A week ago American singer Ke$ha premiered her latest music video We R Who We R. I don't really like that kind of music although I found one part of the video very interesting. Canadian dating website PlentyOfFish had a small role in the video. Because I thought I saw that website in music videos before, I decided to make a quick research.
PlentyOfFish was founded in 2003 by Markus Frind, who is also the current CEO. According to the owners of the site and Comscore report from January 2010 PlentyOfFish is the world's largest dating website. In the beginning of 2010 it has almost 650,000 daily visitors.
PlentyOfFish’s cooperation with the music industry started last summer, when they collaborated with the U.S. rapper Flo Rida. It was possibly the first time that some online dating site has featured in a music video: it was inserted in the video for the song Available.
In November 2009 PlentyOfFish partnered with Lady Gaga. The site sponsored a contest for single fans to win a “date of a lifetime” with Lady Gaga during her North American concert tour. PlentyOfFish gave away tickets and backstage passes for two lucky winners per concert.
This year PlentyOfFish and Lady Gaga collaborated again. This time the website was included in Gaga’s famous Telephone video. I even wrote an entire blog post about it: The Virgin Telephone. Reports from the web suggested that the website noticed a massive jump in brand awareness and they also saw a 15% increase in PlentyOfFish searches.
In April they teamed up with young American R&B singer Jason Derulo for his hit single Ridin’ Solo. This time they made a very interesting product placement. They put their website on an iPad. You probably remember that iPad came into stores in the beginning of April, while Ridin’ Solo premiered on April, 26.
Next month PlentyOfFish has made it into Natasha Bedingfield’s single Touch, which unfortunately for the website wasn’t a very big hit (it was released on iTunes only).
In the summer PlentyOfFish could be seen in the 3OH!3’s (pronounced “three oh three”) music video Double Vision. The video is simply great: it’s like slowly scrolling down one long blog in real-time, and just like when you read any other website, you can see features such as YouTube videos and dating site ads. It that case: PlentyOfFish.
That brings us back to the latest Ke$ha’s video. This one is a bit strange. I was generally impressed with product placement in the 3OH!3 and Lady Gaga’s video, because it was innovative (3OH!3) or it was placed in an interesting context (Gaga). But PlentyOfFish’s placement in Ke$ha is awkward. The website was used by DJ’s in a nightclub, which is IMHO totally out of context. It’s forced and unnatural.
What can we say about PlentyOfFish’s product placement in music videos? They have certainly found a niche and so far they were quite successful. In the table below you can see that videos with PlentyOfFish in them have more than 143 million views on YouTube (as of 8 December 2010). The number will be even higher, because KeSha’s video has been online only for several days now (her song We R Who We R has more than 17 million views and it’s not even a proper music video). A comparison: The New Orleans Saints' victory over Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl 2010 was watched by more than 106 million people and the cost for 30-second ad was between $2 million and $3 million
PlentyOfFish have in my opinion found a proper niche and are establishing good connection with one of their target groups: young (single) adults who love popular music. I’m sure we’ll see several more videos with PlentyOfFish website in them.
