Originally released in 1967, The Who Sell Out received the Deluxe Edition reissue treatment earlier this year – and it could not have come at a more prescient moment. As the music industry’s revenue continues to fall and fall and fall, some of the cleverer music marketers are seeking new ways to promote their artists and even create new revenue streams from them. Who knew that a psychedelic classic from 1967 would provide the template?
Sell Out was The Who’s fourth LP and the band’s first attempt at a full-length concept album. The schtick was that the album was really a radio show complete with interruptions for station IDs and commercials. (This also made for a clever way to gloss over the production problem of the album’s schizophrenic body of songs – everything from Beach Boys pop to proto-metal.) Underlining the “sell out” concept, many of the ads were for brands they loved with the hopes that Premier Drums and [ahem] Jaguar would shower the boys in the band with free product.
The album’s conceptual centerpiece is the track where it all comes together. “Odorono” sounds like a sweet if overdone Byrds-y pop track with a curious narrative about a female singer’s big debut. It’s not until the last line of the song that the curtain is pulled back to reveal that the whole 2+ minute song is an advert for deodorant.
Listen: The Who – The Who Sell Out
Of course that’s all performed as a sly joke. But recent events have brought product placement in pop songs into the spotlight as a legitimate brand-builder. Most notably Chris Brown’s “Forever” was revealed to be a jingle for Wrigley Doublemint Gum only after the track had already launched into the Top 10. (Perhaps we should have noticed earlier because of the chorus: “Double your pleasure/double your fun”). “Forever” also shows in the most dramatic way possible the pitfalls and opportunities inherent in latching your brand to a pop song. As anyone who has passed through a supermarket checkout lane in the last five months would have seen, Brown’s reputation is now tattered following a domestic violence incident with his then-girlfriend, Rihanna, and Wrigley subsequently pulled his spots out of rotation.
Out of the blue, “Forever” was hijacked by a viral video that has become one of 2009’s biggest hits, “JK Wedding Entrance Dance,” now standing at over 25 million views and providing Brown’s song an unexpected return to the iTunes Top 10 singles chart. Reflecting on how the private lives of artists impact their professional output is often a fool’s game, so we should probably look past using a love song by a convicted girlfriend-beater for a wedding. But one wonders if Jill & Kevin were aware how much of a role Wrigley played at their (now very public) nuptials and how much free publicity they would be giving the gum. (Or do they work for Wrigley? Now that would be brand dedication: product placement at your wedding.) One thing’s for sure: Google noticed – and turned “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” into a case study for monetizing YouTube content.
Def Jam, meanwhile, is taking a different tack by reminding publishers that its products often have many more eyeballs than famous magazine and web brands. To that end, Mariah Carey’s new album will include a 34-page mini-Elle magazine – while Elle will feature a 14-page spread about the album. “We sell millions of records, so you should advertise with us,’ ” said Antonio “L.A.” Reid, IDJ’s chairman. “My artists have substantial circulation–when you sell 2 million, 5 million, 8 million, that’s a lot of eyeballs. Most magazines aren’t as successful as those records.” And, he might add, hit records have a lot more shelf life. Just ask Chris Brown. Or The Who.
As anyone who follows media knows by now, magazines have been hit with a triple-witching the last few years: collapsing CPMs for even the most difficult-to-target audiences (in light of the targeting capabilities of the Internet) and plus collapsing advertising page sales; 