R&B singer Chris Brown has a top 10 hit out at the moment called “Forever”. The chorus has the line “Double your pleasure/double your fun” – sound familiar?
“Forever” is an extended version of a new Doublemint jingle written by Chris Brown and scheduled to begin airing next month in 30-second spots for Wrigley’s green-packaged chewing gum. Turns out that Chris Brown is hired by ad agency Translation Advertising to update the images of three of Wrigley’s best-known brands. It’s a product placement scheme, and all the artists are looking at sampling sounds from previous Wrigley’s advertising jingles.
I thought this was nothing new, but the Wall Street Journal and PSFK both seem surprised enough to deem it newsworthy. Maybe the only surprise is that someone’s releasing Chris Brown singles… or more seriously that whilst Busta Rhymes’ hit “Pass the Courvoisier” was an unashamed nod towards a brand, this time round it’s actually been paid for in advance by Wrigley’s to promote Double Mint. More on “Push the Courvoisier” here. DJ Premier, Nas, KRS-One and Kanye’s hit “Classic” was commonly accepted as a clear push for Nike (the song’s an homage to the Air Force One shoe). And what about the deal between Bacardi and Groove Armada?
The most interesting thing about this appears to be that Jay Z is behind it all (surprise surprise!) as he’s a partner in Translation Advertising – read the New York Times article for more!
Here’s Chris Brown’s song. (Not my thing, but it did rather well in the charts!)
2 Comments
Man…this is like 100,000 light years from the origins of hip hop….how this music form can still be dubbed ‘street’, ‘real’ etc etc is an absolute joke. It started with RUN DMC and addidas and has gone to this…very good ideas on a advertising level fo sho…but ‘they’ (the industry and those responsible for it) ought to hang their heads in shame at the abuse of those who see hip hop as representing their plight and as manifesting their gripe against the Man…
Run DMC and Adidas wasn’t a commercial venture, though, don’t forget. It was a display of “cool” (and wealth, status etc) that they chose to make.
Nothing surprising with that – they were the biggest name-checkers, but not the first. I agree that hip hop has fallen very far from the tree but if the music industry still wants to make money, they need to look at opportunities presented to them. People don’t really care. And is it any different from Mr T in a snicker’s ad or Ronaldo in a Nike? Not massively, in my opinion.
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