The World Cup has been with us for over a week now but it’s not just football matches that have kept us music supervisors entertained. There has also been a battle of the brands and with it a deluge of high budget football-themed adverts. The best and biggest of the bunch is of the course Nike’s “Write the Future” ad:

But what about the other adverts? We’ve been looking at a couple of match ups on the run-up to the World Cup.

Coke vs. Pepsi

Both brands start this match with a sense of fun but you get the feeling Coke have more conviction from the off with a strong use of actual match footage. Pepsi must be disappointed with themselves after trying to no avail to get their players to act…no doubt we’ll see plenty more acting from the players during the games! Coke then double their efforts with an online campaign to inspire viewers to upload their own celebrations and its 1-0 to Coke.

Never ones to be defeated easily Pepsi attempt to strike back with a heavily African influenced track, but it seems the pace is all wrong as Coke counter with their own African influenced track that is far more evocative and memorable, 2-0 Coke. The exposure of “Wavin’ Flag” means we’re all singing along with Coke’s ad, whilst Pepsi’s remains distinctly forgettable.

Pepsi continues to battle on and has one final chance with their use of a very strong cast. The big name players such as Henry and Drogba never fail to grab our attention (2-1), although they lack the flashes of skill we’ve all come to eagerly anticipate from the Nike ads. While the familiar faces draw us in, the music certainly doesn’t…an unfortunate end result for Pepsi.

Final Score:  Coke: 2, Pepsi: 1

Matt Lee, Music Supervisor
soundlounge

Music is one of the most valuable tools at an advertiser’s disposal. In 2006, the top 100 US advertisers splashed between $150 million and $2 billion just on sound-enabled media, such TV ads and the Internet, according to the Association of National Advertisers. In the UK, it is estimated that in 2008 the spend on acquiring copyright music for synchronization hit £60m ($98.8 million).

But brands have worked to understand how a particular target group, with shared values and aspirations, forms a loyalty to a specific brand. They have figured out how to manage and measure how we respond to color, texture, lighting, and other apparently visceral stimuli. So is sound simply the next frontier?

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