I'm pulling my hair out and you should be, too. Wrigley has commissioned hip hop performers (I'm not going to call them artists anymore) to re-make their jingles. And then releasing them as songs. Putting them on albums. Watching them rise to No. 4 on the Billboard chart. All before revealing they are, in fact, delivery systems for gum.
The campaign was conceived and executed by Mr. Stoute, a former senior executive at Interscope Records who counts rapper Jay-Z as a partner in his business. The idea was to connect the hit song and the jingle in listener's minds. That way, Mr. Stoute says, "by the time the new jingle came out, it was already seeded properly within popular culture."
There are a ton of folks out there whose expertise in marketing, advertising and sociology (not to mention law) far exceeds my own, so I hope you all chime in about this ridiculous development. It makes my skin crawl to watch the gasping behemoth that is the modern music business (multinational corporations) further pervert an already herpetic art.
Republican deregulation in the 80s (that continues today under both Dems and Republicans) eliminated the limits on how much advertising programming could contain, and the requirement that the ads be fully disclosed to the audience. But we're past the time when advertisers can tell us that ads don't exert a subconscious pressure on viewers, and if we don't protect ourselves, and our kids, from their presence we will continue to be a nation of idiots driven by some guy whose livelihood depends on selling bits of crap that nobody needs, or a war that nobody wants. That can't be a progressive value.
I can't even wrap my brain around all the reasons this is jacked up. I just returned to LA from Tahoe after spending a week working on my novel with my writing group. To go from spirited discussions about the relationship between literary criticism, contemporary novelists and book critics to reading this Wall Street Journal article about some bonehead commissioning jingles and passing them off as pop songs (which is the artistic equivalent of selling pop tarts masquerading as white bread to diabetics) took me from zero to sixty in like .0005 seconds flat. Is there anybody at the wheel anymore????
Tom Carrabba, executive vice president and general manager of the Zomba Label Group, which includes Jive, says label executives initially had qualms about releasing and promoting a song recorded at an advertiser's behest. "But the song was so potent and strong. That overruled us being maybe a little hesitant," he adds.
I know the FCC sold us down the river on "product integration" -- this is when a product becomes a part of the storyline, like ET's Reeses or, more recently the Versa placement in the NBC HEROES TV show -- but when you've got morning "news" programs putting ice cold cups of [fast food company]'s product on the desk during the newscast --
The arrangement does raise questions about potential conflicts between the intended message and news content. The ad agency that arranged the promotion said the coffee cups would most likely be whisked away if KVVU chooses to report a negative story about McDonald’s.
"If there were a story going up, let’s say, God forbid, about a McDonald’s food illness outbreak or something negative about McDonald’s, I would expect that the station would absolutely give us the opportunity to pull our product off set," said Brent Williams, account supervisor at Karsh/Hagan, the advertising agency that arranged the deal between McDonald’s and KVVU.
If that did not happen, "it might lead to the termination of an agreement" to appear on the show, he said. KVVU, for its part, said it would continue to report truthfully and honestly about McDonald’s. Mr. Bradshaw said the station would remove the cups, just as it would remove spot advertising from a newscast for any advertiser who is the subject of a negative report.
emphasis mine</ </p>
-- there might need to be a class-action lawsuit to resolve this. Imagine the news desk having to contend with this expectation and still be trusted to report fairly:
"I’m kind of relying, my client is relying, on just the inner workings of that station," he said. "Not that editorial would ever give a heads-up to sales or be expected to give a heads-up to sales, but these are professionals. They do realize that some businesses’ brands, some businesses’ reputations, could be at stake in terms of how commerce and news are interacting here."
Uhm, yeah, and this protects Freedom of Speech, how??? How can we be expected to remain a vigorous society of free thinkers when those thoughts are censured and influenced by stealthy commercial interests? It's hard enough to make a living as an artist as it is, but the bar for remunerative creative expression is being manhandled by multinational corporations.
The Wrigley's situation involves performers commissioned to create new jingles then passing those jingles off as songs. I'm not at all clear how this doesn't violate the Sponsporship Identification Rules*
Mr. Brown is one of a trio of pop stars enlisted by ad agency Translation Advertising, a unit of Interpublic Group of Cos., to update the images of three of Wrigley's best-known brands.
The campaign includes spots featuring R&B singer Ne-Yo doing his own take on Big Red's "kiss a little longer" jingle. And "Dancing With the Stars" regular-turned-country-singer Julianne Hough recorded a twangy version of Juicy Fruit's "The taste is gonna move ya."
But Mr. Brown's "Forever" is the most ambitious part of the campaign. Mr. Brown was commissioned to write and sing both the pop song and a new version of the Doublemint jingle, introduced in 1960.
First, Mr. Brown updated the jingle and recorded it with hip-hop producer Polow Da Don. Then, during the same Los Angeles recording sessions in February, paid for by Wrigley, Mr. Brown added new lyrics and made a 4½-minute rendition of the tune, titled "Forever."
In April, Mr. Brown's record label, Jive, released the song to radio stations and digital download services as a single. After the song became a hit, Jive added it to his 2007 album, "Exclusive," and re-released the album in June. "Forever" reached No. 4 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart last week.
[snip]
The campaign illustrates a deepening of the ties between pop music and advertising. Rappers frequently mention luxury products like liquor or cars in songs, and occasionally serve as paid spokesmen for the brands. And for McDonald's Corp.'s 2003 "I'm Lovin' It" campaign, the burger chain, with the aid of Translation Chief Executive Steve Stoute, enlisted Justin Timberlake to write and record a song using the slogan as its chorus. But the song was never released on one of his albums.
My head hurts. Please write the FCCand your local reps about this deplorable practice. Please support the WGA and SAGin insisting that advertisers provide real-time notificationto viewers when products are "integrated" into the storylines of television programming.
I purposely did not cover the most recent heinous use of paid advertising -- the pentagon propogandists -- since it has been covered hereand here, but suffice to say these are all on the spectrum of things that trash the first amendment.
** A good resourceI found while trying to calm myself down.**
* The statement from the FCC Commissioner regarding what the FCC is doing:
STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS
Re: Sponsorship Identification Rules and Embedded Advertising, MB Docket No. 08-90.
The fundamental premise of our sponsorship identification rules is that the American public is entitled to know who is trying to persuade them. That premise applies to a wide range of conduct, from payola to political advertising to product placement. This rulemaking is intended to determine whether our sponsorship identification rules need updating in order to provide adequate notice of certain types of "embedded" advertising practices that have proliferated in recent years. It is difficult to watch television and not be struck by the amount of product placement. According to press reports, product placement on broadcast TV during the first quarter of 2008 was up almost 40% from the previous year—including a whopping 3,291 product placements on top-rated American Idol alone. Concerns have also been raised about the growth of "product integration," in which, unlike product placement, the commercial product is not shown but is woven into the plot of a storyline or script. These kinds of stealth advertising may be particularly insidious because viewers often are unaware that someone is trying to influence, persuade, or market to them.
Whether these embedded advertising techniques have proliferated because DVR households fastforward through commercials or for other reasons, it is the Commission’s job to make sure that sponsored programming is properly identified. I agree with the recent filing by a group of 23 public health, media and child advocacy groups that all of these issues could have been addressed—and should have been addressed—in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). Unfortunately, that position did not command
a majority at the Commission. In the end, I supported the proposal to split the docket into an NPRM and a Notice of Inquiry (NOI). While this means more time than I would like to reach final rules in some areas,
I believe it is important to initiate the public dialogue and begin developing a detailed record. Moreover, the NPRM section tees up certain key issues on which we can move directly to rules—such as whether and how to make sponsorship identification more obvious to consumers, and rules regarding embedded advertising in children’s programming.
On the latter point, it is my strong initial belief that embedded advertising in children’s programming is already prohibited because it would run afoul of our existing requirement that there be adequate separation between programming content and advertising. The Commission’s existing policies in this area—which also include a ban on host-selling and tie-ins on children’s programming—target those practices that unfairly take advantage of the inability of children to distinguish between programming and commercial content. I hope we can move quickly to clarify our rules in this area as necessary and to take any appropriate enforcement action.