Do you remember when people used to talk about artists ‘selling out’ when they would advertise or self-promote? The concept of ‘selling out’ now feels like a relic of a bygone era.
In February of this year, Vox published an article called ‘Everyone’s a sellout now.’ It was about how you have to ‘sell out’ now if you want to have a creative career. This feels true to me to a certain extent: to be a working creative in the current landscape, you largely have to be your own marketer, you have to have a ‘brand,’ you have to have a social media presence and make TikToks to promote yourself and to sell the stuff you make. Of course, there are still ways to work in certain creative fields without any of these things. For example, you can still get work (to the extent that work exists) in the theatre industry without a social media audience — that’s what connections and nepotism is for! (I’m kidding.) But if you want to make a living as an artist or a creative, having a ready-made audience certainly helps. They’ll buy your books, they’ll stream your TV programmes, they’ll come to your performances, they’ll read your articles, they’ll purchase from your Etsy shop. Of course people who get creative jobs have talent, but it’s easy to see why industry gatekeepers would offer opportunities to people with an audience — it’s about having an almost guaranteed return on investment.
Due to this necessity of self-promotion, to do so is no longer looked down upon, considered distasteful or referred to as ‘selling out.’ It’s now just part building a creative career.
A 2019 Guardian piece about the delineation between ‘journalist’ and ‘influencer’, writer Allegra Hobbes wrote:
‘The most famous writers have always been public figures with their own media-fueled mythos, of course… But the image management that once seemed incidental, or at least parallel, to the literary profession seems now one of its most necessary, integral functions. In the age of Twitter and Instagram, an online presence, which is necessarily public and necessarily consumable, seems all but mandatory for a writer who reaches (or hopes to reach) a certain level of renown, especially for anyone dealing in personal essays or cultural criticism.’
This has only become more true in the years since. The last couple of years has seen an avalanche of Substack bloggers, many of whom are young women who cultivate an aspirational coolness through curation of a meticulously grungy, carefully throwaway social media presence. The idea of the ‘literary it girl’ was huge for a moment (then kind of disappeared?). While this coolness may be presented as effortless ‘shitposting,’ it is clearly extremely intentional. It’s self promotion, it’s brand-building and it’s meant to attract the attention of readers and editors and publishers and brands. It’s no accident that these young, attractive, strategic posters make money from social media sponsorships alongside their writing. It can’t be cringe to advertise if the cool girls are doing it!
It feels like this would be where I would talk about influencers. But I don’t think influencers can sell out. Accusing influencers of selling out would be like accusing sales people of selling out. Promotion and enticing people to covet and to buy is literally their whole thing.
Two things are converging in the discussion so far. One, the need for artists to self promote on social media. Two, that this self promotion leads to social media advertising for other brands (i.e. when people get a following on social media, they will be offered money to post adverts for other products and brands, and often take it).
The saturation of social media advertising has led to such posts becoming completely commonplace and unremarkable. This doesn’t apply only to ‘normal people’ level of artists. It now applies equally to celebrities. It is no longer considered selling out for even mega-famous, mega-rich actors to post paid adverts for skincare, makeup, sex toys, whatever, on their instagrams.
Celebrities, including A-list actors, have always done adverts and they’ve always made Big Money doing them. But, in the past, most celebrities were filming TV adverts that would be shown outwith the country where they live (and, mostly, work). For example, it wouldn’t be unusual for an American celebrity to advertise on British, European or Japanese TV.
Samuel L. Jackson, Robert De Niro, George Clooney and Sylvester Stallone have all made huge amounts of money in adverts for Warburtons (a British bread brand). Snoop Dogg has been seen in a lot of UK adverts. Kevin Bacon has put in a long shift — more than a decade — advertising EE (a UK mobile network).
Now that there is less (no?) shame in openly advertising on their own instagrams, with their own face and name attached, celebrities are able to brazenly participate in domestic TV adverts and make even more money from it.
George Clooney appeared in Nespresso adverts in the UK since 2006, but only since 2015 in the US which I think perfectly demonstrates this shift in the perception of advertising and its acceptability. Adverts aren’t embarrassing anymore. Selling out is dead.
There is a current advert for Felix cat food that begins by introducing a song by Robbie Williams, which he then performs. Robbie Williams used to be one of the biggest names in the UK. I would hypothesise that, had the same advert come out 15 years ago, this would have been more of a Thing. I can’t help thinking certain celebrity-discussing media outlets and people on Twitter would have been all over it, perhaps remarking on how he’s not had a real hit for years, perhaps accusing him of embarrassingly hanging onto fame or calling him desperate. Instead, nothing has been said. No one cares because this is what celebrities do now.
I think all of these examples are different facets of the same overarching trend: it is no longer cringe to advertise; advertising is just what we do now. Everyone is advertising and we are all being advertised to all the time. I think this is what they call late stage capitalism. I don’t love it!
I really enjoyed reading this and I completely agree !! I find it really hard to be a 'creative' now and gain an audience from it because you have to have a standout brand and continually sell yourself on social media and I just don't have the stamina for that