FEATURE
E-CIGARETTE
BRANDING
IN MOST
POPULAR
HIP HOP
MUSIC VIDEOS
RISES TO 87.5%
Half of the most viewed hip hop music videos
now feature some form of tobacco, marijuana
and e-cigarette use, with the latter rising sharply
By Leo Forfar
A new study has revealed that on-screen depictions of vaping,
smoking and marijuana use (both vapourised THC and combustible)
rose between 2013 and 2017 to an all-time high.
The study, published in October via Dartmouth College, surveyed
796 examples and found that the most popular featured smoking
and vaping.
Specific brand placement rose from zero in 2013 to 9.9 percent in
2017, and brand depiction of e-cigarettes alone has gone up from
25 percent to 87.5 percent.
“We don’t know if the videos that showed smoking and vaping were
inherently more popular because they had smoking and vaping in
the videos,” said lead researcher and co-author Kristin Knutzen.
“But we did notice that videos that depicted smoking and vaping
had more views on sites such as YouTube, for whatever reason.”
The researchers divided their findings into order of popularity, with
the most viewed videos totalling between 112 million and four
billion views on YouTube and other sites. This category sees 49.7
percent of videos featuring one or more instances of the named
activities. The grand total of views for all videos surveyed stands
at 39.5 billion.
Vaping is making inroads into many forms of popular culture, cropping
up in film, television, apps and the YouTube content creator community.
Studies of this rise are well documented, but music videos remain
largely unanalysed.
"I don't think there's been a study of music videos that I can recall
in recent years looking at tobacco,” said Dan Romer, a professor
at the University of Pennsylvania.
“We did notice that videos
that depicted smoking and
vaping had more views on
sites such as YouTube” –
Kristin Knutzen, Researcher
Now that hip hop stands as the most popular and influential form
of mainstream music, e-cigarette use may have found its strongest
platform. Some of music’s most popular hip hop and R&B artists
have become leading ambassadors for vaping products, with
many launching their own brands of vaping devices, using their
videos as a platform for product placement. DJ Khaled’s video
for “The One” featured his very own KandyPens. American rapper
and entrepreneur A$AP Rocky has also partnered with KandyPens,
promoting his own branded version. Both Snoop Dogg and Whiz
Khalifa market dry-herb marijuana devices through their partnership
with Grenco Sciences.
Hip hop’s massive popularity among children and teens has also
left many concerned about impressionable viewers taking up vaping,
including Knutzen herself.
Intentional marketing of all three kinds of product falls under FDA
regulatory rules and could inspire censure. In 2015, the FDA launched
the Fresh Empire Campaign, which describes itself as the FDA’s
“first public education campaign designed to prevent and reduce
tobacco use among at-risk multicultural youth ages 12-17 who
identify with hip-hop culture.” With such a campaign as precedent,
along with the administration’s recent threats of a flavour ban and
raids of manufacturer JUUL Labs amidst accusations of teen
marketing, action against artists or record labels could follow.
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