A glimpse into the Private Equity future for EMI

As it prepares to disappear into the clutches of Terra Firma, EMI has outlined what the future holds. They're going to take the music that means something to people, and whore it out until it's an empty husk:

"Our back catalog is so prestigious and so rich in heritage in its impact on pop culture that half our effort is reminding people and recreating awareness of the music's availability, " said Ronn Werre, president of EMI Music Marketing.

Over the next year, Saatchi & Saatchi will help EMI seek new ways for fans to reconnect to music they might hear on a commercial or TV show and ultimately translate that into a transaction, Werre said in an interview.

In other words, you can expect to hear a lot of songs you loved being flung onto car adverts. Oh.

Ramones kick Doc Martens

Despite Dr Martens attempts to dampen down the damage its awful 'punk icons who might or might not have worn our shoes' campaign has done, there's more trouble brewing for the Chinese shoe manufacturers as The remaining Ramones have issued a statement about the co-opting of Joey to flog the boots he was, erm, famous for not wearing:

"Obviously, we are in the same position as Courtney Love, as well as the Estates of the others depicted [in the ad]," said Mickey Leigh. "We were never consulted about this ad. We were never asked for permission to use Joey's image, or paid for the use of it. As executor of my brother's estate I never would have approved this ad as Joey never wore these shoes. And, not that my brother was terribly religious, but the fact that he was Jewish, and this ad is not exactly Kosher, makes it that much more inappropriate, inconsiderate and contemptible."

The shoe company has yet to explain why an advert which was enough for it to fire its ad agency was approved - even if "only" for Fact magazine - by the company in the first place.

Still, they should be pleased that they've managed to find common ground on which The Ramones and Courtney Love can agree.

Shoegrazing: Martens drop Saatchi

Saatchi and Saatchi have taken the rap for Dr Martens dead pop stars adverts. The Daily Swarm is reporting that the shoe company has blamed the whole thing on the advertising agency and said it was very sorry:

Dr Martens is very sorry for any offense that has been caused by the publication of images showing dead rock icons wearing Dr Martens boots.

Dr Martens did not commission the work as it runs counter to our current marketing activities based on FREEDM, which is dedicated to nurturing grass roots creativity and supporting emerging talent.

As a consequence, Dr Martens has terminated its relationship with the responsible agency.

David Suddens
Chief Executive

So, Dr Martens "did not commission" the work - which, interestingly, isn't quite the same as saying they didn't approve the work. And, indeed, they did sign off on the campaign for publication, according to the statement from Saatchi:

Saatchi & Saatchi today (Thursday) said it was standing by the creative work for a series of ads created for Dr. Martens which has seen the agency fired by the client. The client approved the ads to run as a one-off in Fact Magazine in the UK.

Kate Stanners, executive creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi said the four print ads which featured the late rock singers Kurt Corbain, Joe Strummer, Sid Vicious and Joey Ramone all in heaven wearing Dr Martens boots, were presented as a homage to the rock legends. All four punk-rock icons were known for wearing Dr. Martens boots.

Stanners said: “We believe the ads are edgy but not offensive. There has been blog commentary both for and against the ads, but it is our belief that they are respectful of both the musicians and the Dr. Martens brand.

“We regret that the controversy has led Dr. Martens to terminate the contract with Saatchi & Saatchi. We are investigating the circumstances and considering the ongoing employment of the individual who was in breach of instructions not to distribute the ads further than the original approved placement in Fact Magazine in the UK.

“While we believe the creative is a beautiful tribute to four legendary musicians, the individual broke both agency and client protocol in this situation by placing the ads on a US advertising website and acting as an unauthorised spokesperson for the company.”

So, it seems, Doc Martens were only unhappy with the idea of illustrious corpses being used to flog their shoes when people started seeing the ads - we're a little at a loss to how the idea was fine providing it only went into a little-read magazine; we're also not entirely sure how, if the ads only appeared in Fact magazine and, without authorisation, on a US advertising website, members of that Joe Strummer forum were talking about a poster that had been up on the streets.

The statement from the advertising people, though, does sound credible - "edgy but not offensive" is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect an advertising person to say when honking on about something the clearly don't really have a grip on. How could using someone's face to flog shoes without permission be anything other than offensive?

Style, Extract, Pay: Honeyshot flops

Good work over at PopJustice, which has turned itself into a Panorama-style investigative journalist outfit to out the band Shocka featuring Honeyshot. Following PJ's pointing out that the band were a marketing stunt, and their single Style, Attract, Play was effectively an advert for Shockwaves, Radio One has dropped the band from the playlist.

(PopJustice, of course, was able to do the bulk of the research in their own archives - when Honeyshot were merely a Trojan Horse being built by Saatchi and Saatchi to provide a way of "covertly marketing" to young people.

Now, of course, suggesting that this is terrible and wrong is a little bit of a stretch - you could argue that this is merely The New Seekers' I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing, only without the need to make an advert beforehand; or that if using songs to promote commercial products is wrong, then why has nobody complained about when, say, Mission Impossible soundtrack singles get spun on Radio One when, really, that's just about getting people out to see the movie or buy the DVD as much as the Shocka single is trying to get people to use styling products.

But there's something doubly unethical and stinking about this - it's not just that the connection between product and track is intentionally hidden, but that the marketing push seems to be little more than trying to get the advert strapline repeated over and over again. "Style, Attract, Ein Fuhrer" or whatever it is, just being repeated, as if that should be enough. It's like Saatchi and Saatchi are trying to market through mantra, a bid at hypnotism rather than sales.

Adding to the general stench that everyone involved knows a line has been crossed, when The Guardian started to poke about, the first response was to deny everything:

Initially, the Shockwaves press office said it knew nothing about the song and its relationship to the brand. But a spokeswoman called back later to admit "there may be a link" and would confirm when she knew more.

Several hours later a different spokeswoman said she could not speak to anyone at Procter & Gamble, the company which owns Shockwaves, and therefore could not comment further.

Clearly, if Procter & Gamble were comfortable with their part in this dupery, they wouldn't be hiding behind the corporate sofa hoping the people with questions will go away.

The first rule of good corporate behaviour is: if you don't want to own up to what you've created, don't create it in the first place.

Shockwaves, of course, is the sponsor of the NME Awards at the moment. That might make for an interesting event next year.