The free degrees

Rock and roll-on marketing

What?: Ashley Tisdale, singer and star of the Disney Channel’s High School Musical mega-franchise, is to appear in a number of commercials for Unilever’s new Degree Girl deodorant. Print and TV ads will feature Tisdale in awkward or embarrassing ‘OMG!’ (that’s web-speak for ‘Oh My God!’ if you’re wondering) moments. The campaign invites fans to “Tell us your OMG! Moment” to be in with a chance of meeting Ashley Tisdale in person.

Each Degree Girl deodorant stick will include a music download card which fans can use to get songs from the accompanying website – DegreeGirl.com. Each scent will feature a different song. On the site now Tisdale does a cover of ‘Heaven Is A Place On Earth’. Unilever spokesperson Heather Mitchell referred to the campaign as having a “robust integrated marketing plan in place to generate buzz”.

So what?: With High School Musical 3: Senior Year set for October, and with a new nose job to boot, we will be seeing a lot more of Ashley Tisdale as a music artist. This campaign is aimed squarely at Tweens and teens with its text speak tag line, in the same vein as Paris Hilton’s BFF (‘Best Friends Forever’) MTV show. “We wanted to show teens that we understand them,” said Mindshare Entertainment President David Lang. Using language like this can come off as patronising, even though this campaign has probably got its audience well pegged.

“The music download element creates that added ‘pester power’ incentive so girls will persuade mums to put it in the shopping basket; for Tisdale, it keeps her in her target audience’s mind between HSM movies.”
Ruth Mortimer, Editor, Brand Strategy

http://go.rtm.com