Sonny's Cozy Tavern

Social insights for successful brands come from real people in real places. Sonny's Cozy Tavern is one of those places. It's like every small-town beer joint across the country. The kind of place where you can learn more in a couple of hours by sitting with the characters at the bar than you could ever hope to learn in a hundred consumer focus groups. Good brands start at Sonny's.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Sunday, Bloody Hypeday

It always amazes me when marketers use popular music in completely inappropriate context.  

I remember just after 9-11 when Levi's used portions of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Fortunate Son as a patrotic backdrop for a "let's all-feel-good-about-America" TV spot selling jeans... problem is, Fortunate Son is not a patriotic, feel-good-about-America song. It's an in-your-face-America protest song written during and about the nation's angst with the Vietnam War.

Now, with NFL on NBC, we get another totally inappropriate misuse of a popular song. Showing cinematic slow-motion action of hard-hitting NFL action to hype football, NBC accompanies it with a soundtrack of U2's Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Great song, but it's about REAL PEOPLE DYING in a REAL WAR -- specifically, the clash of British Soldiers and protesters in Northern Ireland on what has been called "Bloody Sunday." To make it about football, and comparing the NFL to war is just too much.

I'm disappointed in NBC... and in U2 for allowing its song to used in this way.

Is it wrong? Is it dumb? What do you think?

- Butch
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