Celebrity, Inc.

How Famous People Make Money

Jo Piazza

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781453258194
• eBook ISBN:
  9781453205518
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entertainment Industry
• Index: Business

From $10,000 tweets to making money in the afterlife, a recovering gossip columnist explores the business lessons that power the Hollywood Industrial Complex
 
Why do celebrities get paid so much more than regular people to do a job that seems to afford them the same amount of leisure time as most retirees? What do Bush-era economics have to do with the rise of Kim Kardashian? How do the laws of supply and demand explain why the stars of Teen Mom are on the cover of Us Weekly? And how was the sale of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby pictures a little like a street drug deal? After a decade spent toiling as an entertainment journalist and gossip columnist, Jo Piazza asks the hard questions about the business behind celebrity.
 
Make no mistake: Celebrity is an industry. Never in the course of human history has the market for celebrities been as saturated as it is today. Nearly every day most Americans will consume something a celebrity is selling—a fragrance, a sneaker, a song, a movie, a show, a tweet, or a photo in a magazine.
 
With the benefits of Piazza's unique access to the celebrity market, Celebrity, Inc. explains in detail what generates cash for the industry and what drains value faster than a starlet downs champagne—in twelve fascinating case studies that tackle celebrities the way industry analysts would dissect any consumer brand.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Bonnie Fuller
• Introduction
• 1. #babies Shiloh Jolie-Pitt: The Magazine Market and the Bull Run for Celebrity Baby Pictures
• 2. #realityTV Spencer Pratt: When Fame-Whoring Became a Business
• 3. #diets Valerie Bertinelli: Turning Pounds into Dollars
• 4. #littlegoldmen Oscar: What's an Academy Award Worth?
• 5. #scandals Kim Kardashian Versus Paris Hilton: Innovation in the Celebutante Market
• 6. #perfume Tim Mcgraw: Using Fragrance to Maximize Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• 7. #feuds 50 Cent: The Evolution of the Hip-Hop Beef
• 8. #tweets Ashton Kutcher: The Evolution of the Digital Celebrity
• 9. #singingsolo Taylor Hicks: Building a Career After American Idol
• 10. #bleedinghearts David Arquette and Celebrity-Charity Synergy: Fame Will Feed The Poor
• 11. #consistency Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen: The Importance of Brand Consistency
• 12. #beingdead Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley: The Afterlife of Fame
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright