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Dead Celebs Make Comeback as Pitchmen
« on: Aug 19th, 2002, 10:19pm » |
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Dead Celebs Make Comeback as Pitchmen
ABCNews.com
In show business, everyone loves a comeback story. But 25 years ago, Elvis Presley went to a place that no one comes back from.
It's a tribute to the vitality of his recordings and the power of his persona that Elvis never did vanish from the pop culture landscape. This summer alone, his music and image have been featured in Disney's Lilo & Stitch , and he's had a No. 1 single overseas: a spiffed-up remix of a song from the '60s called "A Little Less Conversation." You can even hear part of Elvis' latest hit on a new Nike commercial.
In fact, a quarter-century after his death at age 42, Elvis has been earning more per year than he ever did when he was alive. Death, it seems, was just another phase in a career that featured so many different indelible incarnations: The hip-swiveling hero of the '50s -- the grinning sex symbol of '60s -- the jump-suited Vegas legend of the '70s -- and now, the eternal icon of advertisements, selling everything from pizzas to state lottery tickets.
Yes, the King of rock 'n' roll has become the king of dead celebrities, endorsing products -- and earning millions -- from beyond the grave. It's a field more lively than you might think. Because while some celebrities go to heaven, and some celebrities may go to hell, others are going straight to the bank.
From Marilyn Monroe to Albert Einstein, John Wayne to James Dean, a fistful of long-gone greats are defying time and achieving a kind of digital immortality through commercials. The estates of the deceased get a paycheck, and they sign off on every ad you'll see on television.
Perpetual Cool
Right now, the coolest dead celebrity might be Steve McQueen. His chase scene from the film Bullitt was technologically tweaked by Ford in Europe to market a new car.
Why was an action star who's been gone for more than 20 years such a hit? "Well, he sells," says Neile Adams, McQueen's first wife and the trustee of his estate. "Steve has that believability. He was an original -- the coolest guy around."
Perpetual cool pays off, apparently. There's a clothing line in the works, and in the meantime, McQueen's currently hard at work for Tag Heuer watches -- and again for Ford.
"It's a very profitable business," says Adams. How much money are we talking about? She smiles. "It's up there, it's up there."
Marketers are putting the time-tested images of other dead celebrities to work as well. Humphrey Bogart, Hollywood's world-weary romantic, has turned up in a Diet Coke ad alongside the very- much-alive Elton John. Goddess of glamour Marilyn Monroe might have only made one commercial during her lifetime, but her image has been alive and pitching everything from fine wine to French perfume and Japanese pantyhose -- plus a credit card to pay for it all.
Trivializing Greatness?
Sometimes, estates and their representatives are criticized for indiscriminately slapping a deceased celebrity's face and name on a product or service.
"We don't do anything like that," says Roger Richman, one of the few talent agencies that specialize in representing what he prefers to call "legends."
For example, he says, "We licensed Coors to use John Wayne in a very successful campaign where John Wayne was associated with beer. But most importantly, seven figures [went] to the John Wayne Cancer Institute at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. ... The family has no qualms about being associated with that at all."
But if death sells, not everyone's buying. An icon's image can be so close to our hearts that to see it used in an ad campaign rubs the public the wrong way. One ad for a communications company used footage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech -- and the advertiser was accused of trivializing a great moment in American history. And when Fred Astaire was made to dance with the devil -- well, a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner -- millions of fans wanted the ad swept under the rug.
Then there's Princess Diana. She's been dead five years. Can you imagine her endorsing products? Mark Roesler can; his company, CMG Worldwide, represents the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. "Absolutely, she's someone that a major company might consider using," he says. "It's been discussed with many major companies."
Jack Soden has run Elvis Presley Enterprises for 20 years, and in that time has made Elvis the gold standard of celebrity estates. When it comes to endorsements, he says, "I'm aware of the fact that that we're making a choice to involve a person who didn't get to vote in the decision. So you want to do that, I think, very carefully."
Soden also knows his client possesses near-universal appeal. "Elvis ... he just transcends. He just keeps riding those waves of cultural change. We would be foolish to alter Elvis. All we really have to do is make the connection between Elvis and [the] audience."
That connection is what keeps these deceased celebrities so close to our hearts. And as long as we love them, we won't stop seeing them pitching products in commercials. Because while we may treasure our memories of their luminous charisma, to a growing number of advertisers, their eternal appeal is just ... heavenly.
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