Celebrities launching their own brands has become a common phenomenon in Hollywood. Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty was a massive success, and, in recent years, stars like Ariana Grande, Harry Styles, Ellen DeGeneres, and more, are jumping on the bandwagon, not only in the beauty industry but also in products like tequila, apparel, foods, and other commodities. In today’s capitalist society, everyone is free to invest or venture into any monetary activity they want; thus, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this ongoing trend in celebrity side hustles. However, it has sparked its fair share of controversies, leading many to believe celebrities should refrain from selling self-owned products in the market.
Normally, side jobs are a means to support an insufficient main source of income. According to CNBC, 44 percent of Americans are balancing at least one extra job for financial sustenance. Yet, ironically, so many affluent celebrities have their own brands as side hustles. While commoners balance two jobs because they cannot easily obtain money, celebrities do so because they have plenty of resources to launch a brand, with significantly lesser risk than other businesses. Also, with a certain amount of trust already established through their presence in the entertainment business, they get a head start in marketing costs compared to local or small-named businesses.
Undoubtedly, celebrity brands can be a great way for fans to connect with and support their favorite celebrities. By launching businesses and releasing products, celebrities are, in a way, exploring their passions while sharing them with the world. As an added benefit, if the products turn out to be reliable and of good quality, like Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, they may even grow into viable products for regular consumers.
However, the underlying truth about celebrity brands is their dependence on parasocial relationships, which are relationships wherein one person feels a personal connection to a public persona who does not know of the former’s existence. According to Dr. Mike Anderson, a sex and relationship expert, this may lead to unrealistic expectations about celebrities. Celebrity brands are controversial in that they rely on this almost fabricated, nonexistent image of trust to increase sales and may even end up encouraging excessive consumerism. Plus, information provided by MarketWatch notes that a single celebrity endorsement can be traced to an immediate four percent sales increase for a brand. Thus, the positive impact of having a celebrity’s name value on the title of a product is quite significant, so one can only imagine the negative spillover effects it has on ordinary brands’ sales during competition in the market.
Frankly, celebrity brands are far from innovative or unique. For one thing, celebrities’ unrealistically perfect skin and symmetrical faces are not simply the result of them using their own products; rather, celebrities can easily afford costly beauty procedures that ordinary people cannot. Dr. Shereene Idriss, a board-certified dermatologist, stated that there are now so many of these brands that their “authenticity and credibility are now lacking.” Of course, people are already aware of this and refrain from buying celebrities’ products. Nowadays, consumers seem widely unimpressed by celebrities’ businesses, further stressing the point that celebrity brands are a waste of time and resources.
It is time for celebrities to take a step back, and reassess their purposes before starting yet another brand. Again, they are free to do whatever they want, but by doing so, they are unintentionally exacerbating parasocial relationships and selling products lacking credibility, which is unhealthy for society and the market. Perhaps instead of doing the thing and starting a side hustle, celebrities could express their support for smaller businesses that have good intentions and similar ideals as their own.