TROJAN GETS MARKET PENETRATION IN VIDEO

Cobra Starship’s new music video “Good Girls Go Bad” shows gambling, drinking, carousing and — here’s the unusual part — a paid reminder to practice safe sex.

The maker of Trojan condoms, Church & Dwight, slipped its brand into the video, which is set to debut today on MTV. It marks the first time Trojan, which doesn’t usually pay for product placement in movies or TV, has bought its way into a music video.

The Cobra Starship video, which also features “Gossip Girl” actress Leighton Meester, shows two young women purchasing a Trojan 2Go condom in anticipation of their night on the town. Not since Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, a member of R&B girl group TLC, wore a condom in place of her left eyeglass lens in the 1990s has safe sex received such a starring role.

Trojan’s media agency, Maxus, and lifestyle consulting firm Brand Alchemy handled the product integration with the band’s record label, Fueled by Ramen, part of Atlantic Records.

Although Trojan is a regular advertiser on cable channels such as MTV, Comedy Central and Spike, Jim Daniels, vice president of marketing for the brand, said he is frustrated with restrictions the major broadcast networks continue to place on condom ads.

A couple of years ago, CBS and Fox refused to air ads from Trojan’s “Evolve” TV campaign. The ads, which did appear on NBC and ABC, portrayed men as pigs in a swank cocktail lounge until one of them buys a Trojan condom and is transformed into a normal guy women find attractive. “We have these media barriers, and so we are looking for ways to broaden our reach,” Daniels said. “If this is effective, we will look at doing more of it.”

Daniels said the Trojan 2Go product has been two years in the making and was created with convenience and discretion in mind. The packaging is a thin, hard-shell plastic case — as opposed to a foil wrapper — that holds two condoms.