celebrity

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Celebrity Studies

ISSN: 1939-2397 (Print) 1939-2400 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcel20

Cultivating celebrity through public relations

Paul Ziek

To cite this article: Paul Ziek (2016) Cultivating celebrity through public relations, Celebrity Studies, 7:1, 122-124, DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2016.1131015

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2016.1131015

Published online: 08 Jan 2016.

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Cultivating celebrity through public relations

Paul Ziek*

Department of Media, Communications and Visual Arts, Pace University, Pleasantville, NY, USA

(Received 8 July 2015; accepted 9 October 2015)

Although there has been an increase in research on celebrity, Turner (2010, p. 13) argues that there is not a ‘great deal of depth or variety in academic writing’. He believes that there needs to be more analysis on celebrity, particularly how it is understood as an industry. One of the areas of the celebrity industry that certainly deserves more attention is the role of communication, and more particularly public relations. This is not to say that communication, or public relations, is ignored in previous research, just under- developed. Celebrities communicate with the public through both their primary medium (i.e. film, radio, reality television, etc.) and also an extra-textual dimension that includes interviews, award nights, social media and premieres, to name a few (Marshall 2010). This extra-textual dimension is really a form of public relations meant to create and sustain relationships. Accordingly, this article focuses on the idea that celebrity public relations has emerged as an inclusive field of communicative practice and that there are fruitful directions to be taken up when academic attention is focused on understanding the field.

When Boorstin (1975, p. 57) pointed out that a ‘celebrity is a person who is known for his well knownness’ he seemed to have provided a straightforward definition. Yet as the study of celebrity increased, and more information about celebrities became avail- able, the definition of celebrity grew to be truly ambiguous (Marshall 1997). This is because, as Milner (2010) explains, celebrity is qualitatively different depending on the approach taken to understand the phenomenon. Overall, however, there is an underlying thread among the ways theorists view celebrity: celebrities are individuals selected by the public (see Marshall 1997, Rojek 2001, Currid-Halkett 2010). In other words, celebrity is about choice – the choice the public makes on certain individuals. What is undervalued in celebrity studies is the role communication plays in cultivating the context where choice is made.

Communication is ‘directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time’ (Carey 1989, p. 18). In other words, com- munication creates social reality (Craig 1999) and thus the opportunity for selection. To this end, we can delve even deeper into the way that communication cultivates celebrity by focusing on a particular form: public relations. According to Grunig and Hunt (1984), public relations is the management of communication between an entity and its publics. Although the definition creates an understanding of the function and purpose of public relations, it does not allow for the discipline to extend beyond the boundaries of the technical level (Bowen 2003). To overcome this ideological confusion, public relations has moved toward a more focused and concentrated style, or styles, of communication.

*Email: [email protected]

Celebrity Studies, 2016 Vol. 7, No. 1, 122–124, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2016.1131015

© 2016 Taylor & Francis

In its current form, public relations is a field of specialities where practitioners and scholars typically focus on particular areas such as investor relations, media relations, government relations and consumer relations, to name a few. There is even an area dedicated to entertainment, which is geared toward promotional efforts relative to show business, sports and travel (Wilcox and Cameron 2010). At the crux, all of these specialities focus on the goals, directions and ideals related to using communication to build mutually beneficial relationships between an entity and particular publics (Cutlip et al. 1994). In many ways, celebrity public relations is no different because it is meant to build goodwill with the public. However, it is not geared toward promoting particular films, television programmes or products and services but instead the image of an individual. Therefore, given the narrowcasting that occurs in the field, the communicative work done towards propelling an individual to celebrity status should be considered a speciality area of public relations.

The mention of celebrity public relations brings to mind Max Clifford, a former press agent who has a reputation of securing front-page coverage for his celebrity clients. However, Max Clifford does not call himself a public relations practitioner but a publicist – a distinction often lost on many (Fawkes 2004). To his point, creating and maintaining celebrity in today’s digital world is not just about publicity and media coverage but a well-rounded approach to communication. Indeed the shift to a more inclusive public relations model can be seen directly in how celebrities, or would-be celebrities, create moments and instance with the public using new media and technology (Marwick 2013). For example, as Piazza (2011) describes, beyond television and movie appearances Ashton Kutcher relies heavily on Twitter to present a particular image to his audiences. She also describes that, after splitting from American Idol’s (Fox 2002–2015) label, a desperate Taylor Hicks took to MySpace to craft a narrative for his fans. These examples show that celebrity is not simply about box-office sales or newspaper and magazine coverage, but a discursive phenomenon that emerges from a multiplatform approach to public relations.

To be sure, there are countless practitioners who focus on the area of celebrity public relations although they do not want to admit it. In fact, the build-up used to promote an individual lies outside the mainstream of public relations work, to the point that many practitioners are embarrassed by the exaggerations and tactics employed (Wilcox et al. 2013). More to the point of this article is that celebrity public relations is discussed in many classrooms that attend to either public relations or celebrity. Yet in both practice and academia the idea of celebrity public relations as a speciality is overlooked. The benefits of accepting that there is indeed a form of public relations focused on celebrity could be vast, including adding to the understanding of the ways in which celebrity is created and maintained as well as the ways it is damaged and lost.

Speaking from the academic side, the next step is to follow Penfold-Mounce’s (2015, p. 255) assertion that ‘it is essential for glossy research to successfully pursue the creation of measurable value by developing new bodies of evidence’. There needs to be more research on how public relations cultivates celebrity so that we can build normative models and theories of the speciality. For example, practitioners create many different instruments that enable celebrities to communicate with the public. Theoretically, these instruments are central to building the key moments that spur publics to choose individuals as celebrities. However, the instrumental landscape is difficult to navigate for practitioners because of the enormity of variety. Typically practitioners couple tried and true instruments such as press conferences, speeches and media

Celebrity Studies 123

appearances with newer forms such as social media, philanthropy and celebrity endorse- ments (Zhou and Whitla 2013, Ziek and Stein 2015). Yet very little is thus far known about the impact these newer forms of instruments have on celebrity or the way they create contextual moments and instances. It is precisely these types of investigations that are essential to legitimising celebrity public relations, which will only help academics better understand, and practitioners better manage, how celebrity is created and maintained.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor Paul Ziek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Communications and Visual Arts at Pace University where he teaches strategic and organisational communication in both the undergraduate and graduate programmes. His research interest is how the communication–infor- mation–media matrix shapes communication.

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