Apple’s iPod ads between 2001 and 2012 achieved that rare thing in advertising and sync – they became genuine cultural moments. More than that, they also became, like the Levi’s ads of the 1980s, enormously powerful sync opportunities and sales drivers.
New acts like Feist, The Ting Tings, Jet, The Bird & The Bee, Wolfmother and CSS all benefitted from the enormous lift that appearing in an Apple ad gave them. On top of this, acts that normally shied away from commercials, notably U2 and Coldplay, were drawn in and had their music used to push Apple products.
Time moves on and the iPod has been retired, but Apple still continues to use music to shift its devices. Maybe the ads don’t seize the zeitgeist like they once did, but when the world’s most profitable company uses music in its advertising strategy, it still has an enormous impact.
Despite his position as Lord Antediluvian Of Analogue, Jack White is still happy to have his music appear alongside the latest electronics, in this case the Apple Watch Series 7.
‘Power of My Love’ was first recorded by Elvis back in 1969 and covered by Jack White as the B-side of his own ‘Lazaretto’ single in 2014, but the release of the Baz Luhrmann Elvis biopic earlier this year has, once again, revived interest in Presley and his music. Especially as the use of ‘Power Of My Love’ in the film melded Elvis’s original recording with White’s vocals.
Peter Raleigh, President of Raleigh Music Group, told Synchtank this summer that they got a brief from Apple last November for songs that “had certain keywords like power, love, and strength” and White’s cover of ‘Power Of My Love’ is one they put forward.
“They said, ‘Well, actually, we were thinking of using him for this campaign so it’s great that he recorded this song,’” he explained, adding the company already had an Apple connection, placing the Elvis song ‘There’s Always Me’ in an ad pushing group FaceTime on iPhones in 2018.
“We always look to get placements for the less obvious songs in a catalog,” added Raleigh. “There are probably about 10 Elvis songs that most music supervisors know, but then there are a hundred others that are terrific and could be used in various ways.”
As with Johnny Cash’s ‘These Are My People’ appearing in a Volkswagen ad in 2019, this is a great example of a non-obvious song being used to broaden our understanding of the true depth of a major artist’s catalogue – stretching far beyond the greatest hits.
