Product Placement: Lady GaGa - Telephone Music Video

Product Placement throughout Lady GaGa’s Telephone Music Video

1:34: Heartbeats earphones. Unpaid. An extension of her partnerships with Interscope Music and Hewlett Packard, her own products which she designed.

2:06: Virgin Mobile. The cell phone in the video is a nod to the company, a mobile sponsor of Gaga’s Monster Ball tour.

2:17: Diet Coke. Unpaid. It was Gaga’s idea to curl her hair with Diet Coke cans in the video as homage to her mother.

4:15: Virgin Mobile (again). The cell phone in the video is a nod to the company, a mobile sponsor of Gaga’s Monster Ball tour.

4:24: HP Envy ‘Beats Limited Edition’ laptop from Monster. Unpaid. An extension of her partnerships with Interscope Music and Hewlett Packard.

4:28: Plenty of Fish dating site. Unclear. Possibly the weirdest deal of the bunch; result of the dating site's partnership with Interscope.

4:44: Chevrolet.

5:37: Polaroid. Camera and photo booth featured acknowledge Gaga’s role as Polaroid’s creative director.

6:24: Wonder bread. Unpaid. Used in a sequence showing Gaga poisoning diner customers, because Gaga wanted to contrast the poisoning with an all-American brand.

6:36: Miracle Whip. Paid. Used in the same scene—and for the same reason—as Wonder Bread; seems to be part of the spread’s new, edgier campaign

8:31: Polaroid (again)

Camera and photo booth featured acknowledge Gaga’s role as Polaroid’s creative director.

Lady Gaga is known for her controversial videos that attract millions of views, so what better way of advertising both her own products and other ones through her music videos. The idea of Lady Gaga using these brands and products makes it appealing to the viewer and fans because they’re all available to the typical consumer. This means the viewer can feel like a celebrity for a certain time as they have the same products as this mega star which sells and advertises the product really well. Another example of product placement through Lady Gaga videos is the ‘Bad Romance’ video where we see 8 products alone being placed and advertised. Throughout my music video I want to use inspiration from the success of the video and one thing that I believe mains it’s success is the product placement used. Using big brands throughout music videos has been something many do in this day and age; therefore I will consider using this method as well.

We see within the music video that the storyline used without is a continued version of the ‘Papparazzi’ music video within the sequel. Using Michael Jackson’s concept of a story being told through a music video is what we see happening more and more through modern society. What I like about the start of the music video is the fact that we see a sequel of music videos all connecting to each other but still keeping Lady GaGa’s post modern approach of unique and unusual mis-en-scene, lighting, sounds and editing. At the start of the video it is set in a prison courtyard, following the ending of ‘Papparazzi’ when she got arrested. The prison holds a variation of unusual and different ethnicity’s (all women however).