Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Well, I'm joined now by the presenter of Newstalk's Screen Time, John Fardy, and we're talking about the best and worst celebrity endorsements of all time. What is the fascination, John? You said the best and worst. These are mostly on the lost side of the balance sheet that we're going to talk about. There's just some very strange things.
And you would just have to think it all comes down to money. But some of the people who've appeared in some of these ads, you think...
Chapter 2: What are the best and worst celebrity endorsements discussed?
Wow. Are you not worried by your legacy? Exhibit A, Jackie Chan, one of the great martial arts turned actors in the world, bizarrely in the 90s, showed up in a Woolworths ad. Hi, guys.
Oh, yeah, it's Jackie Chan. Jackie Chan! So, ready for the party? Sure are. Hang on. You're naked. Oh! Wooly, run down to Woolworths and gather some jeans and t-shirts from their new Worth It value range. Let's hope. Now, where are they? Oh, hello. Hey, Jackie. Wax on, wax off. I wasn't in that one. Ta-da!
Poor Jack, he must have needed the money for the electricity bill. He must have needed the money. And like listening to it there, you could argue it's borderline racist because they start, you know, doing the karate kid, wax on, wax off. And he's like, that wasn't even, I guess he needed the money. And look, you can't fault him for that, really. I mean, he was a movie star.
You know, they sold their image, but it's a bizarre one. Woolworths doesn't exist anymore, as you know. But you know, Back in the day before the World Wide Web, the stars always went to like another part of the world very far away to do these endorsements and hoped that we didn't find out about it in the West or in Hollywood, say.
Chapter 3: Why did Jackie Chan appear in a Woolworths ad?
You know, that happened a lot, didn't it? George Clooney would kind of make that claim with his Nespresso ads when it first began. There's a movie called Lost in Translation where Bill Murray plays an actor who makes a whiskey commercial in Japan, hoping no one will notice and famously says, I'm getting paid two million dollars for it. Yeah. So it has changed.
And the whole celebrity ad thing in a way has changed now because of influencers and all that kind of thing. But let me bring you some more horror shows, if I might. Oh dear. The worst one in terms of, you know, we can laugh about these, but the one that, you know, landed on its face and was pretty god awful was 2017, Kendall... Jenner in a Pepsi ad. You may remember this.
2017 was kind of when Black Lives Matter was really boiling and I couldn't play any of this because it's just audio that makes no sense, but the visuals are pretty horrific. So you have this middle American town clearly rioting about something and it's kind of nameless protests, but there's clearly angry people. What happens? She shows up, gives the cop a can of Pepsi and you know what?
We have world harmony. And it was the most ill-advised She subsequently apologised for it. Pepsi, who were no stranger to making some bad ads over the year, held up their hands and said, we got this really wrong. Because Pepsi, you may remember, and cola, particularly in the late 80s, early 90s, had the cola wars when they were... Taste test.
Yeah, and which rock star can we pay to say, drink our cola and rot your teeth? And it got ridiculous. Didn't Michael Jackson, wasn't he the face of... He did loads. And famously, his hair went on fire, which is covered in that god awful movie that still seems to be number one in the box office. I'm a massive Billy Joel fan, which I've probably mentioned to you before.
He turned down a 90 million dollar... offer from Pepsi even though he drank the stuff. There you go. And even though he probably needed the money. Proof that he's a good man, John. A good man, a good man. So Kendall Jenner did the Pepsi ad. It was awful. But like the Kardashians, do you know, they'll sell anything, won't they? They would indeed. And that brings us nicely to Kim Kardashian. Yes.
Why don't we have a little flavour of this? Guess what she's talking about?
It's the fifth year in a row that Charmin is opening up a great, gorgeous, clean restrooms for everyone to use in New York City during the holidays.
Talking about the Jacks. Yeah. So Charmin, that well-known toilet brand company, during the Christmas holidays in 2012, had a specially built toilet for shoppers. in some street in New York and they were sponsoring it and they got her on board to help flog the toilets and the toilet paper. Yeah, particularly Loeb. That was kind of nearly pre-internet.
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Chapter 4: How did the celebrity endorsement landscape change over time?
So, you know, this is bizarre. Like, so maybe you can't fault anyone. They show up with a hat full of cash and offer you all this money to do one day's work or a week's work and make some ad. And maybe someone's not, people aren't going to see it on a certain side of the world.
But there are certain people in the world you think have such global legacy and have changed history that you would think, they're not going to be privy to any of this kind of stuff. Like Billy, like Billy Joel. Like Billy Joel.
Chapter 5: What was controversial about the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad?
Or Mikhail Gorbachev, who was flogging pizza. This is partially in Russian, by the way. Glasnost, Perestroika and Pizza Hut. Yeah, nice hot pizza. So that was 1998. What's happening is it's a Pizza Hut in Red Square. This was designed to be shown outside of the USSR. And Gorbachev is in a Pizza Hut with seemingly his granddaughter or something like that.
And all these Russians out of central casting are discussing his legacy in Russian. And then they stand up and clap him and go, let's all celebrate Pizza Hut. It's horrific. And he got a huge amount of negativity for it. Understandably so. I mean, let's not forget he was the, you know, also, you know, the godfather of the end of communism.
Like he had an understanding of capitalism that other people didn't have. This was a wrong move, you would have to say. As great a man as he was. Bob Dylan sold pants, though. We have to also remember that. OK, well, here's the thing. In his. sentence. Here's the thing about Bob Dylan. I love Billy Joel, but Bob Dylan is the greatest singer-songwriter of all time, right? He sold pants.
Well, he sold ladies' underwear, right? And it's this bizarre ad. I just watched it outside. It's not bad, as weird as that sounds. So it's a really strange ad where there was this scantily clad model in Victoria's Secret's underwear, kind of with feathers and angelic lights, in this old house in Venice. And there's pictures of him kind of in the background, watery,
singing his song Lovesick from the album Time Out of Mind in the mid-90s. So that's, you know, the end of civilisation, Bob Dylan in a lingerie ad. However, for the Dylanologist amongst us, he was doing an interview in 1965 and someone said, Bob, would you ever sell out? And he said, well, maybe for ladies' underwear. So he did promise us that he might do it. I've completely changed my view.
And he sold pants at Bob Dylan selling underwear. Yeah, I'm sorry. John, thank you so much. Thank you. John Fardy from Newstalk Screen Time. We'll take a break back after this.
The Clare Byrne Show with Aviva Insurance. Weekday mornings at nine on Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
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