Tom Asacker is getting his Advertainment groove on.
Have you seen the new Gap commercial starring Joss Stone? It’s a sign of things to come, as marketers dump traditional advertising and appropriate popular culture to sell their wares.
Here’s how it works: The Gap pays Joss to record and star in a hot little number wearing Gap white jeans. The audience is exposed to it either through broadcast television or via the web, and then is directed to the Gap website where they can download a free copy of the song and order their own white jeans.
It’s a win-win. The Gap gets a cultural icon. The icon gets massive exposure. Can you imagine other scenarios? How ’bout this? Levi’s hires a popular graffiti artist to spray paint kickin’ designs on jeans. See the ad on TV or the web, and then go to Levi’s website to purchase your own custom pair.
It does seem like a good way to sell jeans, but when I went to The Gap download page, the song never made its way to my hard drive. Freaking technology.
Same here. I like Joss Stone, I went to the web site and tried literally 5 different ways to download (multiple email addresses, using a Mac, Windows, Safari, Firefox, IE6, etc…) and never got the song. I was told everything from “your code is invalid” (it was the one they sent me minutes earlier) to “this promotion is not valid in your country (I live in San Diego… sorry USA citizens).
A failure indeed. I ended up with a negative experience and frustration because Gap.com promised me something I wanted and failed to deliver.