Entertainment or Marketing?
The use of celebrity endorsement is probably one of the most common marketing strategies used by many firms today. Whether it is featuring celebrities in their magazine advertisement, television commercial, or even movies, we can see them almost everywhere. Britney Spears recent hit single “Hold it against me” has finally came out with a music video. I was a huge fan of hers when I was a kid, and I must admit that I still love her. Britney Spears, or so known as “Pop Princess”, has made many remarkable achievements in her life and is known as one of the top-selling female artist at all times. Although she had gone through a downhill period in the past year, she is trying to make her “come back”. This new video caught alot of people’s attention, whether its her fans, media, or rivals. With Britney’s popularity, her videos are definately a hit, just within the first 24 hours that the music video came out, it got over 1 million views. The demand for her music video is so high that when she produced multiple teasers for her video (each only 5 seconds long), but they reached over 5 million views. Marketers have clearly realized this and took advantage of it. Only 2 minutes into the video, you can already see numerous product placements exposed: PlentyOfFish.com, Sony, Makeup Forever, Radiance (Britney Spears Fragrance), etc. The image of the product conveyed may be affected by the values and belief of the person viewing the video, some people may see Britney Spears as an aspirational character while others as a dissociative character.
For sure these placements dont come cheap…but many marketers still do so because they are able to easily reach their target audience and maximize the exposure of their products to the public. Although it is common, I havn’t seen a video compacted with so many marketing so I thought it was really interesting and to be honest, a little overwhelming. There has been a debate going on about this music video and questioning its purpose, people found it hard to focus on the music with so many marketing going on.