Ladies of the 80s . What the hell?!?! and Music video product placement

God Bless former students

I was having drinks with a former student of mine and he said something really interesting to me: "Every 27 years the fashion cycle repeats itself."

I asked him, "Where did you get that from?"

"The readings you assigned us in Brand Management."


2011 and the 1980s.
If you were around 27 years ago (the mid 1980s), you probably remember it as a very upbeat era. The economy was great and both personal and financial optimism were high (See Theodore Caplow, Howard M. Bahr, John Modell). Upbeat pop and spirited glam rock (e.g. Madonna, Bon Jovi, Starship, Michael Jackson, Journey, Def Leppard, Poison etc.) dominated the music scene. The era's optimistic mood was reflected by the period's music. I remember reading the liner note of the Nelson's After the Rain at the time. They argued that it was music that made the change to a better world. I suspect they are right too. Ultimately, optimism fuels upbeat art. Upbeat art drives optimism.

So what is 2011 like? The 80s style glasses are cool again, women's tight black stirrups and boots are in vogue (and have been for a while), and upbeat pop music is again dominating the charts. A lot of the bands that dominated Billboard's charts in the mid 1980s are mixed in with the best selling artists of today on iTunes. Journey, Heart, Iron Maiden, Pat Benetar, and David Bowie all have best selling iTunes songs. Sometimes both the original 80s and the 2011 remake are selling side-by-side. (e.g. Heart Alone and Alyssa Reid Alone Again) In addition, many of today's artists(especially the ladies) are throwbacks to the 80s. Lady Gaga seems to be Madonna reincarnated. Kesha is Cindy Lauperesque. Katy Perry's melodies are classic, catchy, commercial 80s with a Snoop Dog twist.

So what follows the upbeat, optimism of today's music? If the research proves to be correct, in 4 or 5 years we will be feeling the grays of the dark, anti-establishment, gloomy grunge era. But, for the time being, commercial is cool.


It's (not) About the Music
True artists like to be pure to their art. Watch interviews with new musicians and and you will likely hear something like, "For us its about the music. We don't want to sell out to the corporate pressure." Very few artists, however, don't 'sell out' when they realize that the music business is "80% business, 20% music" (Metallica) and that "the listener is more important than the song" (e.g.Rob Thomas, Def Leppard). Even artists like Avril Lavigne who started off with an 'independent brand value' eventually accept corporate sponsorships. How much has Avril gone corporate? Check out the product placements in her music video "What the Hell". I counted 4 distinct still shots with product placements, including her own fragrance line. I am a little bit bewildered how much Sony product placement there is in the video given her ongoing sponsorship deal with Canon. (Check out her product placement music video here). By the way, if a 90 minute motion picture served up product placements at the rate that Avril is doing here, there would be more than 100 in the film. I'm sure audiences would say "what the hell?!!" to that.

A Society of Sissies and a Bloodthirsty lot

One of the most interesting questions that I ever received during a job interview was from an ad agency. The question was “Talk to me about a trend…” Of course, there were obvious trends that I could have talked about: the baby shortage, the aging population, and obesity. I can’t remember my answer at the time, but the question stuck with me. Tonight, I will comment on something that impacts the obvious trends.

It was 19 something
When I was a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s, I remember racing my wagon down steep hills, building forts which were later used as defensive empires in mud-ball flights, swinging from ropes of the tallest trees, amassing giant artilleries of snowballs to be used in snowball fights, jumping off cliffs on motor bikes and bmxing off ramps. I remember traveling in the back of my parent’s wood-grained-panel station wagon (where there was no seat), sitting in between my parents in the front of our old Ford where there was no seatbelt, and cuddling with our sick dog on the way to the vet. I remember lighting firecrackers to blow up ant hills, playing organized ice hockey in -40 outdoor stadiums and competing hard to make hockey teams. Some times I made it, sometimes I didn’t. But, along the way, I collected my share of scrapes and a lot of bruises - but they all forge an extremely happy collective of my childhood. Even the bloodiest moments would end up well because of a loving hug from my mother, a “This is what it takes to be a man, son” command from my dad – or a cup of hot chocolate from my grandmother.

We’re now in 2010. I don’t need to say a lot has changed but I will say that a lot of the trend lines are absurd. Schools have been on the attack against basic child-hood games. Dodge-ball, tag , soccer, and even balls have been banned from school yards. Sparklers have banned from public places. There are movements to assign warning labels to Coca-Cola, Big Macs, and iPhones. Law suits are sure to follow. There are campaigns to ban preservatives on apples. There are fines for not wearing a bike helmet (1,2) or riding in a car without a seatbelt. By today’s standards, most of my family’s trips of the past would have been illegal.

So what are the implications of this? We’re becoming society of sissies and driven by fear. Kids’ favorite games have been taken away from them resulting in less exercise and more inside time. Instead of playing dodge-ball, a lot of kids are dodging fiery bullets in bloody, violent video games. Instead of competing and learning how to be gracious winners and losers on a soccer field, kids ain’t doing what kids ought to be doing. Worse yet, kids become conditioned to accept the big brother mindset on things that are incongruent with their nature.

But, this trend of “big brother knows best” has a lot of far reaching implications. Just think what a simple regulation on mandatory child restraint seats means to a new family. To have a 3rd child, the family requires larger cars for transport- which is a financial tax on having an extra child- exacerbating our already low birth rate. This, in turn, has implications on the nation’s aggregate future tax base which impacts social policies for dealing with our aging population. And what about warning labels and bans? Well, reduce the preservative and the supply of available apples will go down - driving up prices. Of course this will affect the poor and working classes disproportionately while the affluent shift to organics. All of these rules are part of the "big brother knows best" mindset. But as long we do not resist this mentality, we become compliant in its issue - and complacent on regulations that intrude on individual freedoms and personal responsibilities. We accept laws that limit choice and by "being boiled slowly" (starting in our school system), we get sissified, and lose our gumption to resist attacks on individual freedoms and personal responsibilities. These are precisely the values that our ancestors shed blood to defend.