Free For All: Music and Marketing

From a young age I’ve been playing video games: from sports games, shooters, to adventure games and more. Video games have been a big part in my life and I will always have the memories of playing them whether it’s the high points of beating a game or the low points of realizing that I’ve wasted a whole day because of my gaming habits. In my opinion the best parts of the video game experience is the setting, ambience and feeling you get while immersed within the game. There is no better way for a game to instill a specific feeling into the player then to deliver a great soundtrack and sound effects.

I will always remember the soundtrack to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (one of my personal favourites). Songs like Cyclone by the Dub Pistols, No Cigar by Millencolin and You by Bad Religion shall forever be engraved in my memory. Let’s not get the idea that it’s only songs that make for great sound in a game but it's also the original compositions made for game ambience. The Final Fantasy series has always been known for it’s great music and I can tell from personal experience that if I hear any of the series music, I’ll know where it’s from.

Because of my background in marketing, after listening to this music I’m wondering: How has marketing used this to its advantage?

Right off the bat I remember Apple’s marketing for the iPod. Almost everyone will remember the original iPod commercials featuring Jet’s “Are you Gunna be my Girl”. Another one that comes to mind is TELUS’s commercial featuring “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”. Music and advertising have always been tied in many ways. When creating an advertising campaign one of the main goals should be to create a memorable campaign. Whether it’s creating a song specifically for a campaign like McDonalds’ “I’m lovin’ it” or taking an existing song like “Come Fly With Me” in the WestJet commercial, it has been continuously proven that great music makes great advertising. Maybe the music industry should jump on this, but that’s another story for another day.

I know this guy gets it: