage, not in the same league as, say, the Supertramp Breakfast in America cover that re-imaged Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty so cleverly. The key difference isn’t quality, though, but context and intent – the difference between cynical appropriation of a national tragedy and a cheeky homage free of any tragic or political associations to graft on.
Called me out on both counts. For central 'Jersey purposes, “tri-state” usually substitutes PA for CT, even if NYC-based media usually disagree. I wasn’t sure OTTOMH how the ad went, third-state-wise, so I just went with one. I’ve caught the ad since. The graphics don’t dwell on the CT side (I’m not positive if it shows CT at all) and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t reach PA at all, even in the high-elevation wide angle bits. It’s hard to tell, what with the weird angles and editing, but I think it doesn’t get farther east than Queens in the near-street-level cuts and, in the concluding wide-angle shot, a chunk of Long Island. It doesn’t help matters that there’s no map-like state borders in the graphics (with each state in a different color, of course)… It also didn’t help my post that I was eating dinner, saw the commercial, got steamed up, and wrote up my post *without seeing the ad again * while I was pitting it.
And as for my using “PN” instead of “PA,” that was a brain fart.
and
Au contraire; there are professionals whose job it is to manage corporate branding and massage the public’s perceptions of these companies. I’ve seen, up close and personal, how corporate executives agonize over the semiotics and feelings evoked by product packaging, commercials, etc. – both from inside the development process and in connection with a consulting firm that specializes in focus-group research. Trust me: there is no detail in connection with a product image or corporate image, however seemingly trivial, that someone isn’t responsible for shaping and controlling. Every choice of color, graphic shape, pattern, font, and so on is selected for a perceived reason, however half-baked – in the belief that it promotes impressions of newness, dynamism, force and strength, or reliability, integrity, continuity with an established product line, trustworthiness, economy, etc. While their semiotic choices sometimes fail to secure their desired goal, it isn’t for lack of trying.
(These images are also run past a legal team to preview for copyright problems; if your product packaging sports a dynamic swirl, say, you want to ensure you’re not giving Nike a basis for a lawsuit, or Coca-Cola, which has long maintained and defended their trademark “Dynamic Ribbon Device”. It can all get very tricky!)
One technique of these focus-group gurus is to turn out the lights and have everyone lie down and even take a short nap (just like in kindergarten!), and then write a story or narrative involving the product or brand in question. The researchers are not looking for conscious, reasoned evaluations of the product’s merits; they’re soliciting consumer narratives to uncover emotional key words, to better massage their message on a purely psychological level. They couldn’t care less if you just bought that product for thirty cents less than a competing brand in your local supermarket; what they want to know is that the product makes you feel wistful because your mother used to use it to clean the kitchen when you were a little kid, before she died on cancer (and your clueless father married your stepmother, who preferred a different brand, natch), and every time you use the product, its distinctive smell reminds you of those carefree years back in the '70’s…
Now, whether anyone can guarantee that such research can help shape an ad campaign that will reach a certain demographic of the American public is another question, but that’s one of their methods and they (and the corporations who contract for these services, at considerable expense) believe in their efficacy.
A bank commercial may have a narrator touting a logical reason to choose that bank over the competition, and they may even be right. It may well be the case that Chase has more locations than ever before, with more ATMs than the competition, etc. etc. But the makers of the ad are probably banking that its greatest effectiveness lies with whatever touchy-feely buttons they can push, via symbolism, music, mythic themes, cultural allusions, generational identity, or whatever – because none of us operate as Homo economicus, the outmoded model of rigorously rational human behavior touted by economists of a bygone generation. We are, rather, emotional, often irrational creatures, who can latch onto brands for sentimental reasons in our youth and remain true to them throughout our lives. We are sometimes more loyal in our brand choices than we are to our philosophies, political orientations, and our lovers and spouses. We are just that silly. And we continue to make ill-informed, emotional economic choices throughout our lives, acting on ill-understood impulses to retain our youth and sexual vitality, to be popular, to be successful and make lots of money (or at least to fake it), and so on…
And that’s why Chase’s appropriation of WTC imagery is so odious (in addition to the crassness of exploiting the symbols of a sacrosanct tragedy): viewed analytically and consciously, no one would ever accept the Chase subtext and conflate any bank with the national [really, international] tragedy or with NYC, but that’s what the ad seeks to do on the subtextual level. As for just how it’s supposed to work in Chase’s favor, they probably have the market research test results indicating it does in some way, probably by further cementing the link between “Chase” and “NYC” and “America” – again, mostly on that emotional level – to get more New York-area people to bank with them.
Of course, corporations are only human after all, and they’re fallible; the advertising and marketing types even more so, perhaps, than the average suit. That last batch of Super Bowl ads didn’t impress the public much overall; and corporations burn through millions of dollars developing products or ad campaigns that are doomed to fail (New Coke, anybody? And would you like an RJR “smokeless” cigarette with that?).
The ad’s “Tribute in Light” imagery is, to me, pretty fucking obvious and, pardon the pun, transparent in its purpose. What more do some people need to see the connection, I wonder; thousands of little American flags? However tacky or ill-conceived some of the post-9-11 memorials and *mementos mori * were, I can’t help but respect people’s need to express their grief in a time of tragedy in whatever way that works for them, and to extend that respect to their expressions. The Tribute in Light shouldn’t be considered hands-off with respect to advertising because of its sublime artfulness (or withheld for lacking it), but because it was the city’s first stab at a memorial (however ephemeral, by design) and represents the feelings, and loss, of so many. And incidentally, I found it plenty moving. Maybe I’m just too sentimental or aesthetically unsophisicated to snicker at it, but it gave me a big lump in the throat every time I happened to see it.
Neither. Real trolls tend to rack up far more posts per day than I do, methinks. (And how does pitting a commercial translate into trolling, anyway?) BTW, if it’s crusty, it should be biopsied or excised, although yours will probably respond well to soap and water.