Obviously the notion of what constitutes selling out is constantly changing and evolving in the modern digital era. Many already feel that the concept of “selling out” is an antiquated one that no longer is relevant in this accelerated age.
Times are changing and the standards for what is acceptable have loosened. Feist in a ITunes commercial? Fans are fine with it. Sure people like Brad Pitt still make their cell phone commercials with people like Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson overseas, but when North American audiences spot them — and inevitably they do — the creativity involved usually supersedes any notions of rich people getting further paid for endorsing lucrative products. The people involved are usually applauded and sure, we suppose that’s fine.
There’s no doubt that advertising, marketing and commercials are becoming cooler and therefore more acceptable to those that soak them in, because they’re being targeted in a manner that speaks to them (hip songs, hip bands, cool actors, etc.). But there are limits to whoring yourself out, how the culturesphere feels about it, and how they’ll react.
So Zooey Deschanel’s website, commercial and originally-written song for Cotton and its Fabric Of Our Lives campaign?
We might not go so far to say sell-out, and surely some will not bat an eye over it, but writing a jingly song about the product? Isn’t that a little much? It’s really not that much different if she wrote a song for New Coke is it? (listening to the lyrics of the song that essentially shill the product). She’s not the only one either. Miranda Lambert and Jazmine Sullivan are also part of the ads, but obviously Deschanel’s a much bigger name, especially since she has a new movie coming out, “500 Days of Summer” — arguably an film geared to indie kids and the same demo — in a few short days (July 17 to be exact).
So sell-out? No, not really and some will probably just go, “cool! new Zooey Deschanel song!,” and overlook any eyebrow raising issues wholesale, but we’d be lying if we didn’t say we wanted to take a bath after watching the commercial and hearing the song. Be your own judge we suppose…