The Power of a good television commercial

There’s a commercial currently playing for a new title for X Box, Gears of War, and while we’re sure the game is going to be a huge Christmas hit. The real winner might be iTunes, which has seen a spike in the downloads of Mad World, a song from the soundtrack to Donnie Darko.

The song has gone from past novelty to current day hit status, built only on the fact that it forms the soundtrack of a thirty second commercial.

The original song goes back as far as the early Tears for Fears days of the eighties, though it didn’t have the benefit of a hot new video game to spur on the sales in those simpler days of radio and that newfangled thing the video channel.

Version after version has come along since; the current variation has a techno variation pushing the synthesizer to the max, accompanied by those eerie vocals to develop the haunting sound.

And while Roland Orzabal will probably collect the royalties on the lyrics, it’s the latest one seems to be the one resonating with the music buying crowd these days, iTunes features it on a cinema and movies compilation, and with the heavy play of the television commercial the song climbed to number one on November 27th and since settled around third spot after a busy weekend of downloads.

The talk today has been how the iTune bubble may have popped, with collapsing sales and an expected further drop in the pass through clicks of the site as the next year dawns. However, you would be hard pressed to believe that today judging by the success of a relatively unknown song heading into the start of November.

The advertising concept for the Xbox game has been a pretty impressive launch, the music seems to set exactly the right tone for the game they're selling. It's done wonders for the theme song, it will be interesting to see the sales figures for the game after Santa makes his rounds.

EA Sports: It’s in the game, they’re on the shelf!

Everyone has heard about the Sports Illustrated cover curse, a famous athlete finally achieves sports immortality by becoming featured on the cover of the most popular sports magazine in the world. The next thing he knows, injury strikes and the career takes a sideways step during convalescence.

Well, the SI curse is old school; welcome to the digital era and something that is starting to worry NFL players just a little bit. The Madden curse, yet another NFL star has suffered an injury after becoming featured as the cover photo athlete on the Madden 07 game box.

Shaun Alexander, star running back of the Seattle Seahawks is on the indefinite injury list, due to a fracture in his foot. Alexander’s team mates may be a tad superstitious with Alexander’s departure from the line up, the Seahawks lost and lost big to the Chicago Bears on Sunday night.

The Madden Curse goes back to 2000 and a cover featuring Barry Sanders, before the game had even hit the store shelves Sanders had announced his retirement from pro football. 2002, brought Dante Culpepper to the cover and then off to the medical room with knee problems, that after struggling all season long.

Marshall Faulk was selected for the 2003 cover, who promptly suffered an ankle injury and failed to rush for 1000 yards and never did again. The 2004 game belonged to Michael Vick; the star Falcons quarterback who fractured a fibula on the day after the game was delivered to the store.

2005 was a curse free year, but 2006 brought misery to Philadelphia, where cover star Donovan McNabb had a horrible year and suffered a hernia in the first game and never regained his form.

With Alexander adding to the legend of the Madden curse, it will be interesting to see what they do in 2007, there could be more than a few players asking to take a pass on the privilege of sharing the marquee with big John!