Iconic Dealmakers Part 8: Mark Roesler: The godfather of the Rights of Publicity

The Music Row Dealmakers Barry Neil Shrum and Dennis Disney discuss how the godfather of “NIL” - the modern acronym for rights of publicity - negotiated his way into representing the estate of James Dean & Marilyn.  They share their experience with deals involving this lesser-known personal and property right.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to Music Row Dealmakers, where we explore our world of making deals from Nashville's famed Music Row. In the heart of Music City, we are the Deal Makers from Composing to Closing. Now, here's your hosts, Barry Neil Schramm and Dennis Disney.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

We welcome you to our ninth episode of Music Role Dealmakers from Composing to Closing, available wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Barry Neil Schramm, and boy, do we have an interesting episode planned for you today. I hope you stick around and listen to all of it. After I introduce our eighth iconic dealmaker in the series, my partner, Dennis Disney, will join us in the studio to discuss making the deals. In today's episode, we're going to discuss a lawyer and an entrepreneur and a businessman whose name is Mark Rossler. He's a good old Indiana boy from the city of Alexandria, right down the road from a man you might have heard of, James Dean. We'll talk about how Mark became the grandfather of the rights of publicity. In today's modern nomenclature, you might know that as NIL or name, image, and likeness. And we'll talk about how Mark negotiated his way into representing the estates of such legacy celebrities as Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Michael Jackson. This podcast is brought to you live from Shrum Disney's offices on Nashville's famed music row. You can find out more information about our law firm at shrumdisney.com. Go check it out. You can also uh call us at 800Dalmaker, or that's 800-332-5657. We'd love to hear from you. What is a right of publicity? We mentioned that in the in the intro. A right of publicity allows a person, or in Rossler's case, someone's estate, to control the name, image, and likeness, among other things, and control how they are used commercially, and then receive royalties for such usages. Now, you might be thinking, I don't remember that right being in the Constitution. You know, the Bill of Rights has the right of free speech and the right of free assembly and the right to prevent search and seizure without warrant, all those things. I I get that, but where's this right of publicity come in? Well, frankly, it's not there. But what is there is what Samuel Warren and Lewis Brandeis, when they were students at Harvard, wrote about in their famous article on the right of privacy. So if you're following along, you're gonna say, well, wait a minute, I don't remember a right of privacy in the Constitution either. Well, Warren and Brandeis hypothecated that there was a penumbra of rights that were hidden behind the constitutional bill of rights that we all know and love at this point. When you think about, for example, the right of assembly, that implies a certain freedom to be interrupted, right? So when you're assembling in America, in the United States, where we have this Bill of Rights, you expect a certain amount of privacy there. That was their point. It's a penumbra, it's something that's that's in the shadows, that's that's hidden in behind these rights. Search and seizure is is very much that way as well. Think about that, right? We think about it in the context of your cell phone, for example. The cell phone, the information you have on a cell phone is very private. It's things that you may or may not want to share with other people. So even in the search and seizure provision, there is this hidden penumbra of a right of privacy. And that was the point that Warren and Brandeis were making in that in that article. So logically, if we if we posit that a person has the right to protect that private personal information from being exploited and exposed, then should they not logically have the opposite of that, the flip side of that equation, the right to exploit their persona or their person. And that's the basic principle behind this right of publicity. Some states have statutes that cover rights of publicity, and that is as a result of some of Mark Rossler's efforts. Other states might only have common law or or case law precedent that establishes some common law right of publicity. So through this combination of things, we we get this concept. Tennessee passed in 1984 the Personal Rights Protection Act as a result of some of the efforts of Rossler, which we'll explore later. So he was very instrumental in establishing this legislative right and pushing the Tennessee legislature to pass that act. You may have heard that that 1984 statute was recently amended just last year and renamed the Elvis Act of 2025 in order to address some of the deficiencies of that prior law when it comes to addressing many of the vexing issues that relate to artificial intelligence. So let me tell you a little bit more about Mark Rossler and his resume and his company CMG Worldwide. Mark graduated from the Indianapolis University School of Law in 1981, and he secured a position shortly thereafter with the Curtis Publishing Company, which you may know is the publisher of the famed Saturday Evening Post, which often featured the artistic stylings of Norman Rockwell and his idyllic scenes of Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas and all of that. Rossler's job was to secure licensing for the copyrights to Norman Rockwell's famous homespun illustrations. While working on Rockwell's copyrights for the company, Mark began to think about this issue of representing an intellectual property for the estate of a deceased artist. That got them to thinking about deceased celebrities who may or may not be capable of protecting the intellectual property rights of those deceased celebrities. And then it raises the question of whether or not those things are descendable. In other words, can they be passed down to your heirs? So in thinking about all this, he began to think, oh, it would be nice to represent celebrity as an agent, right? And get them licensing deals like I do for Norman Rockwell's copyrights. But but he began to realize that that any living celebrity would be represented by Hollywood agents, you know, and and and so they wouldn't need a representation, but but the but the families of these uh deceased celebrities, that becomes an interesting proposition and and begin to plant a seed in in Rossler's mind that this is something he might like to do. So Mark went to the CEO of Curtis Publishing and and he said to him, I, you know, I like what I'm doing here. I would like to stick around a little bit longer, but I think we need to set up a separate company where we could use some of our expertise and contacts to represent outside clients and the families of those deceased celebrities. Chairman agreed and thought it was a good idea. And ultimately, CMG Worldwide, Mark Mark Rossler's company, was born out of that conversation in 1981. On his website, Mark said that before he took up the mantle, quote, deceased celebrities or their estates had limited rights to their name, image, and likeness, end quote. He said, I saw the problem and I made it my mission to change that. And boy, did he. Mark set about to do research and to figure out how to achieve that goal. Frankly, before CMG came along, before Rossler, a celebrity's right to profit from their name and likeness died along with them. Take, for example, the estate of Elvis, the estate of James Dean, which we will see becomes Mark's first two clients. So Rossler's idea, while intriguing, faced significant obstacles. First of all, from his work with copyright and his law school training, he realized that in order to license anything, real property, intellectual property, there has to be an enforceable legal right. Here with with rights of publicity of a deceased celebrity, there simply were none of those. And then secondly, the the concept of a right of publicity at at that time was was still relatively unknown. So you've got to do some explaining, as Rick Ricardo used to say. And then thirdly, there was no federal statute with which to support this kind of right, as there was with copyright, patent, and trademark, all three of those intellectual properties have a statute backing them, an enforceable legal right. And then finally, at the time, other than a few states with some common law principles, there weren't any specific state laws that protected a right of publicity either. In fact, it was the opposite. You remember Warren and Brandeis? There were a few laws, New York in particular, but a few others, that had what was called a statute related to the right of privacy. So Mark set about to change that state of affairs. He began to do research and seek out owners of some of the most famous and prominent Delebs, he called them, of that generation, dead celebrities. Elvis Presley, of course, was one of the most prominent at the time. And he convinced the estate of Elvis Presley to let him represent the estate's intellectual property, Elvis' right of publicity. Now, Rossler wasn't involved in this case, but but around that same time, 1981, the New Jersey case of estate of Presley versus Roussin was decided in New Jersey. And Mark would have been aware of this case. And on the basis of their common law, the the court in New Jersey claimed or ruled that the right of publicity was in fact descendable, just like a property right. Of course, Elvis had it while he was alive, but the question was: were these people who were using Elvis to promote a tent act, were they using, were they required to pay a license to Elvis' estate in order to use the name? So Mark took that to heart and he lobbied Tennessee to pass that 1984 Personal Rights Protection Act. So that was his first effort to get law passed. And on the basis of this, newfound client, CMG Worldwide, had its first deceased celebrity, the estate, to represent. And he located that business in his home state of Indiana, just outside of Indianapolis, and he began to do business. Now, just down the road from where Mark grew up, about 10 miles, James Dean had been buried in a small little Indiana town. Mark is quoted as saying, it was then that I realized the international influence that James Dean had had. And I thought it was ironic that he was just a stone's throw away from me where I grew up in Fairmount, Indiana. He was buried there. And so I became hungry to learn all I could learn about him, right? And remember, he's just acquired one of the most prominent deceased celebrities. So he drove over to Fairmount and met with the cousin and aunt, respectively, of James Dean, Marcus and Hortense Winslow, and began to talk to them about these issues. And so his aunt and uncle and the cousin were very close. So James Dean, if you'll recall, only made two or three movies. And one of the most important ones, of course, was Rebel Without a Cause, and that became an iconic cultural image over the years since his uh dramatic and and untimely death. And the family had noticed, and and and of course Rossler noticed, that there were a lot of uses of that image on all kinds of things. Mugs, t-shirts, hats, uh posters. And so monies were being made and paid to these third parties. Who was that money going to? Right, was the question. So Rossler talked to the family, sat down to dinner with them, and explained that that what he was trying to do with Presley could also be done with James Dean. And and he was willing to do whatever was necessary to secure the rights for for James Dean as well. And they agreed, and and he secured his second deal with the family of James Dean on the basis of that. For for Rossler, at least according to some of his interviews and writings, a relationship with a client is more than just business. And that's something we can learn from in today's business is that when you enter into a contract with people, it's more than just business. It's sometimes personal. Opposite of what the common expression is. You're right. And sure enough, CMG still represents 40 years later the estate of James Dean. So there's a lot to be said for that philosophy. So this second client, James Dean, put CMG on something of a collision course with the people who had made the movies, Warner Brothers, who, by virtue of the contracts with the artist contracts with James Dean, claimed that they owned all the rights to James Dean's image. And it was them that was doing a lot of the exploitation that we talked about earlier. Years of litigation ensued, a two-week trial, and CMG successfully won that landmark case against Warner Brothers, which sort of established the principle of rights of publicity, and it has been operative ever since. And that now there are somewhere around 30 or plus states who have a specific rights of publicity statute granting all people the right, the exclusive right, to the commercial use of their name, image, voice, likeness, and other things, depending on where you live. So with each client, this was Mark's pattern. He would go into the state, get the laws passed that would protect that deceased celebrity that came from that state. His next client was the estate of Mar Marilyn Monroe. He lobbied that legislature to pass a law. He lobbied Indiana, his home state, to pass the law. It has one of the most extensive rights of publicity statutes, as you might imagine, since Mark is from there. And it reaches back 50 years to grandfather in celebrities who died before the statute. And then it gives them a 100-year right beyond their death to exploit their rights of publicity. It's one of the most progressive and important celebrity protection acts in the country, if not the world. Now, that that was again back in 1981, 1982, up through 1984. So, you know, at this point, several significant clients, probably a few hundred or a few thousand licensing deals later, 1988, Mark begins to look at Major League Baseball. He was always a baseball fan. And so he says he took the field against Major League Baseball and he secured the right for retired players as well as deceased players to be shown in their team uniforms and to use that to endorse products and services. That was very significant. If you know anything about the NFL or the NHL or the MLB or anybody else, they are very protective of their intellectual property rights, including the design colors and everything else of their uniforms. So for him to be able to take retired players and show them in their uniform and license companies to make products, that was very significant. Some of the uh more interesting deals for this uh collective group of clients, uh which included, by the way, Babe Ruth, were at least two in number. The first was a deal with uh Franklin Mint. And if you know about Franklin Mint, they make plates and statues and things that people buy. They used to be on uh late-night television commercials and things of that nature. But he licensed Franklin Mint to produce 116-scale replicas of these baseball players, these retired baseball players, these deceased players in uniform. And of course, they sell them as collections and all those kinds of things, and you can probably still buy them. Secondly, he began to license individual deals for people like Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson for use on individual USPS postal stamps. And that deal is probably one of the most prolific and long-running deals that that Rossler put together. He licensed over 200 celebrities, including Jack Dempsey, Jesse Owens, the aforementioned Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, and Malcolm X, just to name a few of the 200. So what else does CMG do? Rossler's influence extends beyond just the legislation. He also created a system, a marketing system and a information gathering system through CMG. CMG will go out and acquire the URL or license the URL, for example, Marilynmonro.com. And then CMG builds out the website, puts merchandise there, and licenses the merchandise, and then takes calls for the merchandise through a call center. And this produces some of the most lucrative and exploitive rights of publicity licensing in the business. So in connection with those websites, of course, he's collecting information. When people come to place an order, he's getting their information, he's getting email addresses. And so CMG also maintains, in addition to these websites, the celebrities' fan base or fan clubs, right? Living celebrities have fan clubs, but there are a lot of people who still are fans of deceased celebrities. And so he acquires that information, and that information itself becomes a valuable, valuable commodity of CMG. And in connection with this process, this uh website means there was a 60 minutes interview in 2009 with Mark Rossler. It's entitled Uh A Living for the Dead. And you can still find that on the internet, and I think it's even on Rossler's website. He stated in that that interview that the CMG Call Center received somewhere around 15 million hits a day. Now, that's 2009. So what would that be today? Let's just extrapolate and say it's you know four decades later, or what is it, two decades later, so so let's triple it. So we're looking at somewhere near 50 million, right? And if each of those calls generates an average of three dollars, you know, that's quite a bit of money, isn't it? So you can see the how lucrative this rights of publicity has become through primarily the efforts of Mark Rossler. Uh now there are a lot of us doing it these days, but Rossler is in fact the grandfather of that. He's been doing it for over 45 years. He's represented over 1,500 clients, in addition to those already mentioned. He's represented Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Ella Fixgerald, Neil Armstrong, you name it. So I'm looking Looking forward to talking about these deals, and we'll be right back with you with Dennison Toe. Remember to call us if you have questions at 800-DEAL MKR 332-5657, or send us a message to questions at MusicRollDealmakers.com. Welcome, Dennis. How are you doing today? Doing great. Other than I hear our paralegal and associate out in the hallway. Talking about us and laughing at us. That's the only opportunity they get. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

When the door closes to the podcast room, they go party.

SPEAKER_03 22:44

The mice will play. There you go. Well, you know, Rustler's career, it's very innovative. It to me it lends itself to a discussion of the various types of licensing deals that you and I are frequently involved in, particularly as it relates to uh celebrities and this right to exploit their persona. You know, that's the business we're in. In our world, often the these deals involve everything from tour sponsorships to marketing campaigns, you know, for beer, soda, and Jack Daniels, and you name it. Right up your alley. I can't wait to get into it with you with your ties and marketing and and your background. It's going to be a fun conversation, I believe. I think we're going to have a good time.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Well, for a brief moment, you said beer, whiskey, Jack Daniels, right up your alley. Those are your words. And I'm like, well, I don't drink, but I do do sponsorships, yes.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Well, there you go. There you go. So yeah, you don't have to imbib in order to make the deal, right? So these these licensing deals that we're talking about are for the audience, these are really strategic tools. It involves uh deep conversations with national brands and and uh organizations that sponsor these kinds of things. It it for for the for the brand, it boosts their their visibility, it it reinforces the credibility of the brand because it's associated with somebody that that people know and love. And it uh in that regard, it engages not only their existing clients or or consumers, it gives them the opportunity to be in front of new consumers. So it's pretty obvious why people, what, why brands do this. And if we take this outside the bubble of country music uh to the celebrity industry in general, I often teach my class at Belmont about this concept of singularity, a point at uh at which the the consumer so aligns with the celebrity endorser and in their mind aligns that with the product that that celebrity is endorsing. The concept of singularity says they become one in their minds. When I say Madden, what do you think of these days? Well, these days, yeah because I'm a bit older. Uh well, me too. Obviously, uh, EA games football. And for for you and me, talking about the age, you know, we we probably remember him when he was a player, uh, and then a coach, and then you know, the the fame he he got on Monday night football.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yeah, I definitely remember him coaching the Raiders. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

I think that was my first exposure too. I don't think I ever remember him. I'm not that old.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

I don't I don't I don't rec recall him as a player, but I definitely was aware of him as a as a coach and what he was doing with the Raiders, and then he's just become iconic once he got into the Monday night football booth with Pat Sumerall.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

That's right. He was iconic. And I can still remember some of the some of the not inane, but the the sort of off-kilter things he would say. He was a he was a very comic person in my mind. And and Pat Summerall, of course, is the opposite, and he's just so calm and cool, and and the interaction was just priceless. And another example, I think, of singularity is uh George Foreman. And it's getting to the point, you know, e each class at Belmont gets a little bit younger, and my cultural references get a little bit more antiquated. And so now when I say George Foreman, uh most all of my class will say, Oh, yeah, the grill. You know, we cooked our burgers on the George Foreman grill. And I say, Who is George Foreman? And half of them don't know who the heck he is.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Never knew him as the world champion boxer.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Never remembered the what was that? The thriller and vanilla. Manila, that's it. Yeah, not vanilla. I like vanilla, but yeah, uh that fight lasted, I think, 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

I can't remember how how long it lasted, but I do remember he, if I remember correctly, he beat Aldi and then got beat himself.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

I don't remember that. I I remember them spending mu m a lot of money marketing that that thrilla and manila. I mean, you just can't forget that that name. That was a classic name. And I thought it only lasted like 20 seconds.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Well, according to Dr. Google, we're both we're we're both slightly incorrect.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Okay. What does it say?

SPEAKER_02 27:28

George did not beat Ali. Right. Which I thought they had he he had, and it was called The Rumble in the Jungle. Oh, really? Yeah, the Thriller and Manila, I think, was was with Joe Fraser.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Ah, you mean people go, who's Joe Fraser? He doesn't have a grill.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

No, but then but then you can't even go to uh Howard Cousell. Down goes Fraser.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

Now, see, you're doing the same thing I do in class. I say these names, and my students look at me like a deer in the headlights. Like, what are you talking about, Dr.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

I was adjuncting there one when I was there from 09 to 2018 as an adjunct, and I made a reference, and one of the students looked at me and go, goes, Mr. Disney, I wasn't even born yet. I'm like, oh my gosh, you're killing me.

SPEAKER_03 28:13

Well, that's now how I measure my references. But now at this point, even their parents weren't born when I some of my references were around. So speaking of which, Ed McMahon is another one, right? Remember publishers' clearinghouse sweepstakes? Oh my gosh, and Ed McMahon carrying that big check around and giving it to the winner. So your background includes working not only in celebrity management, but you've got experience on your resume in marketing and advertising and a lot of different things. So you bring a lot of value to this discussion. That's why I was uh I'm so excited about it. What are some of the ways you've seen rights of publicity add value to the celebrity equation? Tell us a little bit about the kind of deals you're familiar with and what you've been involved in.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Yeah, you know, it's as we've talked before about relationships. First of all, all these things have to be, I guess you want to call them somewhat symbiotic. The value to the brand goes beyond just the money. There has to, the the person that I'm working with has to bring, as you alluded to a moment ago, has to bring new audience potentially or a bigger audience. They have to have some sort of relation to each other. In other words, they're not so divergent that it makes no sense why are you doing that type of thing. However, having said that, when you think George Foreman, you don't think of the grill, but it kind of worked there. And then the other way around, the the entertainer, if you will, can't just be solely focused on the money because there has to be an authenticity there for it to work with the audience, right?

SPEAKER_03 29:52

So Yeah, that authenticity has to be there. I you know, companies we don't often think about this, but companies spend millions, maybe billions of dollars trying to align their image with the right celebrity. You know, we don't see that quite as much in the in the country music specter, but in in the broader celebrity endorsement arena, you know, there's the Q-score that measures the the recognition of an artist. There's a lot of different ways that companies use to measure that alignment.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

And and added to that is this idea of not only is it that Q score, but then it becomes, well, how does that extend to brand loyalty? How does that extend to these other things? Most recently we had this issue with Bud Light, and uh I forget the the person's name, I think the last name is Mulvaney, the the transitioner. Who Bud Light fans just really came down hard on the on the beer company because they felt that wasn't what that what the brand represented, and so much so that they eventually got out of the deal, et cetera, et cetera. And so it you have to have this real authenticity where Bud Light was built upon, for lack of a better word, traditional Americana and sports idea, et cetera. And now they were bringing in an influencer who was none of that. And in many respects, probably represented the opposite of what the traditional approach to their marketing had been.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

Trevor Burrus, Jr. That is so important in in a brand or for a brand, you know, and and what you're giving there is an example of what let's say a deal gone bad, you know, where where the negative publicity is worse than what they intended. You you think about something that works, we've talked about several of them, but think about Allstate and that voice of Dennis Habert. You remember? You're in good hands, and and I can't do an imitation of him. His voice is so deep, but it was the perfect, you know, it sounds rock solid. It sounds like you're in, you know, a deep bear hug with a person that's going to keep you safe.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

That's it. It's not just a matter of how many more eyeballs can we get. Right. But it is, are they the right eyeballs? Do they fit our target audience, the demographic that we target with the rest of our marketing? You know, you and I have talked internally a lot about it takes at least seven impressions to motivate someone to do something, essentially. Now, those impressions come from various sources. They don't always have to be the same ad over and over. Right. But that is why the same ad gets run over and over and over as part of that equation. Yeah. But if if you're you're looking at those various impressions out there, it's because it targets a particular demographic that they're trying to influence, if you will. So it's not just the size of the audience, because right now you could probably go find a celebrity for about any brand, or any brand can find a celebrity that has a gargantuan audience. But if it's the wrong audience, it goes for naught. Now there are things that honestly have transitioned over time now, which I find really fascinating. I look at Snoop Dogg, and back in the what, late 80s and 90s, right? He was known mostly for being a pot smoking rapper.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Well, uh, that hasn't changed.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

No. Now he's he but now he's morphed. He has progressed, evolved into something else, where he's doing commercials for Corona Beer. It is incredible. A whole bunch a whole variety of other products. Twenty years ago, most of those products that he's working with now touch him touching.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

Well, he improved his image by getting associated with Martha Stewart, I believe.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

That was a little bit of a friendship.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

That's something that I think and it's funny how the image of a celebrity like that can grow and change over time. And so it is fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Or you look at a Martha Stewart, who di is her own brand, granted, but she also endorses a lot of other things. Right. Who was at the at the pinnacle of that back in what 80s and 90s? Right. Had her little inside trader issues. She went to jail, went to prison for, you know, not very long, but was in prison for around what it was, a year, a year and a half, something like that. Came out of that, took a little time off, sort of rehabilitated. Now she's back up doing more endorsement things again. And so you can run these cycles and the public is forgiving. The point being though, you would not necessarily take a Martha Stewart and go do something that was completely 180 degrees out of sync with who she is and what her personal brand is. It wouldn't work. Right. You know, unless you're doing a parody, obviously. And so when we're putting these endorsement deals together, those are the things that you look at. You go, okay, how many eyeballs were ears? If it's an audio thing, how many eyeballs and ears can we get? What's the demographic of that audience that doesn't mess with what our strategic goals are as a consumer brand? And sometimes those just like with Bud Life, their intent was to expand their audience. It wasn't to change the audience, it was to grow it. So I understand the intent behind it. But you have to look at those things. Are we trying to extend our brand? And if so, how's the best way to attack it? Who do we work with on those things? And you know, the fact here's a real fascinating thing though now in in with social media, if you're paying attention to a lot of the marketing, you don't have to have a million people on your socials to get a sponsorship deal. You don't even have to have a hundred thousand, right? You can have 10,000 people or less. So a lot of these college athletes now with name, image, likeness deals, NIL stuff, they may have less than 10,000, but those 10,000 in that particular college town, even, let's say, are valuable to local advertisers, if not national brands. And so they will do stuff to that audience because they are reactive. And at the end of the day, that's what it's about. How how reactive will your audience be? Will they go buy our product by doing this? Or is there some other benefit we get from a brand enhancement, you know, that type of thing that that grows our our brand a little bit more? But social media has changed so much in this area of name, image, likeness, and and sponsorships and endorsements. And you can be a small influencer, I'll put it that way, and do deals with multiple products or brands and do okay.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

Yeah, I've had students who do the limited social media influence that you're talking about, making three to ten thousand dollars a month on those kinds of little deals. You don't have to be Kim Kardashian getting, you know, three-quarters of a million of dollars for one tweet. You know, she's at the point where you know that's a super influencer, I would say. But, you know, on the other hand, you can be that that little guy with 10,000 followers as long as they're loyal super fans.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 37:16

And and that that is worth something.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

Well, and in addition to the cash, though, you don't always have to make this a cash deal or pay for your own money. You may uh cut a deal for free product, which is not a bad thing. I don't have to go spend my own money to go buy XYZ. No, they'll send you the free product, you're talking about it on air, and they'll do they'll do it's almost like a barter idea, if you will. And that's another great benefit of social media. Now, the only problem you have to watch out with those social media deals involves the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

You have to put notice.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

You have to put notice on there, whether you're paid or whether you receive the product for free. I know there are a lot of people that would go get the product on their own and talk about it, and that's fine. But if you're getting free product or if you're getting paid, you have to declare that, or it's it can be a significant hurt.

SPEAKER_03 38:10

Yeah, there was a while back that they sent out hundreds of letters to various uh social media influencers suggesting that they put, you know, a hashtag on that that says they're an advertiser or sponsor, things like that. And you do have to comply with the FCC.

SPEAKER_02 38:26

And they've got a a web link on, if you go to the FTC site, they have a web link for that that you can find all the regulations you need to follow. They're not overly onerous necessarily, but it's all about making sure the public understands that what you're doing was a paid endorsement, if you will. It's it's that difference between earned media and paid media. That's why traditional publicity, editorial articles, and newspapers or magazines are so important because those things come with what's called an implied third-party endorsement. If the media outlet is doing a positive article on you, the consumer looks at that and goes, oh, well, they're writing about this in such great words because they think this is such a great person. Well, the same thing is in reverse that if an influencer is talking about a product without declaring that it's an ad, the listener or the viewer sees that as, oh, that's this must be a great product. Why would my favorite athlete or favorite musician be talking about it? Tweet about it.

SPEAKER_03 39:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

And so you have to be careful with some of that.

SPEAKER_03 39:30

Do they call it tweets anymore? Is it exes now? I X'd you.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Yeah, well, but in the country world, all my exes live in Texas, right? That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

Where is that though? Never mind. I've got a wah wah that I play when Dennis does a uh uh a dad joke, but uh we'll we'll skip it for now. One thing you were talking about is is Snoop Dogg and and how you know he would not be aligned with a product back in those days. And the flip side of that is is brands look for celebrities that do align, but celebrities being celebrities, you know, like the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, this can this can change the trajectory of their endorsement deals. Take Tiger Woods, for example, back in the day when he, you know, had an affair with with was it a Swedish blonde woman, and and his all of his endorsement deals except for, I think it was Nike and AT ⁇ T, gone. You know, Buick, uh, the razor blades, you know, the whole gamut, you know, millions of dollars gone, at least for a period of time, until, like you say, with Martha Stewart, the reputation, you know, that fades into the background. It's not news anymore, and the reputation begins to take an upper trajectory again.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

And especially if coming out of those times of turmoil and distress, how they handle that plays a big role in this. Tiger Woods has handled it very well coming out of those situations. And that's a big part of how this plays out to extending your brand. All these contracts are gonna have, for lack of a better term, we'll call it a morals clause.

SPEAKER_03 41:20

A moral turpitude clause.

SPEAKER_02 41:22

They're going to have a escape hatch, for lack of a better word. They're gonna they're gonna have language in there that says if if you do or say anything that brings disrepute on our brand, we're done.

SPEAKER_03 41:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

I always find those contracts interesting because I I've tried to work language back into those where it's got to be an objective, objective, reasonable view that this was disreputable because I know that there's a lot of things that happen out there that to the general public would not be disreputable, but it's almost like an escape hatch for the brand if you're not careful. So like let's tighten this up a little bit. I don't want your CEO being the one as the arbiter of what might be disreputable.

SPEAKER_03 42:03

Let's face it though, if you're if you're a brand and you're paying this celebrity millions of dollars, shouldn't you have the right to say, hey, I don't care. It it is my objective. I'm the one with the gold. I make the rules.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

No, I I do agree with that, actually. You should, but I don't it it's always up to for me about trying to protect my client, which would be the celebrity in this case. Yeah, and I I agree with that. From some sort of a knee-jerk reaction from the head, you know, on a whim. I had bad pizza last night decision by a CEO who may not know his, you know, but from a Holeman round, otherwise. That's what I I like to try to protect.

SPEAKER_03 42:47

No, no, I I totally agree with you there. And I I think those clauses can be extremely arbitrary.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

Oh my gosh, I've seen them so incredibly vague. It's like, what what what are you trying to say here? Because I could have a slightly, just a slightly different political opinion. You go, oh, well, that's we're gonna disrepute on us because we got one phone call.

SPEAKER_03 43:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

You know, let's be reads.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

Agreed. Agreed. You know, you were talking earlier about the the barter system that is very frequent in a lot of different industries, including the country music industry, where, you know, a small-time artist can get, you know, an endorsement deal from a Gibson and get a guitar, you know, every year or something of that nature. That reminds me of one of my prominent clients, and we we are talking to him to try to get him on this show at some point, and hopefully we will, Damon John. His big break, uh if you know anything about his history, was with his uh FUBU business, you know, for us by us. It was 1997, long before he was ever a household name on Shark Tank. He gave one of his homemade beanie hats that had Fubu embroidered on it, to one of his neighborhood friends. That friend happened to be LL Cool Jay. Right, when he was a little bit ahead of Damon in the fame department at that time. And he ended up wearing that hat in a commercial that a commercial endorsement, ironically, for the gap stores. And during that commercial, you can find this on the internet, by the way, in that commercial, he was rapping and he rapped the phrase at the end of it, for us, buy us during the commercial. Well, sales at the gap rose tremendously. So they didn't care. They didn't know, even know. But his FUBU brand, as a result of that, took off. And before you know it, he's a $350 million enterprise and bought out by Samsung.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

That's amazing. You know, it's I guess they call it the zeitgeist when it moves certain ways. If you're positioned well, it's amazing what happens. I'm I'm always awestruck by some of the things that end up taking off the way they do. But you know, at the same time, you're doing your product line, you know you have to get the word out, you have to create awareness. So, and that's what endorsements come down to. How do I get awareness? How do I scale this awareness the best that I can? And on a somewhat as a puppet barter situation, and using yellow cool J, first of all, that happens a lot at these major award shows. The questions that get asked of actresses and actors, who are you wearing? Meaning, who designed your dress, who designed your your if it is a tuck, what jewelry are you wearing? Where did you get it? And I'm early on, I'm just so intrigued by a lot of that. That these major brands that we all know are lending items to people to wear at these major events like this.

SPEAKER_03 45:53

Well, uh, maybe not even lending, maybe bartering. They're saying, here, we'll provide you with this dress if you wear it on stage.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

I do know with jewelry that becomes a little different because some of these actresses will wear a quarter of a million dollar necklace. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's not being bartered.

SPEAKER_03 46:13

Probably not. Do you remember tonight? Do you remember a few years back it was Ellen DeGeneres? She hosted, I think it was the Grammys. It was one of the major award shows that was the Oscars. And she came out with a Samsung phone. And she said, I'm going to take a selfie. And she walked down in the midst of all these other stars, and she took a selfie, which ended up, of course, on social media. And you talk about increasing your sales. I mean, and it was all under the guise of, oh, this is just Ellen being Ellen. But that was planned. You know that was planned.

SPEAKER_02 46:54

You know it. So you've got these two, I guess you want to call them sort of related marketing approaches, especially when it comes to film and television. One being product placement, which typically is a paid spot.

SPEAKER_03 47:11

You know, Seinfeld used that a lot.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

Oh, a ton.

SPEAKER_03 47:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:14

Major movies, all the Bond films. Between the cars and the watches and all this. The pins. And they that generates into ongoing marketing after the film comes out at the end.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

For years. And that's great. But when you get that personal connection, like you're talking about, here's Ellen DeGeneres wearing this item in a not in a film, you know, which some people look at would be, well, that's a paid placement. Hers might have been paid too. We don't know. But the fact that she's wearing it in that environment at that time, and not even having to really say anything.

SPEAKER_03 47:48

Yeah, she just pulls the foam out of her pocket. You know?

SPEAKER_02 47:51

That's the power of endorsement.

SPEAKER_03 47:53

It really is.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

People view that as she's really using that. I really like her. So therefore it must be really good. Let me go check it out. You know, with the endorsement world being what it is, it's it's one of those things where if you can work into those situations, hence wearing the clothes, the red carpet, all those things, it's all because that means to the general consumer, hey, this is something I need to be well aware of and check out.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

The more organic marketing campaign can appear, the more impact it's going to have on that brand.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

Exactly. Now, if we go back a little bit to, and I don't know if you in your your opening, if you define what the words Delebs mean DEI. I did. Did you? Okay. I did. I love that phrase. Obviously, they can't wear new stuff. No, no, they can't do that. But the idea that they can be associated, their image, their persona, it's still the same effect. So if you get a James Dean somehow connected to a high-speed sports car, people are going to love it. I know that Steve McQueen, there was a Mustang commercial that came out and with him. With him and was able to put him in. These things still, if you've got that gravitas, if you will, if you've got that Q score, that high Q score, even though you're deceased, the endorsement idea as I keep I call him Rosler. I thought you may say Rossler, I don't know how we pronounce it.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

I've been calling it Rossler.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Rossler. I say Rosalind, tomato, tomato, potato, potato. But he, the folks at CNG, understand that. And again, what we would do with a living celebrity, which is what brand authentically can connect with you?

SPEAKER_03 49:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

And let's go from there.

SPEAKER_03 49:43

Let me let me give you a little test. See if you pass. You know who the one of the most popular dead labs, a dead celebrity of all time is?

SPEAKER_02 49:52

The most popular of all time?

SPEAKER_03 49:55

Yeah. Don't say Elvis.

SPEAKER_02 49:57

No. I'll give you a hint. I was going to go back even further than that.

SPEAKER_03 50:00

He's a scientist.

SPEAKER_02 50:01

Oh, Einstein.

SPEAKER_03 50:02

Albert Einstein.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

That's right. Yes. Which is interesting when you think about it, because he wasn't the flashing guy. He wasn't a flashy guy.

SPEAKER_03 50:10

He wasn't outgoing.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

He wasn't in pop culture in that regard, but he's now entered into pop culture.

SPEAKER_03 50:18

And his cue score was something like 56. And you know, just for the audience, uh, 56 is it means one out of every two people will name you as their favorite scientist or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 50:30

That's amazing. Well, you know, was it Kobe Jack, Kobe Bryant dressed up as Einstein in one commercial, I know at one point. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

Then you have Baby Einstein, which I know got attached with his name and um some of those things. Yeah. He had that iconic look about him.

SPEAKER_03 50:47

He does.

SPEAKER_02 50:47

And the fact that he was a genius off the charts.

SPEAKER_03 50:51

I'm trying to grow my hair out like Einstein. You think that'll look good?

SPEAKER_02 50:56

No.

SPEAKER_03 50:57

It'll work. No.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

I would have tried to if I had hair. I was right up. If I tried to go, if I tried to grow my hair, I've got I can't, just so no one can see it. So I do shave my head because I'm I'm bald, definitely bald in that middle. But if I tried to grow out, it would come out the sides like Bozo the Clown used to be. That's how I'll look, you know, I'd have to dye my hair in red if I did that.

SPEAKER_03 51:21

Oh, that would be good. It would be bozo.

SPEAKER_01 51:23

It would be bozo.

SPEAKER_03 51:24

And for the audience, we're having a special shaving day for Dennis a little bit later in the month. We'll invite you all to it. And we we just spray a lot of uh shaving cream on top of his head. I have I go crazy.

SPEAKER_02 51:36

I've been tempted to plug in for sponsors here. I've been tempted to go get some of that Nair.

SPEAKER_03 51:43

Do they still make Nair?

SPEAKER_02 51:45

I have no idea, but that tells you how old it's like.

SPEAKER_03 51:46

I don't know what kind of toxicity was in that thing. You put it on your legs and it dissolves your hair.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

And it would stay gone for six, eight months.

SPEAKER_03 51:56

Well, you know, it's probably trichloroethylene or something of that nature in the in the product.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

Well no, maybe I could try that, you know, and not have to go through the electrolysis, but until then, I shave my head every day.

SPEAKER_03 52:08

Getting back a little bit on track with these uh endorsement deals, I I want to talk a little bit about these types of of how these types of deals have evolved. You know, we've talked about formal agreements, we've talked about bartering kind of thing. At some point in history, and I've tried to pinpoint it, it's hard to pinpoint, but these arrangements between a celebrity and the product become a partnership or the company giving stock to the individual. And the liquor industry is very fond of this. And if we just take our country music world, you know, Kenny Chesney has that blue chair rum, right, which aligns with his brand because he's kind of an island kind of guy, kind of like Jimmy Buffett. And rum is kind of an island kind of drink. So that worked out very well. George Strait's Codigo, I don't know how to pronounce it, is aligned with not only his lyrics, but his his persona as sort of a punchy cowboy kind of had act, you know. And then similarly, of course, Willie Nelson, you could associate him with almost any kind of drug, but but he he had a whiskey brand called Old Whiskey River. So when you can develop that kind of thing, and I one of the things I think about is Air Jordan. You and I have talked about that movie. I think that's one of the best alignments of that nature of all time.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Yeah, the the cool thing, if the movie is accurate, his mother had a lot to do with how that deal ultimately got put together.

SPEAKER_03 53:51

Right, the mommager.

SPEAKER_02 53:52

The mommager. And but she was great at what she did for him, protecting him, but tying him into a piece of the action. You know, just gonna pay him a fee. Right. We're gonna tie him into the sales of this product. And Nike went for it. They did. You know, interestingly, as I was prepping for this episode, I looked into um some of what that deal structure looked like. And uh, I don't have obviously I'm not proved to all the details of it, but from what we do know, he gets about 5% of all Jordan brand sales.

SPEAKER_03 54:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:26

And that's what I've heard too. That has turned out to be in 2022, he received $256 million. Wow. Just in that year.

SPEAKER_03 54:35

Was it true that uh he's he's earned something like $2.4 billion over the course of that deal?

SPEAKER_02 54:39

Yes. And counting. And counting. 2024, we'll jump there. He earned reportedly earned $350 million that year for that stuff. Here's what got me. That's from 5%. That's just a five percent.

SPEAKER_03 54:54

At least that's what they say.

SPEAKER_02 54:55

So his 2024 earnings pushed his earnings from Nike to 3 billion. Oh, geez. When you add in the 2024.

SPEAKER_03 55:06

Did he make that much play in basketball?

SPEAKER_02 55:08

No. And I've got that number here. It's said that he now makes more annually from his shoe royalties than he earned in his entire 15-season NBA career.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

You know, and and this is nothing like the Jordan legacy and that deal. But Roger Federer is very similar. And you can find this all over the place. You know, Peyton Manning, all these people. Roger is worth $1.4 billion. He didn't earn nearly that. He earned $130 million during all of his various wins, and he's won more majors just about than anybody. Rolex, Uniglo, Mercedes. Uniglo toward the end of his career, after he had announced retirement, gave him a 10-year deal for $10 million to wear their clothing. I mean, come on. He's not even playing tennis anymore. Peyton, you know, $250 million in his career, but at least five times that with all of those things that he did. And I don't know if you remember, but at some point he had a stake in Papa John's. You talk about a good endorsement deal. That deal was pretty incredible. He he bought 30 franchises in the Denver area while he was playing for the Denver team. He got the Denver team to give away or to announce when he gets a touchdown that Papa John's is going to give free pizzas. So he's selling all this stuff based on his existing career. That's it's pretty phenomenal what you can do when you put your mind to it on some of these things.

SPEAKER_02 56:48

It is. Again, it goes back to the Q-Score and the lackability, all these things. You know, Shaq, Shaquille O'Neal, has a slew of Papa John's franchises. So he does Papa John's commercials, he does the general car insurance because he actually used that insurance when he was first driving because that's all he could afford. Wow. And he stayed with him. And so that he's got that deal there, and then all the other endorsements. I found it interesting. I know you started out with Rossler Rosler and what they do with CMG. And I and I thought, man, what about Kobe Bryant, who was killed tragically in like 2020? I look back and looked at what his deals might have looked like. They were was going to be really, really good. He reportedly signed his Nike deal in 2016 that was going to be worth a billion dollars, you know, over time. But he had a bunch of other product products that he endorsed along the way, but one of which was Body Armor, which is a sports drink.

SPEAKER_03 57:45

Familiar with it.

SPEAKER_02 57:46

When as part of that deal, he did a Michael Jordan. He got 5% of the company. Not 5% of sales, but 5% of the company. And when Body Armor sold to Koch in like 20, I forget what year it was now exactly. But it's past his death, his share was $400 million for his family, for his estate. What am I going to make this month, this quarter, this year? That's great. It's a multi-year deal, great. But man, when you can tie into things that are generational that will go to your estate, that's a beautiful deal.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

It's the power of celebrity that that is often overlooked. And you know, when when you've got that power combined with the power of the brand, which is all about trademark. And then in some ways, these two things align. Every celebrity has a brand, right? Example of that is Apple, right? Apple has a reputation intentionally built of being the simple computer company. Our designs are flawless, they're simple, our software is easy to use, you don't have to worry about anything else. I mean, that's how they built their business. And when they started thinking about people to endorse, who do they use? If you look at Apple's slew of celebrities, when they were releasing, I forget what they were releasing, but they took Bob Dylan and Steve Jobs, alive at the time, announced that Dylan was coming on and he was the poet of our generation. And he sort of portrayed him as, you know, the same kind of philosophy. And even the advertising at that time, Apple was using that Apple with the glowing light behind it, you know, and they had a glow on the back of all their computers. Well, when they when you saw Dylan in the commercials, he was backlit as well. And so it was silhouetted, kind of like to pull you into the same thinking of Apple. It was amazing. I think that was probably one of the one of my favorite commercial alliances between a celebrity and a brand.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:11

It's interesting. I watch too much television, I know. But what I've felt anyway over the last year, year and a half, there's been this big uptick in celebrities just doing straight-up product commercial. Now, there may be some other things tied into some of this, but I just saw Rob Lowe's, and I've always liked Rob Lowe, but I saw his promotion the other day for some brand of dog food because he's very much into he's had pets forever and dogs forever, and very much into pet health and pet nutrition and things. So it matches well, but you see that, and then you've seen uh Jason Bateman doing something, I think it was for uh Allstate, even. And so you've got and and I I do scratch my head a little bit, and I'm thinking, wow, are they just throwing all kinds of cash at these people? And they can't, they have to do it. Because at one time, if you not too long ago, really, a lot of actors and actresses said, I'm not doing commercials, just straight commercials. Oh, yeah. That's beneath me now.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:15

That taboo is long gone.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:17

Oh, long gone. I think Bet Medler still holds to that principle, that moral code of not doing commercials. But uh then you got the opposite end of the spectrum, like Peyton Manning, right? Well, at the height of his football career, I counted one time, he was doing at least 12 different brands. Now, the danger in that for a brand is that you're lumped in with all those others. And that's what we call oversaturation. If you, if, if your celebrity is oversaturated, you know, is he doing an advertisement for Buick? Is it ATT? Is it, you know, yada yada yada? So a celebrity can can be overused.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:57

Yes. Comes back to that authenticity, right? So if I can align myself with a product that appears authentic. So when you think of a Peyton Manning type, yeah, you think of he does some, I think it's it's either butt or butt-like commercials.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:13

He still does, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

He, you know, he's got the pizza thing. Well, yeah, he's an athlete. Athletes drink beer and pizza. Okay, that that feels authentic to me, and I like Peyton Manning and what he stands for in his life and all this stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:25

As do their fans when they're watching him.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

Exactly. And so as long as you have that authenticity, I think you can sort of attenuate some of what you were talking about.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

But man, if you're just taking on anything and everything over time, it will erode your your value as an endorser.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:46

It does. And you you you you have to be careful with that thing. And for something you just said reminds me of we were talking about Dennis Habert and Allstate earlier. A a celebrity can get to the point where their effectiveness is not as powerful as it used to be. And that started to happen, I think, with Habert, which is when they started doing commercials without him physically in the commercial, but then the actor would speak in his voice. Do you remember those? And so that's a way of tying into that legitimacy and authenticity that they had originally with him, but they had used him probably a decade at that point. And so they softened it, and I thought that was genius, by putting his voice in the commercial so that you're recalling all of that in a different setting.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:45

No, exactly. The uh similar thing happens, I think, with Vene Rhymes, who or Raims, excuse me, I always mispronounce his name. Uh who he really to me came on the scene with the Mission Impossible films. He was the computer genius. Then he started getting into a few commercials, but he does the voice for Arby's. Arby's have the beef. Yeah. And very distinctive voice. So you know who it is, but he is not visibly out there anywhere. So he has that ability to just, you know, but the the voice speak for it. Who was the my mind went completely blank? The voice of Darth Vader.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:25

Oh, yeah, um James Earl Jones.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

James Earl Jones. He's an amazing actor with such a distinctive voice.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:32

And he did commercials.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:33

And he did commercials.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:34

And you know, Morgan Freeman. Yes, Donald Sutherland.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:39

You know, when you get to a certain point, that is your calling card, right? You don't even have to hear uh James Earl Jones say more than one word and you know it's him. Same with those other guys. I mean, it's incredible. You we'll we'll age ourselves a little bit here.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:56

Do you remember Tom Baudet? I don't. Motel 6. We'll leave the light on for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:02

I remember that expression. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:03

So Tom Baudet had this folksy, country-esque voice to him. Right. I only saw him a few times, appear on some things, but you know his voice. And to me, that's one thing that doesn't diminish over time if it's just the voice. I think if you're seeing the person all the time to what we're talking about, I think that you can run that risk of you're overexposed.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:27

Yeah. But if it's just the voice, well, and and and people, most people really don't notice who the voice is. They know they know the voice, but subconsciously they don't sit there and identify, well, okay, that's James Earl Jones. My wife has that knack. She can tell me, okay, you know who that is, right? I'm going, of course not. Just tell me.

unknown 1:05:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:48

But then, you know, it's interesting in this world of celebrity that sometimes the opposite can happen. And again, we're going to be showing our age here and our locality. We grew up, but in this area, long time ago, Purity was using this strange little guy popping in the window and doing all these little comic things. Jim Varney, you know I'm talking about. And he ended up becoming a national star, yes, and doing movies. The opposite, right? He was a little local actor, unknown, doing the purity commercials, and all of a sudden he's a celebrity.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:28

The Ernest movies, the Ernest Movies, you know, uh that whole character was developed here in town by Carden and Cherry Advertising. Yeah. And they, not to get too deep in the woods on advertising and marketing, but what they ended up doing was building these doughnuts, as they call them, uh-huh. So that they could take this one setup and this one scene, you know, the Hey Vern idea. And then they marketed that around to different regions for different products. So here it was purity dairy. But in another state, another region, it was a different dairy for that, which was brilliant when you think about it. We're gonna go this donut, use this. So he developed this national profile, but it got it got big. It did. And he was, I remember seeing him, I think, on the tonight show and being interviewed. It was it was a phenomenon back in the 80s.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:21

You know, and that's that's the ideal thing for a marketing company or a brand to find that exact right person, that Ed McMahon, that that John Madden, that that George Foreman, whoever it is that that becomes the face of the brand and just becomes and and we're talking about a time when you didn't have the internet. So you didn't have something going viral on the internet. That's that's great, and that's a different world. But back then, it was much more difficult to be quote unquote viral.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:55

Yes. It it it took a lot more, I don't know what the word is concerted effort. That that's a big one, yeah. Because I do think today in marketing, if something doesn't go viral, there's a tendency to pull the plug on it quickly.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:09

Quickly, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:10

And on the one hand, that sounds good. Hey, it's not working, let's move on. At the same time, you get so myopic on it's not working because it didn't go viral. That doesn't mean it was wrong or it's not going to work.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:22

I do think that back in the day you had to do real marketing, real test marketing, real all the you know, focus groups and a lot of these things that we all did back then. The internet's now your focus group.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:34

Really, yeah. The metrics are so readily available these days, uh, when, you know, as opposed to a time when you had to go out and make the metrics and and invent the metrics. Well, I think that's um all of our time for tonight.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

Uh let's uh real quick, you you brought up the the the liquor brands by these celebrities. I did want to mention here that one of my colleagues Casey Johns, she is an independent country artist, lives here in Nashville. I think she's originally from Florida. But anyway, she has a branded liquor. She did a deal with a company, it's called Casey Johns Thunder, Suburban Whiskey, and she sells it well, or she can legally sell it, I'll put it down. You know, she can't ship it over state lines necessarily. But but no, she's got this this whiskey brand. And to me, that's just an another example of you don't have to be the Willing Nelson's Kenny Chessies to to put certain deals together. Now, the zeros may be fewer, yes, true, right? But you can still do some brand identification, some brand activations, some uh some of these other things. As we were talking about earlier with social media influencers, you don't need a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, a million followers on Instagram. If you've got a few thousand, you might be able to put a deal together. Now, obviously, the more people you have following you, the bigger deals you can put together, but that's just about scale. Yeah. So my encouragement to anyone out there looking to put deals together, don't be afraid of small beginnings. Don't think that you can't do something just because you're not a major celebrity at the moment. No, there might be things that you can do. It's just about scalability at the moment.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:16

Well, let me give a shout out to Casey and say, you know, your liquor is wasted on Dennis. So next time give it to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:24

How about that?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:50

Dennis, let's give our guests some walk away points. One of the first ones I'd like to focus on is Rossler and his attitude. He thought big. He wasn't distracted by that fact that that most celebrities were were already represented by agents out there in California. He wanted to be an agent. At the time, he was working for Curtis Publishing, and he was working with Norman Rockwell and the copyrights and the estate. And I think that's what set him on the path to finding out, you know, who's representing Elvis Presley, who had recently died, who's representing James Dean, who lived down the road from me. You know, thinking like that, thinking in in a non-limiting way, open-minded, think big. I think that's a good lesson.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:40

You can't be afraid of the challenge. Right. You have to think strategically. How can I make it happen? Who do I know that can open a door for me? And in some cases, if you open the right door early on, which I think happened here with him, the dominoes start to fall.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

So he was able to go down the road to the aunt and uncle of James Dean. And hey, we're all Indiana people, and they connected, and and nobody's doing anything with James Dean, literally at the time. Right. At least in terms of being compensated for it. And nailed it. So as soon as you get that one domino to fall, then it becomes easier to say, here's my call and card, and it moves forward.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:22

The rest of the people just line up.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:24

That's it. So you don't be afraid of the big idea. You can't be that. Don't be afraid to make the phone call. All they could do is tell you no. And that was a hard thing for me to learn in my early days, I'll be honest, because I wanted my credibility, you know, to lead into conversations, and I wanted people to respect what I was trying to do. And it it that can create a fear that if I misstate something on this phone call, cold call, basically, I'm getting ready to make, it might hurt me down the road. Well, you can't think that way.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:59

No, you can't. And and you know, chances are down the road, as we say, you know, years later, people aren't gonna remember one little mistake or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:08

I used to work I used to work with a guy real quick on this who he had, as as a a co-worker said, he could have a hundred I out of a hundred ideas, 99 of them may be crap, but that one was pure gold. But his approach was, and I saw him do this, he walked, I was there when it happened. He walked into our at that point the current president of the label, who was not a good man. I'll just say it that way. I won't tell who it is. And he said, Hey, I'd like to think about this idea. Let's try this. And this guy just ripped my friend up and down, just shredded him, and thought the idea was stupid and dumb, and called him all these names. My friend turned to walk out the door, stopped, made a U-turn, and came back and said, Well, what about this idea? My point being, I used to call him the the Weeble. If you remember those old bunching bag commercials, the Weeble wobble, but they won't fall down.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:06

They won't fall down, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:08

That's how he was. And that's kind of what you do with some of this stuff. Sometimes you gotta be that way. You just gotta be that way. Hey, I'm gonna take a shot over here and and get hit. Great, I'll bounce up and I'll try it this way. And so when you're looking at the something really big, yeah, it's big and scary, and it can be all those things. But at the end of the day, it's really just all they can do is tell you no.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:30

It's just about taking the first step.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:32

Yeah, that's it. And this is just business. I mean, you don't really know them, you're not having them, you're not marrying them in the biblical sense. And so, okay, okay, it's just a business idea. Right. And it didn't fly. Okay, let me go retool it. Maybe I can find another way to approach it. So exactly. Don't be afraid to think big.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:51

Now, one of the other things that that that I think is a good walkaway point, and I want to talk about it here. You and I discussed these a little bit before the show, and is this attitude that a lot of celebrities have, particularly today, right? And it seems that they are not aware of the power of their persona. And you know, we we talked about that. The the concept that all publicity is good publicity, right? Well, that's a fallacy. As we've talked about in the show, I mean, there are times when, you know, wardrobe malfunction or you know, a missed up and you know, out of a taxi cab or or whatever becomes frontline news, headline news, and in these days can literally ruin a career, right? So I think it's important that that you know, and then if you think about the old celebrities, they had that awareness. They were aware of what their persona was, what and and the the influence. Yeah, very much so.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:01

Yeah, it might be never be caught smoking in public. Right. Don't be caught with an alcoholic drink in your hand in public. Some of those things, when it came to sexuality, even there were that was a big taboo. A big taboo. So if you were a gay man in Hollywood, you kept that hidden. You only went out on dates, quote unquote dates, with a female. The studios in the early days would even take a single female actress that they really wanted to publicize and a male actor they wanted to publicize and put them together in in forced, man-made, contrived dating opportunities where press was there, that type of thing. Right. You know, but because they were aware the studios and these celebrities were aware of that persona and and tried to guard it as best they can to keep it perpetuated. In modern times, it's gotten a lot less of that. Sometimes out of just spite, I'm gonna do it anyway. You're I'm doing it because you're telling me I shouldn't do it, if you will, kind of like dealing with your your elementary age kids sometimes. But at the same time, some of that could be their persona that they're trying to perpetuate. I guess my whole point to everything is you be authentic to who you are, absolutely, because ultimately that wins the day, in my opinion. But at the same time, you can be strategic about that. And strategic about what parts you let people see, what parts you don't let them see. And we all do that in our everyday life anyway, to some degree. Yeah, right. You know, you know, you don't need to know that I'm a slob at my house necessarily, because when I come into an office, I do something differently. Okay, that's fine. Trust me, that's we know. That's the thing. Well, the worst part is that I know. No. So but you know what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:57

I do, I do. You know, and that's the thing about a celebrity, right? They have this persona that we all see in the movies, on the stage, wherever. And that persona is different than the persona that they live. And I think the recognition of that is important.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:21

No, i i it it is. We get so wrapped up as a culture in especially if it's episodic television, we get to know the character, we know that actor playing that character. And we transfer the character's attributes to the actor, to the person. And when they walk out in public, people think, well, you're supposed to be this. No, play the character. And and but at the same time, you got to be aware that A, that's how people will see you and respond to you, but then B, authentically be who you are and make sure you're that way all the time off screen.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:05

You know, in some ways, recognizing that dichotomy between who they are as a normal person and who they are in in the public's eye can be an advantage in marketing because marketing, at least from a celebrity endorsement perspective, is based on Pavlovian principles. You remember the old experiment where he would ring a bell and then feed the dog, and ring a bell and feed the dog. Ultimately, he could ring the bell and the dog would salivate, right? That's the Pavlovian effect. And the celebrity is the same way, right? The bell that's being rung is their celebrity persona. We view them as trustworthy, we view them as whatever. And when that aligns with the product, the bell rings, and all of a sudden we're salivating for whatever that product is.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:01

No, exactly. There's a somewhat of a corollary to that called the Hawan effect that's used in social sciences that basically describes how people tend to modify or improve their behavior simply because they know they're being watched. And and so I think that comes into play here as well. So to your point about we're seeing this person in a Pavlovian idea, the bell rings, and so now I'm gonna go do this because I witnessed this this person. Well, that person knows they're being watched, so they act in a certain way, right, which then enhances the Pavlovian effect you're talking about to a big degree, and it's sort of all ties together. All ties together.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:44

Yeah. I think the the last point that that maybe we we can make is is this idea of the relationship and and authenticity, and that all kind of ties together. It's not always about the money. You talked about one-off deals that you know are not quite as effective at marketing as the relationship kind of thing. You know, like any deal, it's a it should benefit both parties. There's the benefit of the bargain that has to be there. And I think at some point when we were talking about this, you said that that the two coming together is is better than either one of them individually. And I think that's important to remember in a deal like this, in an endorsement deal. And it should be viewed as a relationship.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:29

Yes, that whole is greater than the sum of the parts, right? And you know, not not to provide marital counseling here, but it suddenly dawned on me one day a few months ago. I've been married for 41 years, man. I'm like, why did it take me this long to realize this? Old dog learning new tricks. You know, but especially in in the the Christian and Jewish traditions, probably others, but they they talk about the two become one. And I told my wife one day, I said, after all this time, it just now dawned on me, if this is true, that two become the one, if I'm not engaging you on a more regular basis in my world by what I'm nervous about, scared about, what I want to dream about, whatever, I'm only operating in half my strength.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:21

And I think that kind of plays here if you pair with the right partner in in whatever business environment. If if you can come together and both of you work together almost as one, if you will, or I should say if you don't do that, then you only are operating in half your strength at that point. Right. So if you're in in endorsing a product, you don't know the product, you don't use the product, you don't rely on the experts at the product companies to help you assess the commercial and advertising environment, et cetera, et cetera, then you're only operating in half your strength, and vice versa. If the company just says, well, here's your money, go do your thing, and they're not helping you develop and do things or finding out what really works better for you in the messaging that you that it puts around the endorsements you're doing, et cetera, et cetera, then you're only operating in half your strength. That makes sense. And so I really think that deals in p deals of all kinds have to be viewed as mu best you can as a partnership so that you're operating at full strength as much as possible. And and then comes back to that, which does mean then that hole is greater than some of the two individual partners.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:42

So I think that's what it's about. And when you can do that, especially in product endorsement world, when you can do that, then people see the product as you and you as the product, so to speak. That can be really powerful.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:55

It is powerful and it can enhance the brand in all kinds of ways and present it in different ways than the consumer is normally looking at it. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:04

Well, I think Michael Jordan, the company have have proven that.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:09

That's really what it comes down to.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:11

It's something sometimes pivots the company in a different direction. Nike was only shoes before Michael Jordan, and now all of a sudden it's it's a brand of a clothing line and and everything else, watches, you know, everything they're into. I mean, they're a conglomerate at this point.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:28

One of the earliest companies where I started noticing, wow, we as a as a culture are okay wearing logos. Oh, yeah. You know, and I know it probably had to exist before then, but I remember getting my first pair of Nikes in high school. And they they were a running shoe at the time. Yeah. And I just loved the solution all that. And then I started seeing them, so I'm just like, okay, I'll that's cool. I will wear that logo just because I thought it was cool. But it wasn't just the logo was cool, obviously it's what everything it was standing for, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:04

Well, and then you get into lifestyle brands that you know convey a certain lifestyle. And if your lifestyle aligns with that, that's that's a powerful thing. Apple, that's it, that's what Apple does. Apple is a lifestyle brand. It's I want a computer that I don't have to mess with, right? Now, I don't use Apple, but that's what it's all about.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:25

I do.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:26

Yeah, so there you go.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:28

So, Apple, if you want to send us a few.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:31

Yeah, go right ahead. I think on that note, audience, we will let you go. I hope you've enjoyed everything, and we hope you've got some points that you can take away from all of this. We appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:47

Music Row Dealmakers is a production of Shroom Disney and Associates.