Celebrity Sells

Celebrities have always captured the imagination of the public. In today's age of consumerism, their ability to influence our behaviour can be seen worldwide. Harnessing this power can reap huge rewards for business — the Jamie Oliver campaign helped turn around Sainsbury?s fortunes, with the return on investment estimated at £27.95 for every advertising pound spent; sales of Walker?s Crisps increased by 105% thanks to Gary Lineker; One to One re-launched its brand with stars including Kate Moss and Elvis Presley. Celebrity Sells demonstrates the awesome power of famous names, when skilfully used, to sell brands and offers practical advice on how to develop and advertise a brand using celebrities, including: How to choose the right celebrity for your brand How to build your brand using a celebrity How to manage relationships with celebrities How to protect celebrity and brand reputation

Celebrities have always captured the imagination of the public. In today's age of consumerism, their ability to influence our behaviour can be seen worldwide. Harnessing this power can reap huge rewards for business — the Jamie Oliver campaign helped turn around Sainsbury?s fortunes, with the return on investment estimated at £27.95 for every advertising pound spent; sales of Walker?s Crisps increased by 105% thanks to Gary Lineker; One to One re-launched its brand with stars including Kate Moss and Elvis Presley. Celebrity Sells demonstrates the awesome power of famous names, when skilfully used, to sell brands and offers practical advice on how to develop and advertise a brand using celebrities, including: How to choose the right celebrity for your brand How to build your brand using a celebrity How to manage relationships with celebrities How to protect celebrity and brand reputation

Once upon a time, the ad men thought there was no better way to get their products off the shelves and into our shopping carts than a recommendation from a familiar, friendly face. As faces didn't come any more familiar than the stars of the screen, the celebrity sell was born. If you couldn't decide what to smoke, drink, eat, or wear, there was no need to worrythe stars were there to help. Among those starring in these 31 postcards are Lucille Ball, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Ronald Reagan, Rock Hudson, Laurence Olivier, and Liberace.

An engaging introduction to the key terms, concepts, dilemmas and issues that are central to the study and critical understanding of celebrity, exploring the impacts of celebrity culture on the modern media and examining the influence that celebrity has on the way people place themselves in the modern world.

How Stephen Hawking became the most brilliant man alive When Stephen Hawking died, he was widely recognized as the world's best physicist, and even its smartest person. He was neither. In Hawking Hawking, science journalist Charles Seife explores how Stephen Hawking came to be thought of as humanity's greatest genius. Hawking spent his career grappling with deep questions in physics, but his renown didn't rest on his science. He was a master of self-promotion, hosting parties for time travelers, declaring victory over problems he had not solved, and wooing billionaires. Confined to a wheelchair and physically dependent on a cadre of devotees, Hawking still managed to captivate the people around him-and use them for his own purposes. A brilliant exposé and powerful biography, Hawking Hawking uncovers the authentic Hawking buried underneath the fake. It is the story of a man whose brilliance in physics was matched by his genius for building his own myth.

Made Up exposes the multibillion-dollar beauty industry that promotes unrealistic beauty standards through a market basket of advertising tricks, techniques, and technologies. Cosmetics magnate Charles Revson, a founder of Revlon, was quoted as saying, "In the factory, we make cosmetics. In the store, we sell hope." This pioneering entrepreneur, who built an empire on the foundation of nail polish, captured the unvarnished truth about the beauty business in a single metaphor: hope in a jar. Made Up: How the Beauty Industry Manipulates Consumers, Preys on Women’s Insecurities, and Promotes Unattainable Beauty Standards is a thorough examination of innovative, and often controversial, advertising practices used by beauty companies to persuade consumers, mainly women, to buy discretionary goods like cosmetics and scents. These approaches are clearly working: the average American woman will spend around $300,000 on facial products alone during her lifetime. This revealing book traces the evolution of the global beauty industry, discovers what makes beauty consumers tick, explores the persistence and pervasiveness of the feminine beauty ideal, and investigates the myth-making power of beauty advertising. It also examines stereotypical portrayals of women in beauty ads, looks at celebrity beauty endorsements, and dissects the “looks industry.” Made Upuncovers the reality behind an Elysian world of fantasy and romance created by beauty brands that won’t tell women the truth about beauty.

This balanced examination looks at America's pervasive celebrity culture, concentrating on the period from 1950 to the present day. Star Struck: An Encyclopedia of Celebrity Culture is neither a stern critic nor an apologist for celebrity infatuation, a phenomenon that sometimes supplants more weighty matters yet constitutes one of our nation's biggest exports. This encyclopedia covers American celebrity culture from 1950 to 2008, examining its various aspects—and its impact—through 86 entries by 30 expert contributors. Demonstrating that all celebrities are famous, but not all famous people are celebrities, the book cuts across the various entertainment medias and their legions of individual "stars." It looks at sports celebrities and examines the role of celebrity in more serious pursuits and institutions such as the news media, corporations, politics, the arts, medicine, and the law. Also included are entries devoted to such topics as paranoia and celebrity, one-name celebrities, celebrity nicknames, family unit celebrity, sidekick celebrities, and even criminal celebrities.