The Nigerian Entertainment Industry and Cheap Publicity Stunts

Drama! We love it! That’s the reason most of us are interested in the entertainment industry gossip, gist and the likes. We love to see drama happen under our eyes. It’s what we pay for. Publicity? It’s part of what drives the entertainment industry. You have to push product you’re selling some way or another right? Promotions, ads, marketing and of course the good ole publicity stunts. Publicity stunts are nothing new in the entertainment industry and in all honesty without it, the industry might be a little less exciting. From America to the UK to Nigeria there are publicity stunts all over the place. The Kardashians, Lady Gaga, Kanye, 50 cents, Nikki Minaj etc; They’ve all jumped on cheap publicity stunts to promote themselves for some reason or another. However for this particular post we’ll just focus on Nigeria, and recent craze for publicity stunts and very cheap ones at that. On any given week there’s bound to be some story about celebrity doing xyz on abc thing, and at this point it’s getting pretty annoying and very cheap with each stunt trying to outdo the next. Let’s take a certain celebrity now; In the space of one year there’s been a major break up of a relationship (we have to call into question now), new love, a love triangle, new links to another lover, claims of fake stories about her being sold to blogs, a death threat, hacked account etc. I mean only one person? You have to sit and wonder… hmmm… why all these strange things for just one person? Maybe it’s just bad luck, maybe everyone is just out to get her or maybe the buzz from being in the news is just enough to keep the name alive and keep that popularity factor high. I mean if something bad happened to me, I’m not sure I’d be so willing to blast it out for the world to see so quickly. It doesn’t stop there as there’s also “XYZ buys new car“, “ABC buys new house“, “XYZ broke off from this label“, “123 buys 20 million dollar champagne“, “ABC carrying $20000 bag“ or just generally exaggerating or down right making up any little story that can give one a buzz. It’s kind of sad because at some point this person or persons become known more for what they’ve done than what they actually do. I might never have heard a song or seen a movie that this person did, but I do know that just last month, they had a tweet fight with someone else, and then deleted their tweets. Or they were rumored to be sleeping with so and so. I’ll raise my hand, and say we, media, bloggers aid in this charade and BS (yes including Jaguda.com) by constantly pushing out the fake stories even if we know it just sounds fishy. I know I’ve been approached on more than one occasion on putting out some story that I knew was not 100% true, or was exaggerated, or down right false. I mean I’ve even heard of someone trying to intentionally put out nude photos of themselves to get their name buzzing – Kim Kardashian style I guess – It’s kinda sad because you look around and a good number of big names have engaged in some sort of cheap publicity stunt or another. Not all though, so kudos to those who haven’t. On the flipside, I’d be lying if I said all the drama is just for publicity as some real life drama does happen, and when it does it leaves a lot of damage along the way, and a good number of times, the real life drama is barely known to the public. Some break up happen and people barely even know the relationship even existed in the first place. Finally though, publicity stunts aren’t all bad if done well and with some tact. Leave the cheap “my girlfriend slept with my best-friend” BS alone, and give some actual thought into marketing, branding, publicity and promotion. Sell the product you make, and not cheap stories of the drama you’re in. It might work well for a while, but very soon many will begin to smell the coffee that smells like BS. And to the audience and bloggers (including me), the less we indulge in the BS, the harder it’ll be to sell. Peace out. I hope I didn’t offend too many, and if I did then it might have struck a nerve.