2HousePlague

Yes, yes they are -- but we cannot include personal celebrity in this discussion, because then branding ceases to be a repeatable science, with methods and measurements.

You can easily add Linda Lovelace, Traci Lords and John Holmes to this list -- or even Kato Kaelin, for that matter. The factors that make one person famous, that lift them from obscurity into the public attention, are circumstantial, extremely subjective, amazing to observe -- but of little instructive value to Marketing Science.


Are they icons? Asbsolutely.

Would their names top a list of porn star names taken from a man-on-the-street poll? No doubt.

Are we grateful to them? Without question.

But do their achievements and examples influence YOUR marketing plan?


They made themselves mainstream. Certainly their mutability as "stars" in other mediums (especially in the case of Ron and Traci) helps by setting a precedent for the happy inclusion of a hardcore PAST within our contemporary definition of Celebrity -- case in point: Paris Hilton.

But it's not as if crossover-pornstars are helping to popularize something that isn't already popular.

That is a great irony: Porn is everywhere, consumed by most -- and, therefore, statistically mainstream. But, until we as Marketers of Adult are free to pursue our (adult) customers wherever they are, and by way of every medium that serves the purpose, without moral condemnation and the rigors of a conditional legality, we ARE NOT mainstream.




j-

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