Brandwatch Bulletin #150: Team Rolex or Team Casio?

How pop culture impacts brands.

3 February 2023

From Don McLean’s mention of Chevrolet in American Pie in 1971 to Pitbull’s iconic mention of Kodak in Give Me Everything, singers name-dropping brands isn’t anything new. But since the release of Shakira’s new song – where she mentions a plethora of brand names – we’ve been wondering whether your brand being mentioned in a song is always a good thing. We’ve had a look at the data to find out.

Let’s get to it.

Subscribe to the Brandwatch Bulletin

Shakira’s shaken the internet

Two weeks ago, Shakira released a new song with Bizarrap. The song, called Music Sessions Vol.53, has since shaken up the internet. It broke YouTube records, logging more than 63m views in 24 hours and becoming the most watched new Latin song in the platform’s history. Today, it’s sitting at 257 million views on YouTube.

Mentions of Shakira soared in the week after the song’s launch. She went from being mentioned under 6,000 times per day earlier in the week to over 2 million times on release day.

That’s impressive.

But what has this got to do with brands like Rolex and Casio?

There’s no such thing as bad publicity?

In the song, Shakira sings a lyric which, when translated to English, reads: “You traded in a Ferrari for a [Renault] Twingo, you traded in a Rolex for a Casio.” As you can imagine, the number of mentions around these brands was catapulted shortly after.

But that’s not even the interesting part.

Despite the lyric insinuating that Rolex and Ferrari are superior brands to Casio and Renault, the latter duo have actually received better coverage. The graph below shows that Casio and Twingo received two to three times the number of mentions after the song’s release compared to Rolex and Ferrari.

At first glance, you might think that the increased mention volume for Casio and Twingo would come with a slew of negative sentiments towards these brands, but the data tells a different story. Let’s see how sentiment towards these brands was impacted by Shakira’s Music Sessions Vol.53.

After the song’s release, each brand saw a different story unfolding online. Rolex took the biggest hit, with 8% less positive and 54% more negative mentions. Ferrari and Casio received an uptick of both positive and negative mentions.

Of the four brands and products mentioned in Music Sessions Vol.53, it seems like Twingo emerged as the winner with a healthy uptick in positive sentiment and even a slight decrease in the percentage of negative commentary.

So, from the data, it seems that every brand mentioned in Shakira’s new song was impacted. Some in better ways than others.

Pop culture heavily influences brand image

Mentioning brand names in songs is nothing new. Back in late summer 2017, rapper Lil Pump released a track titled “Gucci Gang.” The certified five-times platinum song was a hit and had an interesting impact on Gucci’s social conversation following its release. Conversations about Gucci related to the song continued to spike long after the song’s release.

To this day, Gucci is still benefiting from the lyrical mention, with ‘Gucci Gang’ still seeing a few thousand monthly mentions in 2022.

This pattern can be seen across plenty of brand mentions in popular music. In 2016, Frank Ocean’s “Nikes” was released, which Billboard ranked number 28 on their 100 Best Pop Songs of 2016 list. After the track’s release, mentions of the term “Nikes” increased five times on social media as users praised the song. In fact, mentions of Nike relating to the song had a positive sentiment rate of 75%, compared to negative and neutral comments.

We hope Nikes offered him some of that year’s revenue.

From Ed Sheeran’s Lego House to Nelly’s Hey Porsche, brands can’t escape the inevitable increase in online mentions when being mentioned by a popular artist. And while brands don’t often have a say in being a lyrical subject, the music industry’s influence on their brand image is undeniable. While being mentioned in a lyric doesn’t impact brand mentions in the long run, it does provide a healthy short-term boost.

A common thread ties all these brands together; a strong brand presence. From Gucci to Renault, these companies have worked to create a recognizable brand image from the get-go. At the end of the day, a brand needs to be a household name for a listener to understand the lyrical context.

From our research, being name-dropped in a pop song isn’t such a bad thing. Now there’s a goal for your marketing team in 2023.

Join our Grow With Social Facebook community

Have some thoughts on today’s bulletin? Or maybe some questions about the data? Why not share them over at our Grow With Social community. We’re very friendly, we promise.

What should we cover next?

Is there a topic, trend, or industry you’d like us to feature in the Brandwatch Bulletin? We want to hear your ideas to ensure our readers get what they want. We may even ask to interview you if you’re involved with the topic.

Send any and all ideas to [email protected] and let’s talk.

Thanks for reading

If you were forwarded today’s bulletin and want to get them yourself, you can subscribe to the Brandwatch Bulletin here.

See you next time,

The Brandwatch Bulletin team

Update subscription preferences

Unsubscribe