Keywords
Citation
Diener, B.J. (1999), "High Visibility: : The Making and Marketing of Professionals into Celebrities", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 96-97. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.1999.16.1.96.1
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
At last! A book for marketing academics and practitioners that combines the thrill of voyeurism with the structured outlining of Phil Kotler! You can read about the rich and famous without guilt, because their marketing techniques for high visibility and celebrity are, after all, functions of the four Ps!
Dennis Rodman, Bobby Knight, Ben & Jerry, Claude Monet, Marcia Clark, Hilary and Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, Dan Quayle, Martha Stewart, Bill Gates, Al Gore, Shaquille O’Neal, Jim Bakker, Wolfgang Puck, Bill Cosby, Oliver Stone, Roger Staubach, Richard Daley, Pia Zadora, and Garrison Keiller …
How did they do it? How did they gain high visibility? What separated them from the rest of the pack? Was it luck … or was it systematic? If it was systematic, how was it done?
This book, by three Northwestern professors, is about the business of fame and celebrity … how individuals are manufactured, marketed and managed for high visibility in our culture. It is a great read for anyone who wants to achieve high visibility themselves, who wants to create it in someone else, or who wants to teach a course in the marketing of celebrity.
The basic belief in the book is that people can be transformed into a desirable product and that the quest for visibility can be systematic and not happenstance.
The book seeks to answer the following questions:
- 1.
What strategies are needed to achieve high visibility?
- 2.
What are the roles of agents, managers, etc?
- 3.
How is audience appeal measured?
- 4.
How are audiences attracted?
- 5.
How is image delivered?
- 6.
How is high visibility sustained over time?
The thesis of the book is that people, to achieve high visibility and the pay differential that celebrity confers, need to take control of their images and make decisions based on all aspects of marketing a person to celebrity status.
But the book is more than a “how‐to” book … it is also a marketing book, which outlines, in a very Kotleresque fashion, the achievement of high visibility as a strategic marketing process.
The book, for example, discusses the creation of high visibility in terms of market analysis, environmental scanning, market segmentation, product characteristics, careers in terms of life cycles and sustaining the life cycle, elements of the promotional mix, and distribution channels.
High visibility itself is described in terms of the hierarchy of visibility (invisible, local, regional, national and international), and the duration of visibility (day, week, year, one generation, legends). Subjects can gain high visibility through occupational achievement (Bill Gates), demographic leadership (Jesse Jackson), distinctive personality or lifestyle (Little Richard), inheritance (the Kennedys), an accident (John Bobbitt), or sensational behavior (Dennis Rodman).
The authors go into detail on how to measure the level of high visibility, again all described in familiar marketing research terms, such as raw measures (sales, fan letters, attendance, invitations, or media mentions), the Q factor, polling research, and rating services.
Techniques are listed for achieving high visibility through the 22 most popular story lines or positioning statements … including: “first of a kind,” “talent wins out,” “success/failure/success,” “fatal flaw,” and “great rivalry.”
Finally, the book’s techniques of transformation are described within the constructs of new product development, including defining the market, concept generation, and concept testing.
All in all, this is a fun, entertaining, and highly useful book, whether for the high visibility seeker, the academic course developer, or the celebrity manager. It conceptualizes the field of celebrity marketing in a marketing‐oriented structure which is fun as well as informative.