Plenty of commercials use popular and recognizable music to help sell wares. UPS' brilliant white board ads use The Postal Service's Such Great Heights. Cadillac abused Led Zeppelin's Rock and Roll before finally switching to Stars by the alternative rock band, Hum.
What drives me up a wall, however, is the lengths companies go to when they can't get the genuine article. Either they won't pony up the coin required to use the real song, or the musicians (for reasons of integrity or otherwise) won't sign off. What do we get instead? We get Heineken's misguided Keg Can ad ripping off of Daft Punk. We get Dodge trying to cop a commercial contact buzz off of Apple by using a bouncy guitar/mandolin tune in their latest Caravan commercial (I can't find a clip as of this writing).
I know why they do it. I don't expect more than 0.05% of ads to be original. I still can't stand it.
What drives me up a wall, however, is the lengths companies go to when they can't get the genuine article. Either they won't pony up the coin required to use the real song, or the musicians (for reasons of integrity or otherwise) won't sign off. What do we get instead? We get Heineken's misguided Keg Can ad ripping off of Daft Punk. We get Dodge trying to cop a commercial contact buzz off of Apple by using a bouncy guitar/mandolin tune in their latest Caravan commercial (I can't find a clip as of this writing).
I know why they do it. I don't expect more than 0.05% of ads to be original. I still can't stand it.