Monday, November 26, 2007

Those Penny-pinching Admen

I've noticed a new trend in television commercials. Take the Cadillac commercials. Initially they featured Kate Walsh and the awesome guitar part from Hum's classic song 'Stars'.
Now they feature Lance Reddick from the Wire and that one really awesome episode of the X-Files--and a clip with the same effect, the same atmosphere and general Hummishness, but a sound-alike clip nonetheless, that likely costs Cadillac none of the royalties they had to pay for the HUm clip.
Likewise a Walmart commercial features an instrumental from Badly Drawn Boy's great About A Boy soundtrack, and later broadcasts of the commercial run with a sound-alike, with the same twinkling glockenspiel as the original without any of the residuals to Badly Drawn Boy.
Way to thrift it up, Madison Avenue!

4 comments:

Jeff said...

Which X-files episode was Reddick in? I don't remember one and I couldn't find anything on IMDB. Better yet, which one did you think he was in?

Joe Mondello said...

I vividly remember him being in the episode 'Unrequited', about the guy who can hide in your blind spot. Then I thought he was the ambassador from 'Teliko', about the melanin vampire. Now I don't know where I first saw the guy, but I doubt it was any of the shows on his filmography from the nineties, none of which I've ever watched except 'The Nanny'.

Jeff said...

Maybe Oz? That's where I first saw him.

Joe Mondello said...

It was OZ. I think his skulking undercoverness just gave me an X-files vibe.