Celebrity endorsements and the end of selling out

As this long New York Times piece acknowledges, there’s nothing new about celebrity endorsements. But the piece is correct, I think, in setting out to explore why such endorsements seem more pervasive — higher-profile celebrities, and more thoroughly “integrated” deal formulations. (The article opens with a recounting of Rihanna’s people pitching a company that makes umbrellas, in advance of her now-famous single “Umbrella.”)

To me the key line comes from Steve Stoute. “Hip-hop completely opened the eyes of other music genres as to how to relate to corporations and not be seen as sellouts,” he says.

This isn’t really explored in the piece, so I don’t totally know what he means. But it’s definitely true that nobody is seen as a sellout for doing corporate sponsorship deals anymore, which is why mega-stars (not just in music, but across the board) who ten years ago would have feared tarnishing their reputations don’t sweat such things any more.

I’m guessing Stoute means that hip-hop opened people’s eyes about this in the sense that hip-hop stars simply did it, and there was no particular backlash. So everyone else followed suit.

Possibly the underlying factor is that more people see such deals as signs of hustle, and respect the paydays and corporate support that stars (musical or otherwise) are able to extract from brand-owners. Or maybe he sees other reasons; I’d be curious to know.

(On a consumer level, I think, the way these endorsements really work is that we assume/guess that P. Diddy, or whoever, is smart enough about managing his own brand not to ruin it by association with a truly awful product.)

Meanwhile, the most preposterous quote in the piece is from Rihanna: “We always want to bring an authentic connection to whatever we do. It must be sincere and people have to feel that.”

Oh really? So the authentic connection, I guess, is that the song was called “Umbrella,” and the company writing you massive checks does in fact make umbrellas? (As opposed to, I don’t know, galoshes?)

Come on. There’s no “authentic” reason for a deal like that to exist, other than Team Rihanna “sincerely” smells money. Period.

Moreover, everybody knows it — or “feels” it, if you prefer. Nobody really thinks Rihanna has strong feelings about umbrella quality.

What’s authentic is the hustle.

Not that anybody has a problem with that.