Product Placement in Music Videos: A Case Study

A few weeks a go, my attention was caught by a curious video, automatically playing before whatever I watched on Youtube. It was Young Empire’s new song, “So Cruel”, sponsored by Coors Altitude, a new beer product by Molson Coors. The four minute long video, all in black and white, follows the narrative of a man/woman seduction game, like many beer ads. The protagonist, Young Empire’s lead singer, bored at a cocktail party, follows a seductive woman through a series of doors and mazes, to finally end by her side on a dance floor on top of a mountain. Throughout the whole music video is interspersed shots of the Coors Altitude beer bottle within carefully positioned hands, its sleek black and grey finish integrating well into the visual aesthetic of the video. After watching the whole thing, I was confused: I did not know whether I had seen a music video, an ad, or both. This video seemed to have blurred the distinction between the two worlds, merging them into a unique experience.

Typically, the relationship between advertising and music videos has been through the form of product placement. In most cases, product placement consists of the integration of a product or ad within an audiovisual program, TV series or movie. It is considered an effective marketing strategy, since the product can be embedded into an audiovisual experience that is emotionally appealing, and can reach out to a targeted audience. Studies tend to confirm that consumers seem to prefer product placement over ads, on the grounds that it is better integrated to the whole experience instead of placed before the movie. On another hand, people against product placement underline the unethical value of dumping an ad right into a movie (and sometimes having it as the key component to the climatic part of the whole film, see Superman 2’s Coca-Cola ad:

There is of course nothing new about product placement, its first attempts are found notably in Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”, which had shipping and transportation lobbies seeking to be mentioned in the book. Later, periodicals started including photos of celebrities reading the aforementioned periodical. Early cinema too had product placement commonly included, although it was critiqued early on. The first film to win an academy award for best picture, Wings (1919), had a Hershey’s product placement in it. The term Soap Opera, you guessed it, comes from companies like Procter & Gamble who would finance the TV shows, generating the possibility to place their products and be seen by anybody watching TV at home in the afternoon on a weekday (somehow, housemaids and housecleaners seem to come to mind).

From a Walmart ad in a Looney Tunes movie to a Jurassic Park gift shop inside the Jurassic park movie, advertisers have found creative ways to place products. Some have played on the obviousness of product placement, as seen in the famous movie Wayne’s World, in which Mike Myers denies any form of embedded advertisement while drinking from a delicately positioned, overly exposed can of Pepsi:

In most cases, product placement in films advertise soft drinks, tobacco, cars and digital products like Apple and Playstation (House of Cards made it pretty obvious).

It is easy to assume that product placement in music videos, as in Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” (ten product placements including hair-curlers made out of Diet Pepsi cans) has been prevalent since the beginning of videoclips, but this is a misconception. MTV, since its beginning in 1984, refused any form of product placement in the music videos put on air. Artists started more commonly including this marketing technique by 2000, which was followed by a decrease around 2008, following the economic crisis. Nonetheless, for that past four years, product placement in videoclips has been rising. Companies like Beats By Dre and PlentyOfFish have taken assault of the Hip Hop video clip industry.

Moreover, female singers now promote beauty products including their own cosmetic line: Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea, etc. More recently, media-tech company Mirriad has joined with Vevo to implement a new marketing strategy called retroactive product placement. Aloe Blacc’s “The Man” was the first tryout: weeks after the videoclip’s release, a Levi’s Jeans billboard was added on a background wall. The new strategy has since been implemented in Avicii’s “Lay Me Down” and other videoclips. This permits advertisers to quickly add, remove, and change ads in music videos. Some artists will argue for a better financing, but many stand against. Arcade Fire’s Booking Agent David Viecelli points out:

“I object to it in the same way that I object to commercial product placement in any type of art. I do not hold with the beliefs that corporations are our saviors and this growing perception that nothing good can happen without the largesse of somebody who’s been ripping us off for decades.”

Marketers have been working hard to find new creative solutions to reaching the public since computer users skip video ads and have AdBlock. Musicians are struggling to find ways of financing themselves. I shall argue that this current socioeconomic context should not justify any use of product placement in music videos, which brings me back to the beginning of this article. The Young Empires/Coors Altitude case presents an absolute synergy of ad and music video in a way in which I have never seen since Michael Jackson changed Billie Jean’s lyrics to better tailor it to a Pepsi ad.

If it is defined simply as a promotional tool to get a band known, a videoclip is as commercial as an ad. However, a music video is an aesthetic experience that completes the auditory experience of listening to a song, and therefore is part of its perception. In a sense, music videos are pieces of art, and within them, ads. These two very different spheres have different goals, which in my opinion, should not be unified, since the contemplation of beauty, aesthetic beauty, should not be mistaken for a means to promote material commodities.