Now *That’s* Authentic
Quoting the Times story on brand-supported music: Caress, the body-care line owned by Unilever, commissioned the Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger to record a version of Duran Duran’s “Rio” that it gave away on its Web site to promote its “Brazilian body wash” product.
Just think: a manufactured artist doing a cover of an 80s standard by Birmingham new romantics that, while the actress in the video looks vaguely Brazilian (she’s actually English-Lebanese), was really filmed in Antigua and is about a girl named after the Rio Grande.
Although it does have the nice throwaway metaphor: “Cherry ice cream smile I suppose it’s very nice…”