Product Placement in Music Videos – Classical and Special Solutions

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One does not even have to watch today’s music videos very attentively in order to recognize that brands appear in them from time to time. However, this was not always the case. The changing policies of Music Television, the introduction of VEVO (a music video channel launched on Youtube), and the widening use of product placement in general have all played a significant role in the changes of the landscape, the increasing number of product placements in music videos. The paper examines the spread of brand/product placement in music videos, also known as the Lady Gaga effect. The study focuses on two aspects of product placement: on the one hand, which music genres it is the most widely used in, and on the other hand, what its most common (classical and special) types are. The author describes the notion of product placement drawing on different definitions, then discusses several typical and unique examples of brands and artists involved in product placement in pop, electronic, rock, and more than anything else, hip-hop music videos. Through a discussion of various historical and contemporary examples (most of them visual or auditive), and their relation to business, the study proves that product placement in music videos has become an increasingly popular tool in the world of marketing.