The Lady's Gaga For Product Placement In Her New Telephone Music Video

Streamline/Interscope

Nine minutes, nine products ... Lady Gaga's new epic music video for Telephone features no fewer than nine product placements unless you count Beyonce as a tenth.

The Lady's production team was able to get lots of advertisers on board to help finance her mini movie -- which we're told had a budget of $300 - $400K!

Telephone was shot in two days and was directed by Jonas Akerlund - the Swedish music video master who has previously worked with the likes of Madonna and U2. Akerlund's rep tells X17: "Both [Lady Gaga and Akerlund] are creative geniuses, but a lot of the ideas for Telephone came from Lady Gaga."

Akerlund's rep tells us product placement, however, wasn't really part of Gaga's creative vision: "No one likes it, but it adds money to the project. These days when there's less money from the label, it helps. We're used to it."

(Gaga's label, Streamline/Interscope, has not responded to our requests for a statement.)

And Lady Gaga's definitely no stranger to creative marketing deals -- she signed on as Polaroid's creative director back in January.

Verizon sponsored her Monster Ball tour so it's not surprising a Virgin phone with their red logo on the screen has a role in the aptly-named Telephone.

Gaga's also got a branding deal with Monster headphones and, in fact, the "Heatbeats" in-ears and an HP Envy "Beats Limited Edition" laptop -- both from Monster -- make appearances in the video.

Ad Age's Andrew Hampp says both artist and advertiser win with deals like these: "... there seems to be a commitment to authenticity among her sponsors and marketing partners. For the advertisers, they get a natural extension of their advertising relationship with Lady Gaga as well as access to her fan base of millions around the world, and Gaga, her label and director Jonas Akerlund get to offset production costs for the expensive project."

One of the more surprising placements in the vid is Miracle Whip mayo (who would have thought they could work sandwich-making into a video for a track called Telephone).

Justin Parnell, brand manager at Miracle Whip tells X17 Interscope approached the mayonnaise manufacturer about a spot in the video and they gladly accepted the cash-for-casting: "When we relaunched Miracle Whip last year, we also reached out to a new consumer for the first time, 18-to-35-year-olds, with an engaging new creative campaign. We thought integrating our new package in this music video offered a chance to also engage this same group of younger consumers we want to reach. It is the first music video for Miracle Whip."

So maybe there'll be more Miracle Whip music video cameos to come! Perhaps Metallica can somehow feature sandwich-making in their next video.

Dating website PlentyOfFish is an equally surprising advertiser but their "Director of Love," Kate Bilenki, tells us it's paid off: "We've noticed a massive jump in brand awareness (if you search for us on twitter every post is about Telephone) as well as existing users returning. We did see about a 15% increase in Plentyoffish searches so far and the numbers keep climbing."

This isn't POF's first foray into what's being labeled by some as "organic marketing:" "... we had previously been integrated into a music video by Flo Rida called 'Available' and this was the next step for us after that."

It seems the next step for music video financing (and for film and TV too) is through product placement. Large endorsement deals for artists and other celebs to represent products in various OFF-screen formats are becoming more and more common as well - remember Jennifer Aniston "caught" by paparazzi with Smart Water and Lindsay Lohan covertly promoting Ariva nicotine gum?

Hampp, who's been following Gaga's promotional deals for Ad Age, says the product placements in Telephone are definitely a trend: "Product placements in music videos have risen in popularity in recent years in hip-hop culture as having name-brand cars, liquor and jewelry often go hand-in-hand with the lifestyle portrayed in the songs and their videos."

So have a Coke and a mayo sandwich while you surf the web for a date -- that is, apparently, the Gaga lifestyle!

NME's Abby Tayleure took the time to compile all the products and their minute markers:

1:34: Heartbeats earphones.
2:06: Virgin Mobile.
2:17: Diet Coke.
4:15: Virgin Mobile (again).
4:24: HP Envy ‘Beats Limited Editon’ laptop from Monster.
4:28: Plenty Of Fish dating site.
4:44: Chevrolet.
5:37: Polaroid.
6:24: Wonderbread.
6:36: Miracle Whip.
8:31: Polaroid (again)

And this isn't the first time Lady Gaga's looked for outside funding ... Bad Romance and Love Game feature as many products as does Telephone. Check those out after the jump.