Gaga
If you’re like most of us, you likely caught Super Bowl LI over the weekend. Besides the history-making overtime win, you may have been happily surprised by Lady Gaga’s riveting half-time performance. Fan of hers or not, Lady Gaga brought down the house and her performance has generated non-stop social media commentary, memes, and the like.
Gaga out here teaching people how to get over Trump's wall like: #Superbowl #HalftimeShow pic.twitter.com/MTjnCsr4uY
— Travon (@Travon) February 6, 2017
Marketing Power
What might come as a surprise is that Lady G apparently made no money from this record-breaking event. Yup…zilch, nada, nothing. According to Money Magazine, an NFL spokesperson stated that Super Bowl performers’ cost are covered, but that’s all…no take home pay. For an artist who reportedly earns $1.9 million per concert, PER NIGHT; what’s in it for her?
Hypothesis Testing
All scientific fields use hypothesis testing to evaluate the relationship between two variables. Luckily, the method across scientific fields is the same: the null hypothesis is presumed to be true. The null hypothesis states that there is no statistically significant relationship between two variables (i.e. the observation results are driven by chance).
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Hopefully, this is not what you look like right now… - This may feel counterintuitive; assuming ‘no relationship between observations’ as the true outcome. Well, don’t get too discouraged yet! It’s really just a mechanism to ensure that the burden is on proving that a (statistically significant) relationship exists. Much like our “innocent until proven guilty” justice system; the burden is on proving guilty (assuming innocence to be true), rather than proving innocence.
The alternative hypothesis asserts, in short, the opposite of the null hypothesis. For example, coming back to #gaga, suppose we wanted to determine whether her Super Bowl performance really resulted in no personal (monetary) gain for her. Although the Super Bowl rep states performers receive no revenue, that’s a bit misleading if performers are profiting off of their performances (not dishonest, but misleading: performers are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, they have financial motivation). Our hypothesis might be stated as follows:
- Null Hypothesis: Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance had no effect on her resulting revenue (which we believe, until proven otherwise).
- Alternative Hypothesis: Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance increased her resulting revenue.
I'm not sure, but I think Lady Gaga just made America great again. #SB51
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) February 6, 2017
Without going too far down the rabbit hole of statistical analysis (after all, HotEcon is about real world application), we can collect data to determine whether we will reject the null hypothesis. To do this “officially”, we’d need to determine a level of significance, standard deviation, and specify the alternative (here’s a more technical overview on the difference between one- and two-tailed test. For those paying close attention, our example would reflect a one-tailed test). But, we gonna skip all that today! So let’s collect some highly scientific (no, not all) data and throw out some opinions.
Lady Gaga catching more passes than the Patriots out here #SB51 pic.twitter.com/D8ZT4hEULh
— Jasmine (@JasmineLWatkins) February 6, 2017
Mo’ Money
There are multiple reports that Lady Gaga’s sales skyrocketed as a result of her performance; by 1000%! Digital sales of many of the songs she performed, as well as her full album sales, surged post-Super Bowl. Chief Hot Economist says, “Good enough for me…we are rejecting the null hypothesis.”
This money-making outcome is not unusual and, hopefully illustrates the benefit to those in the entertainment industry who perform “for free”. This “phenomena” (and by that I mean, a totally predictable occurrence) is also seen in product placements, particularly with the relative new popularity of social media platforms such as Instagram. With a market reach that is incomparable to traditional marketing channels, everyone has the chance to get their 6 seconds of fame! From yoga instructors to meme celebrities, everyone is jumping aboard that gravy train! No one really believes that all those B-list celebrities use the products that they hawk, right?? Right?! Well, if you did, I hope you now see that these types of activities are really just a means to market to a wide audience and, like everything else, it all goes back to the benjamins!
A funny side note: as I was googling “lady gaga super bowl 2017 sales”, google tried to auto-populate “lady gaga super bowl 2017 satanic”. Yeah, there’s a whole story about that. So glad that the online community bases their outrageous opinions on, well, as far as I can tell, nothing.
