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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.
It's the jobs they have in the BSF department (bullshut fluff)
...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
There are tech companies that benefit from the celebrity endorsement, being "fashionable brands". Apple, Dr. Dre, GoPro.
It's really hard to gain the "fashionable" status though, and unless you already have it, you won't benefit from celebrities. And if you're an established "office" brand like Dell, Microsoft or IBM, you have precisely zero chance at ever becoming "hip". Your best bet is to create an entirely new brand (a'la Lenovo), bury the connection to the parent company so deep you need a forensics expert to find it, and promote it as the "new hip" thing using funds, tech and supply chain of the "real company" but keeping the original brand as far as possible.
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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.
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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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.
Just imagine Clint Eastwood as system manager.
Just did.