Dead Celebrities

BY D. HEIMPEL

Celebrities have created a niche as posthumous moneymakers, raking in the dough from six feet under.

So, the guy died. Now he’s earning more than he ever did alive. For a special set of celebrities, the afterlife can be very profiese

celebs are so success ful that Forbes magazine has spent the last seve n years tracking the top earners. In the last survey of the top paid dead celebrities, 13 e arned a total of $247 mi llion in profits. Elvis Presley has long held the record for the most money earned on an average year at well over $7 million. But he has some pretty prestigious company among the VIP rooms on the table, with the sale of everything from music rig hts and high school doodles to energy drinks. The ne west ghost on the block is Jimi Hendrix, who will be featured on cans of the new Liquid Experience ener gy drink. Advertising that uses a de ceased celeb as the cornerstone of a marketing strategy can defi nitely create a buzz, as long as it’s done right. And sales from dead celebrities’ right bank of the Styx. Thes tates can generate huge revenue on the auction block.

The crucial factor is t ying up y our target audience with the perfect dead salesman.

“You don’t want Elvis toilet cleaner,” says Michael Kamins, an advertising expert and an associate professor of marketing at the University of Southern California, referring to the success of a recent Gap campaign that used images of Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn to sell clothes. “It worked because you could imagine them in that type of stuff .”

When Los Angeles-based Beverage Concepts was trolling around for a celebrity to peddle its energy drinks, they quickly latched onto Hendrix. The musician has had a resurgence among young kids while retaining popularity among the generation that remembers him as the guitar-burning musical phenomenon that he was. “Jimi’s been dead for like 40 years,” says Beverage Concept CEO Josh Glass, “and he’s still selling $2 million in albums a year.”

With that kind of popularity, Glass thinks he can turn his brand, Liquid Experience, into a billion-dollar company. “We don’t need to advertise on a regional or local basis because of the power of the Jimi brand,” he says.

But isn’t this just a profit-generating gimmick? Well, yes—but also a little more, according to the people behind Beverage Concepts. “Without Jimi we wouldn’t have all this,” says creative director Kelly Kalichman.

To assuage accusations of greed and fulfill their own sense of philanthropic duty, Glass and Kalichman have pledged 10% of the profits to MusiCares, an organization that helps struggling musicians. “Without that we don’t have a shot with the consumer, and we don’t have a shot of doing what we want to do,” Glass says.

As long as it works, there will always be a market for anything that has to do with a dead celebrity. “The entrepreneurs of the world sit around like vultures looking to grab a piece of the pie,” Kalichman adds.

But when the vultures get greedy, using a dead celeb can be dangerous. Airwair International Ltd., the maker of the popular Dr. Martens shoe, hired the famous ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi to create a campaign. When an ad showed up using rocker Kurt Cobain’s likeness, his widow Courtney Love made a fuss. Airwair had little choice but to can the illustrious ad agency.

Beyond advertisements and product sales, another avenue of revenue is through auctions. The white suit John Lennon wore on the cover of Abbey Road went for $117,600; George Harrison’s guitar sold for $560,000; and a drawing of Ronald Reagan holding hands with a monkey inked by a high-school-age Cobain fetched $14,400, according to Darren Julien, owner of Julien’s Auctions.

Scarcity and provenance are another issue. Julien loves selling items from the estate of Marilyn Monroe because there is so little left , driving up prices. Selling from the estate is also good in that provenance of the items can be hard to determine with objects that have been passed on through multiple buyers. While a belt worn by Presley can go for $66,000 on the auction block, it’s worthless without authentication.

In the end, it’s all about how bright the celebrity’s star still burns. If it’s bright enough, it can be the crucial leverage in a saturated market. “There is so much out there,” Kamins says. “There is such a desperate need to differentiate and make some noise. I think [using a dead celebrity] is pretty clever.”

But if the celebrity isn’t widely known, then even being dead might not be a plus. The netherworld’s VIP room is reserved for few.

DEAD CELEBRITY AUCTION ITEMS

Marilyn Monroe’s telephone book
$9,000

John Lennon’s Austin Princess hearse customized with airplane seats
$135,000

George Harrison’s Gibson SG electric guitar that he used from 1966-69
$560,000

Johnny Cash’s striped prison jacket, given to him by the warden of Folsom Prison after one of Cash’s jailhouse concerts
$6,000

Ray Charles’ gold engraved lighter
$3,600

Jimi Hendrix’s belt
$12,000

Janis Joplin’s handwritten letter to a boyfriend
$3,300

James Dean’s white T-shirt from Rebel Without a Cause
$15,000

Kurt Cobain’s used hair-dye bottle
$175