Mariah Carey’s New Album Takes Product Shilling To The Next Level
Posted by: Justine Fields
Filed in:
celebs
5:30PM, Tuesday August 4th 2009
Mariah Carey’s next album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, hits shelves on September 15th. And it’ll be a lot bigger than your traditional CD. The album will come bundled with a 34-page magazine made by the folks at Elle. The ad section of the book, which covered the costs for this endeavor, will be home to lifestyle ads that reflect Mariah’s taste—Elizabeth Arden, Angel Champagne, Carmen Steffens, Le Métier de Beauté, and the Bahamas Board of Tourism. A second section of the magazine will contain articles all about Mariah, with “VIP Access to Her Sexy Love Life,” “Amazing Closet,” and “Recording Rituals.” The third part of the book will be your traditional liner notes, full of lyrics and images. The entire booklet will also be available in digital form, and an abridged version will be tucked into 500,000 copies of Elle’s October issue.
Sure, this is the first cross-platform collaboration of its kind. But isn’t this shill-fest taking things way too far?
Obviously, this is Island Def Jam Music Group’s attempt to reverse plummeting album sales. By creating this marketing scheme, Carey has partnered with Elizabeth Arden to cross-promote the album with a new fragrance called Forever. At Wal-Mart, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel will be displayed at the end of the fragrance aisle in the beauty department. If it proves to be a success, Island Def Jam will take the next steps in doing the same with their other major artists, like Rihanna, Bon Jovi, and Kanye West. [Billboard]
Mariah Carey’s first single off the album, “Obsessed,” isn’t really catching on. Do you think this marketing attempt can even slightly revive her music sales? Or should she stick with beefing with Eminem?
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PRican
wrote on August 4 2009 @ 09:42 pm: [report]
Tisk tisk to this insane amount of cross commercialization. Artists plug products all the time via various forms of media, but d@mn! Whatever happened to being subtle??
Plus, why do I care about the products Mariah Carey likes? She only likes them because she can a. afford them and b. they are shelling out cash for her to say she does anyway.
As for the beef with Em, his verbal rebuttal is FFAAARR better than “Obsessed.” Search for “The Warning.” LoL.
Lavanderism
wrote on August 4 2009 @ 10:38 pm: [report]
I don’t like Mariah Carey. They should’ve tried this with an artist someone actually likes, because I don’t know anyone who does like her.
bogart4017
wrote on August 5 2009 @ 10:01 am: [report]
Great! More crap i gotta toss in the garbage. Maybe next time Elle can just throw the cd in the middle of their mag for free.
meredith
wrote on August 5 2009 @ 01:43 pm: [report]
omg i love mariah carey! but i do think this is a kind of desperate way to try to sell her album. which has a pretty unfortunate name. ugh.
avalari
wrote on August 5 2009 @ 05:41 pm: [report]
I absolutely cannot stand the idea of this woman, but aside from that, am I the only one who notices how cartoony her body looks on the album cover? Airbrush city!