Cezary Skubiszewski, who co-composed ads including Carlton Draught’s “Big Ad” featuring a choir of 250 Australians and a Victoria Bitter ad with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra playing bottles, said ads should be recognised as part of Australian music culture. “It’s a big part of the history,” he said. “I always use Australian musicians even if I do international ads.”
These days, he said, budget constraints led advertisers to rely increasingly on prerecorded songs that were proven hits. “They know it was a hit, so why risk commissioning a composer from scratch? They used to have more jingles when people would be commissioned and write something,” Skubiszewski said. “Some of them became hits.”
Meanwhile, artists can be cautious about which advertisers they support. “That goes to where you want your brand,” Flight Facilities’ Lyell said, adding the band had knocked back offers and negotiated conditions for their songs in the past.
Still, an ARIA award for advertisers teaming up with musicians could encourage more career-changing partnership for artists, he says.
“Our first song Crave You, my parents only realised and kind of were relieved when they heard our song on a Myer ad,” Lyell says. “At that point they were like, ‘oh, thank god, something is happening’.”
The ARIA Awards will be broadcast live on November 24 from 7.30pm on Nine and 9Now.
