Photo: Courtesy of Facebook / theAudience.
The wizard of Hollywood Oz, the force helping viral personalities turn into trending topics, has been revealed. For one, he's not a he; he's not even a singular person. It's a group of people known as cultural jammers helping celebrities get, well, celebrated.
Specialty digital companies like theAudience and WhoSay turn stars into buzz-worthy subjects. Richard Simmons' random presence at the 2013 MTV VMA awards was planned to a tee. Mashable reports that 18 employees of theAudience helped brainstorm potentially viral moments for the former fitness pro. And, what better way than to get him and Miley Cyrus together for a picture? Since his appearance on Cyrus' Instagram, his social media popularity has grown to more than 100,000 followers.
The whole point of these culture jammers is to help stars build and maintain a social media presence so irrelevancy is, essentially, irrelevant. A team meets with the client and builds on their pre-existing brand before staging an event. These companies are tools that help celebrity clients crack the social media code by creating content that's both on brand for the celebrity while still being super-clicky. They're also the messengers delivering us the content we consume over and over again. If suddenly it seems like Beyoncé is everywhere, it's because these companies are feeding her to us based on the rate at which we all flock to her name. At the end of the day, it's not the celebrity's fault they're on every front page, it's ours. The only way it stops is if we stop consuming the tabloid news that these companies help push out. Unfortunately, there isn't a Nicorette patch for pop culture. (Mashable)