Human Billboard Gum Girls
The human billboards
p2p news / p2pnet:- Here’s something that should make all you demographics out there cringe.
It is, as Julian Finn posts on his Leben am Existenzmaximum blog, product placement taken to a whole new level.
And he’s not kidding.
“London-based ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi has launched a new division called GUM, created to target the elusive teen and young 20s demo,” says Finn.
“The idea is simple, according to The Wall Street Journal: Saatchi & Saatchi is offering advertisers a sort of human billboard - that is, owning and naming their own all-female hip-hop band, having their products seen/used/worn on stage and in music videos, and if they want, paying a little extra, have their product names used within the lyrics of the band's songs.
“The band made its first appearance last evening at Saatchi & Saatchi offices, and unless you knew any better, you'd never know it was a marketing device.
“The agency calls this Branded Entertainment, and finds masking advertising within entertainment is a better way to reach this tough young demo. Also coming from GUM, commissioned entertainment for other media including TV, film, cellphones and video games.”
Meet S&S Gum Girls Rockwell, Mercedes, S.J. and Chanel. And why not? A custom-built all-female (of course) product promo hip-hop (of course) band is a kind of natural extension of the now well-established marketing practice of using teens to promote the product you're trying to get them to buy in the first place.
Possibly the sickest example of this in recent times came when Apple Computers, Pepsi and the Big Four music label cartel used 16 teenagers who'd been nailed by the cartel's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in a shockingly cynical iPod campaign.
