Aerosmith really like football, or cola, or something

It's not just that you can picture the marketing meeting where this idea was choke-dropped onto the table; it's the way you can see the pie-chart of "intersecting communities" being drawn on the interactive whiteboard, and hear the whooping:

Pepsi and the National Football League (NFL) announced the expansion of the Pepsi NFL Anthems program, a national campaign that brings to life originally created anthems for seven NFL teams around the league. The latest world-renowned artists to be featured in the program include one of the generation's most influential artists, Lenny Kravitz, who penned "Like a Jet" for the team he grew up cheering for in New York, and America's Greatest Rock Band AEROSMITH, staunch supporters of the New England Patriots, who have released an anthem titled "Legendary Child - Patriots Anthem".

If you're telling people it's an anthem, it probably isn't. If you're having to stick the word "anthem" in the title, what you've probably written is a jingle.

If you can stand the violent interpolation of a can of fizzy drink and a bunch of dinosaurs into enthusiasm for people playing sports, there's much more joyless clunk to be discovered in the promotion.

In an ongoing effort to amplify the intersection between sports and music, we are thrilled to add AEROSMITH and Lenny Kravitz as the newest Anthems artists," said Pepsi Director of Sports Marketing Todd Kaplan. "On top of that, the Jets and Patriots have a notorious rivalry, and we couldn't have picked a better matchup to debut our new songs and advertising campaign."

Let's not doubt for a moment that there is an intersection between sports and music, albeit one whose value sits somewhere between the Hoddle and Waddell single and that comedy record by the bloke pretending to be John McEnroe.

But why and how would one "amplify" it? To what end? And if it's such a vibrant cross-section that you think it should be shouted about, why would you have to pay people to write songs that fit it?

Joe Perry explains why Aerosmith got involved:

"This is a program the band and I were excited to get behind as it is a true representation of our allegiance to the New England Patriots and the city of Boston," said AEROSMITH frontman Steven Tyler. "There's something about the word legendary and the words New England Patriots that have an amazing ring to them. We're excited and proud to be part of that," added AEROSMITH guitarist Joe Perry.

That sentence. That one right there: "There's something about the word legendary and the words New England Patriots that have an amazing ring to them." That is the marketing project equivalent of finding dead fish washed up on the beach, a warning sign that there's absolutely nothing able to breathe in the environment.

There's something about the words 'marketing' and 'patronising bullshit' that taste a little of Pepsi, isn't there?