TV Commercials and Popular Music

Television commercials and catchy music have been hand in hand since TV ads made their debut in the 1940s. But since the 1980s, the use of popular music in advertisements has become an increasingly prevalent method in influencing the viewing public into buying products.

February is an especially big month in television and commercials. Three of the biggest events are on the air: the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards, and the Academy Awards. This is when the advertisers unleash their latest ad campaigns. Take this ad from Crystal Light, which features a song by Grammy awarded artist Estelle, commissioned especially for the commercial.



Catchphrases like “money back guarantee”, “recommended by 4 out of 5 doctors”, have a new brother in “exclusive download”. Estelle’s reputation as a Grammy award winning singer is being used to sell a powdered sugar beverage. The line between art and commerce has become indistinguishable. Which begs me to ask, where do we draw the line between art and commerce?



John Lennon would no doubt be rolling in his grave if he knew his song about political and social upheaval during the 1960’s was being used to sell shoes. Especially a shoe company that has heavily contributed to the controversial use of sweatshops labor, who's workers could definitely use a revolution. Memorable music in commercials is used to empower the persuasiveness of the advertisement. A public relations firm inserts a popular song into a commercial, and the unconscious emotional feelings we have toward that song are transferred into the product they are selling. And if we watch enough times, much like Pavlov's dog, we are conditioned to believe that the emotional response we are feeling comes from the need and desire to buy that product. I’m uncomfortable with the idea that every time I hear Revolution by The Beatles, I might think about how “revolutionary” Nike’s shoes are rather than the cultural revolutions of the past.

The widely acknowledged father of public relations, Edward Bernays, nephew of Dr. Sigmund Freud, founded the practices of PR in attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious. Bernays is responsible for getting bacon and eggs cemented as the “American breakfast.” He also masterminded breaking the taboo of women smokers, by hiring models to smoke in front of the cameras at a women’s rights rally. He openly used his uncle Sigmund’s psychoanalytic ideas for the benefit of commerce, arguing that the manipulation of public opinion was an essential element of democracy. So in essence, that’s the point of advertising and public relations; to use our cultural and social history to invoke an emotional response toward a commercial product, even if that product has no relevance or has not made a contribution to that part of our cultural history.


Observe a classic Pepsi commercial, and examples of their latest ad campaign:





I shamefully admit that at one point, I have sung “you’re the next generation”, rather than “Billie Jean is not my lover”; the commercial is legitimately that memorable and persuasive, with some obvious help from the King of Pop. The joy and nostalgia you feel watching the new ad campaign provokes equally positive and powerful emotional responses, all thanks to our friends at Pepsi, a soda pop company.

When it comes to using arts and culture as a means of financial gain, I feel particularly blessed to avoid this moral ambiguity at KCTS9. PBS and its affiliates do not air commercial advertisements. Instead, we feature the underwriters and funders of our programs before and after our programs; non-profit foundations, local organizations, and others, whose direct contributions to the station (including yours) allow us to give the viewing public, commercial free viewing and unfiltered content that you care about.

When you watch PBS for long periods of time, and then switch over to commercial television stations, you can feel the stark difference between PBS and the bombardment by the plethora of corporations wanting your attention, your loyalty to their brand, and your money. But when you’re a paying member of KCTS, you not only pay for the quality programming that you come to rely on day after day, but you also pay for the omission of advertising.