Check Out Alana Stewart in O Magazine!

 

 

Celebrity Endorsements: How Adly Helps Even Small Businesses Build Brand Connection With Celebrity Power

By Jonathan Keane

It’s important for your customers to be able to connect with your service or product, almost on a personal level. We tend to look for something to relate to in everything, something that speaks to us. In the areas of marketing, this cannot be understated. You are looking for a connection and in the age of instant communications, where some are often ephemeral, crafting a connection that you can harvest and make last for years to come is vital to your business surviving in the high speed digital age. So where do celebrities come into this?

Celebrities, regardless of their background, whether it’s an actor, musician, athlete or someone who’s famous just for being famous, brings a certain eminence with them and most importantly, a fan base.

Charities, for example, have leveraged this for many, many years with countless organizations pairing with a celebrity, or a slew of celebrities, to be the face of their cause and spread the word. It’s a model that isn’t new by any means but in the age of social media, and specifically Twitter, companies, big and small, are finding new ways to engage with consumers and celebrity endorsements are just one way of doing that.

Adly is an online marketing start-up that was founded in 2009, but in May of 2012, they grabbed a few headlines when they announced that former News Corp. executive and Photobucket general manager Walter Delph had been named the new CEO of the company.

“With the advent of social media consumers are able to connect with celebrities that they would not have otherwise had access to,” Walter explains on the very basic idea that inspired the beginning of Adly four years ago.

The small company, with a team of four, is a marketing firm that aims to “spark authentic conversations between celebrities and their fans”, all on the topic of your brand. By analyzing the conversations, Adly optimizes the results for more efficient targeting of your product/service to the right people in the right places. These two services of celebrity contacts and analytics form the foundation for Adly and it has been built from there.

“The power of celebrity has long been acknowledged as one of the most powerful ways to influence and connect with consumers. A brand’s ability to influence consumers via celebrity is considered one of the most effective ways to raise affinity and ultimately to drive purchase. Now with the power of data we can provide ROI metrics to brands,” says Walter on the power Adly and the information they can provide.

“For brands, the potential for celebrity influence is greater than ever, given how far a message can go thanks to social media and its ability to reach wide audiences,” he explains. “It’s apparent that a vast majority of consumers are using social media platforms to engage with celebrities and key influencers and this creates a space where brands can join in and benefit from the influence of a celebrity. Celebrities have the same reach as most in social television shows. The difference is that there is a two-way interaction between the consumer and the influencer.”

Read the rest of the article in SmallBizTechnology

Anthony Weiner Making Theatrical Debut in ‘Hating Breitbart’ Doc (Video)

The former congressman will be seen via news clips and the filmmakers are using his image to market their project.

As former congressman Anthony Weiner gears up for a possible run for mayor of New York, he is also making his theatrical debut in a film he probably wishes didn’t exist. Those involved with the movie, called Hating Breitbart, are also intending to lean on Weiner’s image — by way of news video of some of his embarrassing TV moments — to promote their film.

Weiner quit his congressional seat two years ago after he was caught tweeting lewd photos of himself to women he met on the Internet. His “sexting” turned into a major scandal in part because his wife, Huma Abedin, was at the time pregnant and an aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The entire episode, since dubbed “Weinergate,” is retold in the documentary film Hating Breitbart, which Freestyle Releasing will open in several theaters across the country on May 17, when it also becomes available on VOD.

Weiner did not participate in the making of the film but is seen via news clips, sometimes disparaging Andrew Breitbart, the new-media raconteur who exposed the then-congressman’s sexual foibles. The film is about Breitbart’s rise to prominence as a harsh critic of the mainstream media and as a favorite at Tea Party and other conservative gatherings.

Even though Weiner’s appearances are relatively few, the folks behind the film intend on making Weiner a large part of their marketing campaign, beginning with a video that will be released on the Internet, though The Hollywood Reporter has an advanced copy which is embedded below.

The 3-minute video is a timeline of the fiasco that began when Weiner denied tweeting pornographic photos of himself and insinuated his Twitter account had been hacked by Breitbart. Clips from numerous TV segments where experts attack Breitbart and defend Weiner are played over circus music. Besides multiple shots of Weiner, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews and other news personalities are featured.

“CNN puts this Breitbart guy on and says the most outlandish things about complete, innocent people,” Weiner complains in the video. After Weiner calls a reporter a “jackass” for inquiring about his tweets, Breitbart is seen celebrating the exchange as the moment the media “got it.”

But Weiner’s primary miscalculation in the whole mess, Breitbart argues in the movie, was when he tweeted that his Facebook page and TiVo had been hacked, which, in retrospect, seems like Weiner’s hastily conceived plan to explain away a mistaken tweet that he sent to thousands instead of just the one intended recipient. By tweeting he was hacked — and the fateful tweet remained on his old Twitter account on Tuesday — he made accusations of a federal crime on one hand though on the other hand he was oddly disinterested in allowing an investigation.

The video ends with Weiner at a press conference where he comes clean about the tweets more than a week after Breitbart — who died a year ago — broke the story.  “To be clear, the picture was of me, and I sent it,” Weiner says.

Weiner, contacted by email, had no comment on the film or its marketing plans.

Read the story in The Hollywood Reporter

Paul Stanley, from ‘chunky’ kid to fit KISS rocker

By James S. Fell

The “Starchild” outfit Paul Stanley wears as frontman forKISS is a revealing one. That’s why I chose it for Halloween a couple of years back. I wanted to showcase the efforts of my diet and exercise regimen. I got the hair wrong.

And at 61 years of age, Stanley can’t let himself go and still rock out to arenas full of screaming fans. As one of the hardest working bands in rock ‘n’ roll, he has a reputation to maintain — one he won’t let age tarnish. I’ve seen how lively KISS performances are up close and understand his dedication to fitness to keep the fans on their feet for the band’s Monster world tour.

Were you always such a fit guy?

The only exercise I got as a kid was fork to mouth. Food was equated with love in my household. I thought you left the table when the zipper was down and you’d explode if you took another bite. I’d eat my plate and then everyone else’s leftovers.

I was a chubby boy. My pants used to wear out in the middle, and it was because my legs used to rub together. I wasn’t obese, just chunky.

That doesn’t sound at all like the Paul Stanley we’ve seen on stage. What changed?

Even when the band started, I was chunkier, and the wide belt I used to wear on stage was a bit of a corset. Over the years that became unnecessary. I couldn’t do what I started doing onstage without “leaning out” because the physicality of it was akin to an aerobic workout. This was coupled with a mystery virus in the early ’70s that laid me up for a month and I barely ate. When that was over, I looked in the mirror and was pretty lean, and it had been a life dream of mine. And I decided to hang on to it.

Read the rest of the interview at LA Times

KISS Singer And Guitarist Paul Stanley Stays Fit

By Ben Radding

Photography by Glenn La Ferman

If you take away the black and white face paint, flashy stage outfits, and smoking guitars, KISS frontman Paul Stanley is an average guy—or at least he’s got average-guy priorities: staying fit, having fun, and enjoying his family. We recently caught up with the 61-year-old rocker, who told us why he stopped eating like a kid, how he balances his family with his tour dates, and his secret to avoiding drugs and alcohol when a rock-and-roll lifestyle practically spoon feeds you opportunities to indulge.

How would you say your diet and fitness routine today differs from your lifestyle in the 70s and 80s?

My routine then was: Eat whatever’s in front of you. Youth is incredible because you really do feel invincible. I had no real routine as far as diet; I ate what I wanted to. Back then I tended to eat a lot of sugars. I ate a lot of cookies, a lot of ice cream; I didn’t eat a lot of proper food. I started working out, doing a formal workout right around 1980. That’s when I really decided I needed to get in shape and it may have been because you just start to see a decrease—a change in your body. The workout I was doing then would kill me today.

What is your routine? Do you do it with a trainer?

It really depends. There’s certainly a time before a tour where you start to count days until you’re leaving and that’s crunch time—no pun intended. My workout is always with a trainer because, quite honestly, I don’t think most people are motivated enough to do what they need to on their own. You either need a spotter or you need a trainer. You need somebody there to push you to get that extra five.

Your performances often seem like workouts in themselves.

You can’t do that unless you train for it. You can’t enter the Olympics unless you do your routine to get in shape for it. The idea of going out on stage on a tour without having prepped for it would be suicide, literally.

How did you avoid alcohol and drugs in a culture that is surrounded by it—and it’s almost expected of you?

Common sense. You just have to look around you, and you have two choices. You either go “Gee, I want to be just like him!” or not. In the music business, I always go back to, if all those vices and excesses were so great, you’d probably be doing this interview with Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix or……

 

Read the rest of the interview here.

 

The Nature of Public Relations

I’m often asked whether public relations is a science or an art. That’s a valid question. In science, two plus two equals four. It will always equal four whether added by a Republican from Iowa, a shaman from New Guinea, or an alien from Planet X. However, in public relations, two plus two may equal four. It may equal five. It may equal zero today and fifty tomorrow.

Public relations is an art.

Like an art, there are rules of form, proven techniques, and standards of excellence. But, overall, it’s a mercurial enterprise, where instinct is as legitimate as convention.

Public relations was once defined as the ability to provide the answers before the public knows enough to ask the questions. Another P.R. pundit once stated, “We don’t persuade people. We simply offer them reasons to persuade themselves.” I define what I do as gift-wrapping. If you package a bracelet in a Tiffany box, it will have a higher perceived value than if presented in a K Mart box. Same bracelet, different perception.

—Excerpt from Chapter 1 (pg. 10) of the world’s most widely used and seminal introduction to public relations, “Guerrilla P.R. 2.0: Wage an Effective Publicity Campaign without Going Broke” by Michael Levine, America’s premier media expert and best-selling author.

Purchase your own copy of “Guerrilla P.R. 2.0” by clicking HERE.

Director and Actor Domiziano Arcangeli Nominated for Two “Entrepreneurs on the Move Awards”

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Director and Actor Domiziano Arcangeli has been

nominated for  TWO  “Entrepreneurs on the Move Awards.”

These awards honor the best in film, TV, Music, Business,

Philanthropy and more.

Domiziano Arcangeli is nominated for Best Director in the

Indie horror picture “Waiting for Dracula.”

 

Domiziano Arcangeli is also nominated for best lead

actor in a horror for the same film.

Read more about the awards here.

Stuntwoman Gaëlle Cohen Interviewed by BlogTalkRadio

Gaëlle Cohen is an internationally acclaimed stunt coordinator and performer who has worked on over sixty film and television productions. A native of France, she was recently featured in the award-winning smash ZERO DARK THIRTY.

Her stunt credits include ZERO DARK THIRTY, SAHARA, RUSH HOUR 3, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF; BABYLON AD, OSS 117, MARTYRS. and the upcoming disaster thriller BLACK SKY. As stunt performer, Cohen has doubled for such luminary figures as Sophie Marceau and Penelope Cruz.

Cohen earned a law degree, then, as member of the French National Fencing team, she got her showbiz start performing fight sequences for the television show HIGHLANDER in 1995.

Gaelle speaks French, German, Italian, and English; and among her stunt and athletic skills are Ratchets, High Fall, Squibs, Air Rams, Horseback Riding, Fight-Guy/Gal, Reactions, Wire Work, Hong Kong Wire Work, Fire Burns, Weapons, Car Hits, I Ground Pound, Motion Capture, Motorcycle Falls, Medium and Low Falls, Martial Arts, Weapons, Horse Transfers and Falls, Camel Rider, Descender, Golf, Swimming, Tennis, Fencing, Snow Skiing, Yoga, Rock Climbing, Archery, and Jousting!

As stunt coordinator, her signature action sequences have captured attention within the industry for their earthy realism. THE TALL MAN, a suspense thriller starring Jessica Biel, marks her second collaboration with acclaimed French director, Pascal Laugier.

Listen to the interview here.

Alan Au: How to Dress a Male Body With a Short Torso

By Alan Au

One of the most important things you need to take into consideration when dressing a male body is the size of the torso in question. Dress a male body with a short torso with help from a distinguished fashion professional in this free video clip.

Read more here. 

Silva the Genie Comic Book Reading