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Life's A Pitch

For immediate release: the arts are marketable

OMG: am I old?

July 14, 2009 by Amanda Ameer

What is even going on here.

I was reading my client Michael Gordon’s Pitchfork review from 2004 to see if I deemed it worthy to put in a press kit just now, and I clicked on the 5 Gum banner ad in an attempt to send my friend James a link to the new “Zing” gum (he says “zing!” a lot, OK?). Instead of a Zing or a 5 Gum website, I got to this.

Zing-Gum.jpg
5-Gum2.jpg5 Gum’s marketing campaign is just a super imeem page?? Fair enough: what could they possibly say about gum at this point? Might has well push Katie Perry and Lady Gaga associations and throw people off a bit. Also, The Brunettes, School of Seven Bells, and Fleet Foxes are actually cool; what the deuce kind of awesome marketing intern does 5 Gum have working for them??

This makes for a great argument for a complete lack of boilerplate marketing copy. When promoting a concert, why not just link to a playlist of the music? Actually, when marketing anything – a play, a dance performance, a museum exhibition – why not create a unique playlist? It’s free and more interesting than any words you could possibly use.

5 has a playlist for each type of gum and is asking viewers to vote for their favorite playlists:

5-Gum3.jpgSolstice seems to be most squarely in my iTunes camp. I wonder what it tastes like. I guess I willl buy it and find out. Marketing logic dictates that if I like what it sounds like, I’ll like what it tastes like, right?

For what it’s worth ((nothing)), I’m declaring 5 Gum the Official Gum of Life’s a Pitch. All three readers must now chew it exclusively.

Filed Under: Main

Comments

  1. MW says

    July 14, 2009 at 8:59 pm

    Uh-oh.
    I just popped some Eclipse peppermint gum into my mouth.
    Does that mean I have to leave Life’s A Pitch and stick to Flyover and CultureGrrl from now on?
    Yes. -AA

Amanda Ameer

is a publicist who started First Chair Promotion in July 2007. She currently represents Hilary Hahn, Gabriel Kahane, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sondra Radvanovsky, Julia Wolfe, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lawrence Brownlee. She thanks Chris Owyoung at One Louder Photo for taking the above photo very quickly and painlessly. Read More…

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