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Celebrity Culture, Influencer Brands and Parasocial Relationships
Celebrity is changing.
Jasmine Bina
May 28, 2020
When Steven Galanis and his cofounders launched Cameo in 2016, they noticed two things happening in the celebrity landscape: 1) fame itself has blown up, with more celebrities existing than in any other time in history, and 2) that these celebrities collectively enjoy more fame than their counterparts in the past.
Attention capital, influence and a new breed of platform brands like Cameo, Community and OnlyFans have started to dramatically change how we relate to our icons.
It's a new kind of connection that is outpacing other forms of connection in our lives right now, and a window into the future of social media, influencers and marketplaces.
In this week's Unseen Unknown episode, we speak with Cameo’s co-founder Steven Galanis about the cultural drivers that make a company like this possible during a time like now, and how he made some very specific decisions in positioning and branding that have started to pay off.
As Cameo approaches its millionth video made, the company has unlocked an enormous well of unmet demand, and become one of the fastest growing marketplaces in the US because it has captured an emotional layer in the celebrity-fan relationship that didn't exist before.
We also speak with sociologist and author Chris Rojek about the evolving nature of celebrity in recent years.
Even before the internet, celebrity was starting to change with normal people becoming stars on reality TV, talk shows and game shows. With the proliferation of social media platforms, we’ve all become a lot more engaged in fandom... and not too long ago, the influencer was born: a new kind of celebrity that’s starting to change the rules.
The acts of self-disclosure and "presumed intimacy" that drive this new subset of celebrity have started to draw us closer as an audience and change our norms.
Sociologists call these parasocial relationships, and they are a very new part of the human experience worth examining, not least of which because they affect how we buy, how we vote, how we gather and how we signal.
Celebrity is isn't what it used to be.
You can also listen and subscribe on Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher and Simplecast.
Links to interesting things mentioned in this episode:
Using Permission and Perception to Change the Brand Experience.
On signaling behavior, moving the defaults and taking big swings.
I published a piece this week on how sometimes, the biggest brand moves are simple moves. You don’t need to be radical in order to be impactful.
You need to be aware of shifts in the societal framework instead. When our codes change, your brand’s actions are perceived through a different lens.
When that happens, don’t just give people choices. Give them new defaults and permissions that can actually change behaviors. By changing norms, you change the reasons for using your brand.
Reality is relative.
Here's what we've been consuming.
The New Model Media Star Is Famous Only to You (New York Times): "With short videos and paid newsletters, everyone from superstars to half-forgotten former athletes and even journalists can, as one tech figure put it, “monetize individuality.”... And there’s the old promise of the earlier internet that you could make a living if you just had “1,000 true fans" — a promise that advertising-based businesses from blogs to YouTube channels failed to deliver."
Lavish Parties, Greedy Pols and Panic Rooms: How the ‘Apple of Pot’ Collapsed (POLITICO): "MedMen stands as a cautionary tale of American Wild West capitalism. But interviews with former executives and industry insiders, along with legal filings and public disclosures, show it’s also a flashing red warning light that the emerging cannabis industry is not yet ready for primetime—even if MedMen’s slick marketing videos are."
The Heartbeat of Racism Is Denial (New York Times): "A new vocabulary emerged, allowing users to evade admissions of racism. It still holds fast after all these years. The vocabulary list includes these: law and order. War on drugs. Model minority. Reverse discrimination. Race-neutral. Welfare queen. Handout. Tough on crime. Personal responsibility. Black-on-black crime. Achievement gap. No excuses. Race card. Colorblind. Post-racial. Illegal immigrant. Obamacare. War on Cops. Blue Lives Matter. All Lives Matter. Entitlements. Voter fraud. Economic anxiety."
Being Michael Jordan…when you’re not (Grant McCracken): "American culture does these two things really, really well. It asks us to celebrate the greatness of our heroes without reservation, to ”give it up” entirely for those who do the extraordinary. But it also “cuts us in on the action.” We can be as gods, if only fleetingly, even in polyester. For a moment we are Michael Jordan. Logically, of course, these two things should not coexist."
