Of deaths & clebs

Death-on-sale!?

Branding dead celebrities is a multi-billion dollar business and a slew of smart entrepreneurs are cashing in on the positive feelings associated with the celebrity’s image.

No matter how morbid it sounds, Michael Jackson’s death has given a new lease of life to Hollywood’s ailing economy. As in life, even in death, everyone and anyone remotely associated with Michael Jackson (including his dear dad) is busy using his name to build up their respective bank balance.

Just a couple of hours after Jackson’s death, the music industry relaunched many albums of Jackson and overnight a few of his songs booked top slots of charts. So much so that even eBay, iTunes and Amazon saw a new surge in demand related to Jackson products and merchandise. His father also joined the frenzy. Just three days after his son’s death, Joe Jackson was spotted on CNN’s Red Carpet casually plugging his new record label, Ranch Records. Buzz is that Joe is even lining up Michael’s children for a world tour as The Jackson Three next year. Even rapper Akon is suddenly touting a song with Jackson in his new record;and earlier this month Madonna too paid tribute to the singing sensation at London’s O2 Arena – where Jackson was supposed to perform – of course, to packed audience!

Gloomy as it may seem, marketing the dead is actually a billion dollar industry. A dead product (read: a dead celebrity!) has all the attributes that are required to make a brand. They have a fan following, they are idols, they are memorable, they are likeable, they are valuable and above all, as they are no more present to pamper their fans with their performance, their very names are cash cows for smart entrepreneurs.

Barry Silverstein, a marketing consultant and co-author of the McGraw-Hill book, The BreakawayBrand spoke to 4Ps B&M and gave his take on the trend. “I believe using dead celebrities as part of a marketing program is both a short and long-term strategy. It’s short-term because marketers can capitalise immediately on a dead celebrity who dies, but it’s longterm because, as has been proven with Elvis Presley, a dead celebrity’s aura can live ten, twenty, or fifty years, thus providing a smart marketer with an ongoing path to potential sales and profits,” he says. As per the Forbes’ list, the top 13 dead celebrities generated $242 million in 2007. Firms like CMG Worldwide and the Richman Agency (now a part of Corbis) buy the licence and intellectual property rights of dead celebrities. CMG boasts (even today!) clients like Rosa Parks, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jesse Owens and Babe Ruth among its clientele. While the Richman Agency has few from nonglam world, CMG and Corbis receive 20% of the profits from any endorsement. Adds Barry, “Once a celebrity is gone, they will never act, sing, dance, speak, or perform again and that makes every collectible and every image associated with that person truly valuable.”

Take Elvis Presley. He has still not lost his essence and stands firm in this highly competitive world...uh, the world of dead celebrities. According to Forbes Magazine, around 600,000 people visit Presley’s home every year. Elvis has already sold 118 million record albums and around 500 million commemorative Elvis US postage stamps were sold after 16 years of his death. But with Michael Jackson’s sad and untimely death, Presley’s top slot seems to have found a close competitor. Marketers are even planning to commercialise Michael Jackson’s estate in the lines of Elvis’ estate. The media also crashes in on the party. You simply have to look around at all the ratings-boosting coverage of MJ’s death for current evidence. TIME magazine has been particularly quick on the uptake. While the figures for their recent special commemorative issue on Jackson are still not available, a similar special issue on Princess Diana’s death by TIME sold more than 1.1 million copies. Natmags is releasing a commemorative 132-page Michael Jackson tribute magazine and a total of 200,000 copies of the glossy A4 title will be on sale for a month, priced at £2.99 per copy. Memorial events too are going strong, where fans are ready to pay $50 to vendors for a picture next to a cut out of the King of Pop. Jackson’s funeral, in fact, has been the biggest in entertainment history, even bigger than Diana’s death and at par with the event of Obama’s presidential speech. Jackson’s cremation event was viewed by more than 750 million people. Going by Nielsen data, Princess Diana’s funeral saw 33.25 million viewers, while former President Ronald Reagan’s mid-day funeral drew 0.8 million people only. Not to be outdone, even merchandise licensees from around the world have successfully tuned into manufacturing and distributing products using celebs who have passed away. In 2008, Elvis Presley Enterprises was sold by Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie, for $100 million. It should not come as a surprise therefore if tomorrow it is Michaels’ images and stamps. In the past, Diana dolls had become icons of the Princess after her death. They can still be bought for $188.95 from the Society for the Preservation of History. Franklin Mint’s porcelain portrait plate sells for $29.95 and Solid Silver Memorial Coin for $55.

If we are talking of legendary celebs, we can’t miss out on Marilyn Monroe. More than 40 years after her death, licensing her famous poses and pout have made more than $30 million in fees for Anna Strasberg, the wife of Ms. Monroe’s former acting coach, and her business partner, a professional peddler of dead peoples’ images. Marilyn Monroe’s images alone have pulled in more than $30 million since her death and $8 million in 2007 alone. In 2004, Robert Sillerman (a wealthy American businessman who deals in building and selling media companies) paid Lisa Marie Presley $100 million for an 85% stake in Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc.

And not to miss out on the Monroe frenzy to entice potential consumers, Mercedes-Benz still features Monroe (along with James Dean) in some of their ad campaigns. An auction event organised by Julien’s auctions (of Darren Julien), sold a Jackson album ‘Goin’ Back to Indiana’ for $33,750. The auction also featured other collections of Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Social networking sites have also not let-go this opportunity and have done everything possible to give their users real-time updates. Twitter and Facebook are alleged to be the first ones to break the news of Jackson’s death. Twitter saw up to 5,000 Jackson-related messages being posted per minute and eventually his death emerged as the most discussed subject on the portal. Facebook saw a similar response; with the number of postings tripling during the hour after the news of Jackson’s death broke. Talking on these marketing techniques, Barry states, “Some companies license rights to use a dead celebrity’s image, movie clips, or music and incorporate those things into TV ads or promotional materials. Others just pay homage to the dead celebrity to gain a marketing association with the individual.”

Even IT giants are getting enamoured by the potential of this mammoth business. Corbis, the digital image company set up by Bill Gates, has bought a Beverly Hills company, which owns the image rights to more than 50 deceased celebrities. Corbis takes a 20% cut of the profits from any endorsement, double the usual rate for a living celebrity endorsement. Even celebrity Promotion Companies like CKX rely heavily on dead celebs for their bottom-line. They purchase the intellectual property rights and thus churn out huge money. And if you thought that only the big brands and consultants can take advantage of legends that have passed away, you could not be more wrong. Just walk the streets of New York, London or Rio De Janeiro and you’ll see markets flooded with Che Guevara, Marilyn Monroe and now even Jackson merchandise, ranging from T-shirts, handkerchiefs and coffee mugs to sundry decorative brick bracks. True, dead celebs make for hot brands, hotter than even the living ones! May their souls Rest In Peace!