"'Fight the Power' inside a mock Doritos vending machine"

For South by Southwest, Lady Gaga filmed something of an infomercial for Doritos, urging people to use the hashtag #boldstage and submit a video of themselves doing something “bold” to compete for access to her performance. (In fact, any journalist covering the event was required to do the same thing, which explains why I — and my colleague Jon Pareles — were not there. If we had done so, we would have consented to “give sponsor a royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, nonexclusive license” to use our social media efforts to sell corn chips.)

We missed quite a spectacle, from what I can see in video clips and news reports. Lady Gaga was smeared in barbecue sauce and mock-roasted like a pig and then, with the ink on the check from Doritos barely dry — and with millions destined for her charity — she bit the tortilla chip that fed her. “I won’t play by your” — insert street-cred adjective — “rules,” she said.

She then wagged a crooked finger at her fans who were shooting pictures on their phone and had tweeted their way in at her instruction: “When you leave this earth, no one is going to care what you tweeted. Don’t let the machine and don’t let technology take you from this earth.”

Read More | "A New Model for Music: Big Bands, Big Brands" | David Carr | NY Times

For more on brands and sellouts, see Whitney Mallett's January TNI essay "Personal Ads"