Lady Gaga in concert in Auckland last weekend. Photo by
Craig Baxter.
Product placement in videos, singles as jingles, ad
photo shoots - these days, bands love brands, reports Chris
Lee, of the Los Angeles Times.
In the music video for Lady Gaga's hit single Bad
Romance, the pop diva vamps across several nightmarish
tableaux wearing a variety of barely there lingerie get-ups.
The flashy clip caused a sensation when it debuted in
November and has racked up 85 million views on YouTube.
But perhaps its most striking aspect is the unabashed product
placement - conspicuous visual shout-outs to Nemiroff vodka,
Nintendo Wii, Burberry and other brands.
Back in the proverbial day - say, the Woodstock era, punk
rock's '70s heyday, the slacker-era '90s - a song was a song
and a jingle was a jingle and rarely the twain did meet. But
now, with CD sales in free fall and opportunities for radio
or television airplay increasingly rare, the rules governing
the interplay between pop music and advertising are being
rewritten.
It's no longer possible to "sell out" - at least, not within
a certain time-cherished understanding of the term. Rockers,
rappers and up-and-coming pop titans of all stripes are
licensing music and image as an integral part of
brand-building, which largely has usurped selling music and
concert tickets as many musicians' professional end goal.
Consider Chris Brown's smash hit Forever, which
cracked the Top 10 in seven countries in 2008 (before his
career-derailing assault on Rihanna) and went double
platinum. At the start of the song's video, Brown is shown
sliding a piece of gum into his mouth before heading out for
a night on the town.
In Forever's chorus, he croons: "'Cause we only got
one night / Double your pleasure, double your fun." Turns out
the song was commissioned by Wrigley to promote - you guessed
it - Doublemint gum.
Three months after releasing the single, the chewing-gum
conglomerate aired its "reveal": a TV commercial version of
Forever featuring Brown singing about gum and dancing
with a pack of Doublemint.
The spot generated outcry among music purists, but marketers
greeted the spots with awe.
"When the reveal happened, some people got upset," recalled
Steve Stoute, founder of the firm Translation Consultation
& Brand Imaging.
"But the number of spins went up and Doublemint went up in
awareness."
Stoute, who was behind Forever, also is responsible
for Justin Timberlake's I'm Lovin' It spots for
McDonald's as well as Beyonce's endorsement deal for Tommy
Hilfiger's True Star perfume and the career game plan to
treat Lady Gaga "like a brand" in her own right.
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