While I’m typing this text line by line into the computer’s writing program with a light hand, I feel a breath of wind through the open patio door, light falls in, I hear birds and somehow I can perceive everything much more today, noises, smells, colors. Why it is like that? Well, I slept well, it sharpens my senses and makes me want to start the day. Well-being depends on a good night’s sleep, folks, so I would like to share with you that I slept on a new mattress, from the excellent Seppel company, its modern three-layer composition and foam booster allow for optimal sleeping comfort…
… Well, after this passage do you already take me for the last corrupt monkey? I honestly hope so.
Because, here’s how it starts, of course I don’t have a porch, I’m writing these lines quite normally in a windowless, damp basement, I haven’t slept more than a few hours at a time for years and if a bird were to stray here, I would get the exterminator. Oh yes, and before I buy one of those mattresses that have just been advertised in podcasts, I prefer to sleep on a rectangular pile of animal carcasses from the freeway.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit too pithy, but most of the time I’m just disgusted by advertising. And people who use their media speaking position to sell you something exude boss vibes to me.
Unfortunately, it has to be said that my personal aversion to advertising is well on the way to being read as a total boomer attitude. After all, success today is defined by reach and all too many accounts just thirst to be discovered by some company as a (micro)influencer. In order to finally be able to offer the followers the free bottle of gin with a hipster label. I advertise therefore I am.
Gone are the days when die-hards like me kept blacklists of musicians who made themselves inaudible with paid brand messages. Katy Perry, for example, recently noticed on the big stage how she was widely and highly paid for Lieferando. A service company with union aversion and working conditions that are regularly criticized. But Katy Perry sells it as a hot lifestyle. You get a bad mood with the clip, don’t you?
I’m not a futurist or visionary – you don’t have to be one to state that the interweaving of original content and paid advertising will continue to progress significantly in this decade (especially via TikTok). So it’s better to get used to it. As a desensitization measure, I prescribe a rewatch of seven advertising classics with pop participation. What was funny, what was stupid, and what was just plain corrupt?
Have fun!
Smudo drives GTI (but safe!)
STORY Deutsche Post, Aldi, World Of Warcraft, Bosch … being made into a mascot for corporations and simply letting the synergies flow is simply the greatest thing for the four men of the rap-pop group Fantastische Vier. The busy Smudo acts particularly many-armed.
ARTIST smudo
PRODUCT Volkswagen GTI
YEAR OF CREATION OF THE SPOT 2009
PERFORMANCE Smudo plays a hp fanatic, but also a belt fanatic. Loose, casual, curvaceous. After this well-oiled performance, Til Schweiger already feels Smudo’s overheated engine pistons on his back. Christopher Nolan, are you reading along?! The next Batman actor talks Swabian!
ADVERTISING VALUE You immediately get the mood for an illegal street race at the docks, but the rule is still: safety first. New GTI already pre-ordered!
Ringo Starr gnaws at the edge of Pizza Hut
STORY Beatles… jeez, who were they again? Say nothing, something is ringing. I’m sure I’ll get to it in a moment, at least one of the musicians, Ringo Starr, is drumming up the old band here. What does he want to do with his old masters? Of course, dip the edges of the pizza together in tartar sauce, typical musicians! At the end of the spot, the big reunion actually happens – however, the Monkees dove in instead of the Beatles. Really to the beeping!
ARTIST Ringo Starr
PRODUCT Pizza Hut Cheezy Crust Pizza
YEAR OF CREATION OF THE SPOT 1995
PERFORMANCE Ringo Starr hasn’t forgotten anything, even after all these years he still looks as wooden and ectoplasmic in front of the camera as he did in interviews in the sixties. Stable performance!
ADVERTISING VALUE Cheese crust… a Guilty Pleasure that resonates with the taste of Stars’n’Stripes. In Germany, however, this doughy, lactose-inducing phenomenon never really caught on. Why it is like that? I have no idea, maybe a sauerkraut crust would have taken off, but Ringo’s spot certainly wasn’t the reason. This is a cholesterol mirror cabinet to dream about.
Jay Z – “Am I in yet?”
STORY Computer technology can also be boring.
ARTIST Jay Z
PRODUCT HP personal computers
YEAR OF CREATION OF THE SPOT 2006
PERFORMANCE Imagine your old social studies teacher on the Star Trek holodeck – and play the result at half speed.
ADVERTISING VALUE Cyber technology that lulls you to sleep instead of inspiring you. Jay Z takes the fascination out of the world of bits and bytes – and gives us a moment to linger with this clip. Make boredom great again. Thanks for the deceleration!
STORY “In a society where you wear colorful watches / In a society like this, I’m just in the way” (Tocotronic “Digital is better”)
ARTIST Nina Hagen
PRODUCT Pop Swatch
YEAR OF CREATION OF THE SPOT 1992
PERFORMANCE The cheeky punk bride with a real-socialist GDR aura enchants the viewers who are overwhelmed by visual impressions. She walks, she looks at the clock. Doesn’t that sound like a lot? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that. In Germany, actors have had a Bambi thrown through the kitchen window for far less.
ADVERTISING VALUE Finally you feel like asking strangers what the time is. Finally being able to experience wrists as a fetish again. Thank you watch company, thank you Nina!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC9BV5WrAYI
Collapsing hardware stores with Blixa cash
STORY The hardware store stands for building, the new buildings for collapsing. So far, so understandable. However, it only becomes brilliant when someone comes up with the idea of enmeshing these antipodes in a joint advertising campaign. And someone should say again, in the industry there is no more coke!
ARTIST Blixa cash
PRODUCT Hornbach
YEAR OF CREATION OF THE SPOT 2004
PERFORMANCE Declaiming brochure texts and other trifles in stage-hardened pathos? Why not. When celebrating words like “drilling angle control”, Blixa Geld seems as if Ben Becker were a bit more elegant and yet still capable of self-mockery.
ADVERTISING VALUE So much Metawitz was rare. And maybe you squandered your pop-loving and impractical hipster life after all because you always thought DIY wasn’t cool. The clip here is like a wakeup call from Hornbach and Blixa. So order the Kärcher leaf blower right away – if not out of conviction, then at least out of gratitude for this advertisement.
The hipster advertising icon – MC Fitti with the beard
STORY We hip-hop kids in particular always break something. Oops, the bong falls over; whoops, you kicked down a vase while breakdancing; oh dear, the burning blunt set the curtains on fire and the entire district burned down – what a cost!
ARTIST MC Fitti
PRODUCT LMV insurance
YEAR IN FORMATION OF THE CORPORATE SONG 2019
PERFORMANCE Others are rappers, MC Fitti is testimonial. Whether it’s Fritt Chew Strips, Volkswagen, Adidas, Warsteiner, Saturn, Philipps … your grandmother would also market this beard for eight euros. Maybe he already has.
ADVERTISING VALUE How bold can advertising be? The answer to that is clearly MC Fitti. A passionate scammer and the perfidious thing here is that the song sounds like a Deichkind rip-off, but it’s actually pretty awesome. But MC Fitti uses him for the dark side. He should have insured himself against this constant urge to make subculture into a product…
Roberto Blanco and the 100 Days of Sodom
STORY You can also advertise things beyond consumption. For example for the German Alzheimer Society.
ARTIST Roberto Blanco and Sodom
PRODUCT Awareness for dementia diseases
YEAR OF CREATION OF THE SPOT 2011
PERFORMANCE This spot refers to Roberto Blanco’s hit “A little fun must be”, which was once held in the collective memory by an advertisement. Sing “Tiramisu von Zott” to the melody of “A Bit of Fun Must Be”, then you’ve got it. Blanco now comes from a scene without fear of contact with commerce, has already advertised this and that. And also plays the absent-minded grandpa here as if he were himself.
ADVERTISING VALUE Sodom and Roberto Blanco perform together. It’s a similarly pithy combo to Blixa Geld and the hardware store – and accordingly similarly memorable.
There are many more examples that are both wonderful and horrible, but we are not talking about the Mainzelmännchen here, unfortunately it has to end at some point. Still, I don’t want to end this trash parade without pointing out David Bowie, who once sold all his alter egos to a single garish Vittel commercial. When it came out that the groundwater in the eponymous town was getting scarce and Nestlé kept pumping anyway, the Vittel brand was taken off the market at the beginning of this year. Fortunately, David Bowie did not live to see this further Nestlé PR meltdown.
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PS: Advertising in a completely different matter
Just discovered: The incorruptible hardcore band Amen81 from Nuremberg already anticipated an impressive amount of right-wing conspiracy myths on their great album ATTACK OF THE CHEMTRAILS in 2018. Right-wing conspiracy myths with Reichsbürger flair, which you only really became aware of during the Corona period – and which are now often part of everyday life in “political discussions” on social media. Anyway, on this pre-pandemic record, Amen81 dissect swearing about implanted microchips, chemtrails, a thought police, etc., all while sounding like a well-sorted hand grenade. I can only recommend it. As once Samy Deluxe the GEZ…
What happened until now? Here is an overview of all pop column texts.
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