About this reportNetworked Insights’ Social Intelligence Reports explore topics, brands, themes and celebrities to uncover consumer trends and insights to inform decision making by marketers, brand managers and their agencies. In this report, we examine celebrity endorsement and product placement related to the music artist Lady Gaga. The data for this report was gathered from March 1 through the end of May 2011.

For decades celebrity endorsement has proven to be a successful tactic to influence consumer preference. Omnicom’s Dave Brown Entertainment offers brand marketers and advertising agencies an independent index to quantify a celebrity’s ability to influence brand affinity and purchase intent. Additionally, marketers have recently seen growth in product placement as represented in the upcoming James Bond film, which contains $45 million worth of product placement. Music videos have grown to be about a $15 million product placement industry, allowing brands to align their products with artists who appeal to their target consumer.

How do you find the right fit for your brand?

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I just went to my first Gaga concert in February (thanks Virgin Mobile!) and I have to say, Gaga fans know how to bring the fierce.” from collegefashion.net

Virgin Mobile placement from Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video

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Today, the clear leader among music artists attracting brands for product placements is Lady Gaga, so we chose her for a special analysis project spanning all facets of the social web. The objective of this social intelligence report is to show how well consumer insight gleamed from the Internet can inform decisions about choosing a celebrity, assessing Lady Gaga’s video content, embedding a brand in her video and gauging the benefits to be derived from that.

Usually, when marketers talk about product placements, they base their decisions on what they think is popular – the classic “gut feel” approach. In the past, they haven’t had a definitive or particu-larly fast way to learn how people actually feel about someone like Lady Gaga. Yet such insights can be critical if your company has very strict brand requirements or a particular image to uphold in the market — for example, staunchly conservative vs. intentionally flamboyant.

Is Lady Gaga right for your brand?

Consumer insights derived from the social web also can help you decide whether you’re investing enough in the product placement to stand out. For example, Lady Gaga has an extraordinary number of sponsors, including Virgin Mobile, HP, Diet Coke, Compari, Chanel, Alexander McQueen, Phillip Stark, Nintendo, Burberry, Chevrolet, Polaroid, Miracle Whip and Wonder bread — just to name a few.

So in a video cluttered with other products, will your brand be lost?

Don’t be left starstruck

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39%negative

32%positive

Doing it for the fameThe time frame during which we collected and analyzed data was one of particularly high activity for Lady Gaga, including her appearance on American Idol, new album release, and a number of other appearances and events. The data revealed that she has a very strong, solid, loyal fan base that drives a lot of positive sentiment. At the same time, she is very polarizing — in fact, 39 percent of comments cap-tured during that three-month period were negative, containing comments like “copycat,” “bizarre image,” “don’t understand why she’s famous” and “not really talented.” It’s fascinating how much persistent negative sentiment surrounds this superstar compared to others we track.

When you’re thinking about product placement with an artist like Lady Gaga, you want to weigh both aspects of sentiment. Yes, she has a No. 1 album. Yes, she’s touring, is very successful and is on hit television shows and covers of magazines. But she also stirs a lot of controversy.

How might this affect perception of your brand?

Lady Gaga is a cheap Madonna copy. Honestly, who takes her seriously...-music-mix.ew.com

Is anyone watching Lady Gaga on HBO? I love her attitude, fashion sense, voice...-jezebel.com

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What’s in your wallet?The data produced another interesting nugget:

The household income of the most vocal Lady Gaga fans is $25,000 to $75,000. This begs a question about your target market — if yours is a very high-end brand, will a product placement in a Lady Gaga music video help?

Can her fans even afford your product?

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‘

A

B

C

Engagement Peaks

A. 2/11 “Born This Way” single released

B. 4/19 “Judas” single released

C. 5/5 “Judas” video debuts

5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

011/29 12/14 12/29 1/13 1/28 2/12 2/27 3/14 3/29 4/13 4/28 5/13

Monster trendsThe verbatim comments and phrases that bubbled to the surface of the data analysis were interesting, too. There were many references to Madonna and Katy Perry — in fact, constant comparisons. Both of those artists are extremely controversial in their own right. Madonna built her career on controversy, and she had a hard time attracting endorsement opportunities, which may have paved the way for artists like Lady Gaga. Katy Perry has gone a different route with skin creams and other products. So it’s interesting to see how similar the three artists are in terms of generating controversy and yet how different the story is when you look at the brands that attach themselves to these icons.

Engagement Trends

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Mighty big wordsOur report also features a “tag cloud” — a list of keywords that continuously pop up during data analysis on a given topic. The physical size of the word indicates how frequently it appears in the results. With Lady Gaga, you see words like “born” from her song “Born This Way.” You see the words “fan” and “goo.” With another artist like Katy Perry, you see “pretend,” “Kate,” “naked.”

If you compare the results for another artist who is slightly more conservative, such as Sarah McLachlan, for example — she probably generates words like “album” and “love.” So in an instant visual, you can see all of those keywords that are attributed to someone — and those keywords will provide strong clues about the type of audience that artist attracts.

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Maintaining long-distance relationships Looking at “share of voice” during this analysis time frame, Lady Gaga was working with brands such as Virgin, Gilt.com, Polaroid and Zynga. Zynga was developing her GagaVille app, and that app was announced during this period. She has had a long- standing relationship with Virgin, and she often gives away mobile phones to the crowd in the audience. So you have a very happy audience with cell phones in hand posting on social media sites about how happy they are. At the same time, they’re implicitly and explicitly promoting Lady Gaga’s sponsors. It’s a perfect marriage of the two.

So this type of activity adds another dimension to celebrity endorsement and product placement.

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Zynga“It’s Lady Gaga inspired!!! May 17 to May 19 it will be GagaVille! So ready for all the loony stuff I bet they’ll have! “ – www.farmvillefreak.com

Polaroid“…the brand-new 3D polaroid (Lady Gaga gives photography a new dimension).”– drysafemarker.tumblr.com

Don’t choose a JudasThe key takeaway from all this: Product placements are a growing trend, and while there are many potentially positive opportunities associated with that, there are some strong potential pitfalls as well. And with the unprecedented amount of media coverage, access to information and levels of social shar-ing, there is an increased need for visibility in real time around celebrities associated with a brand. So marketers should fully understand and weigh the risks before they make decisions. Social intelligence can help you do both, giving you the insight you need to enter into a celebrity relationship with your eyes wide open rather than going gaga over the opportunity and regretting it later.

Questions about this report? Want a free consultation on how social data can improve your media planning and other marketing? Contact us.

Phone: 608.237.1867

Web: networkedinsights.com

Email: info@networkedinsights.com

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