Oh hell no!

This is totally fucked up and I totally saw it coming. For those of you who have listened to Chris Brown's new song "Forever" and not realized that it was basically the old Doublemint jingle, shame on you. Even though the song is catchy, I've been changing the radio station every time that "Forever" is played (which is a lot) just because it annoys me because it was basically an old jingle and I felt like I was being advertised to.

Well, turns out, the song is an advertisement, as the idea for the song, the studio time to produce it, and the air time was all sponsored by Wrigley's gum-- IN SECRET. Now that the song is a hit, they are making an announcement about the affiliation in a press conference tomorrow. My information comes via Gawker and they're pretty pissed off about it and calling for a boycott of Wrigley's.

Now I have to admit that the PR side of sees why Wrigley would make such a move... they CAN'T be doing too well, because honestly-- who buys Doublemint or Juicy Fruit anymore? I'm an Orbit girl myself (so yeah, Gawker, I'll be participating in the boycott because I never buy that gum anyways). They had to do something big to get themselves more attention and I don't think their old commercials featuring tons of twins all dressed up in matching outfits and running through fields or whatever would have done the trick. It was a bold move but it is also scary as hell to think that this is the direction that more companies could take.

I think that the worst part is that it was done in secret. I remember a little while back when blogs were talking about how Fergie made that deal to sing about Candie's shoes. Although it turns out that situation wasn't even true (I don't think?), everyone was abuzz. The site Fafarazzi said, "It looks like Don McLean was talking out of his ass when he first sang about 'the day the music died,' because it didn't actually die in 1959. The music died last week, when Fergie finished it off by stuffing fistfuls of advertising dollars down its throat and sitting on its face until it stopped twitching." As lame as that whole situation would have been, at least they'd have been clean about the deal. I can't even wait to hear the backlash that comes out of this one.

Oh and the other thing? People were BRUTAL about Fergie when her rumored Candie's deal was going around. And I mean, BRUTAL. What is going to happen to Chris Brown? I think that at this point his credibility as a musician is beyond Fergie's so how are people going to react to his ridiculous sell out? I have to admit I'm disappointed. I don't like the direction that the music industry has been taking lately. I don't like it one bit.

P.S. I just realized in my last post I included that clip from The Bucket List and I was thinking about how John Mayer wrote the song "Say" for the movie. The song wasn't featured in the movie and was solely a promotional partnership between the two. Anybody have any opinions on the differences between John Mayer writing a song to promote the movie The Bucket List (and that is different that writing a movie for a score, because the song NEVER was featured in the movie) and Chris Brown writing a song to promote Wrigley's gum? Somehow they feel different, but I'm not sure why.

P.P.S. I just figured out one good difference. The Chris Brown/Wrigley's thing was a SECRET. But there is still more... any help out there with this one?

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