Josie and the Pussycats epitomized every aspect of the 90s into 93 minutes of cameos, product placement, and several MTV plugs. The movie was meant to make fun of mainstream America and their willingness to accept anything corporate America defines as cool. Watching the movie again, 5 years after it’s release, I remembered I started wearing my hair a certain way because of the way Rachel Leigh Cook wore her hair in the movie—I was 11. What’s pop culture made you do lately?
Chevrolet has just started a multimillion dollar marketing campaign centered around widely recognized rock and rap songs. "We have found over 200 songs written about America's love affair with Chevy. How many brands can say that? The Corvette and rock 'n' roll were both born in America 50 years ago. Coincidence? I think not,” Campbell-Ewald Vice Chairman and Chief Creative Officer Bill Ludwig of Chevrolet.
For every product strategically placed in Billboard’s Top 200, and every line that refers to something you can pick up in your neighborhood Wal-Mart, does it make the target demographic more eager to buy that product or listen to that song, or both? Maybe both is the point.
Don McLean’s “American Pie” with a reference to Chevrolet cars went to number one on the Music Charts in 1972. Within the same month as the song’s release, General Motors stocks went to it’s second highest position in 1971. When the song went to number one, GM’s stock peaked at a volume it would not reach again for several months. American's saw McLean's song as unequivocally patriotic, maybe because the identifiably American folk tale format, or maybe because the subject was about legendary American musicians. Either way, if that song was considered All-American, why not own something equally as All-American?
A pop song can also go in another direction. When Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” was released in September 1997, they had their CD peak at number 7 on the US Billboard Charts, due largely in part to Mattel suing them ironically, the same week as their CD entered stores. In this case, the brand name helped the song because Mattel was already an established brand, but there was more than the brand behind the song. Had the song been a folk song, for instance, it most likely, would not have been as popular as it is in it’s Euro Bubble Gum Pop format. The song relied on more than the pop culture reference to gain it’s popularity. You need something more than a recognizable brand to sell a song.
Today, as rappers are getting large checks to plug products in their song, it’s good to look at the grass roots of product placement. Run DMC’s hit single “My Adidas” was written and recorded without a dime from Adidas Clothing Company. “Initially reluctant [Adidas] execs promptly ink a $1.5 million shoe deal with the band and give them their own shoe line.” Run DMC’s album “Raising Hell” became the highest selling rap album in history (later to defeated as rap gained popularity), due to their collaboration with Aerosmith with “Walk This Way” and of course, “My Adidas.” “[Run-DMC] came at a time when rap was not fully embraced by [even] the urban culture. ... People can't understand how important they were in pop music history," said Jim Tremayne, editor of DJ Times.
Run DMC’s “My Adidas” is another example of the power of a song. “At one point during the show, Run stopped the music and asked everyone to take off a shoe and raise it to the ceiling. The sold-out arena swelled with the sweet smell of freshly purchased, shell-toed Adidas,” says Eric Parker of The Village Voice. A song about a few boys love of a certain brand of shoes not only sold over three million copies, sold out arenas and helped made Run DMC a household name, it also gave Adidas street credibility, in a way—something that at the time couldn’t simply be bought. More than twenty years later, urban youth and teenagers still identify with Adidas and what they came to stand for in 1986.
For the same reason why people like to say “Hi, Mom” if they have even a few seconds on television, songs will always have product placement, not because they get paid for them, although that is becoming a trend lately, but because we like to tell people what we love. If you like a brand referenced it might urge you to like that song. If you like a song, you might buy the product mentioned, either way—they need one another. One can’t say a pop song made a product what it is, neither can they say the product made the pop song.
As one line in Josie and The Pussycats says “We turn your world into one giant TV commercial.” Now, is that necessarily a bad thing?
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