American Celebrity Endorsement!

Our friend Pete's publishing company recently put out a book, China: Portrait of a People.  It's a great book and was selling well ... but then Donald Trump named it as one of his favourite books and, overnight, sales have gone through the roof.

What on earth is the thinking behind this?  Is it "Donald likes it so it must be good?" which means a lot of people must believe that property developers make the best literary critics!  Or "If this is what Donald is reading and Donald is rich, so, ipso facto, if I read this I will become rich like Donald?"  

I mean, like, Susan Boyle, right?  Ashton Kutcher saw her on youtube and tweeted the link, and immediately she's An Overnight Sensation!  I think that clip is now up to about 90 million hits.  Astonishing stuff.

And do you recall, many years ago, when Fiji Water was this tiny little Fiji company, from just outside the "blink and you'll miss it" town of Raki Raki, that was bottling the water that gushed out from deep within the volcanic scoria in the mountains?  It was fabulous water, sure, but it made us all giggle. I mean "Why would anyone buy Fiji Water?" we were all asking.

But then Whoopi Goldberg carried a bottle onto The Letterman Show and, overnight, Fiji Water became MASSIVE!  Oh boy, didn't we all wish we'd brought shares!

Honestly, you cannot BUY this sort of publicity!  And the nicest part is that they didn't!  Fiji Water didn't pay Whoopi, in fact they didn't even ask Whoopi to do it; they didn't even know Whoopi!

I doubt Ashton knew Susan Boyle.

And Pete didn't know Donald either and definitely neither asked nor paid for the endorsement. Donald just did it!  And aren't we so grateful to him for it!

Look, I hate saying this, but there is nothing like American celebrity endorsement to give you bang for your buck!

I know everyone has known this for a very long time - in fact, it's a multi-billion dollar industry - but I never realised quite so strongly before how well it all works.

In fact, I really have no idea how the world works.  And certainly no idea how other peoples' minds work.  Is it a deep insecurity and mistrust about our own taste and values?

Probably!  Once, many years ago, I was chatting with an interior designer who told me he was always astonished at how much reassurance people needed about making choices; that people needed to be given permission to like something; that people didn't know they were allowed to like something unless it was given a stamp of approval by someone they admired.

Say what?

But I guess this is the key I've been missing; that I've never really understood that there are people out there who don't know something is good unless they're told.

But the thing is ... "China: Portrait of a People" is a beautiful book, Susan Boyle is a beautiful singer and that youtube clip that got those 90 million plus hits is the most heartwarming narrative imaginable, and Fiji Water is indeed a fabulously pure product ... but they would still be so without American Celebrity Endorsement ... only no one would know about them.

And, for an opinionated little git like me, that is just SAD!