Edition 19: Person or Brand?
As we all know the entertainment industry is more than just the movies and the music. These days there’s the internet of course but celebrities are more and more turned into brands. An actress or singer rarely is just an actress a singer anymore.
It has become quite normal that an actress records an album and that a singer makes a movie. That’s not I’m referring too; I’m talking about the vast array of products that are connected to celebrities these days. They’ve always done advertising and endorsed products but this is going further. Stars are no longer just people; they’re brands. A trend that was started by the Olsen Twins but it has expanded to a lot more celebrities.
Scarlett Johansson is a highly regarded actress; she’s pretty much one of the most wanted younger stars in Hollywood right now. We already knew she’s working on an album full of Tom Waits covers but there’s one thing a lot of people probably don’t know. Hearts RBK is Scarlett’s line of clothing with Reebok; it mainly consists of casual sportswear and sneakers for women. I know I’m not a marketing genius otherwise this site would probably get a lot more visitors.
I just don’t get why a company like Reebok would get someone like Scarlett to help them sell sportswear. I know they lost Venus Williams to Nike but I would think you’d replace that with another athlete not with a chain smoking actress. As a sporting goods company I would want to portray a healthy lifestyle. But the name Scarlett Johansson is apparently strong enough to ignore that. That’s what sells the product in the end, the name. The products themselves aren’t exactly high fashion; they pretty much look like normal casual sportswear to me.
Even the lesser names are doing it; Amanda Bynes isn’t exactly a top-list name yet. She did get offers to record an album but refused those because she wants to focus on her acting. Yet how she released her own line of clothing and accessories called Dear by Amanda which is being sold at Steve & Barry’s stores. It’s a budget line of clothing but she probably gets a decent pay check for it. Though she does wear the clothes herself, she showed some of it off on Late Night with Conan O’brien.
The thing with those clothing lines is that they’re said to be designed by these celebrities but I somehow doubt that. Of course they will give their input on the line; it has to be stuff they like. In the end designers will finalise the products and attach the celebrity name to it. People like Amanda and Scarlett don’t have that much time to spend their time designing clothing. And it’s just not clothing; besides her line of clothing Stuff by Duff, Hilary Duff also has a perfume called With Love. One of the song of her album is also named With Love, I just don’t know whether the perfume was named after the song or vice versa.
Currently the biggest brand of the younger actresses is Miley Cyrus, though most of it is of course named after her alter ego Hannah Montana. Disney is known to market as much stuff as possible but now they’re just not thinking straight. That they put out a line of Hannah Montana clothing, computer games, perfume, dolls and some more random crap is normal for that market. But what on earth do we need a semi-professional acoustic Hannah Montana guitar for?
I can’t imagine that any halfway serious musician would want to be seen with a purple guitar with Hannah Montana on it. But that’s not even the worst product; the most pointless product ever must be the singing tooth brush. The idea behind the product is that the song plays for the amount of time they brush their teeth. So it’s to ensure that they brush them long enough, only thing is that kids get bored with songs and the toothbrush only plays one. And if I were a parent I would want to ensure that they use a proper toothbrush and not one made by a toy manufacturer. Not to mention that Miley’s teeth are a bit crooked, we don’t know if she has cavities of course but she sure doesn’t have the perfect smile.
The main difference with the other ones probably is that her say is far less limited; Disney owns the Hannah Montana name of course so they tell Miley what products to endorse. She is compensated for that, she apparently gets a decent cut of the profits Disney makes on the products. Her problem is that her brand is Hannah Montana, the future will tell if the name Miley Cyrus has the same selling power.
That’s what it all comes to in the end money; things like this are just another way of making money. In some minor regard it’s to expand their horizons a little bit; that’s for the ones that give their input on their clothing lines anyway. Does this extra source of income make them sell-outs? Of course not, if I were in that situation I would probably do the same. Their profession is to be in the public eye, their name is what they use to sell themselves in the end. This basically makes them brands, if they can sell products that way why wouldn’t they?
Written by bvang
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