• by David Allan , August 11, 2008

When Chris Brown's single, "Forever," topped the music charts two months ago, fans, including me, recognized the line from the old Wrigley's gum commercial jingle: "Double your pleasures/double your fun." Only, we didn't know it was the commercial jingle. As part of a new campaign, Wrigley commissioned pop music stars, including Brown, to freshen up its chewing gum brands. The idea is innovative and original. However, as a marketing professor, I have serious concerns about the cultural, ethical and legal implications of this strategy.

I love jingles. I sing along to them all the time. But I want to know a song's a jingle before I start singing along to it in my car. As an unapologetic advocate for the marriage of commerce and culture, I have limited concerns about the partnering of popular music and advertising. But even I haven't made peace with this new practice. Is it because I was fooled, too? Or is it because this nontraditional advertising tactic of using music as advertising undermines the origins of music as we know it?

Popular music is a cultural product and, as such, should not be "commercialized" in advertising. I want to know how a song was born before I celebrate its life. So, as a song is a cultural artifact at its inception, its use as a commercial artifact is justified because we know where it came from. A great example is Busta Rhymes' "Pass the Courvoisier." When I was a radio executive years ago, I remember hearing the song and thinking, "This is going to be in a commercial someday." And I would have been okay with that.

But a cultural line has been crossed when Wrigley creates a song as a commercial, represents it to the public as a song, and then later reveals it to be a commercial.

The ethical implications are murky depending on your perspective. But it seems like we should be told that something was created as a commercial before we start adding the song to our MySpace page or downloading the track to our iPod. It doesn't mean that we would have liked the song any less. Maybe more. But if I were still in the radio business and the record company hadn't told me that the Chris Brown song was actually a commercial, I would have felt betrayed in some way.

The legal implications are clear. When something is advertising in print, and not editorial, it has to be identified as such (i.e. "Special Advertising Section"). Shouldn't this song now be identified as advertising each and every time it is played? And tracked on the commercial log as a four-and-a-half minute commercial? This presents an interesting dilemma for the radio business.

Wrigley, no doubt, is benefiting from having pop stars make them cool again. Brown's "Forever" hit aside, country singer/"Dancing With the Stars" winner Julianne Hough's interpretation of Juicy Fruit's "This taste is gonna move ya" is gaining popularity as is R&B singer Ne-Yo's recorded version of Big Red's "Kiss a little longer."

But how will consumers feel? Probably the same way they feel when they open a piece of junk mail that looks like a check.