From Soap Operas to...Billboard and Nielsen?

Take a look at this interesting piece of news from the entertainment industry: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/chart-alert/1549398/billboard-nielsen-add-youtube-video-streaming-to-its-platforms To sum it up, Billboard and Nielson are now incorporating data from YouTube to create their top 100 charts for music. This means songs with popular music videos on YouTube are more likely to end up in the top 100 than if it was just a song. Take for example, Macklemore's Thrift Shop, which is a great song, but gained most of its popularity through a funny music video. This could have an interesting impact on companies, just wait for it. Remember how P&G basically created soap operas? With YouTube data being incorporated into Billboard rankings, it would be interesting to see a company essentially "create" a music star purely for the purposes of product placement and quote unquote free celebrity endorsement. They could create a celebrity who is brand owned. Follow me through a scenario; perhaps this works, perhaps it doesn't. GAP is looking to revitalize their brand (a problem they seem to always have). They discreetly go on the hunt for some talent and find a girl along the lines of a mash up between Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato and Ke$ha or something like that. She's got vocals, she's cute, she's fun, etc. Woo. They get the best songwriters, managers; whatever it is that goes into creating a star, they get the best. And they launch her out into the world. Tada! She wears GAP everywhere, in all of her music videos; maybe she even goes shopping at the GAP. And she has awesome music videos so people watch them and her rankings go up on music charts so she become uber celebrity. Everybody who loves her loves GAP. GAP is cool again. Magic. Maybe this is a really expensive way to go about promoting a brand, but I was just thinking about the possibility that this kind of YouTube data incorporation could present. Music for thought.