CINCINNATI – Help! Some Beatles fans are feeling down about the latest use of a Fab Four song in a commercial. The 1967 peace anthem “All You Need Is Love” highlights a new campaign for Luvs disposable diapers.
“I just cannot see a Beatles song being used for trivial things . . . not Beatles songs!!!!” fan Andy Bonnell said by e-mail from Liverpool, England, the Beatles' home base.
Such sentiments represent something of a lost cause. A version of the Beatles' song “Help!” was used in a car commercial in 1985. The many instances since then include the late John Lennon's son Julian's 2002 cover of “When I'm Sixty-Four” for insurer Allstate and current Target commercials that use a version of “Hello Goodbye” – “Goodbuy” in the ads.
But the “All You Need . . . ” campaign, launched this month for Procter & Gamble Co.'s Luvs diapers, struck a particularly sour note for some fans, who have heated up online forums about it. Among the objections is that the idealistic song, popular in the counterculture “Summer of Love” era and among Vietnam War opponents, is being used at the time of another war, in Iraq, to evoke soiled diapers.
“For people who feel that political connection, it comes off as kind of a callous action,” said Angela Natividad, co-editor of adrants.com, a marketing commentary site. “You've got the Beatles, which draws like, religious feelings, and you've got the war.”
The Cincinnati-based consumer products company calls the campaign, developed with Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency, an upbeat introduction to Luvs' “Bear Hug Stretch,” offering “premium leakage protection” at no extra cost. P&G is among many companies that often link products to familiar songs – its Swiffer dusters recently used Blondie's “One Way or Another.”
“Classic songs have been used for some time to connect with the consumer and drive emotion for a product or brand,” said Lisa Jester, a P&G baby care spokeswoman. “Music has a way of connecting us and making us smile.”
She said the Luvs commercial, showing a diaper-clad toddler wrestling with a stuffed bear as his smiling family watches, was popular in testing with parents, who gave high marks to the music.
Elizabeth Freund, U.S. spokeswoman for Apple Corps, the London-based group formed by the Beatles that helps guard their legacy, said Sony/ATV Music Publishing (a joint venture of Sony and Michael Jackson) holds publishing rights for “All You Need Is Love.”
Sony/ATV doesn't need permission from surviving Beatles or heirs to license the songs in its Beatles catalog. Versions of the song have been used elsewhere, including in a credit card commercial.
Paul Freundlich, a spokesman for Paul McCartney, who shares songwriting credit with Lennon on most Beatles hits, declined to comment on the commercials.
Jester wouldn't say how much P&G paid to use the song, recorded by a studio group in New York. P&G increased Luvs' marketing budget by 20 percent – dollar figures weren't released – for the multimedia campaign.
Some veteran fans have come to accept such commercials.
“When it was first done years ago, it really bothered everybody,” said Charles Rosenay. “I'm less offended now.”
Rosenay, who organizes pilgrimages to Liverpool called the “Magical History Tours,” said his young children have been introduced to the hooks of Beatles songs by commercials.
“Then they hear the whole song and they love that song. . . . It has a positive effect, teaching a new generation about the Beatles,” he said.
