Why is the advertising industry so addicted to celebrities who don’t care about advertising?
A packed conference featuring talks from Mr Bean, Barry from EastEnders and a reanimated Josef Stalin might attract an audience but, really, what would that audience learn? shots’ Culture Editor Amy Kean takes the mic to bemoan the onslaught of on-stage celebs.
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Last week I went to an innovative disruptive conferencefest that promised to “unleash the unlimited possibilities of real-time agile genscapes at the intersection of art and science”, and let me tell you: it was a fun time.
In a packed-out auditorium, Mr Bean gave a thrilling keynote about building brands during periods of cultural chaos. It was standing room only as Ellie Goulding took to the stage to share her musings on hyper-personalisation while later in the day, a panel of famous tennis players - including John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova - provided unparalleled guidance on using programmatic insights to create enhanced audience segmentations. In the futures tent, a hologram of Josef Stalin shared his top tips for growth hacking to a captive audience of C-suites, followed by an American reality TV star who was clearly high on different alcohols and drugs. No one knew what their actual topic was, but we all laughed so much!
The crowd went wild, launching into a completely unplanned sacrificial burning of the Financial Times...
My personal highlight was the fireside chat between Liza Minnelli and the CEO of an AI start-up on harnessing the power of data lakes, and to end a thoroughly fulfilling day, Martin Sorrell once again announced that everything is dead, and he’s the only solution. The crowd went wild, launching into a completely unplanned sacrificial burning of the Financial Times as Barry from EastEnders performed a goosebump-inducing rendition of Something Inside So Strong by Labi Siffre.
Just another completely normal day in a completely normal industry. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a packed-out auditorium filled with marketers smiling maniacally at an American millionaire who once starred in a TV show being interviewed by the CFO of WPP, but it’s quite the sight to behold. What’s both interesting and depressing is how many people leave the room when the celebrity session is over and the talks about genuine creativity begin.
The ad industry’s obsession with celebrities has existed for nearly 150 years
The marketing world is addicted to booking random celebrities at its festivals and summits. I blame Kim Kardashian. Back in 2014-ish, she introduced a whole new wave of celebs-at-conferences hysteria when she toured the circuit talking about her mobile game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. To be fair, she made about $50 million selling digital clothes before most other media brands caught on, but it gave attendees a taste of the glitz and glamour they don’t otherwise access in their open plan offices. But KK aside, let’s be honest: there’s not a huge amount advertisers can learn about lead gen from Hugh Jackman or Jimmy Carr.
The ad industry’s obsession with celebrities has existed for nearly 150 years, ever since actress Lillie Langtry became the face of Pears Soap in 1882. Celebrity sells! It worked when Bob Hoskins said “It’s good to talk” for BT, it worked when Beyonce, Pink! and Britney Spears sang We Will Rock You for Pepsi, and it worked when Bob Dylan promoted Victoria’s Secret. But there’s a difference between using celebrities and learning from them. Celebrities can sell products brilliantly. That doesn’t automatically qualify them to contribute meaningfully to discussions around audience segmentation, organisational creativity or the future of media measurement. And applying one person’s success story to your own business journey is destined for disappointment, especially if that person is unfathomably gorgeous and either born into wealth or born lucky.
Let’s be honest: there’s not a huge amount advertisers can learn about lead gen from Hugh Jackman or Jimmy Carr.
It reminds me of the ancient Greeks, to be honest. Not in a mass Narcissus way, whereby an entire workforce gets drowned in the reflection of its own sense of superiority. (Although…) The Oracle of Delphi offered a similar setup. For nine magical days a year, the rich would head to the Temple of Apollo and pay often-manic female prophets with cash, cake and sacrifices to hear the god’s advice, which he would allegedly channel through these women, known as Pythia. The Pythia would sit on a tripod seat in a VIP area of the temple and share guidance in the form of poems and riddles that were often so vague it ended in tears. Let’s take Croesus, for example. He wanted to invade Persia and asked the Pythia whether he should. They said: “If Croesus crosses the Halys river, a great empire will fall.” This was exactly the prophecy Croesus wanted. He invaded, and a kingdom did fall. His own.
Another fun Oracle fact is that in the late 20th century, geologists confirmed that intersecting fault lines beneath the Temple of Apollo likely released traces of ethylene into the air: a sweet-smelling gas known to produce states of trance and euphoria. In other words, the Greeks were all off their tits, gullibly swallowing the random ramblings of a famous influencer. On a completely unrelated note: who’s excited about Cannes this year?
The industry prefers power to creativity, Kean says, and confuses status with inspiration.
It’s harmless fun though, isn’t it. A cheeky celeb here and there, adding some sparkle! Well, yeah. Until they start selling you dodgy shit. The celebrity keynote increasingly comes with a side hustle attached. Demi Moore’s recently been pushing AI, announcing that “it’s not going anywhere”, while big names like Reese Witherspoon and Mel Robbins are telling women they’ll be irrelevant if they don’t adopt the technology. Like how Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, Lindsay Lohan and Grimes, amongst others, were telling us all to buy NFTs. Some marketers actually fell for it, too. Remember when Pringles released a Cryptocrisp? Possibly the worst idea to ever hit the world of branding, no doubt as a result of mindless celebrity pressure.
They don’t want their minds to be opened and challenged. They want a fun story to tell about how Paris Hilton told 500 people that cross-platform tech stacks are “so hot”.
So, why does the industry keep doing it? Because it prefers power to creativity, and confuses status with inspiration. It’s inspired by growth, rather than imagination. Because the industry isn’t filled with creatives in the same way that it used to be. Now, it’s filled with sales people, data engineers, AI consultants, customer success managers, and more sales people. They don’t want their minds to be opened and challenged. They want a fun story to tell about how Paris Hilton told 500 people that cross-platform tech stacks are “so hot”. Because people want to say “I was there.”
Because everyone’s mistaking cultural proximity with cultural intelligence, and a celeb appearance feels like validation from “real” culture. But any culturally intelligent person would tell you that celebrity culture is imploding. Just as the ancient Greeks grew tired of their gods, the public’s relationship with superstars is wearing thin: the recent cringiness of the Met Gala (and significant decline in coverage) was the perfect example of famous people taking themselves far more seriously than we do, whilst selling their souls to Jeff Bezos. Is that creative? Or is it desperate? Or even worse, boring? The spectacle just doesn’t offer as much aspirational value anymore. As Dylan might say (in a Victoria’s Secret ad): “The times they are a’changing.” With AI looming over the industry like a dirty fake cloud, ad people need to prioritise proper inspiration. I’m no prophet, and I’m definitely not high on ethylene, but unless we stop trying to learn creative optimisation tactics from Paul Scholes and Cat Deely, I can definitely see a kingdom falling.
