Pitching Product

Brandweek, Nov 6, 2000 by Rickey Henderson

Has this new aspect of copyright exploitation substantially changed the way that publishing execs license for film & TV? Zomba's Lambert observes, "Business happens at a much faster pace; the ad people cut to the chase, tailoring the search to exactly what they need very quickly. It's not a huge change in the way we operate, just a little more finely tuned and focused."

Mary Beth Roberts, VP of catalog development at Famous Music Publishing, says, "I make the rounds and see that everybody gets promotional CDs of our work. We've just made a new eight-CD package of our copyrights designed for the creative executives at agencies."

Recent uses of Famous catalog items include a re-recording of the 1938 classic "Heart & Soul" for a Quaker Oats campaign and multiple campaigns (DiGiorno Pizza, Colgate toothpaste and Altavista.com) utilizing Bernard Herrmann's shrieking "Psycho" film score. Roberts adds, "The creatives know they can come to me with a concept and ask, 'What songs do you have?' I'm on their list of folks to call in such an instance. The important thing is to get the music to them so they can sort through a selection and make their choices. Creatives don't take kindly to being told that they should use a certain song for a campaign."

Ted Spellman, associate director of licensing at Fox Music Publishing, has witnessed considerable synergy between the worlds of film music and TV advertising. One of his copyrights, "Zoom, Zoom, Zoom," was recently used in a Mazda campaign; the song had previously only been heard on the soundtrack of the film "Only The Strong." Spellman points out that Danny Elfman's score to "Edward Scissorhands" has become popular with advertisers; the film's music was rescored for Chanel commercials directed by filmmaker Luc Besson. "Now that there's an ad campaign in conjunction with the film's home-video release," Spellman adds, "the spots have spurred more ad inquiries."

WORKING TOGETHER

"Agencies get the idea and come to us," points out Brady L. Benton, director of film, television and new media at peermusic, Inc. "We supply [agencies] with catalogs; they don't like to get unsolicited ideas for campaigns." Of the history of song usage in commercials, Benton recalls, "One of the first ones was a Burger King campaign with lots of '70s songs; peermusic had a song in the Spanish version of those ads." Agencies aren't shy about picking more obscure songs, either, Benton notes, citing the California Milk Advisory "peanut butter and dog" ads, which used "Cachito," a Latin copyright from the '40s recorded in the '60s by space-age bachelor-pad artist Esquivel.

"Agencies have realized that it's best to work with the publishers to solve a creative problem," says Scott James, senior VP of music for motion pictures & television worldwide at Universal Music Publishing. "Music from Europe is being used more often in domestic campaigns." James cites tracks by Fat Boy Slim and by the French group Air as examples of the latter trend, but also is proud of The Gap's use of Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story" songs.