Lady Gaga has catapulted herself to the top of the music and fashion industries in a very short time. One of the reasons she’s become such a media darling is because of her boldness to push boundaries, be herself with no apologies and her economic potential.  She’s also head of her own design house, partners with Monster in a new line of headphones as well as the recently named “Creative Director” of a new line of imaging products from Polaroid.

Product placement is everywhere in our TV shows and cinema but somewhat rarer territory for music videos. Lady Gaga’s video for “Telephone”, released with Beyonce, has shattered any records that may have existed before by featuring a list of at least 11 (that I could find) brands or products throughout the video. Even Quentin Tarantino managed to negotiate some promo in the video when he insisted that Gaga use his “Pussy Wagon”; The bright yellow Chevy that was first seen in 2003 in “Kill Bill Vol. 1″.

Some may call her a sell-out, but those who can look under the surface will see the underlying artists message as well as the business smarts behind it. Music Videos can be pricey, especially when it’s nine minutes long, shot across three days, took a month to edit and involved as many props, locations, wardrobe and talent as this one does. For most artists, all this comes out of their pocket. However, Lady Gaga used all the angles she could to get the support to produce and create to her full potential. Surprisingly, not all the products in the video were paying sponsors. Tony Carter (Gaga’s Manager) went though the list with AdAge and revealed in an article, the paid vs unpaid.

Here’s the list of products in the order they appear and the details.

Heartbeat Headphones – Partnership / Unpaid
Virgin Mobile – Sponsor of Monster Ball Tour. / Unpaid
Chanel – Vintage sunglasses. / Unknown
Diet Coke – Homage to her mom who curled her hair with them in the ’70s. Diet Coke also has an empty Celebrity+Style page now. / Unpaid
HP Envy & Beats by Dr. Dre – Partnership / Unpaid
Plenty of Fish (a Vancouver company!) – Partnership with Universal Music’s marketing team and Interscope Records. / Unpaid
Chevrolet (or the Kill Bill series) - Yellow C-2500 Crew Cab Silverado a.k.a. The Pussy Wagon. / Unpaid
Little Debbie’s Honey Buns – Pastry eaten in the truck / Unknown
Polaroid - Partnership. / Unpaid
Mexico via Pacifico – Neon sign in the diner scene. / Unknown
Miracle Whip - Used for the same reason as Wonderbread below but also included to support Miracle Whip’s new ad campaign. / Paid
Wonderbread – Let’s Make a Sandwich! Gaga wanted to juxtapose a well-known, “all-American” brand with the poison used to kill the diners./ Unpaid
Coors Light – Neon sign on the wall of the diner dance scene. Not exactly the logo but might as well be. / Unknown

Carter commented that “If Michael Jackson was making ‘Thriller (today),’ he would do this too. These million-dollar music videos have to have partners to be produced.” When the video launched online the link on the Vevo/YouTube homepage was overloaded and crashed. The video broke all Vevo single-day records and attracted 4 million views in the first 24 hours. Good or bad, that’s a lot of eyes on a product.

It may have been a tough decision for the marketing departments of some of these brands to decide to sink company money into a promotion like this, for others it was a no-brainer. One thing is for sure, it will be interesting to see how (or if) all this exposure by one of the most edgy and boundary-pushing artists of recent years converts into product sales.

The world of today is about working longer and faster to get ahead and the energy drink category has answered a huge calling. The popularity of Brands like Red Bull are based on a beverage with the ability to give you amazing energy boosts or “wings” as they call it. During a long drive in Quebec, entrepreneur Lino Fleury asked himself “What do people drink if they want to relax?”. The ability to wind down and relax the mind and body is essential to keeping ourselves healthy (mentally and physically) and to not burn out. Fleury says “I came to think that there is no beverage to help people slow down when they are stressed. Energy drinks are full of caffeine and they tend to increase anxiety, not reduce it”.

Introducing Slow Cow the drink that relaxes and helps in the improvement of concentration, memory and learning capacity without causing sleeplessness. Made up of 8 natural plants, amino acids and vitamins, this beverage promises many benefits including: relaxation, improved brain capacity and concentration, increase cerebral levels of dopamine, insomnia treatment, reducing nervousness and a decrease in fatigue during exercise.

The biggest and smartest aspect to Slow Cow is the brand strategy they have adopted to catapult them into the media. They have packaged and branded the drink to look like the calmer, little brother of Red Bull (right down to the use of bovine imagery in the logo and the 8 oz can). This mirrored, polar opposite strategy has created an opportunity for Slow Cow to be directly compared to Red Bull, instantly creating additional media attention and a new category within a category that is rapidly growing.

Every business and category out there has competitors. Sometimes it takes looking at everything that your competitors aren’t to see what it is you might need to become.