Lady Gaga recently achieved a pop star, YouTube milestone of one billion views, across three of her videos. Her latest, “Telephone, ” is packed with products, some paid placements, some not. Miracle Whip, Wonder Bread, and Polaroid are among the brands featured in this sexually explicit, bad-girl, lesbian prison story.
In one scene in “Telephone,” Lady Gaga is released from prison, and with her accomplice Beyonce visits an American diner, where the two proceed to poison the all-male clientele.
Supposedly, Wonder Bread didn’t pay for the placement. If this is true, that’s a lot of free advertising.
Consider the irony of a brand billed on daytime TV used as the bread that “builds strong bones in 12 ways,” and that is now the main ingredient (along with Miracle Whip) in Lady Gaga’s poison sandwich.
Or do the two brands have more in common than first meets the eye? (As in overly processed and light on substance.)
I wonder, though–does it really matter what your brand stands for when one billion people are glued to their computer screens, hanging on Lady Gaga’s every tongue thrust? Given the associated cool factor, thanks to the slick Lady Gaga marketing machine, how many of these viewers will reach for a loaf of Wonder Bread next trip down the bread aisle?
If sales do go up, I bet Weston Bakeries of Canada (yes, Wonder Bread is Canadian owned) won’t be too public about it.
