I Want My MTV

1981

Date: 1 August 1981 (channel launch); March 1982 (campaign launch) · Place: New York City · Figures: George Lois, art director · Bob Pittman, MTV co-founder · Les Garland, MTV programming chief · Mick Jagger, first celebrity spot · Tags: AdCampaign, Catchphrase, Shibboleth 01. The Cable Holdouts MTV launches on 1 August 1981 carried by very few cable operators in the major markets. Manhattan does not have it. By early 1982, with affiliate uptake stalled, Bob Pittman and Les Garland hire art director George Lois to flip the carriage strategy from supply to demand. Lois pitches a single line: I Want My MTV. The viewer is the lever; the cable operator is the target. 02. The Shibboleth Spot Lois films Mick Jagger first, in a single take, instructing the camera: I want my MTV. Pat Benatar, Pete Townshend, David Bowie, and Stevie Nicks follow within weeks, each delivering the same six syllables in their own voice. The spot ends with a phone number for the local cable office. Affiliates report thousands of calls a day. Within eighteen months MTV is in the top ten US markets. The line becomes a catchphrase the way the Beatles' name is a catchphrase: by force of repetition by celebrities who matter more than the product they are selling. "If you don't get MTV where you live, call your cable operator and say: I want my MTV." — campaign tag, voiced by Mick Jagger, March 1982 03. Citation Loop Dire Straits releases Money for Nothing in 1985 with Sting singing the phrase as a hook. The song wins the 1986 MTV Video of the Year. The ad campaign for the channel has become the lyrical content of a song aired on the channel. The structure, celebrity-as-shibboleth demanding access to the product on the audience's behalf, is repeated in every Got Milk and Just Do It campaign for the next two decades, and is the template the influencer economy of the 2010s automates. Sources • Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks, 'I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution' (Dutton, 2011) • George Lois, 'Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent)' (Phaidon, 2012) • Museum of the Moving Image, MTV campaign archive, accession 1982-1989