Maybe It's Their Lucky Ad Campaign

This one may not resonate with anyone but my fellow Texans, so feel free to scroll down if that's not you. But I think the story is interesting no matter where you might reside.

I listen to a lot of talk radio during the day, and one of the common advertisers on my favorite station is the Texas Lottery. They've had many ad campaigns over the years, with varying degrees of success (anyone else remember Scratchman? I thought he was annoying as all get-out, and I wasn't wild about all the ads that had various winners throwing cowboy hats in the air, yelling "Yahoo!" and basically demonstrating all the stereotypes we don't need other people to have of Texans); the "Jackpot" song from a few years ago was not bad, but the current one, "Maybe It's Your Lucky Day," is really engaging.

What they've done is used original music that is heavily inspired by other pop songs, starting out with other subject matter that doesn't even make the nature of the commercial apparent until the "maybe it's your lucky day" part sneaks in. So far, I've heard three different ones: A female vocalist whose song is mildly reminiscent of the '70s song "Brand New Key" by Melanie (but with a much more pleasing voice); a male-voiced song that's a dead-ringer for Fountains of Wayne; and a very Beatlesque song that ran before Christmas and changed the tagline to "maybe it's your lucky holiday."

There's apparently nothing to be found about the campaign on the lottery's website, and a bit of searching finds but a few tidbits of information: The "girl song" is evidently sung by Camille Cortinas of Dallas, from a band called Fishing for Comets, and the whole campaign is done by the agency Juniper Music and Sound Design, but I can't find anything but the old "Jackpot" song on their site. (Likewise, on Cortinas' site, there's no record of the lottery commercial, but there are enough clips to convince me that she is indeed the singer.)

At any rate, it's nice to hear some advertising that's not only not annoying but actually includes really good music.

IN THE COMMENTS: An appearance by Camille Cortinas herself! And welcome to everyone who's finding this post via all the different search engines; feel free to have a look around.