We’ve really been trying to get our head around this girl hip-hop group assembled by the London office of Saatchi & Saatchi as part of the new GUM unit, which the agency announced last week. (More specifically, the group was formed by Amos, formerly of Culture Club, who has a stake in GUM.) According to the release (sorry, couldn't find it on the Saatchi site), the new unit “was designed to help clients achieve significant cut through with leading edge young, urban consumers in the context of ever increasing media fragmentation, the emergence of digital and wireless technologies and cynicism towards traditional marketing.” Though the first order of business should be shortening the mission statement, not figuring out whether the girls can rap, we get overall what GUM’s mission is. What’s harder to understand is the description of how this hip-hop group would work, per a story that ran last Friday in The Wall Street Journal. Advertisers would get “naming rights” to the band, could have product included in its videos or performances and incorporate brand names into its music—and yet somehow, the story says, “the band will appear like any other to would-be fans.” If you’ve figured out how you can pepper a band with product and make it appear that that’s not happening, please let us know. In the meantime, we found that the blog for the New York area alternative radio station WFMU, is decidedly, uh, skeptical.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor