Have you ever wondered where to get a jacket like Drake’s in the Hotling Bling video? One of the many outfits in Beyoncé’s 711 video? Or how to experience the colonial safari of Taylor Swift’s Wildest Dreams video in real life? Well, help is at hand courtesy of new website Blingby, where you can watch your favourite music videos then buy the styles and book the travel.
“Getting the look” is far from a new concept. Long before Pinterest, websites such as polyvore and lookbook.nu featured moodboards showing how to copy looks from TV shows and celebrities. Online retail giants ASOS began as asseenonscreen.com. But for Blingby founder Marcia Favale, people shouldn’t have to trawl through online shops and mood boards to find the product – they should be sold alongside the video. “People watch a video to be seduced visually, otherwise they would just go on Spotify,” says Favale. It’s no surprise that her background spans fashion, TV and investment banking. “You can even buy the kettle from Adele’s Hello video – we’ve seen that consumers are genuinely interested in these things.’’
Once the video is posted or “bbtagged” by the Blingby team, users can hover over a product – anything from Rihanna’s lipstick, Katy Perry’s necklace or the sofa in a Selena Gomez video – and find out where they can purchase an exact match or a cheaper alternative. The latter is important to Favale, who believes in appealing to all income levels and demographics. Users can suggest videos to be bbtagged – meaning international and unsigned artists can be featured too. It’s not just new videos either – if you’re looking to go as Billy Idol to a fancy dress party, the video for Rebel Yell has been bbtagged with leather trousers and jackets aplenty.
Favale argues that Blingby could bring an end to the world of clumsy product placement in music videos. Who can forget Lady Gaga’s much hyped Telephone in 2010, which featured awkwardly prolonged zooms of her casually surfing dating website plentyoffish.com? Or the relentless Beats by Dre placements that appear so often in music videos, they could be credited as a featured artist.
But where is the fun when it is too subtle? Doesn’t the boldness of product placements make them so grim that they end up being hilarious? Consumers feel as if they’re in on the joke, rather than being unconsciously beamed in their sleep. Fashion-wise though, it’s a timely move. It’s easier than ever for pop stars to rip off underground artists and club kids – all they need is a stylist with an Instagram account – so it seems fitting that regular people will be able to copy the look instantly, thus accelerating the death of a trend. Culture eating itself with one-click ordering and next-day delivery.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Want to buy the kettle in Adele’s Hello video? Of course you do
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