bringing celebs inworld to sell RL brands

Ok..bear with me here..
Let's say you know someone who's a large celeb, an interior designer, lives in a bubble, and has never played SL due to his television career and private life.
You dream up an opportunity for them to come inworld and be the Martha Stewart of SL with his designs. But.. living in a vacuum, you have to find the best way of selling him on it without overloading him, and yet convincing him that people would pay real money for his aesthetic on what he sees as "pretend houses" in a "fake world", due to his brand popularity iRL.
I'm not insulting his intelligence or business sense. I'm just scared to pitch it to his 'people' in fear they'll snatch up my idea and run. They are the ones who could make or break the deal and could just as easily hire the right design team in SL, which would probably need to be done anyways to some degree. I've never done business in this fashion before, i'm a bit naive when it comes to dealing with large corporations...proposals...existing brands.
So.. do I hire an SL research firm? Do I leave it up to his design team? Do I attempt to do all the legwork myself and after selling him on the idea *then* hire the big guns to pull it off? Eeek. Help!

For which way to go for the right buisness decision, I have noo idea. Tough call there. Either chance the idea being stolen, or chance it being squashed *winces*

On a personal note; RL celebs in SL wouldn't impress me. The corporations there now, don't either. RL is RL and SL is SL. I'd rather use a name built up entirely in SL than an RL name being used in SL.

~Jessy

Same here, RL presences here tend to repel me rather than draw me to whatever they are pushing

I'd pay to kiss the Russell Crowe avatar.

I worked on the Die Hard 4 sim--Bruce Willis himself held a Q & A at the premiere event. It was really cool...they are using celebs to sell movies...so why not other things.

Famous real quote from Mr. Willis, "...I'd do a movie in Second Life."

Make sure you duck when you do.

*Wonders how much she'd have to pay Mike to wear a RC Avi*

Sounds to me like if you really knew him, you wouldn't have to go through "his people." You'd be sitting in your living room showing it to him.

Even if it had potential success in theory, how many billions of Linden dollars would it have to net before it were worth it to a large celeb, as you describe him? I'm guessing that there is very little in this for him, and a lot in it for you.

People always say that RL celebs don't impress them but companies continue to use them. Why? Because it works. It's not because I'm more likely to run out and buy Jello Pudding Pops because Bill Cosby tells me to. It's because whether I realize it or not, I'm likely to pay just a slight bit more attention to the commercial if it's a familiar face on there.

As for how to go about this? Living in LA with many friends in the industry, I can tell you it sounds like you are way over your head. You'll be eaten alive. Best you could do is hiring someone in the industry who can help you with this. Most wont be interested in starting their own SL venture. I wish I could tell you exactly what type of person or who you should hire but I really don't know. I only know you don't want to go this alone.

Right now, he'd probably do a movie in my tool shed.

You want to kiss me? That's so sweet.

ps. I'm cuter than RC, you may want to rethink that. Ahhh man, you know I say these things to get your goats...right?

As long as there was Crafty.

Sure Bradley, I agree. But I can honestly say, that a 1st life celeb in 2nd life would have no affect whatsoever on my purchases. Except for maybe in the opposite direction

Hey, Rose from Golden Girls is doing info-mertials...she may not cost too much. Hell, I'd LOVE to use Rose to sell my products....

In Hollywood this is very heavily frowned upon. Ever know a doctor who gets hit with free medical advice at parties? Same things happen to celebs. In their free times they really want to just be, not hounded about the next big thing. If you want to hit them up with an idea like this you'd better be a very, very close friend, otherwise you're likely to have just lost one.

I am blown away by celebs in RL. It's embarrassing for me to admit it, but I am. I can't turn away from the tabloid headlines in the grocery store checkout lane.

In SL, I couldn't care less about celebrities, and would think it was stupid if I saw an endorsement by one.

I loved wandering the Die Hard 4 sim weeks/months however long after the movie came out. I just didnt' know it was there. I'd be interested in looking at more sims like that, but . .. I can never find them. I only found the Die Hard one because someone had the group "Die Hard Fan" in their profile.

Oddly I couldn't care less what the celebs are doing in real life outside of their professional work. On the other hand I really hate that I missed Bruce Willis at that Die Hard sim.

I get the same , when people come up to me at a party and want to discuss The Magna Charta, or the Battle of Hastings, before I've even had my first glass of wine. The nerve of some people!

Thank you...

Do a search for 'Silverscreen' or 'V3 Group'--you will also find the recent Transformers sim, which is just as impressive as the DH sim. We also did the movie 300 (not as impressive a build as TF or DH though--it was our first one).

This is true. Sandra Day O'Connor, while not a Hollywood celeb, came and stayed at the fly fishing lodge I worked at. She made it VERY clear that she wanted to relax, fish, and NOT talk about "landmark decisions" and would deeply resent anyone who tried to engage her in debate. She was one of the coolest people I've ever met, and played a mean poker game.

[Edit: not "deeply resent". More like "be non-plussed."]

Thank-you, I'll look. If the Transformers one is the Sector 7 one, then I've seen it. Impressive, but I kind of expected more The Sector 7 one just had one scene from the movie without any action. The Die Hard 4 one had exploding cars, helicopters, etc. Very interesting.

I'll look for "Siverscreen", V3 Group and 300.

Who's Crafty?

But you'd notice right?

Think about those ridiculously annoying, low budget, cheesy local commercials. Know why they do them? They work. Many have been doing them for years. People complain about them, and talk about how much they hate them but the car dealers and mattress shops and furniture stores keep doing them. They can't afford the budget for a smooth. glossy advertisement so they embrace the opposite and it's effective.

Many say they would go out of their way to avoid a certain advertised place, but unless the ad was horribly offensive this is rarely true. The truth is there is a little seed planted in the back of our mind that will give name recognition to the place. That's what it's really all about.

We all like to believe we're above being manipulated but if we really are then a whole helluva lot of money is being wasted in advertising. Someone better go tell Coke and McDonalds.

I'm in the 'biz' as well--sadly this is true. It happens, but let's be honest, they are 'celebrities' and most of them are loving every minute of it.

Bruce had a great time being interviewed in SL--at least, he 'acted' like he had a great time.

This is one for Bradley. Go get'em.