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| Poster image for Beatles 1 |
For the third time in modern day, this photo has been used to promote new product by The Beatles, this time it's for "Beatles 1", the new edition of the 2000 release. One can only speculate that the current people working over at Apple Corps Ltd and/or Universal Music Group are unaware of the previous uses of it. It started with the release of the single "Real Love" in 1996, and continued ten years later with the boxed set of the US albums on CD, "The Capitol Albums Vol 2" from 2006.
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| The "Real Love" single |
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| The Capitol albums Vol 2 |
Nine years later, the photo is again used to promote a new product. In the photo, taken by Robert Whitaker, the Beatles' cigarettes have been airbrushed or photoshopped out of the picture, just like it was on the two previous usages of the photo.
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| Full page ad in the November issue of British music magazine "Record Collector". |
See this ad in action over at Universal Music's Beatles page in Japan.
Here's Whitaker's original photo, with the cigarettes intact. It has also been used as a calendar photo in the eighties and nineties.
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| The drawing behind the Beatles is not featured in modern renditions of the image. Photo: © Robert Whitaker |
With so many photos of the Beatles available, and new ones emerging almost on a weekly basis, there is no reason to re-use photos used in earlier campaigns.