In the music video for “Runway,” Lady Gaga’s collaboration with Doechii for The Devil Wears Prada 2 soundtrack, the wardrobes are high fashion and the musicians and their dancers serve, pose, and vogue. Colorful and camp, it’s everything you’d expect considering the subject matter of the song is about turning dance floors into runways.
For some viewers, though, it just looks like a Target commercial.
The post activity for Popcrave’s tweet about the “Runway” music video is filled with commenters pejoratively comparing the clip to a Target ad. It’s not hard to see why. Swap out the black-and-white lines on the video’s main set with red-and-white circles, and it looks like a spot for a deluxe edition of the soundtrack with three exclusive tracks available only at Target.
The retail giant became a popular music video producer thanks to its star-studded commercials promoting Target Exclusive albums for artists like Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, and Taylor Swift in the 2000s and ’10s. Target raised the stakes with live commercials filmed during awards shows beginning with Imagine Dragons during the 2015 Grammys.
The creative partnership was mutually beneficial. The format of Target’s commercials gave musicians the freedom to express themselves and their latest album eras. The ads also provided a promotional platform they weren’t getting at other big-box retailers like Walmart—but used to get from, say, iPod ads.
Meanwhile, Target’s visual brand elements, like its logo and distinctive red color, would inevitably be embedded in the music videos’ sets. Secondary visual features, like high-contrast set pieces or graphic black-and-white stripes in Gwen Stefani’s live commercial music video for her 2016 song “Make Me Like You” became shorthand for the Target brand world, too. And that brand affiliation strategy drove traffic to its physical music aisles at a time when digital downloads still reigned supreme. It also gave the retailer pop cultural cachet.
Target still sells exclusive albums, but it doesn’t promote them like it once did, with commercials that had hi-fi, bespoke choreography and expensive, live awards show ad time.
