Glee, Gaga, Minaj, Aguilera and Lara Logan
Two current pop culture icons have the savviest teams of public relations people behind them.
Lady GaGa and Nicki Minaj.
You may think Ms. Minaj [#6] is relatively new on the scene. She's been with us for awhile, like one of those programs that runs silently in the background on your computer. When enough foundations and associations were made, her PR team sprang into action in a "Minaj Barrage" that truly catapulted her to stardom within and beyond the hip hop community.
Lady GaGa emerged as a cheap imitation Madonna wannabee. I heard from people who have an in with the Lady's PR folk. They actually read my post about Gags NOT being the new Madonna. That prompted a little thinking outside the box... they decided to exploit that very idea, which blossomed at the Grammies. This is a remarkably rare occurrence where a star gives her blessing to a wannabee. And that lifts the "wannabee curse" immediately!
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Recent news that GLEE charted a whole bunch of tunes and supposedly "beat Elvis" is straight-out BS. The music industry is a ghost of what it once was, and this GLEE "news" is utter nonsense.
I posted this several years ago:
The New Information Age (and co-incidentally, the beginning of the total collapse of the music industry in America) began around 1999. The critical event was the making of a star, Christina Aguilera, by use of the Internet.
Soon, the downloading of pirated music CDs (and a bit later on, Movies) changed the face of so-called "Top 40" music and the radio FOREVER: When executives at RCA Records were plotting ways to create buzz around teen pop singer Christina Aguilera's debut album, they knew the Internet would play a crucial role.
The trick was marketing Ms. Aguilera without making teens feel they were actually being marketed to. On a 1-10 scale, Internet marketer Ken Krasner says, teens "have their B.S. detectors on 11." So RCA hired a team of young cybersurfers to swarm the Web and start chatting about the 18-year-old Ms. Aguilera on popular teenInternet sites such as www.alloy.com, www.bolt.com and www.gurl.com. They posted information casually -- sometimes sounding like fans, sometimes like official spokesmen -- but always making sure not to come off as lame adults trying to be cool or marketers pitching a product. It worked.
Thanks in large part to the advance buzz online, the album "Christina Aguilera" was No. 1 on the charts when it debuted in late August. Doesn't sound like much of a big deal, does it? But that's the day "Top 40" died. Today's so-called "Top 40" does not accurately reflect what music the general public is listening to.
WHAT? YOU THINK I'M KIDDING? Think again!
Moral of the story:
Once upon a time, Christine Aguilera had a crack team of PR people behind her... too bad she must have lost them, or they got too fat and happy.
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Last week this humble weblog enjoyed sky-high traffic thanks to a 2008 post about Lara Logan.
The search terms that brought visitors in by the droves were "Lara logan swimsuit pics" "lara logan nude" "lara logan sex" --- you get the idea!
In August 2005 my blog featured multiple posts about Albany area teacher Beth Geisel, a hot blonde who admitted having sex with boys at the military high school where she was employed. A single post about Geisel brought 20-thousand visitors to my over a 9-hour time period! Such was, and is, netizen's interest in sex.
Tags: Lady GaGa, Glee, Nicki Minaj, Christina Aguilera
