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Sprite’s Changing Relationship to Hip Hop: From Ogilvy & Mather to Crispin Porter + Bogusky

As some have recently expressed, Sprite’s ditching of Miles Thirst could be seen as a move away from hip hop and, perhaps, indicative of a larger marketing trend.

Though launching a Sprite campaign focused on the lymon angle, Sprite will still hold a:
fashion event — the inaugural Sprite Street Couture Showcase — at
Guastavino’s in New York. The event will feature collections from
streetware designers, including Etnies, LRG, Rocawear, Triple Five Soul
and WESC
.

Of course, such an event could simply be playing out older commitments or not viewed as hip hop specific but, rather, urban in its broader dimensions.

On the other hand, the Sprite/MSN Exposure site features urban and hip hop related elements, with a shift from the focus on a star, well, Miles Thirst, to real people becoming celebs for their realness, or something.  Very of the times.

The earlier Sprite/MSN collab The Scenario featured Miles Thirst and hip hop djs, so Sprite’s been online for a while.  Perhaps current developments are more about Sprite’s changing relationship to hip hop rather than an abandonment scenario.

Of course, they also have to do with a shift in ad agencies from Miles Thirst creators Ogilvy & Mather to Crispin Porter + Bogusky.  CP+B are the ones doing the subLYMONal campaign featuring the term OBEY from Obey Your Thirst that I can’t help but think resonates due to Shepard Fairey’s OBEY campaign.

Sprite has also had a mostly unrelated "Show & proove" street campaign going since April:
To try and shake things up at street level, Sprite
is employing a campaign that loosely strings together viral video,
guerrilla postings and print ads in alternative weeklies all of which
ask, "Do U have the proof?" The new logo, which looks like a football
made of half lemon and half lime is featured, although the brand name
is not revealed.  The "Show & prove" guerrilla effort was originally
touted as an underground buzz-building ploy, a la Halo 2′s
ilikebees.com, complete with a countdown to the launch event. However
many of the plans, created by Commonground, Chicago, have yet to come
to fruition or have been scrapped altogether.

Sounds like a bit of chaos and also that the activities related to hip hop in some way, primarily the fashion show and the Exposure site, are all separate from CP+B’s core campaign, which might not be a good sign for the future of such projects.

2 Responses to “Sprite’s Changing Relationship to Hip Hop: From Ogilvy & Mather to Crispin Porter + Bogusky”

  1. dj mirateck says:

    for some perspective,
    Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B for short) = the G-Unit = Microsoft of the advertising world
    you love to hate them, but they get their money

  2. Clyde Smith says:

    Yeah, I’ll definitely be writing more about them soon.