Jose Gonzales - Sony Bravia Commercial

José González
Heartbeats

All right, here is a division of Sony that actually gets it. By “it” I mean how to market products through a visually stunning commercial that also features memorable (and good) indie music. This is the commercial for the Sony Bravia with music by José González.

All too often, companies completely drop the ball on offering up the actual video or music to their commercials. I never understand this. I mean, why in hell would you not want people to play your commericals OVER AND OVER on their computers because they think it’s cool? Why in hell would you not make it clear somewhere what band is playing the song in the commercial (and for those “made for commercial” songs, make preparations in case you see a lot of people liking that music). Screw the rights concerns and such, you’re a big sprawling company; figure it out by throwing money at it or something.

Anyhow, I’ve been wanting to write about the Bravia Commercial for awhile. Not only can you play and download the commercial in different sizes, but they even made an entire website (bravia-advert.com) devoted ONLY to the commercial that includes Behind the Scenes information, music downloads and pictures.

Why would you want all that info? Well, it is a visually stunning commercial. You have to see it for yourself but it basically involves a gazillion (250,000 actually) multi-colored Superballs simultaneously bouncing down a San Francisco Street. They let all of them go at once. The effect is unreal… I couldn’t believe this was not computer generated but it’s definitely real.

So, to complete their commercial they set it to a really awesome track by indie folk troubadour José González (note the spelling, it’s Gonzalez with a “Z”, not Gonzales). The track is called “Heartbeats” and is off his first album Veneer. Quite a few folks have compared him to Nick Drake and the resemblance is uncanny at times. People are going to say Iron and Wine as a reference point too. But I think his mostly fingerpicked acoustic guitar music can stand on it’s own for it’s sheer beauty and timelessness. And it certainly didn’t hurt to have it in this commercial.

OK, the only slight hitch in all this is: I’ve never seen this commercial on TV. I believe it’s only been shown in Europe. One of these days we’ll get some good commercials over in the U.S….

by Palebear