When was the last time you scrolled on social media, and someone you liked was advertising a product? Did you immediately go buy that product? Did you know anything about the product before you saw the person you liked?
Today we live in a society that is heavily media driven: your personal lives, friendships, and even income is intertwined with social media. Purchases we make now can be done through social media and social media branding.
But, when you click that purchase button, do you ever wonder why this brand has become so popular? Why so many other people were buying from that particular brand?
Maybe it has to do with a face or name attached to the brand. According to The Marketing Psychology Behind Celebrity Endorsements, 76% of consumers say that they are more likely to buy something from a brand with a celebrity’s name attached to it vs other brands.
I’m not calling anyone a horrible person because they bought a product that had a celebrity attached to it. I’m not here to criticize; I have fallen into the same trap before, and I’m here to introduce people to the bigger issue that’s behind the scenes of a product.
What happens to celebrities every time we idolize them with the purchases we make. Celebrities are used in today’s society’s market as a product to a consumer audience of, well us. But what’s often forgotten is that celebrities are people too. Through social media and other platforms they are held to certain ideals. Their personal lives are deemed as nothing more than commodities.
They are marketed to us so brand companies can make a profit, and we can have something to entertain ourselves. This dehumanizing concept of celebrity culture turns people into brands and ideals turning them from people to profit and entertainment.
It’s not that companies make celebrities their brands and then abuse them. They need to be strategic, they have to start somewhere, and celebrities are a great place to start.
Their main goal at the end of the day is to make a profit. Our main goal is to enjoy what we buy. But for both people in this business and a consumer relationship to be happy we (the consumer) need incentive. We need something to draw us in.
To understand why we fall into this trap, we have to look at how brands manufacture our attachments to famous figures. The California Polytechnic State University has information to help. In an academic paper exploring how consumers form their relationships or attachments to celebrities, author Sydney Taylor Jordan, editors Bennard Duffy, and Lauren Kolodziejski explore this idea.
“A sheer cry for attention,” the paper stated.
This is what they do, why brands need celebrities. People who are famous or have a large liking are able to appeal to the consumer, making the consumers eager to purchase the product. In order for us to be eager to buy the product, we must be interested in it. That’s where celebrities come in.
You’ve heard of celebrities trying to build their image, so they can gain attention, become famous, well brands do the same thing. They build an image for celebrities in a way that is centered around their brand, so when we look at a brand and see the celebrity, we are immediately intrigued.
This process of molding a human into a marketable brand, the way I describe it, might seem like folklore. Surprisingly it’s not. Even A-list celebrities are subject to this process. Take the summer 2022 blockbuster Barbie, for example, an actor in that movie, experienced this exact process I’m describing. No it’s not Margot Robbie, it’s actually another main star in the movie, America Ferrera.
While Ferrera is wildly successful in many other things apart from Barbie; In her acting experience, she had to be molded to fit an image that producers needed her to fit, in order to make her marketable to their audience. She says in her Ted Talk,
“I’ll just follow the playbook, I constantly tried to lose weight,” she says.
While we may not think about it, a process like this is common for many celebrities. The playbook, as Ferrera describes it. It’s a way for companies to get celebrities to conform to their ideals, having them create an image that changes their personalities and who they are. Then companies can sell and make profit.
By changing their image, like, losing weight, or buying fancier clothes to fit into a market standard, they become the product. A product that must be maintained in what companies believe is the ideal package, so they can sell to us, and we are appealed to what is sold. Making them nothing more than a marketing tool.
While consumers and companies benefit from this transaction, the hidden cost is paid directly by the celebrities. We idolize celebrities even more now because they have put us onto a great product. But did we ever stop to think what this is doing to celebrities? What do they gain from all this advertising these products?
In order to advertise, it often involves letting us into their personal lives, putting everything they do and love on a camera for the world to see. While we see this as our latest stream of entertainment, it’s someone’s life on display.
Sometimes this invites immense praise, but it also opens the door to severe public backlash, revealing the dark side of turning yourself into a commodity.
The cost of giving up your privacy to sell a product, it’s a high price for anyone to pay. Enya Williams a known writer with Brown University, and scholar researcher in Cultural Critique, Digital Sociology, and Marxist Theory says it best in her article, The Influencer Issue: The Link between Commodification and Well-being on Social Media, that explores the well being of celebrities/influencers and how the commodification process in a capitalist culture can effect that well being.
The commodification of the influencer, “necessarily infringes upon the influencer’s privacy and intimacy; therefore the self of the influencer is commodified,” she wrote.
Turning celebrities into tools for production takes away their value as a person. The use of their personal lives to sell companies’ products makes their personal identity their work, and inseparable from each other.
Williams makes it clear, anything personal like a break-up, marriage, even simple things like buying a new home become content, used to sell a product. Because of this, celebrities lose any control that they have over their own life, it’s now on display for the world, for us to comment, and judge on.
Processes like this can be draining for celebrities, the constant spotlight on their life along with the public pressure, and standards to live up to, takes a humongous toll. But we never realize the toll it takes because of our infatuation with the product that we bought.
Once we buy the product, we never notice the pressure we put on the celebrity to sell more of the product, advertise more, sell themselves more. In a podcast called Through The Eyes of a Therapist , licensed clinical professional therapists talk about the aspect of celebrity culture, specifically the pressure on celebrities and the mental toll it takes on them. They specifically dive into the celebrity Britney Spears and her struggle with mental health while being in the spotlight her whole life.
Britney’s stardom goes back to an early age in her life, when she was 16 with her hit song, Hit Me Baby One More Time. This opened up a bigger discussion with the commodification of celebrities early on in their life when they are at the start of their fame, for some, when they were kids.
“They were trained to sell themselves as a product/brand,” pod-caster Crista M Acosta said.
This commodification of one’s self comes with a heavy personal cost, they feel the pressure to perform to maintain that brand image. From early on celebrities are taught that by representing the product, they become the product, and any interaction no matter the context is a business transaction. If they have a bad day, say a tantrum, or they’re drunk in public, for someone normal, it’s a learning moment, but when you’re a celebrity in the limelight advertising a product, representing a brand, the response it’s different.
That pressure that’s described makes them only feel as valuable as their sales. When they are selling the product, getting those followers they are happy, when they aren’t selling, and receive lower followings the emotions change.
Their mental well being is tied to sales. Tied to the product. This pressure, and need to perform, brought on by celebrity culture has trickled onto us, and multiple parts of the country, even the world. Especially now with social media, allowing us to connect with other internet platforms, we are more susceptible to this notion of commodification.
46-49% of purchases are made from products endorsed by celebrities and advertised on social media, according to the Digital Marketing Institute. Let’s take a known brand for example, White Fox Hoodies, a known brand by every teenage girl. The headquarters of this brand company is based in Australia, but yet we see influencers that live in L.A advertise this product, this brand to us, and people in Illinois are on the website hitting the purchase button.
We idolize these celebrities, advertising these products from all over the world, we are creating unrealistic expectations for not only celebrities, but for ourselves too. As we create these ideals and images for celebrities, we try to live up to those expectations and ideals, to be like our role models.
“I feel like people idolize celebrities because they are always at the top of the trend, and they set the standard for the rest of society to follow,” SWHS Senior Andrew Sasenaraine told The Prowl
Say I’m right, and celebrities are commodified, a market tool to get to us, the consumer. Us, wanting to be our role models, and mimic what they do, then, in some way, aren’t we becoming commodifications too?
In a youtube video by Wisecrack made by history and market professionals, they describe how the relationship with commodified celebrities and us, allow us to view ourselves as celebrities.
“Think about it if celebrities teach us how to be human… they’re basically encouraging all of us to view ourselves as commodities.”
In past history, people have always looked up to people who were the elders of the community, for dress codes, and how to act. Not so different from today, we look up to celebrities tell us what to wear, what to eat and what to buy. Like elders in communities, we let celebrities teach us what to love, what we should purchase. And we listen. But this notion of listening to commodified people as clearly stated out by Wisecrack, leads us to be commodified too.
We began to mimic them because we think their standards are the only way to be happy or successful, leading us to act exactly like them, act like a commodified product. Now I’m aware that this process of commodification of celebrities is not all doom and gloom. Some people would say that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, celebrities at the end of the day get paid. They get paid when they advertise, and sell the product they are given.
Here’s an example, celebrities get paid about 1-3 million dollars for every campaign or endorsement they do. Along with influencers who get paid 50,000 – 100,000 dollars for every social media post, according to the New York Times. That’s more than the EMTs or doctors make in a year.
Celebrities make the money and still get to keep the fame. In an article: Manufacturing Celebrity’ Spotlights Exploitation in Hollywood-Obsessed Media the author states that,
“Celebrities even coordinate with paparazzi at times… maintaining precious control of and equity in their image.”
Yes, they gain profit, and as stated, they can create moments of chaos for themselves so they remain in the limelight,remain popular. But the sign of a dollar doesn’t take away mental struggle, or the pressure for celebrities to perform and sell as a market tool.
Here’s a name: Jarad Higgins. You might know him more commonly as Juice World, the famous hip-hop rapper, who died from a drug overdose in 2019. While he was making about 3.3 -4 million according to Rap Up.
While he was essentially a young millionaire he heavily struggled with a drug addiction that began in his early childhood. He was surrounded by celebrity rappers, and spent time in the limelight at a very early age. This eventually led to a series of mental health struggles, furthering his drug addiction leading to his overdose according to ABC7 Chicago.
My point to this story is yes, this work to re-invent celebrities to sell products, comes with an up -side. But the downsides are so much greater.
Now when you scroll on social media do you see a product? Do you see a celebrity you like advertising that product? What do you feel towards them, sadness, empathy, or happiness?
Nobody is saying that you can’t buy a product that you see online. The point that I’m making is that through celebrity culture, and various platforms, we base our decisions off of what celebrities do. We create and create ideals, which can be unrealistic. Through a mix of our purchases and love for celebrities, we are both taken advantage of.
Companies get the profit out of it and celebrities are seen more as a tool for profit than a person. For us we gain a product, companies gain profit, what do they gain, except for commodification?
But we can change this, change our behavior, make others who use this process of commodification think twice. But it has to start from us. With the use of technology these days ideas spread fast from person to person until a vast majority believes it. Use that.
Bring awareness to this issue that others might be blind to. Even when you’re scrolling through and see a product, research the product, truly decide based on knowledge if you like it or not. Not based on a celebrity. Bring that mindset when you do a purchase so that you know what it will do, when it goes beyond you.
