Commercial Success Issue #40

Selling out gets you indie cred

By Jenny An
Published: August 1st, 2009 | 12:00am

Glistening steaks, perfectly seasoned shrimp, and juicy bloomin’ onions can only mean one thing. Well, two: it’s either time for dinner or time for Of Montreal.

The infamous 2006 Outback Steakhouse commercial, featuring a reworked version of “Wraith Pinned to the Mists and Other Games,” made expected waves in the music community. “It caught me off guard, but I thought the lyric changes were funny,” says indie fan Cassi Saari, 19.

But those lingering strains of “let’s go Outback tonight” weren’t so harmless for all fans. For Ami Li, 20, “The inclusion of indie music in such a mainstream commercial signaled not only the death of the music, but also the death of my identity as a lover of indie music.”

Li’s opinion — at one time the collective cry of the embattled indie masses — is quickly becoming one of dissent. Now that spots in Apple ads have jumpstarted the careers of the Fratellis, Feist, and the Ting Tings, the term “selling-out” just isn’t uttered with the same vitriol it once was.

In a new spot for Cotton Inc., indie darling Zooey Deschanel pokes through thrift store racks and pushes her bike as she sings about “the fabric of our lives.” Nothing’s being swept under the carpet here — the ad is posted on Deschanel’s Facebook page and it’s been receiving considerable fanfare.

“Bands that would not consider licensing before would now suddenly consider licensing,” says Rani Vaz, Senior Vice President and Director of Music and Radio Production at BBDO, an award-winning agency that’s owned by the Omnicom Group (which also owns DDB, the agency that produced the Deschanel Cotton Inc. spot).

It makes sense. The record industry has been on deathwatch since the advent of digital music, and commercial licensing creates an additional source of income for independent bands. And the artists aren’t the only ones strapped for cash: Licensing lesser-known music is also less expensive for advertisers; and the economic reality is also impacting how the fans react to commercial licensing. “Sure, [artists] enjoy playing music,” says Saari, “But if being in a band is their full time profession, making money of course comes into play.”

Beyond just dollars and cents, Vaz thinks we’re becoming more accepting of discovering music via commercials. “Everyone has exposure to a lot of music. Everyone has an iPod with thousands of songs on it and everyone is very close to music these days and each in their own way.” With music blogs and iTunes offering thousands of snippets at our fingertips, people are now more open to unknown artists. “There’s a cache with someone that hasn’t been heard by a lot of people in your spot,” Vaz says. “In the old days, the known entity had more cache, and I don’t think it’s that way now.”