Product Placement

A few posts ago I reviewed Lady Gaga's newest video "Telephone," staring herself and Beyonce. At first I was fairly surprised at the overt lesbian motif of the video, as most people probably were, but I recently re watched the video to attempt to see if there as anything I might have missed the first time I watched it. Of course, there was. Upon re watching the video, massive product placement becomes obvious and while it doesn't detract from the message of the video, it does put it in new light. There were eight products that I was able to find, and there could have been more, I thought the eight main ones would be more than enough. Throughout the video Virgin Mobile appeared twice, Diet Coke and Channel once, Miracle Whip and Wonder Bread once, Coors Light once, Chevrolet three times and Polaroid three times. While it might be a stretch to use Coors Light and Chevrolet because they were mostly in passing, the others were very direct and obvious. In terms of Virgin Mobile, they clearly sponsored the video because whenever a character used a cell phone, Virgin Mobile was clearly displayed on the screen, as was when pictures were being taken with a Polaroid camera, a Polaroid vending machine was clearly marked and placed outside the diner. The wonder Bread and Miracle Whip were probably (I hope) not product placement, I would hope they were used to call attention to the roles of women and mothers in society whose only jobs are to feed their kids and make sandwiches, but with the track record of the video, one can only speculate. The Chanel specifically is hopefully a reference to the high fashion she so commonly espouses, but as with Miracle Whip and Wonder Bread, it is hard to determine what's been placed and what hasn't. Lastly, the Diet Coke is covertly included in her costume while shes in prison and are being used as rollers in her hair. Whether that was intentional or not, it is unclear but the cans could be clearly distinguished as Diet Coke.

What does this all mean for Lady Gaga? While she is trying to get across a very important message, women's roles in society and in relationships, is she undermining her credibility and the credibility of her message by blatantly including products from companies that have paid her a large sums of money? In my opinion, no. Its no different from an athlete or an actor being paid to be a spokesmen for a product or appear in advertisements for that product. They are still free to say what they believe, no they get paid to do it. Good for her.