Celebrities will endorse publishers (and get paid for it)

It was just four minutes into the Blink-182 Peloton ride with Kendall Toole that it occurred to me just how next-level of an infomercial this exercise class was.

The conceit: Travis Barker, drummer of said pop-punk band, would drum along live to Kendall’s indoor cycling class in split screen. Peloton gets a headliner “show” for their platform helping retention of long-time bored cyclers like me. Blink-182 gets to promote their nostalgic revival tour to moody ’90s kids like me. Truly the target audience.

Somehow I can turn even my precious exercise and downtime into an obsession with all things audience development, though maybe I’m returning to my previous work.

Don’t look behind the curtain, though: A PR and marketing machine churns away to create cross-sell content, designed to fight the attention tide.

After all, it’s not just us publishers who are stuck between declining organic social, the increasing cost of paid social, and the threat (or reality) of SEO skyfall. Everyone (yes, even Taylor needs Beyonce) is in the precarious dance of sizing up the new way to catch and keep attention.

One tactic in the revised toolbox should be the celebrity endorsement or “partnership.”

My prediction: Publishers will begin to work with celebs to sell subscriptions and cross-sell awareness. And these partnerships may be paid, maybe even for the first time.

Celebrities may have once needed the exposure from us, but it’s publishers that need the attention now. News avoidance just adds fuel to the fire.

The problem is that partnerships like this are deeply uncomfortable territory for newsrooms. Think of all the drama over “guest editors” of magazines and splashy celeb op-eds. I can’t stop thinking about how Tom Hanks voiced the Washington Post Super Bowl ad when I worked there. And those are generally not paid engagements. Adding money to the equation will make it more confusing for publishers even if is “natural” in the TikTok/Instagram influencer scene.

It’s also not cheap when many publisher business models don’t have marketing costs like this built into their budgets yet. Sure, they can take some Facebook Ads spending and set it aside for a new plan, but it’s going to be a jump. We’ll see some creative ways to reduce that cost through “co-creating” just like Peloton × Blink-182.

At least have a little fun with it: Who would be your organization’s best celebrity endorser?