Which celebrity has the strongest overall brand? What makes the brand so strong and what are some of the ways that the celebrity leverages their brand in the marketplace? Which celebrity’s brand needs to be revamped and why? What are some of the current problems with the brand? Limit: 6 responses
Zeinab Dore
ReplyDeleteCelebrity banding is a way of to promote campaigns or a marketing technique in which celebrity’s social status or recognition is used to advertise a product, service, brand, or to raise awareness about a cause. Markets employ celebrity endorsers in the expectation that the celebrity endorser’s good reputation can be transferred to the commodity or brand’s image. Branding is successful in part because celebrities have the ability to attract a wide range of potential customers.
I believe Kylie Jenner has the strongest overall brand. Kylie is one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. She is among the most followed celebrities across platforms, with Instagram at 218.2 million followers as of March 2021 (Schultz). Before founding Kylie Cosmetics, Kylie spent almost a decade of her childhood and adolescence in the hit reality TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. With the rise of social media, Kylie started to gather a desirable fan base of devoted supporters across various platforms. As a result, even before launching Kylie Cosmetics, she had already established her own brand. With her beauty, fame and the financial boost she got from the Kardashians, it has helped her a lot to market herself (Hillier). She founded Kylie Cosmetics in 2014 and sold her first lipstick and lip liner set on November 30th 2015 (Kylie Cosmetics). What has helped her in having a great brand, is how she does not rely on anyone to promote her products because she is the supreme influencer on makeup and fashion, displaying her beauty collection on her own face. Kylie’s sales growth can be seen with the combination of her personal platforms as well as her business’ platform. So it shows that she reaches a very wide target audience (Hillier). Kylie Jenner is the top earning celebrity who brings in $590 million (Greenburg).
On the other hand, Ellen DeGeneres’ brand/show is declining on the daily. Ellen lost more than a million viewers since September, after learning about the toxic workplace employees had to go through because of her behavior, including accusations of racism and sexual misconduct against producers. As a result of this, Ellen has been losing viewers, followers, but also the great relationship she used to have with her audience (including me). Her whole platform was described as “Be Kind”, nevertheless, her literally describing it that way but doing quiet the opposite behind the scenes is very hypocrite of her (Koblin). Although she has been losing lots of viewers, the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” remains one of the top three highest-rated talk shows of the television season. But because of how successful the show has been over the years, they still have a deal with Warner Media who is producing four different programs for HBO Max, with a positive encouragement of bringing back live audiences for her 19th season. She has had various celebrity friends that have been defending her and speaking up about how she is still a wonderful person (Koblin).
Schultz, Cody. “Kylie Jenner and the Most Followed Celebrity Accounts on Instagram 2021.” Kardashian Dish, FanSided, 1 Mar. 2021, kardashiandish.com/2021/03/01/most-followers-instagram-2021/.
DeleteHillier, Lizzy. “Behind Kylie Jenner's Success in a Saturated Cosmetics Industry.” Econsultancy, 19 July 2020, econsultancy.com/behind-kylie-jenner-s-success-in-a-saturated-cosmetics-industry/.
Greenburg, Zack O'Malley, and Rob Lafranco . “The Celebrity 100: The World's Highest-Paid Celebrities 2020.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 2020, www.forbes.com/celebrities/.
Koblin, John. “Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/business/media/ellen-degeneres-ratings-decline.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesbusiness.
Kenneth Gruenfelder
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to celebrity brands, I believe that Dwayne Johnson has the strongest brand among every current celebrity. In October in reached the milestone of 200 million followers on Instagram, which made him the mist followed man in America on that particular social media platform. According to the article “Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Breaks Instagram Records After Endorsing Biden-Harris for President: 'Always speak your truth,” this occurred most likely when it came to the 2020 election. In the article it says that “the action star and former WWE wrestler endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris in the upcoming presidential election against President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Since then, he’s gained about 200,000 Instagram followers, according to Trackalytics, which provides statistics about social media.”(Shewfelt) Many people are heavily influenced by the actions of celebrities that they admire and since Johnson endorsed a political party, many people sided with him. This election year had many celebrities coming out and speaking their mind on many political topics going into the election. Another reason why I believe that Dwayne Johnson has one of the strongest brands is the fact that he is one the highest paid celebrities according to Forbes Top 100 list. According to the article “The World’s Highest Paid Celebrities 2020,” celebrities make a ton of money especially the world’s highest-paid ones. In the article it says that “The world’s highest-paid celebrities earned a combined $6.1 billion before taxes and fees, a $200 million drop from 2019, after the global pandemic shuttered stadiums and silenced performances around the world.”(Greenburg) The Pandemic caused a lot of problems for many people but, people like Dwayne Johnson were able to continue to make money and find success during this hard time.
Kenneth Gruenfelder
DeleteEllen DeGeneres is a celebrity that definitely could use a revamping of her brand because of the many accusatiions that were thrown her way by former staff members of her show. The staff members reported harassment from DeGeneres and this got out to the public causing her to lose a lot of viewers. She needs a revamping because people believe that she is a different person on camera and off camera. One of the problems she had from this situation was the drastic decrease in ratings. According to the article “Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace” it says that “The loss of viewers includes a 38 percent decline in her core audience, adult women under 54, according to Nielsen. And it appears to have put a dent in the show’s ad revenue. From September to January of the 2019- 20 season, “Ellen” brought in $131 million from advertisers, according to the research firm Kantar. That has fallen to $105 million for the same period in 2020-21, a drop of about 20 percent.” (Koblin) In the article it also talks about how DeGeneres has reached out to her celebrity friends for help in order to fix her brand and get viewers to come back to her show.
Works Cited
Greenberg, Zach O'Malley and Rob LaFranco. "The World’s Highest Paid Celebrities 2020." Forbes Sept. 2020
Koblin, John. "Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace." New York Times 22 March 2021
Shewfelt, Raechal. "Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Breaks Instagram Records After Endorsing Biden-Harris for President." Yahoo Entertainment 8 Oct. 2020
Adam Tollin
ReplyDeleteMedia Trends Blog 7
Over the years, across a few different platforms, Christiano Ronaldo is a name that stands out in my mind along with a few others when it comes to social media popularity. Don’t get me wrong – I think about soccer first, but the next thing I think of is definitely the fact that he has the most Instagram followers in the world, coming in at 266.3 million as of March 2021 according to an article on Fansided (Schultz). Aside from soccer skills in Instagram fame, Ronaldo’s brand has extended into almost every industry. He is in sports, he is in media, he is even in the chemical industry with his CR7 cologne. Although the article I found is a little old, it explains this point very well. Ronaldo said he wanted his cologne to have his name in it to represent a personal connection, and that the word “legacy” is meaningful to him (Badehausen). He wanted to the cologne to represent himself, which in turn would shape his brand, giving him the foundation he wanted to start for himself (Badehausen). He has over 100 million more followers than he did on a single platform than when that article was released, which is also when the cologne product was released. Using his enormous social media platforms, it is easy for him to leverage his account and his brand at this point in his career. His millions of followers will appeal to his accounts if he does an advertisement or promotes his products.
On the contrary, I think Ellen DeGeneres could use a complete brand revamp. With all of the nasty things coming out about the way she treats her employees on and off set, I think she is in need of something that will get her likeness back up again. For Ellen, I think a lot of people trusted her, and who she was, and what she was about, so I think it’s going to be really difficult for her to reinstate that trust in people. I think I, along with everyone else, was completely shocked to hear the news about how she treated other people who worked with her. The title of this article literally states that she lost 1 million more followers just for attempting to make an apology about those allegations (Koblin). Clearly, fans didn’t think Ellen was being very sincere with her apology since they tuned into her season opener to hear it, and then it appears they tuned out. Somehow, ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ remains one of the top three highest-rated syndicated talk shows this season (Koblin). I think Ellen needs to do some work to give back to the community or do something more than say sorry for mistreating employees the way she did. If she wants people to like her again, she’s going to have to get that done in a complete and sincere way.
Works Cited
Schultz, Cody. “Kylie Jenner and the Most Followed Celebrity Accounts on Instagram 2021.” Kardashian Dish, FanSided, 1 Mar. 2021, kardashiandish.com/2021/03/01/most-followers-instagram-2021/.
Badenhausen, Kurt. “Cristiano Ronaldo Expands His Brand With Launch Of New Fragrance.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 June 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2015/09/16/cristano-ronaldo-expands-his-brand-with-launch-of-legacy-frangrance/?sh=604523c2665a.
Koblin, John. “Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/business/media/ellen-degeneres-ratings-decline.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesbusiness.
Gabriela Alvares
ReplyDeleteMedia Trends Blog 7
Among the celebrities covered by the week’s articles, I would definitely say that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has the strongest brand because he has built a reputation for authenticity and uses a range of platforms for promotion. In contrast, Ellen DeGeneres’ brand is suffering because her image as a person who promotes kindness has been damaged by revelations of workplace harassment by her senior production staff.
In 2019, Johnson earned $90 million and had a net worth of approximately $300 million (Chan, 2019). In the article “5 Ways The Rock Has Built A Rock-Hard Personal Brand Online,” the author summarizes Johnson’s success and analyzes the strategies he uses (Chan, 2019). Johnson has a reputation for promoting things he personally enjoys and believes in, which creates a sense of confidence in his statements and people feel they can trust that a product is good. He also works hard to live up to his followers expectations and generates a lot of social media content, so people feel he appreciates their interest and support (Chen, 2019). For his businesses, he is also forward-thinking and always looking to expand into new markets, especially internationally, and new products (Chen, 2019). He reinforces his brand through integrating his promotional platforms, such as wearing his Project Rock Under Armour collection while working on his films, which add to the message that his endorsements are extensions of his actual lifestyle (Chen, 2019). Because of his overall reputation for being sincere, he was also able to simultaneously promote people and ideas he believed in and gather more followers by endorsing Biden and Harris during the last election. In "Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Breaks Instagram Records After Endorsing Biden-Harris for President," Shewfelt (2020) highlights that his careful consideration of endorsements (he had never publicly supported a political candidate before) creates a lot of publicity both for him and what he is promoting when he does make statement, the main reason for his brand’s success which Johnson sums up as “The life lesson I wanna share with you guys is to always speak your truth.” (Shewfelt, 2020).
The celebrity brand that definity needs improving is that of Ellen Degeneres. The article "Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace” analyzes how her image as a progressive lesbian who focuses on promoting positive energy and happiness has been damaged by incidents of workplace sexual harassment, racism, and an overall toxic relationship between staff and producers (Koblin, 2019). In contrast to Johnson, Degeneres is now seen as inauthentic due to the contrast between her message and behavior that she did not work to address, even if she herself was not directly involved (Koblin, 2019). This is summarized by Stephen Galloway, the Dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of film and media arts; “Her brand is not just being fairly nice — it is ‘Be Kind.’ She’s chosen two words to stamp herself. You cannot have hypocrisy better defined than when you’ve chosen those two words to define yourself and everyone is seeing the opposite is true inside your show.” (Koblin, 2019).
This negative image has had financial consequences for her main platform, “The Ellen Degeneres Show” and has resulted in a loss of viewership. “Ellen” has lost more than a million viewers since September 2019, averaging 1.5 million viewers over the last six months, down from 2.6 million in the same period last year and a 38% decline in her core audience of women under 54 (Koblin, 2019). Revenue from advertisers dropped to $105 million from $131 million.
Gabriela Alvares
DeleteMedia Trends Blog 7
Work Cited
Chan, Goldie. (2019, September 21). 5 Ways The Rock Has Built A Rock-Hard Personal Brand Online. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/goldiechan/2019/09/21/5-ways-the-rock-has-built-personal-brand/?sh=65adee0817ea.
Koblin, John. (2021, March 22). Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace. New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/business/media/ellen-degeneres-ratings-decline.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesbusiness
Shewfelt, Raechal. (2020, October 8). Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Breaks Instagram Records After Endorsing Biden-Harris for President. Yahoo Entertainment.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/dwayne-the-rock-johnson-reaches-instagram-milestone-after-endorsing-joe-biden-president-192528332.html Accessed Mar. 28, 2021.
Looking at the Forbes list of Top 100 Highest Paid Celebrities I am not surprised by many of the names on the list. Kylie Jenner, the Rock, Lebron James. These are all people who have built a name and image and have profited greatly off of it. One celebrity doing well with his brand is The Rock. Back in October of 2020 he reached a milestone for his career. He became the first person to reach 200 million followers on Instagram, this makes The Rock the most followed man in America. Along with being the most followed, The Rock is also the highest paid actor in America. More recently, the Rock posted about his support of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the White House. About this he says that, “The life lesson I wanna share with you guys is to always speak your truth.” I think this line sums up why The Rock has been so successful as an actor and has established such a brand for himself. He is a very likable, good looking guy who has stayed away from much controversy. And his line about always speaking the truth makes him seem very honest. Ask most people and they will probably say they like The Rock. He has successfully been able to speak on politics publicly, yet keep what seems to be an honest genuine image of himself. Also in 2020 he launched two new businesses which is a testament to his ambition. He launched Teramana Tequila which has been successful and a newer company, ZOA Energy. To launch his brands he used social media while at home which he said worked well, “Frankly, in a way that didn’t feel polished or produced. It just felt more authentic and directly connected with them.” He also said that the most important thing he learned when building his brand was taking care of his consumers(Scipioni).
ReplyDeleteOne celebrity struggling recently is Ellen DeGeneres. This year was a tough one for Ellen. Her show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, lost more than a million views since September and is only averaging 1.5 million viewers over 6 months instead of last year's 2.6 million(Koblin). Ellen used to be a huge show, winning dozens of Emmy Awards. This controversy and decline of the show started when former staffers of the show said that they faced a toxic work culture and some were sexually harassed. Three of her producers were forced to resign. The irony came with her message “Be Kind” considering her work environment wasn’t so kind. Ellen has been super successful in what she does. But maybe in 2021, where the world is more woke and a show like Ellen, where the core audience is probably women, don’t take it too kindly to hearing that the culture of their show is sexist and bad and that women were sexally harrased on the set. She's been around a very long time too so maybe the controversy combined with the show getting old could be leading to its decline. Ellen's brand needs to be changed in a way to help bring the show back, but I feel that at this point, with all the controversy, her brand really can’t be saved.
One celebrity who has created a great brand around themselves recently is rapper Travis Scott. It is pretty crazy the brand he's created for himself. He makes clothes for everything he does that are super overpriced yet me and millions of other people buy them every time, he got a McDonalds meal, a seltzer company, shoes, who knows what else. He’s built this brand around his name turning himself into not just a rapper but an entire brand and lifestyle like I have seen no others do before. He is a great example of someone who has very recently and successfully built a brand for themselves.
Koblin, John. “Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/business/media/ellen-degeneres-ratings-decline.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesbusiness.
ReplyDeleteScipioni, Jade. “Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson on the Key to Success and Launching 2 Businesses during Covid.” CNBC, CNBC, 11 Jan. 2021, www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/dwayne-the-rock-johnson-the-key-to-success-starting-businesses-during-covid.html.
Shewfelt , Raechal. “Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Breaks Instagram Records after Endorsing Biden-Harris for President: 'Always Speak Your Truth'.” Yahoo!, Yahoo!, 2020, www.yahoo.com/entertainment/dwayne-the-rock-johnson-reaches-instagram-milestone-after-endorsing-joe-biden-president-192528332.html.
Rachel Feliciano
ReplyDeleteDr. Burns
MSS-495
March 29, 2021
Celebrity & Sports
Blog 7 (1/2)
Celebrities have a responsibility to create a brand around themselves to obtain a focus on what they as a celebrity can bring to the table, for society as a whole. Kylie Jenner is a celebrity that has the strongest overall brand. Although she is the daughter of Kris Jenner who had created an empire for the Kardashian/Jenner family, Kylie herself evolved by creating a make-up brand that’s sole focus started with lipstick kits. The lip kits included a liquid lipstick and matching lip liner that soon became so popular which then led Kylie to expand her brand...Kylie Cosmetics to different kinds of cosmetic products for the face, eye, and skin. Kylie started by selling her products online and then moved forward to creating pop-up shops to sell more of her products, but “her initial kits sold out online in less than a minute” (Robehmed, 2019). Due to her success in the cosmetic industry, Kylie was able to sign a deal with Ulta, a very large beauty retailer allowing her to sell her products in-store across the country, which made Kylie the youngest billionaire in the world.
Since Kylie is the daughter of Kris Jenner and Caitlin Jenner who is formerly known as Bruce Jenner the retired olympian, she has had a lot of exposure on television due to their family’s reality TV show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. This reality television exposure led Kylie to have a large following on social media since day one, while the attention on her family has only grown more over the years. Kylie’s large following on social media has allowed Kylie to share her brand with her followers which only created more attention for her and her brand. Being the fourth “most followed celebrities on Instagram (2021)” (Schultz 2020) is a large reason why Kylie’s brand will keep going, her Kylie Cosmetic customers will always start with being her followers and fans first. The content Kylie posts will always be watched by many and followed by many which are why her brand will be on the rise for quite some time. She makes the marketing of her company so easy when staying connected with customers through social media, and many companies are not able to do that but Kylie’s company is all about Kylie.
Unfortunately, today Ellen Degeneres is a celebrity whose brand needs to be revamped due to her facing reports of workplace misconduct made by her to her staff. Ellen started off her eighteenth season with an apology toward the staff affected by the misconduct within her place of work made by her. This apology got The Ellen Show season opener, “the highest ratings for an “Ellen” premiere in four years” (Koblin, 2021). Yet, right after the first episode of the season, Ellen lost more than a million viewers since then. These reports made a lot of Ellen’s audience steer away from her because she had been always preached to “be kind”, making it her motto for her overall brand. But, it seems like today Ellen never really lived by her motto “be kind” since she has been accused by many of her past staff for being racist while instilling fear and intimidation toward them. Producers of hers have also been accused of sexually assaulting other staff as well. I have always been a fan of Ellen, I thought she was unique and hilarious while also being known for having “one of the longest running and most successful talk shows in history” (Koblin, 2021). Except I vividly remember in the very beginning of quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic, Ellen had her show set up in her home for the first time and had complained how she felt that being in quarantine was like “being in jail” (Lee, 2020). Fans came after her insensitive comment over being “locked up” in her mansion while still having the ability to continue filming her show within her home. The insensitive comment came with a lot of comparison to people who were struggling during the pandemic and how Ellen should not be making jokes that were affecting many because of the pandemic. This comment is when I knew Ellen was slowly going to get “canceled” over time. Sadly, Ellen has come a very long way to have the amount of success she had until today. Yet, her past accomplishments are no excuse for her repetitive behavior of only acting like a celebrity who knows they have so much success and think that success will carry over despite their rude behavior. It is time for Ellen to take notes from Kylie Jenner specifically to rebuild her brand and show her fans that she is capable of making positive changes to continue gaining attention and revenue from her show.
ReplyDeleteWork Cited
Koblin, John. "Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace." New York Times 22 March 2021,
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/business/media/ellen-degeneres-ratings-decline.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesbusiness
Lee, Alicia. “Ellen DeGeneres Sparks Backlash after Joking That Self-Quarantine Is like 'Being in Jail'.” CNN, Cable News Network, 9 Apr. 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/entertainment/ellen-degeneres-quarantine-jail-trnd/index.html.
Robehmed, Natalie. “At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 7 Mar. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2019/03/05/at-21-kylie-jenner-becomes-the-youngest-self-made-billionaire-ever/?sh=32deeeb12794.
Schultz, Cody. "Kylie Jenner and the Most Followed Celebrity Accounts on Instagram 2021." Fansided March 2020, https://kardashiandish.com/2021/03/01/most-followers-instagram-2021/.
The most successful celebrity brand is the Jenner/Khardashian family. The five sisters and one brother are the children of Kris and Caitlyn Jenner. The siblings have built a pop culture empire through many ventures. Today, the 5 sisters are all in the top 20 most followed celebrities on Instagram, all drawing in upwards of 100 million followers. (Schultz) With such a huge presence on social media, the Khardashian clan their brand draws huge attention for advertising their products and potentially leveraging that platform in deals with other companies as well. One venture in particular has consistently built the Khardashian brand with their long running reality television show that follows the family in their busy lives. This was key for arguably the most famous and relevant member of the family, Kylie Jenner. Kylie has the most Instagram followers among the sisters, and was the highest paid celebrity in 2020 at 590 million dollars. This was mostly due to her selling her beauty empire off, receiving a huge sum of money in return for a share. (The Celebrity 100: ) Although, the other sisters aren’t doing too bad for themselves either.
ReplyDeleteOne cerlebrity who I believe has a brand that is declining is Ellen Degeneres. Degeneres hosts her longtime talk show named “Ellen”. She has built the show to be funny, inclusive, and good spirited with appearances from celebrities and musicians. Her show has been popular since its start. However, in July 2020 multiple reports were filed that outlined misconduct in the workplace behind the scenes of the show. Allegations of sexual misconduct and racist remarks were made public, although Ellen herself was not mentioned. However, a backlash on social media, specifically twitter, prompted people on social media to reveal moments when Ellen had been rude to them, as her character had been questioned in multiple tweets, and then flooded all over the site. (Glamour) Her show took a dip in ratings after she released an apology in September of 2020. Over the next 6 months, her viewers dropped by a million from the same point next year, and given the state of the pandemic it was surely due to a distrust with Ellen and a disappointment from what had been revealed. This loss in viewers is a 43 percent decrease from last year, and is the highest among competing talk shows. (Koblin) Ellen could try to highlight the topics that were revealed in the allegations in her show to try and show a commitment to improving and making an impact. This could be a step in building back her brand as her show continues next year.
Schultz, Cody. “Kylie Jenner and the Most Followed Celebrity Accounts on Instagram 2021.” Kardashian Dish, FanSided, 1 Mar. 2021, kardashiandish.com/2021/03/01/most-followers-instagram-2021/.
“The Celebrity 100: The World's Highest-Paid Celebrities 2020.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, www.forbes.com/celebrities/.
Glamour, et al. “Ellen DeGeneres Talked About Her Staff at the 2020 People's Choice Awards.” Glamour, www.glamour.com/story/the-ellen-degeneres-show-controversy-explained.
Koblin, John. “Ellen DeGeneres Loses 1 Million Viewers After Apologies for Toxic Workplace.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/business/media/ellen-degeneres-ratings-decline.html?smtyp=cur&%3Bsmid=tw-nytimesbusiness.