Yesterday we discussed Target’s “Baby Got Backpack” commercial. Today someone sent me a link to oddsagainst7even.com. It’s another new Target campaign, aimed at college-bound indie-rock fans. Bloc Party, 22-20s, British Sea Power, the Hold Steady and other bands are featured in slick webepisodes that attempt to further blur the line between entertainment and marketing. I did some googling to see if other bloggers were rolling their eyes. Urbanhonking reports:
It’s way creepy, like one of those super product placement heavy teen movies, but reversed. This time it’s more like “film placement” or something: the mock-casually arrayed back-to-school catalog and Bloc Party cell phone (it turns into a Target logo if you mouse over it!!!!) are the real stars here…As for the story itself, it seems to revolve around our Seth-Cohen-lite indie rock hero and PCU-lite wacky friends trying to find a band to play some show at their college or something.
So here it is, indie rock in 2005: a culture placement in a Target movie. Damn.
Free ringtones though!
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first comment, YEAH!
second post bitches!!!!!!
Well, this should put to rest any notion these so-called “Indie Kids” had of being more “special” than the rest of the music-listening world.
eek the movie was kinda cheesy but the end was really cheesy. nice concert footage though.
this is more hipster marketing by the guys who own Insound.
jake is a dumbass. 22-20s go with all the other #’d records.
Don’t do it Jake! I heard from the kid in the ironic t-shirt that Madison has the Herpes.
No wonder Art Brut is pissed off. They’re just not gettin’ the love from Target.
Jake’s really losing sleep over having sold his soul to a corporate retail behemoth. He is pretty ‘tuned in’ though…for me to poop on!
whoo hoo!! urbanhonking!! the best blog community in the world!!
Call me crazy, but I’m sort of impressed. The videos aren’t all that interesting but the production value is insane and most of the soundtrack (is that what you call it) is pretty good. I actually can’t stand when people get all precious complaining about how their music gets stolen. Like the music isn’t for everyone to enjoy and like the band wouldn’t want to be popular. I mean, the bands must be getting something out of this. It’s a bot of a OC ripoff but other than that I think it’s kind of cool and well done.
Plus it’s Target. It’s not like it’s Walmart. Target has always been better than the other megamegastores.
I don’t care about ads using popular songs (although, I have to wonder why the artists agreed to lend their song to M&M’s, for instance). But what is really obnoxious is when the band members themselves just become corporate shills. Unlike an ad passively using a song, these guys had to “act,” and they were willing to do it! Also, the targeting of this ad (no pun intended) is WAY too obvious, and speaks to a profound lack of marketing savvy on the part of Target (plus they’re dull).
No free ringtone for me. I think they just told me its time to get a new cell phone.
no.nononononono. these bans really put one over on the indie music community by working up buzz and then selling out at their earliest possible convenience. fucking pathetic for the musicians themselves and embarassing for their original fans.
also, posting shit like “first post” for the sake of posting it is about as lame as it gets. but somehow i’m not surprised that it occurs in response to blogs about the indie scene being sold to the embarassment that is middle america…
My friends decided it’s closer to being a rip of the tv show “Undeclared” that was on a few years ago, only more blatantly indie. Or whatever is marketable as indie.
I’m still unsure of what is wrong with the bands appearing in this. Also, I understand people thinking it’s obvious. But thats only obvious to us — elitists :) To the average college kid, this is something new. And we are the minority.
If some megastore had expressed interest in using the indie rock bands of yore for their niche marketing, would they have been so quick to sign up? Say it was 1995. D’ya think Pavement would have been in a Target ad? Then again, the internets were slow back then and Target didn’t exist yet. Still, wasn’t there some ETHOS that existed back then that wouldn’t allow anybody to shill, or am I and my notions of integrity just outdated? It’s hip to be cynical and all that, even more so back then, but isn’t anyone who appears in a Target ad kind of aligning themselves with something inherently lame? I mean, sure, they have a great ad campaign, but they’re still a place that sells toilet paper and dog food to everyone in America.
One more thing: the bands’ appearance in the Target ad is different than if they licensed their song to just any commercial. These bands are named; their image is being used to market a lifestyle. “Shop at Target and you’ll be as cool as the Bloc Party!” I think that makes it even more insidious. How brainwashed are people nowadays that this shit just passes without much comment? That people are ATTACKED for being vaguely uncomfortable with music that is sold under the guise of being noncommercial is being used in a commercial because, hey, that’s just the way it is? Scary scary.
I think to say that Target is lame because it sells dog food and toilet paper is silly and borders on being classist. I see your other points but I am much more ambivalent about the positions on them. It’s complicated. But personally I like The Hold Steady (can’t stand Bloc Party though) and I have no problem with them wanting to be more popular and wanting to see if Target can help them in that somehow.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Target, not at all. I’m just saying toilet paper and dog food are supposed to be different from music, which is, ideally, art, which ideally transcends the quotidian nature of mundane consumables. Furthermore, isn’t there something inherently classist in anything niche? Why should an “indie” band bother differentiating itself from any other band if it’s not “better” than the pablum being shoved down everyone’s throats?
Dude! don’t choke on those big words.
Dude! The first Target store opened up in 1962.
i don’t really see the difference between target pimping these artists and stereogum et al doing so… put your money where your mouth is fools.
Remember when Target started selling stuff designed by Michael Graves (or his employees, whatever)? One of the things that I thought was so cool about it is that it’s great design that is no longer the reserve of only a priveledged few who could spend $200 on a tea pot. Anyone who was pickin’ up what Michael Graves was putting down could own something of comparable beauty and design qualities.
Why am I bringing it up? Becuase I think some people ’round these parts have set elitism and anti-consumerism on the same pedestal, side by side. “the embarassment that is middle america” needs good music just as much as anyone, maybe more.
If there is something inherently classist in anything niche, then we’ve got to get good music out of that niche.
Yeah whomever compared this to “Undeclared” was right. Damnit, I liked that show and I still miss it.
Fucking Fox.
I gave up when the RA showed up. Bleh.
I gave up when Kimberly Stewart showed up. ewwwwwww
They couldn’t get Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan for the dream sequences?
http://www.mightyamy.com
sing it sister. odds against 7 is ruining my internet.
I am uncomfortable with the discomfort of non-commercial bands in commercials commercializing the quotidian of mundane commercial consumables. Pablum!
You know, if Craig Finn read this thread he’d be laughing his ass off. The hipper-than-thou Dude!s of the world are the target (heh) of much Hold Steady mockery, so I doubt he’s losing sleep over accusations of “selling out.” These fairly innocuous little ads are not the Death Of Art, Chicken Little.
That Baby Got Backpack crap is straight up retarded though.
most of these people are going to be rich and shallow no matter what. Unshock myself. yourself. I want a sandwich.
i think these ads are pretty good actually. i read an interview w/ craig finn & he said he was happy to do it. seeing how target is an MN company. support your local conglomerate
You would all shop at Target if there was one in Manhattan. Everyone’s gotta wipe their ass and feed their dog. Also, consumerism is a tango that takes two. And I believe we’ve all had a dance. So get off yer Tide box.
I watched only the first movie – and my reasoning for that was I dig the song that Target uses for the Trailer… and I know it I just can’t place it and it’s sucking my will to live.. Help.
my comments are for ms mighty…The very sites that you like to go and read about all the pop things that matter to you are paid for by advertisers. After all, the internet is free and those sites have to make money somehow, that is unless you want to pay for their content. I?ll take some funny videos and decent music, it pays for my internet. a large portion of our generation expects music to be free, and i guess you expect every piece of information on the internet to be free as well.
who carries their laptop in a cardboard box?
hey i saw the target commercial on tv, the one which flashed the names of bands shuch as bloc party and british sea power etc. well im a huge bloc party fan and in the commercials there is a bloc party song in the background and i seriously cannot find that song anywhere and i have no idea whats the name of that song dammit and its sounds like a great song! guys could u tell me, if u know, the name of that song please i beg u.
yea…target sukks
anyways anyone know what song was playing in the background of the commercial??? my eternal gratitude if you could tell me…
BLOC PARTY ROCK PARTY!!!
bloc party is so awesome it hurts.
that song is called “always new depths”
you can get in on the helicopter single
thank you for telling me!!!
Thanks Bunny ;)
i love you bunny
ok…two things. the new tommy lee album should be taking up more of your time…time spent well by making fun of that no talent ass clown. secondly…if anyone can find out the name of the actress that plays Madison on the odds against 7even ad campaign…i would be impressed. i hunted for about a half hour and…nada.
Target has a board and they sit in a room, and brainstorm ways to get YOU PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALS to think about them, visit their sites, and talk about them. and whether its negative or positive, you are all thinking about target, and in the end, thats all they want. and yes, bloc party want money and fame like the rest.
So what, Bloc Party isnt all that great anyhow. I got the ep, which showed promise, then the album and its full of songs that sound alike or bore me. I should have stopped at the ep.
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