Is All Publicity Good Publicity?
Unless you live in a foxhole or some remote place like Antarctica, you have probably seen Janet Jackson’s boob by now, being exploited on television, on the Internet, and in magazines and newspapers. That boob is pretty much all I see or hear about these days. I mean, what is the big deal anyways – it is just a piece of flesh. Well, it seems to be a big deal to the network that aired the Super Bowl as well as the NFL and MTV, but according to Janet Jackson, she did not know it was going to be a big deal. Or did she? My bet is that she knew exactly what the repercussions of her actions would be. My guess is that she did not do it to be fun, or daring, or even sexy. She exposed her flesh for the whole world to see in order to sell more records. So, will her little stunt pump up her record sales? Maybe. However, the way her little publicity stunt played out also offended many people as well. The people that took offence to Janet’s actions were those who she really should not have wanted to piss off. CBS is so ticked at her they are actually preventing her from being a presenter at the upcoming Grammy awards. When it is all said and done, was her stunt really worth it?
Celebrities, as well as us normal people, tend to think sometimes that all publicity is good publicity, but that is not exactly true. It is true that some scandalous behavior or actions can turn out in the end to be good publicity, but there are just some things that can go too far. If your stunt or behavior ends up hurting or offending too many people than it may not technically end up being good publicity. Let me give some examples of where scandals can turn into good publicity. While Britney Spears’ recent whirlwind Vegas marriage and subsequent annulment, had a lot of people wagging their tongues, it did not end up hurting or offending anyone (except maybe her ex-husband). What her behavior did do was put her on the headlines of every news program, magazine, etc. It also was great timing considering she had just released her fourth album, In the Zone. This is a classic case where a scandal can turn into favorable publicity. Another example of scandal turning into good publicity is the Paris Hilton sex tape. That sex tape essentially put Paris Hilton on the map and made her the star of the online adult world. It did not do much to damage her reputation, because she did not have much of one to begin with and it came out just as her new reality series was being aired. The only people that she probably offended were her parents and that nice family that she shacked up with in Arkansas. Those are two examples of how a scandal can end up turning into good publicity, but there are also many, many cases of where a scandal ends up just being scandalous.
You may be wondering what all this babble about celebrities has to do with this industry, but there is a connection. The porn industry and especially the online segment of it, is chocked full of scandals and publicity stunts. Webmasters seem to be under the mislead impression that anything that actually gets their name out there will end up turning into more sales for them. You constantly see bitch-fests, scandals, and fights being pasted all over our favorite message boards. What you do not see is what the actual motivation behind these events really is. Many times, these actions are made in order to try to gain some publicity and a lot of the time it will end up being good publicity, but not all the time. Sometimes outrageous behavior and scandalous actions can be very, very harmful to an adult Webmaster and can end up actually ending their career. I have a really good example of where this occurred.
About three or four years ago, back in the end of the good days for this business, there was a young hot webmistress who worked in sales for a content company and who started taking the industry by storm. She was befriending all the male webmasters and some pretty key industry players by flirting like crazy via the boards and ICQ, as well as flashing her picture every chance she got. It worked for her because she steadily brought in the business and started making a name for herself, until the day that she was exposed. Someone found out that this hot new webmistress was really not hot at all, but in fact “she” was actually a “he”. It turned out that he felt that he would get ahead in the industry faster if he in fact pretended to be a hot chick coming onto the other webmasters. In the end he just ended up pissing alot of people off. The stunt did have everyone talking about him though, but this publicity never could get him ahead in this industry, and now he has seemingly disappeared altogether. This is a clear example of a publicity gone bad.
The point that I am trying to get across is that you should really consider what the reactions are going to be to your actions before you make a big mistake. If you can foresee that your behavior may in fact end up hurting or offending people, perhaps you should think twice before trying to stage some kind of publicity stunt. Janet Jackson probably did not think hard enough prior to her boob show and now she may feel the repercussions of negative publicity.
Reader Comments: (1 posts)
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Kapil says: this is very useful infmoration. i've done most of this already, but i had a problem with signing up on the yahoo site. i'm going to have to give it another try, the link that you've provided here may be different than the one i received (who knows where) originally.thanks as always for your helpful posts! |
August 24th, 2012 at 2:03am EST Rating:  |
