Published on
May 13, 2024
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In this Breakdown, we're looking at ✨ Pump Up The Jam ✨ - Technotronic’s gigantic 80s house banger. Why? Because somehow two different campaigns dropped this week using that same track. Which is an odd coincidence to say the least.
A new season, an old jam.
M&S’ new summer clothing campaign tells the UK to “keep you cool”, led by a cool, chic, jammy and pumped up TVC. We see a series of sunny holiday scenes with the cast looking effortlessly cool wearing pieces from M&S’ summer collection. And they’re all pumping up inflatables like nobody’s business.
It’s an incredibly simple ad that leans veeeery heavily on the track. A track that sets the tone and the tempo of the ad, and works as the earworm that keeps the poppy visuals coming back to mind over and over. Pair that with some equally poppy OOH, radio and whatever else M&S have cooked up, ad you’ve got the makings of advertising best practice heaven. Make it memorable, and brand the f**k out of it.
M&S and Mother didn’t seem to concerned with landing a particular message. In some ways, they set themselves a harder task - create and catch a vibe. Summer, pool, fun, cool, relaxed, exciting, sassy, cheeky. Walking out into a beach club where the DJ is playing 80s techno anthems and all eyes are on you. It works, but we have to ask: pumping up inflatables is quite specific - what came first, that ‘consumer insight’ or wanting to put this track in an ad?
Fine, this ad launched a while ago. But still, another campaign using the same track in the past 6 months? Weird…
And therein lies my issue. Pump Up The Jam is a certified jam. If you watch all these ads, the song will be stuck in your head all day. But it will always dwarf the ad it’s featured in.
If the point of using a big anthemic track is to stay memorable, is the entire campaign not scuppered by someone else using the same track? Does your marketing effectiveness become a straight battle of media spend - but now with those outside your category?
Truthfully we don’t know. But this Mini ad is basically the same as the M&S ad, just with an electric car in it. Eh, that’s being harsh - the Mini ad has some really cool visual effects and motifs centred vaguely on a product feature. And there were apparently 1000s of online and social bits. But like the M&S ad, there’s no real message. Just a vibe - and here, it’s clear that the vibe is trying to say, “Hi, we’re Mini, we’re cool and electric.” I haven’t seen any sales reporting since the campaign, but I am curious about how much work the track puts in.
Back to the present day, but with something slightly different this time.
Rebellious wine brand Jam Shed dropped a whole music video featuring a remixed version of the 80s jam. Last month a grandmother sporting a leopard print outfit became a bit of a sensation after dancing for hours cheering on runners at the London Marathon. One track, Technotronic's Pump Up the Jam, was the most shared video, which Jam Shed decided to jump on.
The remix is familiar but “modern”. That seems to be the guiding light (presumably expressed with much more punch in a slideshow presentation somewhere) for the Accolade Wines-owned brand. Tom Smith, the marketing director of Accolade Wines (who also own Hardys and Echo Falls), feels they need to shake up the wine industry:
“We’re not going to recruit new people to the category just by talking about vintages and chateaus that exist in France.”
Smith said that back in October, and about this latest campaign for Jam Shed, he had this to say:
“The wine world is often viewed as traditional, serious and complex, but Jam Shed recognizes consumers are looking for brands who can deliver enjoyment and fun, free from constraints and rules and helping to keep things simple. The brand isn’t afraid to go against the grain, celebrating how it stands out with its unapologetically different attitude, which goes against category conventions.”
Ok, so ‘think different’ is the broad idea, pointed squarely at a stuffy category that thinks too much of itself. Enter a remixed 80s banger. Makes sense.
Except it also doesn’t. Call me a borderline-alcoholic-move-on-from-uni kind of wine drinker, but it’s only a category associated with tradition and complexity if you’re in that part of the category. There is no talk of hints of apricot or legs or bouquets when most groups of friends gather round a bottle of wine. I’d go so far as to say that it’s as simple as people like wine that tastes ok and doesn’t cost more than the food you’re drinking it with (or is under a tenner, if it’s to be drunk without food before a night on the town).
In that case, we return to memorability. How frequently do people remember your brand when they come to a supermarket shelf. And for wine, where there is far more choice than most shelves, this is particularly important. People will buy the last bottle they got a compliment on, or a bottle their friend bought that seemed a little bit fancy, or a bottle with a yellow Clubcard sticker, or a bottle with a pretty label. Wine-buying heuristics can be complex, and so if this campaign wants to sift through the complexity and drive pure recall - well, why pick a song that gets used so often?
Yes, it got popular on social media in a trend that the brand wanted to hop on. And yes, it’s a banger. But there are millions of bangers. The fact that there’s a linguistic overlap between “Jam Shed” and “Pump Up The Jam” cannot be the only reason to rely on a song that has been used in ads so many times. What about “Jam of the Year” by Prince? Or “Slow Jamz” by Kanye? Or “Traffic Jam” by Weird Al? Fine, they’re not as catchy or as boppy, but you catch my drift. Arbitrary choices can lead to arbitrary results.
Music is incredibly powerful at encoding memories more deeply. Plenty of studies (here’s one!) show that music can evoke potent autobiographical memories in everyday life. But it’s hubris to think that an ad is one of those memories. Sometimes it works (Phil Collins is sadly now a chocolate advert for an entire generation), but most of the time, it doesn’t. Music catches attention, develops some largely undirected emotional response, and can build associations between two points in space and time. It doesn’t, however, eternally attach a beloved, decades-old tune to your logo.
Rant over. And this isn’t pointed at Jam Shed really. The music video is entertaining - much more than can be said for plenty of other work. The song fits, it’s incredibly distinctive for the category, and there’s a social media-shaped reason for its selection. And it does the job of capturing attention (if you ever see the ad) and, like the previous two ads, communicating some kind of ‘vibe’.
The point is that if you’re going to use music to essentially carry a campaign, you need to simultaneously take personal taste out of it, and jam it back in. Music can and will evoke memories - maybe consider which ones you want to evoke, rather than focusing on creating some yourself. If you want 30-somethings to buy wine for when they’re about to party, could you be led too far astray if you had a look at a few 30-somethings’ Spotify playlists called “Pre-drinks”? Chances are you won’t find Pump Up The Jam.
But then again, maybe that’s the point.