The Brief, Bumbling Tech Careers of Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys, and Will.i.am (backchannel.com) 97
"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."
Only the most gullible think... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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.
Re:Only the most gullible think... (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of how awesome my 'Beats by Dre' headphones are.
Re:Only the most gullible think... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, and I'm sure Dr Dre was deeply involved in the electronic and acoustic design of them!
Oh more likely:
"Yo, I like red init! Dem is a cool colour blood!"
"Ok, Mr Dre, we'll make some red ones too. Now just sign your name here for our design guys .. yes, heres a crayon, no, you hold it this way around... well done."
Re: Only the most gullible think... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's actually one of the better examples. Beats by Dr Dre (which I think make shitty headphones) are actually commercially successful before Apple bought them. Android fanbois (if you believe they exist) will say both are successful in a sort of fanboish way and thus the weird synergy (if you think the word means anything).
As for the other celebs, the companies did it wrong. These Celebs are a product. Most of those mentioned are "created" by their producers plus creative and management team.
When you see
Re: Only the most gullible think... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ditto. Listening to the radio my 14yo daughter listens to, I hear the same rotation on all but two stations (gangsta rap/sucka noizez there*), with a 'new' song every two weeks and standards hanging on for months, intentionally marketing songs about rape, promiscuity, and random violence to teens too young to drive, a product placement I'm afraid I understand, hoping I'm wrong. I'm old enough to claim rock n roll stations did something similar to this decades ago chasing the Billboard Top 40 like a dog chases butt, though I listened to slightly more edgy rock then** and those stations seemed to hold on to stuff longer but cycled in new music for a trial before Billboard know how to spell the title.
Feh. The current hip-hop/rap music scene is so manufactured it's industrial.
* I don't let her listen to those two stations in my presence any more. I know she does when I'm not around, but she knows why I don't want her to hear that in the car with me. I cannot, literally cannot sit in the car with her when those lyrics come out. It's offensive, degrading, and I cannot permit it in my hearing.
** I listened to WLOB in Portland, Maine back in the late 60s and discovered metal late at night on my transistor with earphone, wiked decent***. When I moved 2 hours north and asked the local top radio DJ to play some Led Zeppelin, he told me 'Northern Maine isn't ready for that yet'. He was right. I was in hibernation for 3 years until I joined the service and re-entered civilization.
*** That radio also let me listen to space launches in school. And win arguments over technical details like abort plans, down range safety, and comms with my so-called science teacher. Thanks,Dad. I need to buy and rebuild a red ChannelMaster 6506 with the leather case and earphone pouch (:
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"Yo, I like red init! Dem is a cool colour blood!"
LOL, they're Beats by Dre, not Beats by Ali G. Americans don't say "init" (or "innit").
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Artistic license :)
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I didn't know Dre was British ;-)
From what I can tell he had a consultation role on the sound of early Beats models. The tech was developed in partnership with Monster, which tells you most of what you need to know. They basically have a built in hip-hop EQ that you can't turn off: heavy bass, pronounced highs that are about 80% distortion anyway, and a shitty soundstage because it's a mixing desk and a sampler, not an actual soundstage.
Don't get me wrong, I like hip hop, just not Beats.
Re: Only the most gullible think... (Score:4, Insightful)
Haha yup they do...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/h... [digitaltrends.com]
http://gizmodo.com/how-beats-t... [gizmodo.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
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They basically have a built in hip-hop EQ that you can't turn off: heavy bass, ...
Hear that? I love the sound of intermodulation in the morning.
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Cool racism bro.
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Yeah, and I'm sure Dr Dre was deeply involved in the electronic and acoustic design of them!
TBH, you cannot expect a surgeon to be an expert at acoustic design as well.
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You can expect a producer like Dre however to know a thing or two about it. If Dre just rapped or wrote lyrics you would have a point. He spent a whole lot of years mixing and producing works by a whole lot of artists you've most definitely heard of. While I wouldn't call him a genius I don't think he is anywhere near as dim as people make him out to be here.
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Given how they sound I'm sure that he did in fact design them himself with his only input from a 2 year old on how good the acoustics are.
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Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of how awesome my 'Beats by Dre' headphones are.
The absolute gold standard for listening to autotuned lyrics.
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Re:Only the most gullible think... (Score:5, Interesting)
Name a guy or woman you think is smart from the tech sector. Make them talk about entertainment or something they don't have a background in. "Man, (insert name here) is an idiot with an IQ of a half a box of doorknobs!"
Stupid is as stupid does, and all these celebrities you're saying are dumb are without question successful at what they've attempted to do, IQ number aside. None appear to have been the product of dumb luck or mommy and daddy money from what I can tell.
Seriously slashdot, the basement dwelling anonymous trolls are getting to be too much of a distraction, as are the morons with mod points who thought "They're dumb!" is insightful.
Re: Only the most gullible think... (Score:1)
Re:Only the most gullible think... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Said employees and directors get compensated through pay and other methods for their contributions.
When they have as many followers as the celebrities do that may result in the company some more sales , they can be called anything they want as well. Until then they can shut up and get back to work
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If companies do weird stuff like that (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If companies do weird stuff like that (Score:4, Interesting)
their end is near, because it is done out of sheer desperation...
That depends on the company.
Speaking of weird stuff, we've seen more than our fair share of corporations literally piss money away on Superbowl advertising time to not do a damn thing with it other than gain a sizeable tax write-off.
There are many reasons to make decisions about revenue that may not make sense on the surface. Some mega-corps today hold a metric fuckton of cash reserves. When $30 million is considered a rounding error, you can certainly afford to take on the oddball venture or two, and would hardly be ringing the doomsday bell.
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Do they leverage synergy in these letters yet?
If not, there's still hope.
Actually hiring people ifrom showbiz could work. (Score:5, Funny)
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Just imagine Clint Eastwood as system manager.
Just did [xkcd.com].
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Dude, you're getting a Lenovo
Re: Companies that try too hard to be cool (Score:2, Flamebait)
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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 exp
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Steve Jobs? ;)
Never mind product placement in all-star movie superproductions.
GoPro gets a lot of "product placement" from Youtube 'celebrities'.
Those aren't tech jobs (Score:3)
What bothers me... (Score:3)
...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.
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It's when that marketing cost pays off that there is money for bonuses and raises. The only reason you think it's bullshit in this case is that it didn't pay off.
Dr. Seuss (Score:2)
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Surprisingly, he managed to be up on tech enough to snag is name on the .am TLD.
Forgot one (Score:1)
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Less forgot, more ignored.
Who is this, anyway?
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So that's why I didn't hear anything about them for years?
Maybe because (Score:2)
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.
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Are these "stars" controlling their own celebrity? (Score:3)
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.
Re:Are these "stars" controlling their own celebri (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Hell, Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) has an advanced degree in Physics, as does Dolph Lundgren. Don't judge a book by its cover.
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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. [forbes.com] Perhaps Microsoft should have made her more than a creative director.
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Re:Are these "stars" controlling their own celebri (Score:5, Interesting)
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 ...
"Tech careers"? (Score:2)
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K. S. Kyosuke opined:
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.
Uh ... Steve Jobs?
He had essentially zero technical chops. He DID have a superb grasp of design, but his major talent - you know, the one that killed him - was marketing. He was so successful at it that he sold himself on the notion that he could rid himself of his cancer by willpower alone.
You can have a successful career in tech without ANY engineering talent - because the tech industry is based as much on marketing and product design as it is on hardware and software development. Bui
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jay-z (Score:1)
and tidal wave
HAHA!
Suprise surprise... (Score:2)
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
In other news (Score:2)
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.)
Yeah (Score:2)
Of course it's a flawed strategy. (Score:2)
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."
WHO ^3 (Score:2)