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The Brief, Bumbling Tech Careers of Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys, and Will.i.am (backchannel.com)
"Four years ago this week, Blackberry named Alicia Keys its global creative officer... Keys was really going to work for Blackberry -- to participate in weekly calls addressing product development; develop ideas and content for the Keep Moving Projects, which targeted artists and athletes; and of course, promote the brand during her upcoming tour... It didn't work."
Slashdot reader mirandakatz writes:
For a minute in history, it was oh-so-cool for legacy tech companies to hire pop stars... In 2005, HP brought Gwen Stefani on as a creative director. In 2010, Lady Gaga landed the job of creative director at Polaroid. In 2011, Will.i.am was the director of creative innovation at Intel. In 2012, Microsoft brought on Jessica Alba as creative director to promote its Windows Phone 8.
These roles were all touted as far more involved than the mere celebrity pitchman: The artists promised, to varying degrees, to dive into the business. But in all of these cases, the strategy failed. At Backchannel, Jessi Hempel dives into why that is, and how big names in entertainment are now finding other ways to harness the momentum of tech.
Lady Gaga left Polaroid in less than a year after "collaborating" on video camera sunglasses that offered playback through LCD lenses. While they weren't popular, this article argues most of these tech companies "faced structural business issues too significant to be addressed through celebrity branding and artistic energy." One digital ad agency even tells the site that "It's always been a flawed strategy," and calls the hiring of a celebrity "a press cycle hack."
These roles were all touted as far more involved than the mere celebrity pitchman: The artists promised, to varying degrees, to dive into the business. But in all of these cases, the strategy failed. At Backchannel, Jessi Hempel dives into why that is, and how big names in entertainment are now finding other ways to harness the momentum of tech.
Lady Gaga left Polaroid in less than a year after "collaborating" on video camera sunglasses that offered playback through LCD lenses. While they weren't popular, this article argues most of these tech companies "faced structural business issues too significant to be addressed through celebrity branding and artistic energy." One digital ad agency even tells the site that "It's always been a flawed strategy," and calls the hiring of a celebrity "a press cycle hack."
... that these slebs are directing or creating anything. They're there to add some glitz and glamour to a fading or jaded brand, nothing more. They turn up to pre arranged photo opportunities, mouth off some vacuous rubbish pre-prepared by the marketing dept then head off back to their lives with a fat cheque in their back pockets. Its all very very cynical.
their end is near, because it is done out of sheer desperation. This was true in the past and will be in the future. Keep that in mind, my young friends.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Just imagine Clint Eastwood as system manager.
Lenovo + ashton kutcher = lol.
When it started happening, we were all shocked thinking part of the money for high-tech gadgets would go to these so-called celebs... It was opening the door to basically anything. Then why not elect a reality TV show presenter as president...
Remember the Dell dude, another attempt at making technology cool. In fact technology sells no matter if a celebrity or artists supports them. People need technology but not because a Gaga endorses it. Of course it's a attention thing, and a marketing tool to get someone notable to endorse your product.
I've always said companies like AMD needed to do more marketing to get people to recognize it as a brand. Microsoft as we know spends a lot of advertising but probably does the worst at using marketing well. Like that Dell dude that turned out to be a druggy. Those things can really backfire.
It's the jobs they have in the BSF department (bullshut fluff)
Do they leverage synergy in these letters yet?
If not, there's still hope.
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...is that you know at every one of those companies, people got the "I'm sorry, I know you work hard and do a good job, you really do, but we simply can't afford to give you that $3000/year raise you're asking for" while they paid these celebrity "employees" hundreds of thousands.
I get it, it's more like a marketing cost than a salary, but that's bullshit.
-Styopa
I am Will, and Will I am.
Seems like you handily forgot Trent Reznor. Who still works at Apple music although he seems to be a whiny little b**** now instead of giving away his music for free he wants to complain about streaming on YouTube
Silence is a state of mime.
...these were all part of the same business cycle in which lotus cars "hired" swizz beats (alicia keys' husband and producer) as its chief creative officer, despite his absolute lack of qualifications and automotive knowledge...after the intitial flurry of absurd press releases, his sum total contributions as "CCO" consisted a lotus name-drop in one of his rap songs and taking receipt of a pair of new evoras for he and his wife to drive at high-profile public appearances, after which everybody quietly moved on and pretended the whole absurd episode never happened... ...i suspect all these musician C-suite co-branding gigs were masterminded by a common entertainment manager they all shared; marketed to struggling corporations desperate to buy street credibility and become "cool brands" in the public eye... ...it was a transparently-vacuous corporate trend from its outset, probably brainstormed by some clueless MBA marketing drone without a clue that innovative *products* drive public affection and business success; good riddance...
No one needs singing idiots in the IT industry. Their vocal talents are indisputable however it's what not people are seeking for when they're choosing new tech toys to buy.
Another confirmation of my statement is the fact that no one has offered a similar position to Brian May, who's a rare scientist in the pop sphere.
What I find surprising is that these positions (no matter how vacuous their actual roles really were) are being given to celebrities who probably aren't even all that responsible for their own celebrity.
They themselves are quite often the products of PR agents, media handlers, producers, song writing "collaborators", and marketing campaigns. Giving them a job to provide visionary leadership assumes they are themselves responsible for their own successes and are wholly self-made.
I'd also wonder if these celebrities, especially the pop music stars, go in for these jobs on the downward arc of their careers, taking them to keep their own PR buzz going when their principal popularity is fading.
Now none of this is to say that these people are wholly talentless hacks, either, but in the realm of long-duration talent the list of people mentioned seem like pop music footnotes, not long-duration artists known for the depth of their creativity.
So being a janitor in a car factory would count, too, I presume? I mean, that's about as far from an engineering role as a "creative director", whatever that is.
Ezekiel 23:20
Yeh, they did a years adverts as contracted then moved on. So how is this anything to do with the celebrities?? Of course they move on when the contract expires. Their job is to put out a lot of tweets and be seen wearing the product!
Fashion design is the same, often the name is the name of the owner not the designers (e.g. Ford doesn't design the clothes, he approves the designs from his team), or fake made up people which are simply employees of the company under tight contract.
Trump sells of his garden to developers, and then tells people he's redeveloping the garden in *partnership* with developers. Nope, he's not in partnership with developers, he's parcelling the land that was his garden, and selling that off for people to build houses on because he needs the money. When this *partnership* is over and the houses get sold cheap, or maybe never built, does that mean Trump's partnership failed? Or that it simply was never a partnership.
...sub sandwiches. Don't they look phallic to you? I have a feeling Subway is secretly a pedo factory. They are trying to entice with sexually suggestive breads.
Trent Reznor has been working at apple for years, I believe he still is.
I'm not saying that all religious people are idiots but I am saying that all religious people are idiots.
FTFY.
Quite a few of them so. Lady Gaga, though, interestingly, is a curious exception. Supposedly - from accounts of quite a few people - she's intelligent, educated, with sharp wit and good critical sense, a very no-nonsense person. The 'crazy diva' is all an act, something that is expected from a top pop star, required to stay in the spotlight, in focus of the 'brand' press, keep idiot fans interested and rake mountains of money.
I'd find it extremely amusing if they hired her as a publicity stunt for show off, and then she proceeded to stay out of spotlight and be a very competent manager instead.
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Will.i.am also seems to be a fairly self-made man. He's got his fingers in everything. I thought the Intel thing was a bit hilarious, though. I mean, srsly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Like whole sale ripping off other people's music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcyXbLPj-Bk
http://www.youredm.com/2013/04/23/will-i-am-admits-to-stealing-from-arty-and-mat-zo-for-next-album/
I guess you missed black eyed peas at their Superbowl halftime show. They did it to reach millions of new possible fans. It was probably the worst halftime show the SB ever had and instead of getting new fans, they probably lost a bunch of existing ones instead.
I will admit, Fergie proved me wrong at that show. I thought Axle Rose was the worst singer of all time, but when she did the Guns and Roses part, she butchered it far worse than Axle could have. The ONLY good part of their show was the 20 seconds of Slash. They would have been better off with him just playing guitar for the entire time.
I don't remember hearing anything from the Black Eyed Peas since.
Jessica Alba also runs her own business(es), which, as far as I care to research, is the biggest portion of her income these days. Many celebs are just a face from a screen with loads of money that they throw around. Others have actually made something of themselves and are quite successful in other ways.
Hell, Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) has an advanced degree in Physics, as does Dolph Lundgren. Don't judge a book by its cover.
and tidal wave
HAHA!
WhoTF is Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys, and Will.i.am ???
You want me to buy a laptop? Give me the Torvalds signature edition, the Dennis Ritchie, or the Richard Stallman!!
Imagine how much fun you could have designing a 'De Raddt', the 'Woz', the 'Gates', the 'Taco'...
I hope this served as a lesson to the industry at the very least... and for people who are constantly looking for all sorts of advices to follow from their favorite celebrities.
Wanna borrow a celebrity name to sell stuff, ok, no problem.
But pop stars and celebrities will always be worried more about selling their own name and face.
Even if there was some hidden genious out there, their priority will always be their own brand.
But the uglier fact is that most of them are not even responsible for most of their fame, so what companies are essencially doing is hiring the most unqualified people to run an important part of their businesses... how did big companies like those get into a situation like that is why "innovation is stifled" and such.
All in all, you'd get better results by hiring strangers that have even a tiny bit of interest in the product line itself.
SharpFang noted:
Lady Gaga, though, interestingly, is a curious exception. Supposedly - from accounts of quite a few people - she's intelligent, educated, with sharp wit and good critical sense, a very no-nonsense person. The 'crazy diva' is all an act, something that is expected from a top pop star, required to stay in the spotlight, in focus of the 'brand' press, keep idiot fans interested and rake mountains of money.
I'd find it extremely amusing if they hired her as a publicity stunt for show off, and then she proceeded to stay out of spotlight and be a very competent manager instead.
Mod parent up.
Stepanie "Lady Gaga" Germanotta is pretty much entirely a self-made artist. She's been single-mindedly aiming at pop stardom since she was a pre-teen, with voice lessons, dancing lessons, and the piano lessons that made her an in-demand session player in the New York recording scene well before she achieved fame on her own. I'm not much of a fan of dance music, but I watched the documentary about her Little Monsters tour, and I was very impressed by how completely she's in charge of every artistic aspect of her performances, from lighting to choreography, to sound. At the end of the movie, there's a candid scene of her practicing acapella with her backup singers, and it's VERY clear from that that Gaga has a powerful set of pipes and an excellent ear. And, unlike pretty much every other dance-pop diva, she does NOT lip-synch her live vocals. Given how energetic her dancing is throughout her performances, that's pretty damned impressive. (I've been a performing musician for decades, and I know from experience how quickly you run out of breath if you jump around the stage a lot.)
And yes, I know that her recording career was only launched when rapper Akon made her his protege - but before he took her under his wing, she was already a contract songwriter with Sony, and a well-known presence on the NYC avant-garde art scene, as well as working as a professional pianist.
And, hey, her halftime show at the Stupid Bowl kicked ass ...
Check out my novel.
Dolph has a Masters of Chemical Engineering from the University of Sydney.
He also got some sort of scholarship to MIT.
Then he decided to be a movie star, make millions and bang legions of hot chicks.
Go Dolph, for teh win !!!!
Just imagine Clint Eastwood as system manager.
Just did.
Doing meaningful stuff is actually really hard. A streak of luck isn't the same as understanding business, marketing and product development.
(Sure, positive vibes and enthusiasm are all good. But at the end of the day you need deliverables.)
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Fuck these people, and fuck the moron children of rich men who hire them
hes a fuckin scam artist. a hustler.
Just think about this:
Do you know what doesn't address structural business issues? At all? Hiring a celebrity.
That's a roughly parallel statement to "the patient became more sick because they faced medical issues too significant to be addressed through Cheetos."
And a millionaire tech father helps.
The product will be shipped late? Do you feel lucky punks?!!
Rowan has a MSc in Electrical Engineering.
Doesn't matter if it is Sting, or Metallica, or the Eagles, or , they are all being replayed every couple of hours. I remember back in the 80s/90s when they actually rotated songs enough that you WAITED for that cool song you wanted to come back around, maybe all week. Nowadays you could probably time your watch by it (or at least when your shift would be ending!)
As far as the songs glorifying all the stuff you mentioned: Just look at sort-of 'white folk' rolemodels: The Kardashians, The Trumps, The Jersey Shore, The Bachelor, etc. Hell even most of the previously 'family friendly' role models have proven far less family friendly than their carefully manicured public personas presented: Disney, Cosby, the subway guy, etc. Its amoral filth and doing whatever it takes to get your own all the way down.
This is why I nod in understanding at all the people I know (friends and not) who talk about depression, or suicide, or horribly fucked up childhoods. I have stories of my own, but nothing that compares with the horrors going on daily around the world, both mundane and 'hollywood'.
Talking to an empty server rack?
Can write software simply by staring at the computer until it obeys.
Jessica Alba also runs her own business(es), which, as far as I care to research, is the biggest portion of her income these days.
Jessica Alba has been wildly successful in her business ventures. Perhaps Microsoft should have made her more than a creative director.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Or in Trumpet English, "Who?, Who the fuck?, and Who Dat?"
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"