Battle of the Blands

Branded Content: the holy grail of Advertising 2.0
    Or if not The Grail, maybe the holy lance.
    Or the head of John the Baptist.
    Give people something they actually want instead of forcing ads on them and you'll get a much better response.
    Give people advertsing that they're  actually willing to pay for and you have the Ark Of The F*cking Covenant!: Self Liquidating Communications. Ads that don't just pay for themselves, they make the agency money!
    That's what Saatchi & Saatchi's GUM factory were trying to do with Honeyshot, the first band to ever sign to an advertising agency.
    Honeyshot released a record into the charts, that did pretty well. Until, shock horror, it was revealed to be nothing but an advertisment! For shockwaves hair products. And the highly ethical music business decended like wolves on the helpless girls.
    While the Honeyshot experiment was a glorious failure I belive they will be hailed as bold pioneers compered to this lot...
    Giles Fitzgerald, of Frukt, uber music marketing gurus, posted this delightful list of "sponsored battle of the bands" on his blog (thanks to Iain Tait's crackunit).
    It seems that heads of marketing worldwide, are stuck in the same groove: "I like music, I want to hang out with bands: lets sponsor some bands! That'll sell a bunch of product!"   
    Must try harder.
    Much as people mocked Honeyshot, GUM at least tried to make something that people would want.      
    Instead of just slapping a logo on a random selection of musicians in the hope of some sort of goodwill "halo". it's me-too marketing at it's laziest.
    That being said, not all talent searches are a waste of time. Take the Poppets Pop-Pickers national Karaoke Contest (you can soooo tell they wanted to call it "Poppet Idol" but the legal team got scared). Sometimes a display of raw talent like this makes it all worthwhile.
    Oh yes...