Flo Rida is steaming mad at Celsius Heat, an energy-drink company, reneged on a lucrative endorsement deal after featuring them prominently in his video.
The Carol City charmer dropped a new video called “Hola” that featured young adults (Gen Zers and Millennials) dancing in a nightclub who seem to be sipping on the Celsius Heat drink.
By all marketing and advertising standards, this is great product placement for the brand with the GRAMMY nominated-rapper. Based on his “heat” and celebrity cache, the music video has accumulated over 135 million views over the last three years.
Clearly, Flo Rida believes that this successful collaboration brought a lot of attention to the beverage and its parent company, Celsius Holdings, which was backed by Russell Simmons.
He entered into the collaboration thinking that it would be mutually beneficial, helping them get out of a corporate slump and move into a hot listing on the NASDAQ exchange that generated $130 million in revenue in 2020.
In a lawsuit filed in Broward County, the rapper (who served as the global brand ambassador) says that despite helping their visibility, he has received proper compensation for his efforts to raise the temperature for Celsius as a whole.
Flo contends that his involvement in the company (even a signature product called “Flo Fusion”) helped launch the caffeine-infused drink into “a new era,” and supported their “brand development, growth, and expansion.”
He started working with them in 2014, officially documented through an endorsement contract, when the company was trading for $1 per share. January 2020, the share price rose and remained steady at $5.40 and by this year, 2021, it is worth more than $50.
The rapper asserts that royalties and stock bonuses once promised are being withheld and he was not paid proper compensation under two endorsement contracts.
Flo Rida and his company Strong Arm Productions USA are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Also named as plaintiffs are the D3M Licensing Group, a Wellington-area company that helped facilitate the endorsement deal. The story is developing but here is our question … who knew this jawn before the chart-topper put his stamp on it.
Pay the man his bread and give him some stock.