Hello everyone,
This will be my last post of the semester, so I wanted to make it interesting. Don't get me wrong, I want these posts to be informative, but I don't want to bore you to tears. So I thought, what better to entertain while informing, than to discuss PR and celebrity news?
What celebrity is better to talk about and perhaps learn from than our favorite Mouseketeer, the infamous Britney Spears? Since the beginning of her career, she has remained fodder for the tabloids. Every day there is something in the news about her erratic behavior, crazy antics, legal issues or her comeback. Is her star on the rise? I’ll let you be the judge.
Lately all we’ve been heard from the Spears camp is how well she is doing. After a much publicized divorce, a bevy of child custody hearings and a “mental breakdown," Spears is said to be back to her old self again. Unfortunately for her, episodes like the one that took place on Thursday, April 9, 2009, don’t do much for her reformed image. Apparently during her concert in Vancouver, British Columbia, fifteen minutes into her set, Spears left the stage for more than a half an hour stating that there was too much smoke in the arena. An announcement was made to the crowd stating that the show would “resume when the smoke on stage was cleared.” The clearing of the smoke took about 30 minutes, after which she was back on stage in all of her lip synching glory. Spears ended the show on an even stranger note by saying, “Drive safe, don’t smoke weed and rock out with your c**ks out! Peace mother f**kers!”
Now I don’t know about you, but this little episode is not a great signal of Ms. Spears’ mental well-being. Her PR practitioners have been working day and night since she broke onto the music scene to build and maintain her image. She has done quite a lot of damage to that image in the past three years or so, but it seemed as though her career was on the mend. Obviously her problems have not gone away. I believe that this stems from the fact that instead of caring for her personal, physical and mental well-being, the people around her (including her PR practitioners) focused only on getting her career back on track.
It’s about the bottom line. How much money would they lose from her failing career? When would it be too late to have a comeback? How soon is too soon to get her back onto the studio? I think that all of these questions were posed and instead of really taking the time to see if she was ready to go back into the spotlight, they put her back on the hamster wheel and hoped for the best. If I were her PR practitioner, I would have raised concerns, citing how her career would greatly benefit from her complete recovery and if my concerns were not heard, I would quit, stating that I did not feel right continuing to represent the Spears camp.
Here are some words of wisdom for all of you burgeoning PR professionals out there. You are not only governed by your paychecks. Your personal morals and convictions should also be your guide, and what is good for your bank account may not always be good for the person you’re representing. PR is a business like any other and the bottom line does matter, but there is a personal line that must be drawn. Would you continue to enable Britney Spears?
Porsche
http://www.celebrity-gossip.net/celebrities/hollywood/britney-spears-walks-off-stage-breaking-down-212639/#blog
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