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On June 6, Sabrina Carpenter dropped her latest music video, for her new single “Manchild.” On YouTube, it’s been viewed 37 million times. It’s also her third music video featuring Prada Beauty, for which Carpenter is an official partner.
This time, unlike the “Please Please Please” video and the “Taste” video, however, the video doesn’t actually feature a Prada Beauty product, but rather an aesthetically-pleasing blue bag with Prada’s name in bold-faced type containing banana jelly candies. These bags were also seeded to influencers, leading to a frenzy of posts about what the brand may be launching next. As it turned out, the candies were a tease for the July 8 launch of its Prada Balm lip balm in Banana Yellow. The buzz around the jelly candies generated over 10 million views across social media, according to a rep for the brand.
The Prada Balm, $50, is the brand’s best seller. It comes in elevated, status-symbol-worthy packaging. Banana will be its sixth in the franchise.
When Prada Beauty launched the Balm in the shade Astral Blue — which appears pink on lips — it did so via Carpenter’s 2024 “Please Please Please” video. The video has been viewed 235 million times on YouTube since its release in June. It subsequently sold out within 72 hours. It went on to sell out seven times on Sephora.com, said Juliette Ferret, gm of Prada Beauty, YSL Beauty and the yet-to-launch Miu Miu Beauty.
In Carpenter’s 2024 music video for the song “Taste,” she applies the Prada Monochrome Soft Matte Lipstick in the shade Tonka, checking her reflection in a knife. The video has been viewed 192 million times on YouTube since it debuted in August. The shade also saw a boost from its video placement, a rep for the brand said.
Prada Beauty is under two years old in the U.S., so a strategic partnership with Carpenter, who Ferret called a “rising Gen-Z icon,” is a way “not only to chase visibility, but also to chase relevance,” she said. According to Ferret, nowadays, music videos are a more unconventional approach compared to, say, a TikTok campaign — though the brand has done those, too. Carpenter has nearly 48 million Instagram followers and 35 million TikTok followers. “With Prada, we are always trying to be unexpected and to infiltrate culture with intelligence in a clever and artistic way,” she said.
She added, “Music videos are one of the last true visual playgrounds we have today. [They] blend storytelling, style and sound to create emotion. Emotion drives makeup. Makeup is emotion in the U.S.”
Prada Beauty isn’t the only brand to have tapped into Carpenter’s star power through a music video. Last summer, Supergoop placed a handful of hero products — its bestselling Glowscreen, Play Antioxidant Body Mist and Glow Oil, in the pop star’s music video for her inescapable summer 2024 hit, “Espresso.”
Since Supergoop does not work with Carpenter on a continual basis, the product integration came to be like most others do.
Agencies reach out to marketers when an artist’s team is looking for product placement as a money-making opportunity.
“It really just started as a phone call with [the agency] calling us and saying there’s a great opportunity for a sunscreen brand to be integrated into [her upcoming music] video, and asking if we would be interesting in participating,” said Tina Ghory, Supergoop’s senior director of global social and influencer. Brands are not given much insight into the specific creative direction of the video or how the product will show up.
In Supergoop’s case, Ghory felt confident the product placement would be a good fit. Carpenter had organically mentioned her love of the brand in media before and “embodied the spirit of the brand,” Ghory said. Since appearances of beauty products in music videos are often blink-and-you-miss-it moments, Supergoop worked to amplify its appearance with social posts and an influencer mailing.
Ghory and Ferret both said there’s a need to break through the crowdedness and noise of the beauty industry. Music videos provide an opportunity to do so. Product placement is, of course, not a new concept. Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” music video featured EOS lip balm 12 years ago, and it has long been a trend for products like cell phones and alcohol to appear in music videos. However, it is experiencing a renaissance, particularly in the beauty space.
“Today, brands need to show up in really unexpected ways,” Ghory said. “The landscape is so competitive and saturated, in terms of partnerships. So testing into this felt like a no-brainer.”
Of the banana candies, Ferret said, Prada Beauty was looking to “disrupt,” adding, “In a market where there is a lot of noise, you need to emerge in a very artistic, clever way. And that’s what makes it Prada.”
Both also pointed out the value of artists’ dedicated fandoms. “[Carpenter’s] cult following doesn’t just watch her videos,” Ferret said. “They are here to decode, to investigate, to amplify.” She noted that the brand has received countless DMs asking how customers can purchase the (not-for-sale) Banana gummies. “We wanted to start the conversation before the Balm was even for sale.”
Ghory declined to comment on the investment required to have Supergoop appear in the “Espresso” music video. However, she noted, “Because of its potential visibility, we knew we had to at least discuss the opportunity as an internal team.” Likewise, Ferret declined to share the specifics of Carpenter’s contract.
According to a marketing executive familiar with such matters, who spoke off the record, depending on the level of the artist, product placement opportunities like this can range from $20,000 to well over $175,000. The higher end of that range may also include the artist posting about the brand, for example.
But it’s not just Sabrina Carpenter…
Addison Rae’s new self-titled album, “Addison,” is one of the most-anticipated debuts of summer 2025. It officially released on June 6, the same day Rae released the music video for the song “Times Like These.” In the video, she uses a Giorgio Armani liquid blush, which gets a close-up shot. In addition, a Dove deodorant is seen on a countertop. She also wears a full outfit from Free People’s Intimately line, though, unlike the beauty products, the brand is not immediately evident to viewers.
“Addison Rae is definitely someone who’s been on our radar — she’s been blowing up in popularity,” said Libby Strachan, Free People’s director of brand marketing. “She’s really the epitome of cool in pop culture right now, and she’s bringing back that early 2000s nostalgia.”
Like Ghory, Strachan had been alerted to the opportunity to seed product to Rae’s team for potential inclusion in a music video by an agency. It was a quick turnaround, and Strachan’s team did not know how the items sent — around 50 — may be featured.
Strachan received a moodboard for the music video and knew that the brand’s Intimately franchise would be the best fit. “Addison wears a lot of intimate pieces in her day-to-day life. With our Intimately brand, we use the tagline ‘Made to be seen.’ We encourage [you] to wear it as part of your full outfit, out and about, in your regular day, and at home,” she said.
“We lucked out, with a full outfit of ours shown for almost a minute of the video. She’s wearing the Oh My Darling Tee and the All Or Nothing Slip,” Strachan said. She was able to measure an immediate spike in demand, too. The weekend after the video’s release, the tee’s product page saw a 30% spike in traffic, compared to prior days, and sales of the style spiked 44%. In the same time period, the slip’s product page spiked in traffic by 83%, while sales spiked 84%.
Given that visible logos are not seen in the music video, Free People amplified Rae’s clothing choice on its own social media platforms in a post with the caption “Intimates like these. Link in bio to shop @addisonraee’s look from her music video for ‘Times Like These,’ from her debut album.” The post has over 5,600 likes. The lack of logos also felt more natural and organic, Strachan said.
Dressing Rae was a move to both attract younger demographics and appeal to millennials, given Rae’s nostalgic style, Strachan said.
“We’re clearly seeing a trend with beauty brands engaging with fandoms through marketing, partnerships and collabs,” said Dana Paolucci, Dove’s head of PR and influence, of its decision to place its deodorant in Rae’s video. “With music, it’s very easy to map key audiences for our brand to artist fandoms in a laser-focused way. The traditional brand placement in a music video, TV show or movie is modernized today because you can target and retarget audiences easily, especially on platforms like YouTube.”
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