Brandwashed (28 page)

Marketers are very aware that when celebrities are photographed or caught on video with a product, sales go through the roof, particularly when the photo is a “candid”—a shot of said celebrity using or enjoying the product while simply going about his or her “normal” routine. Take, for example, what happened in 2007, when former Spice Girl and soccer wife
Victoria Beckham was caught on camera buying the then-unknown cookbook
Skinny Bitch
in an LA boutique. Though it had been a best seller in the UK, you could barely give it away in the United States. That is, until Beckham came along: as soon as that photo hit the
entertainment mags, online sales shot up by 37,000, inaugurating the book’s eighty-four weeks on the
New York Times
best-seller list.
¹³

But of course, these photos aren’t nearly as “candid” as they seem. Knowing full well what a gold mine such a photo can be, marketers and advertisers have been even more persistent—and clever—in their attempts to “catch” celebrities on camera using their product or brand. Vitaminwater did this quite successfully during Fashion Week 2009, when the company placed free bottles on the seats closest to the runway—the seats typically occupied only by A-list celebrities—ensuring that legions of A-list attendees, from Sarah Jessica Parker to Tyra Banks to Heidi Klum, would be seen drinking, or at least holding, a bottle of the drink for a couple of seconds before taking their seats.

Apparently, celebrities don’t even have to be human to be effective persuaders. In South America, one of the sponsors of a TV reality show called
La Granja VIP
is a dog food brand known as Masterdog. In order to shine through the clutter of thirty-second ads (as you may remember
from my last book, the more a brand is integrated into the content of a TV show, the more likely consumers are to remember it), Masterdog insisted the show it was sponsoring add another recurring contestant—a golden retriever known as (what else?) Master. The canine contestant was so popular and talked about, Master became a celebrity virtually overnight. Of course, dog food sales skyrocketed.
¹⁴

Interestingly, the power of celebrity even has a trickle-down effect to
celebrities’ children. Several years ago, Fox News reported that
Angelina Jolie and
Brad Pitt’s children are “the world’s most imitated little nippers. . . . From baby carriers to hairstyles to T-shirts to international adoption,” the article stated, “people are literally copying the ways of Jolie’s adopted . . . Cambodian son Maddox and his wide-eyed . . . Ethiopian sister Zahara.”
¹⁵
Case in point: When Maddox was photographed wearing a T-shirt reading, “Human Cannon Ball,” shirt maker InkyDinkTees’ sales shot up.
¹⁶
Apparently, according to a company spokesperson, the company’s online store has a “How did you hear about us?” section, and most of the people who bothered to write in wrote, “Saw it on Maddox.” We seem to quite literally want
everything
Jolie and Pitt have; as Cheryl Carter-Shotts, director of Americans for African Adoption, told
People
magazine, her organization “began to be flooded with calls and e-mails from people wanting information” after
People
magazine ran a story about Jolie’s adoption of her Ethiopian daughter.
¹⁷
From the BabyBjörn Original (the brand of stroller favored by the rich and famous) to Marc Jacobs diaper bags to even designer diapers (yes, the designer Cynthia Rowley has joined forces with Pampers to create eleven different styles and patterns, available at Target),
¹⁸
if we associate something with a celebrity, we just have to have it for our child.

And what about this? Celebrities even influence the names we choose to give our children. In 2009, according to the Social Security Administration, the names growing fastest in popularity were Malia (the name of President Obama’s older daughter) for girls and Cullen (the surname of the heartthrob vampire protagonist in Stephenie Meyer’s
Twilight
series of megabest-selling books and blockbuster movies) for boys. Sharing the number one spot were names of two other
Twilight
characters, Jacob and Bella (okay, to be fair, Jacob and Isabella have been popular names for more than a decade, but it’s no coincidence they rose
to the top the year
Twilight
mania reached its peak).
¹⁹
Also on the rise in 2009 were such famous names as Khloe (as in Kardashian), Scarlett (as in Johansson), Violet (the name Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner gave to their daughter), and Valentina (as in Salma Hayek’s daughter) for girls; and for boys, Jett (the name of John Travolta’s late son), Romeo (David Beckham and Posh Spice’s newborn baby), and Maddox (see above). Among the names disappearing from the top-hundred list—as the careers of their namesakes either imploded or faded away—were Lindsay (as in Lohan) and Tori (as in Spelling).

Making us feel like
celebrities or royalty (or some unholy combination of the two) has long been a marketing strategy of choice within the travel, hospitality, banking, and gaming industries. These companies know full well that none of us likes to think of ourselves as mere ordinary citizens. That’s why, for over thirty years,
American Express has trotted out its celebrity “members,” including Robert De Niro, Jerry Seinfeld, Quincy Jones, and, most recently,
Tina Fey to lure customers into its exclusive “club” (which, of course, isn’t exclusive at all—anyone willing to pay the exorbitant annual fee can join). Creating this illusion of
exclusivity has been so effective that companies of all stripes are trying to seduce us with everything from “preferred member” upgrades and priority statuses to sapphire cards, silver cards, gold cards, platinum cards, and titanium cards to presidential limousines, Emerald Club memberships, and executive elite suites—the vast majority of which, I might add, are advertised by some famous face or another. Remember the funny American Express commercial from a few years back in which Tina Fey gets shut out of the executive airport lounge and almost misses a chance to sit down with none other than Martin Scorsese . . . that is, until a cheerful airline employee informs her that, not to worry, her AmEx Green Card allows her entry! The message of ads like this is
Buy our product or use our service, and you can enjoy the same status, perks, and even fame as your favorite celebrity
.

“Thanks to marketers and reality TV shows that have shown access to excess, VIP status has become more attainable,” confided a Las Vegas nightclub impresario I spoke to. “It has nothing to do with social status. It’s purely monetary, a form of peacocking—a momentary experience of elitism.” He sighed. “You have to wonder, is it really worth
it to pay six hundred dollars for a bottle of thirty-dollar Grey Goose vodka, just to feel like a celebrity for one night?”

I admit it, even a marketing guy like me isn’t immune to these tricks. For more than a dozen years, I’ve been traveling the world with Lufthansa Airlines. Because of my chaotic traveling schedule and innumerable frequent-flyer miles, I’ve long been one of the airline’s top-rated members. Recently I checked in at the Zurich, Switzerland, airport and proceeded to the first-class lounge, where the hostess politely informed me that because of internal changes too boring to go into, I was now two thousand miles short of becoming “a member of the club.” I’d been demoted to the “Senator” level, and I wasn’t happy about it. Hey, I didn’t want to be a senator! Like George Clooney’s character in
Up in the Air
, I wanted to achieve the most elite flying status there is! Even though I
knew
the whole club thing was a marketing tactic carefully devised to seal my loyalty to Lufthansa, I still felt the sting of rejection and inadequacy.
How pathetic can you get, Senator Lindstrom
? I wondered.

A
poster bearing life-sized images of actresses du jour Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart greets me as I walk into
Sephora, the global
cosmetics chain. It’s a promotional ad for their new film,
The Runaways
, which chronicles the mid-1970s evolution of rocker Joan Jett and her grungy all-girl band. According to the ad copy, “These Make Up Essentials were used on the set of ‘The Runaways,’ to re-create the film’s smoky-eyed 1970s look.” It would seem that the collection’s three products are key to achieving dark, smudgy lids—the epitome of rocker-girl chic.
²⁰

In short, what this ad is saying is that young women can not only get the look of Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart, but they can also channel Joan Jett herself. It’s a one-two punch: the cosmetics secrets of an iconic rock star, plus those of hip young celebrities playing iconic rock stars!

I don’t know, they all look like burned-out baby raccoons to me.

Those aren’t the only famous faces you’ll find in the Sephora aisles. There might be roughly 250,000 products in the store, but my eyes can’t help but be riveted to the back wall where I can make out the oversized letters spelling out, “The Doctors.”

Since the boundaries of celebrity are bulging at the edges, why shouldn’t Sephora promote a celebrity doctor or two? Let’s take a look. First up is celebrity dermatologist and best-selling author Dr.
Nicholas Perricone, MD, who “recommends”—i.e., advertises—not only an assortment of high-priced skin-care products and kits (his RX3 antiaging regimen retails at $603) but also a line of “nutriceutical” dietary
supplements—Dr. Perricone’s special blend of ninety-nine nutrients that allegedly enhance our health, optimize our energy, and help us manage our weight. Garbed in a white medical smock, Dr. Perricone, who has appeared on
Oprah, Today,
and
20/20,
has been featured in virtually every major newspaper and can be seen regularly on QVC (naturally, he also has a popular blog, an impressive Twitter following, and even his own iPhone app) and looks uncannily like David Hasselhoff’s wiser, sterner brother (the one who refused to go into the water because it was bad for his skin). Some of Dr. Perricone’s wrinkle serums and moisturizers are even packaged in old-fashioned brown bottles like you might see in an old apothecary, to emphasize the “medical” feel. Celebrity tinged with nostalgia, anyone?

The famous physician’s “Camera Ready” box is an ensemble that trumpets “Dr. Perricone’s celebrity secrets for creating luminous, youthful, gorgeous skin.” Among other things, the box includes “Neuropeptide Facial Contour, a true Hollywood must-have,” which, at $325 an ounce, also serves as a “red-carpet-prep secret weapon.”
²¹
Next to the shrine to Dr. Perricone sits the skin-enhancing beauty line promoted by another celebrity doctor, Dr.
Dennis Gross. Gross is consistently featured in fashion and beauty magazines including
Vogue
,
Elle
, and
Harper’s Bazaar—
at least according to his Web site, where, in another nod to the power of exclusivity—or at least the illusion of it—we are invited to join the “Beauty VIP Club.”
²²
In short, it’s star doctors telling us how we can look like a star. What could be more persuasive than that?

The infiltration of the medical profession within the beauty industry
would seem to be the ultimate seal of approval, the equivalent of getting the go-ahead from an actual general practitioner. Which is why, more and more, consumers are seeing the reassuring stamps “Doctor-Recommended” and “Dermatologist-Approved” atop their medicine bottles and skin-care products. There’s even an entire brand known as Physicians Formula, but when you go to its Web site, there’s not a doctor in sight.
²³

Yet who
are
these famous doctors and dermatologists who go around giving their seal of approval to various medicines? What are their credentials, exactly? Good question. A quick glance at the bottle’s small print says nothing (except in Germany, where many brands get around this problem by announcing, “Approved by Doctors’ Wives”). The truth is that all pharmaceutical companies employ well-compensated physicians as advisers; and many doctors even sit on cosmetics company boards. In other words, the doctors and dermatologists who “approve” these products are usually positioned to reap some of the company’s profits. Still, companies are more than happy to keep these doctors on their payroll. Why? Because as we’ll see later in this chapter, recommendations from “experts” are worth their weight in gold.

Back at Sephora, the lure of celebrity picks up again two aisles later, with a line of skin-care products created by Philosophy, a brand whose Web site proclaims it is “adored by celebrities, dermatologists and most importantly, their customers.”
²⁴
Many of Philosophy’s clever product names are borrowed from Hollywood, like Dark Shadows (after a popular vampire-themed soap opera from the 1960s and ’70s) and Miracle Worker (after the Oscar-winning movie). And nearby, the LORAC brand (which bills itself as the “Red Carpet authority”) Hollywood Insider Collection offers an “All-access pass to Celebrity Make-up Artist Carol Shaw’s Red Carpet beauty tips and tricks.” The ad copy continues: “Carol hand-picked her favorite LORAC must-haves for this essential makeup collection that contains Perfectly Lit in Spotlight, Couture Shine Liquid Lipstick in Vintage, Baked Matte Satin Blush in Hollywood, Special Effects Mascara, and the exclusive Bronzed Bombshell Eye Shadow Trio. Get behind the scenes beauty with LORAC’s Hollywood Insider Collection!” These ads whisper (or shout),
These are the products that all your favorite celebrities are using. Why aren’t you?

B
elieve it or not, we’re still not finished at Sephora. And what better place to see celebrity marketing in action than the perfume aisle, where among the brands for sale are perfumes named after Halle Berry, Mariah Carey,
Elizabeth Taylor, Shania Twain, Britney Spears, Faith Hill, Gwen Stefani, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Beyoncé Knowles (who, incidentally, also appears in ads for Pepsi, Verizon, Samsung, L’Oréal, Vizio, Nintendo, American Express, House of Deréon, Samantha Thavasa handbags, and Crystal Geyser water).