Sarah Manifold's Blog

February 17, 2011 marked a very important day in music history, the true Queen of pop released her much-anticipated music video for her hit single Hold it Against Me. I would say Britney’s back, but let’s be honest she never really left our hearts.

If you look past the awesomeness of this video you may notice that several products are being promoted. The main products are the dating website Plenty of fish, Sony, Make Up For Ever, and Britney’s own perfume, Radiance. It is reported that Britney earned approximately $500,000 for having those products in her video.

The brands are using Britney as a social influence over potential consumers – much like the Got Milk campaign from my previous blog. I believe that product placement in music videos is a win-win situation for both the artist and the product’s company; the artist is able to make a bigger budget video and the product is being viewed millions of times as well as being associated with the celebrity.

The placement of the website Plenty of fish is a perfect example; they paid to have their website displayed/featured in the video and TMZ reports that Plenty of fish had “a 20% spike in traffic the day after the video premiered.”

Now that we are all aware of product placement, how many products can you count in the music video for Telephone by Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce?

For more information on product placement in music videos check out this New York Times article.