The Kluger Agency

Last updated
The Kluger Agency
Type Private
Industry Advertising, Music
Founded2008
Headquarters Beverly Hills, California & Miami Beach, Florida
Key people
 Adam Kluger, CEO
ServicesBrand Partnerships, Product Placement (Music)
Website Official website

The Kluger Agency (TKA) is music management firm and advertising agency with a focus on product placement within the music industry. [1] The agency represents over sixty brands, partnering them with artists in the music industry. [2]

Contents

The agency has partnered over 100 brands with some of the top recording artists including Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Iggy Azalea, Flo Rida, and Enrique Iglesias. [3]

History

The agency was founded in late 2007 [4] or early 2008 by Adam Kluger, when he was twenty-two years old. [5] He is known for placing the advertisement of products within the medium of popular music. [4]

An advertisement for Plenty of Fish in 2010 Lady Gaga/Beyoncé Knowles video "Telephone" yielded a 20% increase in traffic to the site in the month following the song's release. Plenty of Fish has also placed paid promotions in Jason Derulo’s “Ridin' Solo” and Akon/Flo Rida’s “Available”, according to a Forbes magazine blog which estimates placement deals bring in $10 million a year for Kluger as its cut of revenue from "roughly 100 videos and five or six songs per year". [4] BusinessWeek estimates advertisers pay $40,000 to $250,000 per placement, of which Kluger retains up to 23%. Placing a brand into the song's lyrics may cost a half-million dollars or more. [5]

Adam Kluger established the agency in 2008 by making over 400 telephone calls, claiming to vendors that he could get their brands into popular songs, then claiming to record labels that he could get brands to pay for promotions. In Kluger's words, "there's a bit of bullsh-----g you have to do to get in the door". [5] He eventually got through to Steve Berman, head of marketing for Interscope Records, a label promoting bands such as The Pussycat Dolls. His first product placement was for a lingerie manufacturer whose branding is displayed on a shopping bag of cash in a one-second appearance in Lady Gaga's music video "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich". [5]

The Kluger Agency has worked with a range of stars including Akon, Jason Derulo, Drake, Lady Gaga, Keri Hilson, Beyoncé Knowles, Jennifer Lopez, Flo Rida, Britney Spears, DJ Khaled, LMFAO, Kesha, Uncle Kracker, Rick Ross, T-Pain, Timbaland, Lil Wayne, [5] Christina Aguilera, [6] and Eminem. [7]

"Brand-dropping"

The Kluger Agency coined the term "brand-dropping" to describe the product placement of brands into song lyrics or visual representations during a music video. According to the agency's founder, the process involves finding places where a musical artist is likely to mention a specific product in their song, and to match this with companies that produce those products. [8] The process tries to integrate product placement and song writing, in order to create an unnoticeable form of advertising that preserves artistic integrity but also provides the artist with additional revenue from their work. [7]

Kluger has stated that, "At the end of the day, since sales are down and pirating is up, a lot of company’s budgets for videos are down ... So in order for the artist to support their vision, a lot of times they need a brand to come onboard to help support it financially." [6] Kluger claims product placements allow performers to monetise the ongoing copyright infringement of their works as "obviously if the song is pirated, the lyrics aren’t going to change” and provide musicians with a larger budget to produce music videos. [9]

Reactions and reviews

In 2008, the agency was criticized in a Wired magazine blog post after it was alleged that they had sent an unsolicited email offering to place advertising for Double Happiness Jeans in a Pussycat Dolls tune. The company was virtual and not intended to represent a viable commercial product; the project was a collaboration between Jeff Crouse of the Anti-Advertising Agency and Stephanie Rothenberg, and was intended to be a critical piece. [8] [10]

Britney Spears's music video for "Hold It Against Me", which incorporates placements by The Kluger Agency for clients including Plenty of Fish, was described by TMZ as containing a half-million dollars in advertising [11] and negatively reviewed by Vanity Fair. [12] A Washington Post review described the video as an "infomercial" with "undisguised, un-subtle in-video brand cameos". [13] According to The Hollywood Reporter in 2012, Christina Aguilera's inclusion of the psychic hotline Oranum in her music video Your Body led to a 450% increase in the social media following of Oranum within the span of a few days. [6]

Related Research Articles

Dance-pop is a subgenre of pop music that originated in the late 1970s to early 1980s. It is generally uptempo music intended for nightclubs with the intention of being danceable but also suitable for contemporary hit radio. Developing from a combination of dance and pop with influences of disco, post-disco and synth-pop, it is generally characterised by strong beats with easy, uncomplicated song structures which are generally more similar to pop music than the more free-form dance genre, with an emphasis on melody as well as catchy tunes. The genre, on the whole, tends to be producer-driven, despite some notable exceptions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ray Kay</span> Norwegian director and photographer

Reinert K. Olsen, known professionally as Ray Kay, is a Norwegian director and photographer who is currently based in Los Angeles. He is a music video and advertising director.

Loaded is a half-hour-long series on the public TV station Fuse TV. During the show, videos from one specific artist play. Usually there is a mix of old and new videos for each artist. Depending on the video length there are between 5 and 6 videos per episode.

Jodie Amy Rivera known professionally as VenetianPrincess, is an American former YouTuber. Rivera's content typically included parodies of songs and events in pop culture. Despite being inactive, her channel maintains 860,000 subscriptions with total video views of 363 million as of July 2021. The VenetianPrincess channel gained notoriety in 2006 after being featured on the front page of YouTube. In 2007 she became one of the first people invited into YouTube's revenue sharing program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flo Rida</span> American rapper and singer (born 1979)

Tramar Lacel Dillard, better known by his stage name Flo Rida, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. His 2007 breakout single "Low" was number one for 10 weeks in the United States and broke the record for digital download sales at the time of its release.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2008 MTV Video Music Awards</span> Award ceremony

The 2008 MTV Video Music Awards took place on September 7, 2008, live from Paramount Pictures Studios, honoring the best music videos from the previous year. Nominations for a majority of the categories were announced on the MTV program FNMTV after being selected through viewer online voting at MTV.com. The remaining, professional categories were chosen by a panel of music industry professionals and announced via press release on August 27. When the nomination process was first announced, it mentioned a previously-unheard professional category named "Best Story;" however, this award did not come to fruition when the list of professional nominees was revealed the following month.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Fliptones</span> American songwriters and record producers

The Fliptones are American record producers and songwriters consisting of Chaz Mishan and David Delazyn. Classically trained musicians, the duo have production and song writing credits with Jason Derulo, J.Lo, Flo-Rida, G-Dragon, Samantha Jade, Lil Wayne and Britney Spears. They were both born and raised in Miami but currently live in Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keeps Gettin' Better</span> 2008 single by Christina Aguilera

"Keeps Gettin' Better" is a song by American singer Christina Aguilera from her first greatest hits album, Keeps Gettin' Better: A Decade of Hits (2008). It was released as the album's lead single on September 22, 2008, by RCA Records. The song was written by Aguilera and Linda Perry, with the latter producing the song. After giving birth to her son Max, Aguilera looked to "come up with something new and fresh", developing a "futuristic" era of her career. "Keeps Gettin' Better" is an electroclash and electropop song, and was inspired by the likes of Andy Warhol and Goldfrapp. Its lyrics portray Aguilera as a superheroine.

Plenty of Fish (POF) is a Canadian online dating service, popular primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Brazil, and the United States. It is available in nine languages. The company, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia generates revenue through advertising and premium memberships. While it is free to use, Plenty of Fish offers premium services as part of their upgraded membership, such as allowing users to see who has "liked" a member through the service's MeetMe feature, and whether a message has been read and/or deleted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2009 MTV Video Music Awards</span> Award ceremony

The 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, honoring the best music videos from the previous year between June 2008 to June 2009, were presented on September 13, 2009, at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and televised by MTV. The ceremony was hosted by Russell Brand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claude Kelly</span> American singer-songwriter

Claude Kelly is an American singer, songwriter and music producer. He is a four-time Grammy Award nominee, and has written or co-written songs for Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Christina Aguilera, Adam Lambert, Jennifer Lopez, Kesha, Brandy, Keke Wyatt, and One Direction. He and Chuck Harmony make up the R&B duo Louis York, and founded the music collective Weirdo Workshop.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Who Dat Girl</span> 2011 single by Flo Rida featuring Akon

"Who Dat Girl" is a song by American rapper Flo Rida. It features American singer Akon. The song was written by Flo Rida, Dr. Luke, Claude Kelly, Benny Blanco, Bruno Mars, and Philip Lawrence, and it was produced by Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco. It was released on January 11, 2011, as the third single from Flo Rida's third studio album, Only One Flo . It peaked at number twenty-nine on the Billboard Hot 100.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2012 MTV Video Music Awards Japan</span>

The 2012 MTV Video Music Awards Japan was held in Chiba on June 23, 2012, at the Makuhari Messe and was hosted by Japanese trio Perfume. The nominees were announced on March 21, 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Kluger</span>

Adam Kluger is a music manager, and the founder and CEO of the Kluger Agency, an agency that arranges product placements in music videos and on musical recordings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ammo (record producer)</span> American record producer and songwriter

Joshua Coleman, known by his stage name Ammo, is an American record producer and songwriter. He has co-written and produced songs for Beyoncé, Kesha, Katy Perry, Pitbull, Maroon 5, Britney Spears, Jessie J, Jason Derulo, Mike Posner, Fifth Harmony, R. Kelly, Flo Rida, and Selena Gomez. Ammo has contributed to hits such as Maroon 5's "Sugar", Katy Perry's "E.T.", and Fifth Harmony's "Work from Home". He started working with Dr Luke in 2009, after signing with his production company Prescription Songs.

<i>So Fresh: The Hits of Summer 2009</i> 2008 compilation album by Various Artists

So Fresh: The Hits of Summer 2009 and the Best of 2008 is a compilation from So Fresh, first released on 28 November 2008.

Dylan Dresdow aka "3-D", is an audio mixer. He has mixed songs for such artists as Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Usher, Black Eyed Peas, Nas, Afrojack, Talib Kweli, Britney Spears, Ice Cube, Redman, The Wu Tang Clan, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Xzibit, Missy Elliott, Tweet, Christina Aguilera, P!nk, The Game, Ricky Martin, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Far East Movement, K'NAAN, Hollywood Undead, Common, and Flo Rida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hello Friday</span> 2016 single by Flo Rida featuring Jason Derulo

"Hello Friday" is a song by American rapper and singer Flo Rida featuring fellow American singer Jason Derulo. The song was released as a standalone single on February 26, 2016 in the United States. Remixes were released on May 6, 2016.

References

  1. ↑ "Agency cues lyricists to name-drop brands". LA Business Journal. 7 November 2010. Retrieved 2012-08-07.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)(registration required)
  2. ↑ Glenn Peoples (February 25, 2011). "Katy Perry's Twitter Tirade About Product Placement: An Executive Weighs In". Billboard Magazine . Retrieved November 6, 2013.
  3. ↑ Agency, The Kluger. "The Kluger Agency Announces Partial Acquisition By Dahill Investments LP & Wager H.S. LLC". www.prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved 2020-04-17.
  4. 1 2 3 "The Recording Industry's Piracy-Proof Business Plan". Forbes. 2012-04-18. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "He Puts the Soda in Pop Songs". Businessweek. 2010-12-02. Archived from the original on December 6, 2010. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  6. 1 2 3 Rebecca Ford (October 2, 2012). "The Story Behind the Psychic Hotline in Christina Aguilera's 'Your Body' Music Video". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved October 3, 2012.
  7. 1 2 David Castillo (March 11, 2009). "The Secretive World Of Product Placement: Branding Strategies of the Future". Product Placement News. Retrieved September 27, 2012.
  8. 1 2 Van, Eliot (2008-09-19). "Products Placed: How Companies Pay Artists to Include Brands in Lyrics | Listening Post". Wired.com. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  9. ↑ "The Recording Industry's Piracy-Proof Business Plan". Forbes. 2012-04-18. Retrieved 2013-03-12.
  10. ↑ "BLOG: "Don't cha wish your website was hot like this?"". MusicRadar. 2008-09-23. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  11. ↑ "Britney Spears Scores Six-Figures Off Music Video". TMZ.com. Feb 22, 2011.
  12. ↑ Weiner, Juli. "PlentyOfFish.com, Get Out of Music Videos and Get Back to the Internet". Vanity Fair . Retrieved 2012-08-07.
  13. ↑ Kelly, Liz (2011-02-18). "Celebritology 2.0 - Britney Spears debuts 'Hold It Against Me' video/infomercial". Washington Post. Retrieved 2012-08-07.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.