Selling Products With a Swelling Score

When the figures on a graffiti mural came to vibrant life in a Coke commercial that debuted during the Olympics last month, they leapt, rolled and scaled buildings to the accompaniment of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” a movement of Edvard Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” Suite.

A Chevron commercial about the efficacy of drones gets a shot of adrenaline from that bane of piano students, Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture, once used to sell Quaker puffed cereal, is now featured in an ad for Myrbetriq, a drug for treating an overactive bladder. Meanwhile, a Geico ad makes its point with an assist from Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 3 — and a clueless percussionist shredding a triangle solo.

Classical music has long had a place in commercials. The Western canon’s aura makes it just the thing for pitching luxury brands like the Lincoln Motor Co., whose 2017 holiday ad unfolded over a track of Shostakovich’s swoony Waltz No. 2.

And just as Looney Tunes cartoons used chunks of Brahms, Rossini, Smetana and Chopin as oh-so-civilized foils for the mayhem of Bugs Bunny and associates, commercials have often juxtaposed “this supposedly educated music with foolishness and tomfoolery,” said David Muhlenfeld, vice president and creative director of the Martin Agency.

Consider the Applebee’s ad that features a robed choir paying full-throated reverence to riblets and tenders (“All you can eat … $12.99, all you can eat”) to the tune of Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna,” from the cantata “Carmina Burana.” Or the 2015 Oreo Thins ad that was backed up by Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” otherwise known as the theme from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

But these days, ad agencies are using classical music as more than a jokey device or a signifier of wealth and sophistication. A snippet of Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel” threads through an ad for the rugged but hardly luxe Jeep Cherokee. And Coke, while a classic, is the most democratic of beverages.

It may have something to do with pop fatigue.

“The name of the game is to stand out,” said Jon Pearce, chief creative officer at Hudson Rouge, a boutique ad agency in the WPP network. “If you’re going up against a lot of commercials with contemporary music and energy, the way to get attention is to land on people’s ears in a different way.”

Some products split the difference. A Delta faucet ad that began airing in 2016 uses “Habanera” from Bizet’s “Carmen” to underscore the elegance of the fixtures in question, and an electronic dance beat shows how hard those fixtures work. A 2017 Mountain Dew ad, set in an underground garage, led off with a hip-hop rhythm, then segued into Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor.

And there is this: Classical music can be cost effective. “There are so many production catalogs that have lush orchestral versions of all these songs that don’t require purchasing rights because they’re in the public domain,” said Chris Clark, director of music at Leo Burnett USA. “It’s wonderful to be able to open the classical music treasure chest.”

Agencies also benefit from what composer and arranger Robert Miller calls the recognition factor.

“The thing about ‘Hall of the Mountain King’ is that there was something profoundly familiar and legitimate about it that was going to allow the animation to come to life in a way that brand-new music may not have allowed,” said Miller, who scored the current Coke commercial as well as several other Coke ads that used classical music. As Karl Westman, director of music at Ogilvy, put it: “This music immediately pulls the switch for us. Even if we’re not mavens we understand it because it’s so deeply seated in our daily lives.”

A half-dozen years ago, Westman deployed the “William Tell” Overture in a commercial for the deodorant Dove Men+Care and, more recently, the “Anvil Chorus” from Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore” in an ad for a technology client.

Another plus: Bach and friends aren’t around to object. “It’s fantastic working with a dead composer,” said Hal Curtis, creative director of the ad agency Wieden & Kennedy. “They like all your comments, they listen to all your ideas, and they do exactly what you want.”

The risk for advertisers is turning off the audience. “People could be intimidated by classical music or feel they’re out of their depth,” Muhlenfeld of the Martin Agency said. There’s also a hazard of being just a bit too obvious: reflexively trotting out Delibes or Debussy to provide the soundtrack for a scene that shouts “tuxedo territory.”

“Classical music will always do the job,” Clark of Leo Burnett said. “But as a creative professional, you don’t want to just say, ‘Let’s use “Peer Gynt,"’ and then press play on it. You want to alter the instrumentation or juxtapose it with something contemporary. You want to show people how indelible these compositions are and how enjoyable in different contexts.”