Complicated copying machines

Turning on the television last night to catch The Daily Show, I had to flip through a few channels to get to Comedy Central. As I flipped, a commercial caught my eye and I stopped. Actually, it wasn’t the visuals that grabbed my eye, but the song they were using. I immediately recognized it as “Complicated” from one of my favorite Rolling Stones albums, Between the Buttons, released in 1967. The ad was for (if I remember correctly) Lexmark photocopiers and printers. This struck me as really weird – using a Stones song that most people aren’t even familiar with to try and sell office equipment. Maybe they couldn’t negotiate one of the songs that have been played to death on classic rock/oldies radio:

We feel that "Brown Sugar" and "Start Me Up" would be ideal, but they are both out of our price range.”

“Well, consumers already associate those tunes with Microsoft and that rum drink that had the stupid ad with the cartoon mosquitoes that was running several years ago. How about “Jumping Jack Flash” or “Honky Tonk Women”? Or, if you want to do something edgy, “Sympathy for the Devil” is available.

Hmmmmm…..those are good, but still priced a bit too high. We really want to use a Stones tune; we’ve found that they test well with office managers in the market for a new copier. However, our budget is limited. Is there anything we can use? I’m writing an amount on a piece of paper….

Oh, well, let’s see….there’s not much that you can use for that price. Okay, I’ve found a few that we can let go at bargain rates – “Emotional Rescue,” “Dandelion,” and, uh, what the hell, “Complicated.”

Not much of a selection there…we’ll take, what was it called, “Complicated”? I’ve never heard of it, but it has to better than the other two! It’s either that, or look into using a Gerry and the Pacemakers song…

Personally, I’d like to think that their first choice was “Miss Amanda Jones,” but it had already been snatched up by a cell phone company/online broker/fast food chain.