2. Fascination With Celebrity
• A dominant factor in today’s
mass media is the
publicizing and glorification
of celebrities
• Sports heroes, television
personalities, radio talk-show hosts, members of the
British royal family, movie stars, high-profile criminals
and some politicians are written about,
photographed and discussed almost incessantly
3. •In some cases, such celebrity results from natural public
curiosity about an individual’s achievements or position in
life.
4. • Frequently, however, it is carefully nurtured by
publicists for the client’s ego satisfaction or
commercial gain.
5. Enduring Celebrity: When the
Good and Beautiful Die Young
• Celebrities exist in one-sided,
idealized relationships in which the
celebrity demands nothing of us
• In death, this ideal relationship is
severed and the youthful image is
frozen in time
• Even in death, both adulation and revenue can follow
from celebrity
6. The Mystique of Personality
• The abundance of mass media outlets today and
their intense competition for audiences draws on the
natural instinct of humans to know about each
other’s lives
7. • Appearances on talk shows, fawning TV interviews,
sympathetic magazine articles, online chat sessions
and ghost-written books contribute to the buildup
9. • “Once TV started, the whole celeb-creation and
worship careened out of control… TV gives the false
impression that celebrities are talking right to you,
and you feel like they’re your friends.”
10. Fame
• Some individuals draw public
attention due to their
accomplishments or positions
Notoriety
• Even people who commit major
crimes or are involved
unfavorably in spectacular trials
are treated as celebrities
• “…For the first time in history, the machinery of
communications is able to keep up with these
demands, even to outrun them, creating new needs
we never knew existed.”
11. Self-Glorification
• Donald Trump
– Put his name on the buildings and
casinos he bought
– Has telephoned reporters with
stories about himself
– “The consummate newsmaker
and celebrity.”
12. Repair of a Bad Image
• PR counselors who specialize in
handling individuals sometimes
work to create a positive image
for a prominent person who has
been cast in an unfavorable light
• Kathie Lee Gifford
– Suffered a blow to her reputation
when it was revealed that some of her clothing line was
made by Honduran child labor in New York Sweat Shops
– Gifford hired Howard Rubenstein, a counselor with 50
years in the profession, to help her.
13. Desire For Money
• No one officially proclaims
who has celebrity status,
but once a critical mass of
coverage occurs, that
celebrity’s value in the
marketplace rises
• Once established as a star, companies such as
Celebrity Connection provide unique services
• Indicative of the commercialization of personality is
the success of companies that keep databases on
well-known persons and offer daily bulletins on their
comings and goings
15. Psychological Explanations
• Before TV, the publicity departments of the motion
picture studios promoted their stars as glamour
figures who lived a special world of privilege and
wealth
• Some young people went to Hollywood, hoping to
achieving such glory for themselves
• Some visualized themselves in glamour figures’
places
• Wish-fulfillment was and still is a compelling force
• Exposure on the television in the intimacy of the
family living room, however, makes personalities
seem much closer to admiring viewers today than
the remote gods and goddesses were in the glory
days of major motion picture studios
16. • In fact, reporters who talk on camera about
celebrities attain celebrity status themselves.
17. • Many ordinary people leading
routine lives yearn for heroes
• Professional and big-time college
sports provide personalities for
hero worship
• Publicists emphasize the
performances of certain players, and television
game announcers often build up the stars’ roles
out of proportion to their achievements
• This creates hero figures for youthful sports
enthusiasts to emulate
19. • Still another factor is the desire for entertainment
most people feel
• Reading fan magazines, watching a favorite star being
interviewed, or lining up in front of a box office –
these are ways to bring variety and a little
excitement into the daily routine of life
• A PR practitioner assigned to build up the public
image of an individual should analyze the ways in
which these psychological factors can be applied
• Because the client’s cooperation is vital in
promotional work, a wise publicist explains this
background and tells the client why various actions
are planned
20. The Practitioner’s Responsibility
• Handling publicity for an individual carries special
responsibilities
• Often the client turns to the publicist for personal
advice, especially when trouble arises
21. Damage Control
• A practitioner handling an
individual client is responsible for
protecting the client from bad
publicity as well as generating
positive news
• When the client appears in a bad
light because of misbehavior or irresponsible public
statement, the publicist must try to minimize the
harm done to the client’s public image
• The objective is damage control
22. • A similar approach is
recommended for
Hollywood celebrities who
are caught in scandalous
acts or unfounded rumor
mills
• Experts suggest immediate
response so that the
momentum of subsequent
stories is minimized
• A brief, honest statement of
regret for bad behavior or
denial of rumors works well
23. • TV’s mass audience enjoys celebrity news
• TV lends itself to a short statement that makes a
perfect 20-second sound bite to fit in a brief story
• Then the celebrity needs to disappear from sight
and take care of personal matters
24. Ethical Problems for Publicists
• Personal misconduct by a client, or the appearance of
misconduct, strains a practitioner’s ingenuity and at times his
or her ethical principles
• Some practitioners will lie outright to protect a client, a
dishonest practice that looks even worse if the media show
the statement to be a lie
• On occasion, a practitioner acting in good faith may be
victimized because the client has lied
• Issuing a prepared statement to explain the client’s conduct,
while leaving reporters and their editors dissatisfied, is
regarded as safer than having the client call a news
conference, unless the client is a victim of circumstances and
is best served by talking fully and openly
25. Conducting a Personality Campaign
• A campaign to generate public awareness of an
individual should be planned just as meticulously as
any other public relations project
• Practitioners conducting such campaigns follow a
standard step-by-step process
– Interview the Client
– Prepare a Biography of the Client
– Plan a Marketing Strategy
– Conduct the Campaign
26. Conduct the Campaign
• In most cases, the best course is to project the client
on multiple media simultaneously.
• Radio and television appearances create public
awareness and often make news-paper feature
stories easier to obtain
• Every such approach should include a news or
feature angle for the interviewer to develop.
• Photographs of the client should be submitted to the
print media as often as justifiable
• Public Appearances are another way to intensify
awareness of individual clients
27. Conduct the Campaign
• Awards
– A much-used device, and a successful
one, is to have a client receive an award.
– The practitioner should be alert for news
of awards to be given and nominate the
client for appropriate ones
– Follow-up communications with persuasive material from the
practitioner may convince the sponsor to make the award to the client
– In some instances, the idea of an award is proposed to an organization
by a practitioner, whose client then conveniently is declared the first
recipient
– The entertainment business generates immense amounts of publicity
for individuals and shows with its Oscar and Emmy awards
– Winning an Academy Award greatly strengthens a performer’s career
– Psychologists believe that televised awards ceremonies give viewers a
sense of structure in their life
28. Conduct the Campaign
• Nicknames and Labels
– Catchy nicknames for clients, especially sports and entertainment
figures, helps the practitioner get their names into print
• Record the Results
– Those who employ practitioners want tangible results in return for their
fees
– The practitioner also needs to compile and analyze the results of a
personality campaign to determine the effectiveness of the various
methods used
– Tearsheets, photographs, copies of news releases and, when possible,
video clips of the client’s public appearances should be given to the
client
– Clipping services help the practitioner assemble this material
– At the end of the campaign, or at intervals in a long-term program,
summaries of what has been accomplished should be submitted to the
client
29. Promoting an Entertainment Event
• Attracting attendance at an event requires a well planned
publicity campaign
• The primary goal of any campaign for an entertainment event
is to sell tickets
• Advance publicity buildup informs listeners, readers and
viewers that an event will occur and stimulates their desire to
attend
• Stories about a forthcoming theatrical event should
concentrate on the personalities, style, popularity of the
activity or product
• Every time the product or show is mentioned, public
awareness grows
• Thus, astute practitioners search for fresh news angles to
produce as many stories as possible
30. Promoting an Entertainment Event
• The “Drip-Drip-Drip” Technique
– A steady output of information about the production
– A public relations specialist, called a unit man or woman, is assigned to
a film during production and turns out a flow of stories for the general
and trade press and plays host to media visitors to the set
– The TV networks mail out daily news bulletins about their shows to
media television editors
– They assemble the editors annually to preview new programs and
interview their stars
– The heaviest barrage of publicity is released shortly before the show
openings
– One danger of excessive promotion of an event, however, is that
audience expectation may become too high, so that the performance
proves to be a disappointment
– A skilled practitioner will stay away from “hype” that can lead to a
sense of anticlimax
31. A Look at the Movie Industry
• Motion picture public relations
departments use market research
and demographics and
psychographics to define the
target audiences they seek to
reach
• Most motion picture publicity is aimed at 18 to 24
year olds, where the largest audience lies
• Seventy-five percent of the film audience is under
age 39, although increased attendance by older
moviegoers has become evident recently
32. • Professional entertainment publicity work is
concentrated in New York and Los Angeles, the
former as the nation’s theatrical center and the latter
as the motion picture center
• American TV production is divided primarily between
these two cities, with the larger portion in Los
Angeles
• A typical Los Angeles-area PR firm specializing in
personalities and entertainment has two staffs:
– Planters
– Bookers
• Some publicity stories are for general release;
others are prepared especially for a single media
outlet such as a syndicated Hollywood columnist
or a major newspaper
33. • The latter type is marked “exclusive,” permitting the
publication or station that uses it to claim credit for
“breaking” the story
• Another device is to provide supplies of tickets for a new
movie or show to radio stations, whose disc jockeys
award them to listeners as prizes in on-the-air contests
• Glamorous premieres and trips for media guests to
distant points so that they can watch the filming or
attend the opening are used occasionally, too
• For such services to individual or corporate
entertainment clients, major Hollywood publicists charge
at least $3,000 a month, with a three-month minimum
• The major studios and networks have their own PR staffs
34. • Entertainment firms also may specialize in arranging
product placement in movies and TV programs
• Usually the movie or TV producers trade visible
placement of a product in the show in exchange for
free use of the item in the film
35.
36.
37. • Many aspiring PR
students believe it
would be fun and
glamorous to work in
entertainment PR
• The glamour and glitz
and fascination of
the personalities
does exists, but being
a publicist to the
stars can have
drawbacks
• Dates back to the
ancient Mayan
civilization
Average PR Practitioner
in PR Students’ minds.
38. • Challenges of being a Celebrity Publicist:
– Hectic Pace
– Late Hours
– Demands of Magazines for Exclusives
• The paparazzi with their invasive cameras and
tabloids with their scurrilous headlines both seek to
do damage to your celebrity client – simply to sell
newspapers and tabloids
• Your job as a celebrity publicist is to manage these
forces effectively for your client
• One of the biggest challenges is dealing with
wrongdoing on the part of a celebrity
39. • Do’s and Don’ts of Litigation PR
For Celebrities:
– Do make sure your statements
are accurate
– Do get written approval of all
statements before releasing them
– Do ask the attorney to speak directly to media
– Don’t keep quiet
– Don’t avoid giving details
– Don’t talk too much
