BigShinyThing

The New York Times magazine recently ran a profile of Tyra Banks about which there has been much bitchery online. She’s an easy target: utterly lampoonable yet ruthlessly ambitious. We think the interview is a masterclass in how to build a media brand and in how to maintain control. Particularly fascinating are the insights into how Tyra and her formidable mother London plotted her rise. Any fame wannabes should pay particular attention to the following:

Around this time, in the mid-’90s, Banks started gaining weight. Her agency made a list titled, “Designers who will not book Tyra because of hips and breasts.” They had a meeting with London and told her to put her daughter on a diet. “My mother told me the whole thing as we were walking down the street in Milan,” Banks said. “She said, ‘They say you’re too curvy. Let’s go order pizza.’ We walked into a pizzeria, and we discussed a career change.” Her curves dictated a different sort of modeling. “Tyra was always smart,” Veronica Webb said. “Tyra didn’t like clothes, and why should she? She looked great in a bikini. And in a bra and panties. That’s where the real action is in the fashion business: if you have great cleavage, you can make a fortune. When Tyra started to get really curvy, she signed a contract with Victoria’s Secret. For a black girl, that was incredible.

Genius. Instead of bowing to the dictates of the fashion industry, Tyra and her mother dictated back. Rather than moulding her body to the industry, Tyra diversified. Did the gamble pay off? Tyra used the platform of her Victoria’s Secret contract to create her own celebrity brand. We also suspect she maintains a lucrative relationship with the lingerie company: note how many times she refers to the brand when reminiscing about her modelling days. From her two shows — Top Model and the eponymous chat show, Banks now makes an estimated $18 million a year, and her net worth is around $75 million. Both shows are constructed around her highly ‘Bankable’ (the name of Tyra’s production company) persona. She owns 25 percent of “Top Model” and last fall Bankable Productions signed a deal to develop projects for Warner Brothers television. She wins.

(Full disclosure: Top Model is probably my favourite reality tv show format of all time. Those unable to fathom its appeal should probably read this.)

Footage of Britney Spears being hospitalised for the second time in a month hits YouTube and Google‘s search advertising hits postmodern paydirt. Running next to the clip is an ad for a ringtone of Britney’s current single, ‘Piece of Me’, in which she sings about her life of overexposure and exploitation:

I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17
Don’t matter if I step on the scene
Or sneak away to the Philippines
They still gon put pictures of my derrière in the magazine
You want a piece of me?
You want a piece of me…

It gets better. Courtney tells the Fashion Informer blog:

…I know a lot of people are doing lines (no sniggering at the back) but my first job, other than stripping, was on Mommie Dearest as an assistant in wardrobe. My first boyfriend, his mother was a third generation wardrobe lady so she ran the Paramount wardrobe department, which was three hangars like this [gestures to the Lexington Avenue Armory space]. And I was in charge, some of the time, of throwing stuff out. I mean, they had four tiers of Mae West’s clothes that went on for, like, six racks… they’d get rid of stuff like Frances Farmer’s clothes and lace that was made out of 24kt. gold that had a little rip in it – so I had the best wardrobe in LA in 1986 since I was in charge of throwing stuff out.

We wonder if Courtney will be reworking her infamous ‘kinderwhore’ look? Can’t wait.

An article on Page 46 of The Times Magazine today about Rachel Zoe, a stylist who works with many film and TV stars, misstated the location of the premiere of the Nicole Kidman film Fur, for which Ms. Kidman requested a travel budget of more than $100,000 for her stylist and other assistants. It was the Rome Film Festival, not the Venice Film Festival.

BTW: big congrats to the NYT for going free online today: welcome to the 21st Century. WSJ and FT — please take note. UPDATE: apparently the Rupert Murdoch has …

See how frightened they look? Free the crackhead 3!

Via the much-better-than perezhilton blog, dlisted.

UPDATE (also courtesy of dlisted). Kitten-flaunting appears to be an emergent celebrity trend. Where’s PETA when you need them?

“Nicole Kidman: My Choice”, reads the Omega ad. Indeed.

This blog post about how Paris Hilton rose to global fame is so perceptive that we’re just going block quote it.

Here is a copy of what Paris said after her recent arrest for DUI.

“I had one margarita (and) was starving because I had not eaten all day,” she said. “Maybe I was speeding a little bit and I got pulled over. I was just really hungry and I wanted to have an In-N-Out Burger.”

Did you notice that?

If not read it again and think.

See it now? (the unpaid product placement).

That’s the real reason Paris Hilton is really famous. Because she is the queen of links.

When Paris first came on the scene with her own user generated sex video she used that attention to create a career. Here’s how she did it.

Though she hired a publisist to get her on Page 6 She never really talked about herself. She talked about other people. She would mention the designers of her clothes, the club she was going to, who made the sweater for her dog, all without any guarantee of any return. She just threw out links.

It didn’t take long for designers and club owners to realize that Paris Hilton was a walking billboard. So they embraced her. She paid attention to them, so they paid attention to her.

The most valuable commodity today is attention. And there are many ways to get it. From sex videos to stupid pet tricks to talking bad about Muslims. The real trick is what you do with it once you have it.

What makes Paris brilliant is that she used the attention she had and gave it to others thereby garning more attention for herself. And it’s been profitable.

Here’s what’s amusing to me though.

Whenever she tries to promote herself, it falls flat. Books, records, movies, etc. don’t work for Paris. Because she’s actually a platform. Like Digg and YouTube.

Paris Hilton has gotten so good at garnering attention for others people are now using the fact that she doesn’t visit as a marketing tool.

In a world where any attention is valuable Paris can’t lose.

So, if we stop paying attention to her — and we’re all complicit, from Perez Hilton to Banksy — maybe, just maybe, she’ll go away.

From Chartreuse via WOW.

You’re a media empire but you’re losing hearts and minds to the blogsophere particularly in that ripe and juicy segment of the media known as gossip. You were used to breaking all the celebrity news (after all you had a direct ‘in’ to their people) but now bloggers like Perez Hilton are beating you to it. What do you do? Get your video-paparazzi (the secret weapon) and follow every d and z-lister until you get a money shot. And boy does it work. You even broke the Mel Gibson/anti-semitic drunken outburst story. Now those fiendish bloggers are linking to you and everything is right with the world. For now.

Our current clip of choice? DD-lister Tara Reid gets denied entry to a club whilst Paris Hilton glides by. Watch and marvel. Note to TMZ though. You need to get with the clip culture and give us a nice bit of hackable code (a la YouTube).

We’ve long been fans of Exactitudes by Arie Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek, the ongoing photographic project which shows how We Are All the Same.

Now The Observer has noticed that D-list celebrities are starting to morph into each other. The article notes that:

While famous folk now look more alike in general — perfect teeth, perfect size, perfect fashion assembled by the same perfect stylist everyone else has — there is a peculiar subset of D-list male celebrities who are taking it too far. With tans the colour of teak [often owing to the obligatory stint on Love Island], army cadet buzz cuts and a wardrobe of hip-grazing jeans, V-neck T-shirts and crumpled jackets, we defy their own mothers to tell them apart.

I think every decade has an iconic blonde — like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana — and right now, I’m that icon.

Paris Hilton in the Sunday Times Style section.

Ever confused by youth culture, it seems that The Independent newspaper has gone the responsible route and just made shit up. Poor old George Michael was nicked yesterday passed out in his car and a number of ‘controlled substances’ found. But the paper seems a bit confused as to what this GHB drug is:

‘A type of liquid cannabis’ reports The Independent.

‘GHB — a Class C drug known as Liquid Ecstasy that is popular with clubbers’ says The Sun who seem to have actually done a bit of research.

Pardon us for sounding sanctimonious but GHB has been at the root of numerous clubland horror stories. At the very least you could expect the press to google it before they reported the ‘facts’.

Bids for a ten minute conversation with Penelope Cruz were at $560 at time of writing. It’s reminiscent of the 1997(?) One2One campaign featuring people like Kate Moss talking about who they would like ‘to have a One2One with’ (hers was Elvis). For our money, pretty much the best representation of what mobile communications really mean.

This too is a cute idea but surely eBay needs to hammer home that calls via Skype are … erm … free?

Via IDontLikeYouInThatWay.

We all know that PETA have a long history of stunts against fashion industry fur fanciers. But do they (or we) ever consider how PETA has in fact done a grand job of publicising and popularising their ‘victims’?

Example One. Julien MacDonald’s show at London Fashion Week. Having been Creative Director at Givenchy a few years back, he quit after a few lacklustre collections. He now has his own line at Debenhams department store and Paris Hilton as a muse — oh, and he’s the catty judge on Sky One’s Project Catwalk. So his show was hardly destined to be front page news — and certainly not big news outside the UK fashion fish bowl. That is, until the PETA flour bombing incident. (Note this also got everyone’s favourite publicity whore, Paris, the lion’s share of the coverage too.)

Example Two. Anna Wintour. Although a known and respected fashion editor, she truly entered mainstream consciousness when PETA started dumping dead raccoons on her dinner plate in restaurants. Since then it’s been one long panto season of ‘Nuclear Wintour’ vs. the animal rights loons, garnering plenty of press for both American Vogue and PETA in the process. It’s also a win-win situation on both sides (although we’re sure damned inconvenient for Wintour on occasion) — PETA make Anna their very own Cruella de Ville and Wintour looks like a stoic protector of Vogue’s (crucial) advertisers.

Example Three. The ‘Giselle fur scum’ sign paraded on the Victoria’s Secret catwalk behind an oblivious-looking Giselle a few years back. She did pretty well out of that did she not? In fact, it seems to have become staple image in any press coverage of PETA — namechecking the VS underwear label as well, of course.

It’s just a thought…

First, a graph showing the number of blog posts that contain the words "Pete Doherty" + KLF per day for the last 30 days.

There are LOTS of people out there willing this to be true and we always had our suspicions.

The story goes:

From tomorrow’s Dagenham Evening Chronicle:
FURY AS DOHERTY TRUTH REVEALED

The Samaritans have today recruited 600 extra staff to deal with an expected surge in calls as troubled fans come to terms with today’s revelations about rocker and teen icon Pete Doherty. In a surprise press conference today, the men behind Doherty’s career reveled themselves – and admitted that the Libertines, Babyshambles, the tales of drug use, the armed robberies and the affair with supermodel Kate Moss have all been part of one of the largest hoaxes in British history.

The men behind the scandal – Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, who were themselves infamous popstars under the name The KLF – admitted how they plucked a young Buddy Holly impersonator Doherty from obscurity and made him a media darling. “It was a meant to be a quick stunt to show the frailties of our celbrity-obsessed culture,” said Cauty, adding, “there are too many people who are famous despite their lack of talent, usefulness and basic intelligence. We wanted to do something that held a mirror up to that.” Mr Drummond called Britain’s pop-culture “sick” and said that although he regretted the hurt caused to Doherty’s many fans, he hoped “this incident taught us all some important things”.

In a prepared statement, the two men – famous for many other pop pranks, including the famous burning of GBP1million on a remote Scottish island – detailed how they manipulated the British Press into making Doherty an icon. Doherty – whose real name has now been revealed to be Trevor McDermott – was making a living as a part-time Buddy Holly impersonator in the Cornwall holiday circuit. He began a short-lived affair with the singer of a well known 80′s rock band, and was introduced to Drummond and Cauty at a backstage party in London’s West End. The men described how a drunken McDermott amused them with his slurred singing and frenetic dance movements, and how they then realised that this would be the perfect “dupe” for a plan they had been hatching for some time.

“The plan involved proving three theories we have about current British society,” reads the statement. “The first is that in the so-called “alternative” scene, everybody is too scared of missing The Next Big Thing to worry about anything else.” To prove this, some session musicians were provided to compose the rest of the “band”, The Libertines, and rumours of exposive gigs were leaked to the media. “The gigs in question never actually took place, but we didn’t have to worry about that. Soon the buzz around The Libertines was so frenetic, journalists were falling over themselves to claim to have been at the front of every single fictional gig.” Within weeks, The Libertines were appearing on magazines and receiving record offers. Gigs sold out in minutes, while their first album “Up The Bracket” flew off shelves.

Feeling that their first point had been proved, Drummond and Cauty moved to their second theory: “We feel that our culture has become an enormous soap opera. We don’t care what a person thinks, or creates, or contributes. We just care about what they do in their normal lives. Especially when it’s something they shouldn’t be doing.”

To demonstrate this, the men co-ordinated a number of scandals. First was a robbery staged in the house of one of the band members. When this took place, McDermott (aka Doherty) was unknown outside of the alternative music scene. An incident of this calibre was sufficient, however, to catapult McDermott onto the front page of every major national tabloid. “One day we has just another singer, the next day he was ‘Disgraced Celebrity Rocker’, and he hasn’t been out of the papers since”. Further revelations about drug abuse and violence kept McDermott and The Libertines on the front pages for months.

One thing that took even Drummond and Cauty by surprise was the affair with model Kate Moss. “That was not something that we planned or had any involvement. Whether she knew about the hoax is something we are not party to. We have never had any contact with Miss Moss.” However, this was the boost their project needed – where the drugs and crime had made McDermott a media sensation, the relationship with one of fashion’s most famous women catapulted him into the world of true celebrity. “While we had not planned this, it certainly proved our point. There are many superior artists in the country today, but they never appear in Heat or The Sun, because they don’t have the words ‘boyfriend of Kate Moss’ after their name.”

Despite this boost, the project began running into a major setback for Drummond and Cauty. Just as they were preparing to enter the final phase of their scheme, Doherty decided that he wanted to part company with them, the fake band, and begin seriously recording music. He stopped all contact with the men, and threatened legal actions if any details were leaked to the press. “We were upset at the apparent failure of our grand project, and also at the monster we had created in Pete Doherty. Our third theorem – that ‘If enough people say that a piece of s*** is a bar of gold, we’ll believe it’s a bar of gold’ – seemed to have been beyond salvation. Fortunately, at that point Pete released the first Babyshambles album.”

In the time since then, Drummond and Cauty have been locked in a vicious legal battle, which was eventually settled out of court by the discovery of a videotape showing McDermott singing “Peggy Sue” at a Butlin’s in Devon. Publicly, McDermott still strongly denies all charges. How this affects the future career of Pete Doherty remains to be seen.

Whatever the truth (it seems to have originated here)… it’s a glorious idea. We can hear the Babyshambles/KLF mash ups already…

Via Gawker, Debaser, Heckler Spray etc etc.

The controversial images are popular with some people and not others. We say there’s a (not all that actually) fine line between cute boy skinny and a look that says I’m wasted and/or ill. And yes, that is supposed to look like Pete Doherty.

According to the BBC:

Former Doctor Who actor Tom Baker is to be the voice of a talking text message service for three months. He replaces BT’s computerised voice which currently translates texts into voice messages on a landline. [... Baker comments... ] “What appeals to me most is the thought that I will be bringing good news to people whether it is a cheeky message, a birthday greeting, or just a quick hello [...] Whatever it is, hopefully my voice will bring a smile to people’s faces.”

On the BBC’s video-feed of the full interview, Baker expresses his hope that the results would be “humorous, funny and I hope touching, and romantic.” He then adds, somewhat darkly, “Of course inevitably there will be a certain amount of anarchy.”

Also note the ‘for three months’: we’re wondering if this is the start of a trend, with guest celebs getting to speak for all manner of automated services. Is Daffyd ‘only gay in the village’ soon to be fronting for the speaking clock?

Ol’ Golden Balls is currently hawking ‘Instinct’, his men’s fragrance, in the UK glossies (well, ES Magazine). It looks like he’s borrowed both his wife’s plastic surgeon and her air-brusher. And that is so a girl’s jacket. Is this how his marketing people aim to capture his ambisexuality? Eeuw.

Both Gawker and ad-rag have already picked up on this but we thought we’d cover it because it’s genuinely Out There. You can imagine the brainstorm: ” so, Mr Cumming what can we stick your name to to leverage your celebrity brand. Cumming, cumming, cumming … hmmm … I’m cumming … Eureka!”. Nice. And he means it – having deployed the radical perfumer, Christopher Brosius, to develop the scent.

It’s either the most audacious/downright silly celebrity perfume launch ever or a brazen postmodern deconstruction of the fragrance industry. An anti-perfume, if you like. If it’s the latter then Comme des Garcons got there first but full marks for trying. Check it out for yourself on the ‘Cumming the Fragrance’ site.

Pete Doherty is bloody everywhere at the moment. Similarly, actress Juliette Lewis can be seen on magazine covers and in clothes ads flogging her band Juliette and the Licks.

Juliette and the Licks have had pretty respectable reviews for a band fronted by a Hollywood star. Let’s face it – Keanu Reeves’ Dogstar wasn’t treated this nicely. And then you notice that Lewis is currently also fronting a campaign for Swedish designer J Lindberg who is obviously in need of a bit of rock mystique. He has also taken on the services of Doherty’s old mucker, ex-Libertine Carl Barat to front his clothes campaign – oddly, Barat has a new album of solo material coming out.

In last week’s Evening Standard magazine, Lewis raved, “I am really into Swedish designer J Lindberg, who is known in LA as the rock’n'roll designer and who has a store in Covent Garden. I got a pair of black jeans from him recently and a grey sweater.”

How kind of her to mention in a London-based publication where his shop is. And oddly neglect to mention that she fronts his campaign and is therefore paid to wear his clothes. Pictured is Lewis on the cover of another Evening Standard publication, the listing mag Metro, wearing – yes – J Lindberg.

Could it be that Juliette Lewis and the Licks are an actress’s hobby rolled into a clever marketing ploy?

Meanwhile, Pete Doherty spent most of last year selling stories about his drug habit, Kate Moss and various other misdeamenors to the tabloid press and building up a nice bit of rock’n'roll notoriety in the process. Marketing for his previous band, The Libertines, rarely shied from exploiting the ‘glamorous’ side of his drug problems – witness the cover shot of their last album, The Libertines. It also hasn’t hurt his current band Babyshambles, whose new single has entered the charts at no. 4. Just as the song Fuck Forever entered the top 10 in the UK, the band turned up late for a gig in Norway because Doherty and a friend had been detained at Oslo airport for carrying 1.7g of cocaine and 1.5g of heroin. Just enough to get arrested and enjoy the ensuing worldwide press coverage, charged £700 each and released.

Now, as even Iggy Pop can tell you, rock’n'roll sells. All of a sudden, Doherty is muse for Hedi Slimane, creative director of Dior Homme – the designer has even published a book of his photographs of the singer. A canny move, given that Doherty’s cover image is selling issues of everything from the News of the World to Arena Homme. Now, he’s launched his own website, Balachadha.com, to tell (and sell) his side of the story to his fans. And gotten round to issuing a press release about it.

Funnily enough, the site is subscription-based – how else to squeeze more money out of journalists and teenagers for access to his louche lifestyle? Of course, the website can also provide access to ‘censored’ coverage that TV and tabloid can’t reach – how else can Doherty make a killing from carving up his arm? The site promises to show such footage that was expunged from a documentary about the singer – all of which has garnered even more press. A quote from the director of said BBC 3 documentaryabout the singer shows just how calculated the whole enterprise has become:

When I first met Pete I felt he had multimedia potential and he would break the mould, dismantling the barriers between the band and the audience. The potential for him to work in different media is immense but it is also necessary for him to keep control. This site is making a statement. It’s way for Peter to be in control of all the different aspects of his work.

There are, of course, plans to develop the site so that clips of Doherty’s performances can be downloaded to 3G mobile phones. Maybe they should consider selling a ringtone version of Fuck Forever. After all, in its own way, the canonisation and selling of Pete Doherty has been as calculated and cold as Jamster’s Crazy Frog.