Jue's Blog (tag:ad)

Previously on this blog I wondered about the origins of a striking electric string quartet piece in an Autodesk ad at the end of a TED video. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I found some people looking for the same thing on another blog. After a brief discussion in the comments, Sharon Jennings of APM Music gave us the answer: the mystery piece was “Cyclorythmique” by French composer Jerome Coullet. The design house who made the inspired decision to pair that piece with their ad is Remedy Editorial of San Francisco.

Anyway, that was resolved about two months after I started looking, more than a year ago, and the only reason I even remember to bring it up now is a new mystery tune.

Today I was watching TED videos again–surprise!–and spotted another ad with a sparse, modern, electric string soundtrack, this time for Barclays Wealth. It was at the very end of Devdutt Pattanaik’s talk, “East vs. West,” and unfortunately, this time I don’t even have a YouTube video for the spot. Assuming TED won’t randomly switch the ads after its videos, you should be able to see the Barclays ad by watching (which I recommend, because it’s a great talk) or simply skipping to the end of the video.

UPDATE 11/26/2009: I’ve ripped the track from the ad on the Ted site so you can listen here.

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Let me know if have any ideas about the music. Generic instrumental compositions, especially when they’re not intended for popular consumption, are very hard to pin down!

I showed the Autodesk ad to a friend and she said it was kitschy. THAT’s the word I was looking for — the original eye-candy, as German/Yiddish culture enjoyed it. Well, I love kitsch. Here’s another example, unfortunately embodying other principles people associate with kitsch (which I don’t love as much): mass marketing, rampant materialism, and exploitation of Third World labor markets. Too bad it’s still so damn fun to watch.

Probably one of the coolest ads I’ve ever seen, mostly because of the music:

This was at the end of a video of Amy Tan’s TED2008 talk on creativity (mp4 of the talk).

This video is what would happen if advertising firms were run by Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass. There is also a longer version of this spot with different music, and therefore not nearly as cool because of it.

More impressive is this video, also by Autodesk, also about the TED conference. This one has some really nice animation and a sort of Nathan-Fake-inspired soundtrack.

Hi-res versions of the 2nd and 3rd videos can be found at Autodesk’s TED2008 site. I don’t know why they wouldn’t post the 1st one too, especially since it’s the best one by far.