Cameo's CEO on how he plans to disrupt Hollywood
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Birthdays, weddings, anniversary milestones, bar mitvahs, high school graduation. Imagine Lebron wishing your kid happy birthday. And all You had to do was pay $5000 and send a script for a 15-second video.
What kind of character can he be to make a PSA?
The last one I saw, my friend said, "please wish my husband a happy father's day". She sent it to the actor who plays his favorite character on his favorite show.
The actor turned that prompt into a 30 second in-character monologue that was just brilliant. It was totally worth the cost just for the entertainment value to both him and the rest of us (she shared it on Facebook for us).
Why is it impressive, to a large proportion of the population, rather than just sad and wasteful (as it appears to me).
I mean I get that it's an [fake] indicator of social associations that could have high value, it's more why is that impressive as opposed to people actually acquiring value. Like a "demonstration of ability to pay" but with social credit.
This seems like the social equivalent of when a brand becomes well known for having high-quality goods -- they then put their logo on lots-and-lots of super-low quality goods that people then buy to pretend they have high-quality goods.
It all makes no sense to me.
Is it something about audio-visual media that we can't use it for entertainment without our brains inadvertently treating characters as part of our social circles; then we fail at recognising actors as not being their characters; ...?
Is everyone insane or is there something I'm missing.
I think convincing yourself a picture of a fridge full of food is as good as an actual fridge full of food is objectively a mental problem - and that this is somewhat an analogue of that.
To use your analogy, this is a 10-cm tall miniature model Cray X-MP supercomputer that has blinking LEDs thats powered by 2 AA batteries and sits on your desk that a parent/sibling/partner/close-friend got for you because it's your favorite supercomputer. It's a bit nerdy to have as a desk ornament and some may judge you unfairly on, but if I went off on a rant about how that's a stupid model, it probably can't do any math, and that you're insane for having it... that rant would reflect more poorly on me than on the owner of the model.
(If you know somebody that has that level of problems with a picture of a fridge, please get them help.)
Touché :)
But, presumably you're not going "hey have you seen my supercomputer" and showing people a picture of your blinken-light toy on social media?
The relationship people assume to have with celebrities, actors in particular, seems different to that they share with mementos/trinkets. At no point does the person think the Cray is the real thing, but people do seem to think - at some level - they know an actor because they've seen the character the actor helps to construct on screen.
Everyone (adult) knows a person paid for the video with the Happy Birthday greeting, but still at some level there's social credit, which suggests we choose to accept the lie.
I like your analogy, and will reflect on it some more (thanks!), but at the moment it still feels like there are fundamental differences between these situations (and that's where the interest lies).
It all makes people happy, and I'm definitely for that, but it's a lie built on a lie - living vicariously through celebrities, and constructing lies in which we choose to rest our notions of self-worth .. I don't know about that.
Now, excuse me whilst I go tell my children that Jedberg responded to me online ;o)
It's the same with a celebrity. You physically feel good when you see that celebrity because in the past you felt good when you saw that celebrity.
in a sense, much of the world is insane because they pursue narcissistic types of social status.
but I also do think this is just fun - putting aside the idea of getting a cameo as a status symbol, it's just fun to get a message from some public figure whose work you admire.
Our consciousness is freeing itself from this situation via computers. The transition seems weird but digital systems are just implementing tricks we've been playing on each other for millenia.
It's just weird when you see Black Mirror type of stuff.
You're missing something. They're not insane, and neither are you.
Imagine you've loved a certain musician your entire life and you could pay them to sing a song with your name in it.
Or, imagine you and your spouse saw a certain movie on your first date, and you think it would be funny and thoughtful to have one of the actors (or characters) from that movie wish your spouse a happy birthday.
Or, imagine you have followed a sports team for years and have the opportunity to talk to one of the stars.
There is nothing strange or new about celebrity. Touching fame is interesting and exciting to people. There are celebrities who are genuinely meaningful to people -- maybe their work helped get through a tough time.
You don't have to understand it, but it's not hurting anyone, so there's nothing insane about it. It's just a form of personalized entertainment.
Who ever would have thought you'd say "I'll pay you $500 to wish me a happy birthday"
"I'm paying you $500 to sing Happy Birthday to a 12 year old child who has the musical appreciation of a deaf dog."
It's the difference between being asked to design and implement a system, and hammering nails into planks. One respects agency, one doesn't.
Meanwhile Cameos can be incredibly meaningful for the people who receive them. They provide an intimate human connection to people they might otherwise have no chance of ever seeing in person. They also give the person fulfilling the Cameo complete control. They can be filled wherever or on whatever schedule they want. I would bet a lot of entertainers on Cameo are perfectly happy with the setup.
I don't think it is right to assume a feeling of morally superiority over the people who participate on either side of this service.
But that's just it... It's not intimate. It just tricks us into feeling that way, but there is zero reciprocity.
I'm with the others in that Cameo seems like a fine platform for debasing and exploiting b-listers and past-their-primes. It's the 2020 version of game show or infomercial cameos.
There will always be a market's worth of people with enough vanity to think that the kind of service Cameo provides is morally sound. They are probably the same folks that keep the National Enquirer and Daily Mail afloat.
Let's not kid ourselves with fancy imagery about how good it makes someone feel or how beautiful it is that it satiates someone's desires. "I'm just building what people want" is the classic amoralist's cop-out.
These video messages or both personal and private therefore they are intimate.
I don't know why disinterest in using this service is almost always coupled with condescension to the people who do use it. It isn't doing any harm to anyone. There are no negative externalities. Just let the people who are interested in the service have their fun.
But what I find sad is the commentary it makes on the state of humanity's collective emotional development if commercial celebrity endorsements and falsely personal birthday messages have so much more sway over our hearts than messages from people who are actually in our lives. Separating fiction from reality is one of the early lessons we teach children. It's not the mere existence of this service that is the problem, it's that it belies a deeper issue with culture in general.
This is what you're failing to understand. The celebrity messages don't have more sway over our hearts than messages from people who are actually in our lives. You don't pay for messages from people who are in your life because you already get a lot of contact with them for free.
But if you think paying $50 for a message from a celebrity is too much, that it overvalues celebrities relative to people who you actually have a meaningful connection with... just remember that people pay tens of thousands of dollars for (scam!) messages from people who were once important to them personally, and are now dead. The demonstrated value of the personal relationship is near-infinitely large compared to the celebrity pseudo-relationship.
If your son likes basketball, and you commission a painting of him playing against Lebron James, that lets him imagine himself being a part of that world. If you commission a birthday message to him from Lebron James... that lets him imagine himself being a part of that world. What's the difference?
Yes, this. What we laud and prioritise often seems so hollow.
Many artists and celebrities actually get a great deal of joy and fulfillment out of making individual people feel special through a personalized experience. Realistically they just cannot do it for everyone. Using a service like this, they now can do it and you can compensate them for their time, so everyone wins.
If an artist feel like they're being disrespected or having to compromise on their artistry, they can always just reject the request, simple as that.
I have no problem with an artist wanting to make a fan feel good. I do have a problem with a society that promotes celebrity for celebrity sake, and I believe as an extension of that, the true craft/gift of the artist/performer/etc is not what is being appreciated.
I suspect that we will arrive at a point where the value drops to near $0 when anyone can just go and guy a greeting/message from a celebrity.
I pay for several musicians on Patreon and even $5/month seems excessive to me, all the while I think this is just not a living for the musician when I see their subscriber count. And I'm probably one of the few that pays for this. It's a bad model even though I wish it wasn't.
But, there are a few people who will pay $500 to that musician for a personalized message.
The math is better with the latter. You just need a few people to do that to make a living. There is just not a way, despite Kevin Kelly's great article about 1000 fans, to make it work.
I bet most artists would argue that money in their bank account is worth much more than "respecting agency." Musicians have to be feeling a lot of pain right now with live venues shuttered indefinitely.
But that's kinda a base thing to build a cultured society around. Can't we do better than that yet, what progress has humanity made?
Agency is what artists need to perform their cultural function in society. Sure there are demands for music and images that don't care for the cultural role of art; but most artists seem to want at least some agency, though the need to do bread-and-butter work (baseline earnings) is something that hits early in any artists career.
However, I feel it's very worthwhile for me:
+ Most of them have some kind of discord or community where you can interact both with them and other fans, and contributing gets you special status or a special channel
+ Usually you get a few extra things that don't get released to other people, whether it's sitting in on a practice session or some media that didn't make the final cut
Admittedly, I am still ultimately paying for some kind of attention, though hopefully it's agency respecting attention and not treating an artist like a vending machine.
And yeah a bottom line matters, everyone has to eat to survive and pay their bills, but as long as you can do that most people will quickly choose a happier life over a more profitable one. Sure, you can do worse work and make more money (or the same money faster) but I don't think that's the tradeoff the majority want to make.
One of the personalities I contribute to has changed their thing a few times. They abandoned ASMR and switched to just videogame streaming, and they were pretty honest that it was going to be a part time thing because it wasn't paying the bills fully. Yet, they still kept their community, they still have the same fan base. and at this rate I've probably followed them for 3 or 4 years. They've gained the freedom to do the things they find interesting, instead of the things that make the community happy.
What do you propose as an alternative?
These are mostly people who aren't getting work anymore. What dignified career do you imagine for them, when there are a million younger, cheaper entertainers to take their place?
It would be great if they all had college degrees and the ability to be hired in a stable white-collar job, but that's rarely an option after a life in entertainment.
Just in case anyone wondered why these celebs would "debase themselves" thus.
The specific service I used sends the money to the charity of the celebrity's choice (which they display before you buy) and no one will see the message except my family. I think the wedding example is just a little more public than how people normally use these things. This is the first time I've heard of them charging four figures but no surprise.
Celebrity culture just makes no sense to me. They were in a movie and are now rich so now I have to care what they have for breakfast? It just seems so backward.
Might be kind of like dopamine and variable reward cycles where technology is able to hijack a response that came to into existence in a very different environment.
So far most of what I’ve read indicates that parasocial relationships are viewed as benign or positive by mental health specialists because they can genuinely supply some of the social needs people have and contribute to positive personal resiliency, stuff like that.
Very interesting and weird and probably only more relevant as time goes on.
Media and Celebrity in general hack this system for profit.
The root cause of all pathological behavior is your brain.
To survive in social circles, we tend to mask such negative associations -- Because sometimes it does have genuine negative consequence, regardless if it is fair or logical. It comes from the same idea that certain topics aren't appropriate to discuss on first dates, with your extended family, with children present, etc.
So to guarantee social survivability, in this mindset, you must offer something that creates a positive association.
Lying is a risky way to create that association. It's social cheating, in a way. If you're convincing enough, your lie might as well be real, as far as your relationships are concerned, and you gain the social benefits of that; Intrigue, mystery, perceived power. But if you get caught, you are labelled as someone who will lie for these benefits.
Many of us can look at these consequences and say it isn't worth it -- Some of us look at those same consequences and say it is worth it. This doesn't make sense to you because you perceive the consequences as the former, not the latter.
But that strikes me as potentially being the death of celebrity actors. If an actor's contribution can be downplayed in that way, then the actor's person becomes relatively unimportant. More akin to a puppeteer, still a vital role but the puppet takes the limelight somewhat.
I'm not sure Hollywood will choose this direction, it goes against their financial benefit I feel.
For not-all-that-much money, I was able to get James and Oliver Phelps (the actors who played the twins in all 8 movies) to each record a separate video message (about 1 minute each) wishing her congratulations by name and wishing her and her baby well.
I made the two Cameo requests on a Friday night, and had both videos by Sunday morning. Both were warm, friendly, and seemed to be genuine and happy for her (obviously to the extent that they know her: "name is X, first-time mom, huge fan".
She was absolutely over-the-moon happy about receiving them.
Don't underestimate the power of nostalgia on humans, which triggers the release of endorphins which targets the pleasure center of the brain.
There are so many dimensions a service like this can be used in powerful (and postive) ways.
My father turns 73 next week how great would it be for me to send him a personalized recording of song from a famous Tamil musician? That would be $50 better spent than the $50 wireless food thermometer I got him instead.
Or for my soon to be 5 year old son, have one of the voice actors from his favorite tv shows, record him a personalized birthday greeting? Better than $50 worth of toys that he will forget about in a years time.
I can't quite put my finger on why, but this suggests an alternate form of IPO is being reinvented, where the currency of issue was branded social capital, and actual cash is a kind of leveraged instrument instead of the primary medium of exchange.
I also feel like this might be a well known pattern in behavioral economics and I just don't know the proper name for it.
Difference in taste based on class-related norms & values, mostly, is what I'd say you're missing. Can make a thing really impressive/desirable to one group of people, and simultaneously gauche/disgusting to another.
Different people have different tastes. Relax and let them enjoy what they enjoy.
I really don't think the logical leap between "people like [person]" to "people think it's cute to pay a couple hundred bucks to get a unique message for someone from them."
And then if you want to get into "but some people spend thousands..." - then we're still just criticizing the extremes of the market, and not so much the concept. Like making a show of freaking out about the fact that some people pay $LOTS for a bottle of alcohol, vs the person who claims they can't understand why others would enjoy alcohol in the first place.
I don't personally think the commentor was "making a show" with his question. In fact, if expressing opinions on this topic counts as "status seeking", wouldn't your defense of this business model count as the exact same thing you're decrying?
By my understanding of what you've just said, (paraphrasing here) "I can't imagine spending money on this" seeks to establish a status, but "I do not have a problem with people spending money on this" does not seek to establish a status. The way I read it, if "status-seeking" is at issue, the main difference is between the status you attempt to seek vs the status you perceive the other person to be seeking, not an indictment of the practice as a whole.
Edit: typo
I'm criticizing the very concept of paying something of material value for a social connection, something that society looks down upon in general. When the matter is important, we call it "corruption" and "bribery". When it's not, we call it "sucking up", "selling out", "prostitution/escort-service", "fake".
The point is, paying for a social connection makes it fake. And no one likes a faker.
I used to dislike it (and again don't care for it today), but as a youngster, when I expressed disinterest due to its phoniness, a friend pointed out that... "so what?"
Yeah, it's fake. So are movies and TV shows. It's just for fun, and it's not a big deal. People suspend disbelief all the time. When you choose not to, the ones who do always look pretty silly.
Your bottle of alcohol analogy is not good. It's more like you pay for a bottle of water with a Grey Goose label freshly stuck on and everyone pretends it's alcohol and pretends you can't see the glue on the label is fresh. People understand getting drunk.
Some people buy cheap stuff with expensive labels. I don't find that healthy for society.
If you're taking out loans and piling up credit card debt so the Soup Nazi can wish you a scripted "happy birthday", you may have a problem.
It reminds me of the episode of Community where Abed kept compulsively hiring celebrity look-a-likes for his own entertainment.
EDIT: After browsing the site, I totally see the appeal. Most of the actors cost around $100 or less and there are pages full of familiar faces, including some personal favorites. There is a 50% chance I end up buying this as a gift for someone!
People will even get a picture with a celebrity lookalike, which is like a third-level lie. Then other people are a little "impressed" (or that might be the fourth level of lie).
It's all v. strange to me.
So somebody I think is a good actor, like Keanu Reeves says "Happy Birthday, Narrator!" in a video. All I can think of is "How much did he get paid or that?" A normal person sees Keanu and they recall how cool he was in The Matrix, the emotions of admiration overwhelm them and "Happy Birthday, Normal Person!" overwhelms them with joy. Is this what happens, Normal People?
I guess we just have a different psychological makeup than most people. It's probably that emotions don't easily transfer from other people, especially in recorded media. It's probably evolutionary to prevent a few mutants from going along with the crowd.
Instead of focusing on why you think it is ridiculous, maybe try to think of why it wouldn't be. You might understand others better.
Our monkey brains are hardwired to think that it's vitally important to keep track of what the high status monkeys are doing?
Reminded me of a passage in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
"They became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears of affliction had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many felt that they had been the victims of some new and showy gypsy business and they decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
This makes sense if the service is relatively unknown on small. But if Lebron is mass-producing birthday wishes, and if everybody knows he's mass-producing birthday wishes, then wouldn't the coolness actor diminish somewhat?
Think of it this way. To rake in 4 million, Lebron would need to do two thousand (!) Cameo videos, each costing $2,000.
Or he could just sign on the dotted line for some hotel in Abu Dhabi that his agent brings him, show up at a shoot, agree to let them use his name and likeness, maybe show up at an event, and make that much in a week.
And he can lock down the terms of the contract - he doesn't have to worry about 1 of those 2000 customers trying to get get $4,000,000 of endorsement value out of it.
Past a certain point, this becomes a dumb deal. If you're A list there's not enough money, and too much reputational risk.
Or does it? The kid wouldn't know Lebron had no idea he existed until he got the cash and the script, and would not remember the day after. An adult should.
"We paid this guy to wish you a happy birthday". How awesome is that.
Looking through the list and seeing that I can get the To Catch A Predator guy to say almost whatever I want for $50, Diamond Dallas Page for $85, The Mooch for $50... it's unbelievable.
The service practically markets itself too, as the more people that share the videos they buy, the more it'll spread. No idea what the end game is here, but it feels like something right out of a dystopian sci-fi novel.
Have a few hours on a morning/evening spare? Easily a few $1000
Might make a lot more sense for the sort of artists that get a lot more TV/radio/YouTube exposure than actual income, but even some of them might wonder if they're devaluing their ability to charge much bigger bucks for endorsements and ads
For better or worse, society forces celebrities to live in this superposition of untouchable and relatable. Cameo kills the untouchable part because it's putting a price on their time - which to the layperson like me feels invaluable - even if we know that there is certainly a dollar figure to it.
$30 per second [0] is unreal money for anyone - If the numbers are right Hasselhof has made $11,000 for doing 51, 30 second videos. So it's certainly a benefit from each side, obviously! At that rate he could work ~30 minutes per day during the work week (2 videos per day, a couple of tries, login and upload) take a full month off a year and still make $140k.
I think for me it comes down to the realization: "I can't believe these huge celebrities have time for this" - but it could just be an artifact of quarantine.
I think most people want to continue to be able to pretend that their favorite celeb doesn't have bad breath in the morning, binge watches bad TV or leaves their dirty towel on the floor in the bathroom.
It certainly does.
I would not classify A-list actors and actresses as “gig economy workers” by any stretch of current understanding of the meaning of that phrase.
Maybe “Talent” (タレント) in the Japanese meaning of the word, maybe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarento
> Tarento (タレント) are celebrities who regularly appear in mass media in Japan, especially television. The term is a gairaigo word – a foreign language loanword – derived from the English word talent (Japanese does not distinguish /l/ and /r/ sounds), and has a connotation of "famous for being famous".
I didn't know if I should scream at him or jump out the window on the void.
Then again alot of smaller celebs will not have as much media training.
Now some do it for charity, which I think if they had started as a nonprofit and took that angle it could end up huge. Think fo the kind of legacy it could become, though I guess they wouldn't become millionaires going that route...
One shout out to a Silicon Valley alum, whose proceeds go to charity: https://www.cameo.com/suzannecryer
Actors are used to taking whatever gig they can. I suspect as film production picks up you'll see fewer of those really well known celebrities on there.
On the other hand, it takes all of a minute to record one of these. You could literally do it in your trailer on set while you wait for them to set up cameras.
Many hours go into acting for each minute that end up on screen.
The whole thing just seems really cheap (in a non-monetary) and seedy.
I guess it's just the final nail in the coffin of old Hollywood stardom, where stars may as well have been on another plane of existence.
Even established actors are in a fairly fragile position with delays, weird hollywood accounting, and the inherent "gig" nature of their work playing havoc with their salaries.
I can imagine Cameo seems like incredibly easy and steady money (even pre Covid) comparatively.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/29/from-the-trump...
Rod Blagojevich (former governor of Illinois) says that Cameo is his main source of income now.
doesn't it? as far as i can tell, the only distinction between "gig economy" and contract workers is that contract workers actually get paid at rates that make it sustainable and that being between contracts isn't a catastrophe, whereas jobs classed as "gig economy" pay low enough to keep the workers desperate for the next gig.
Contractors also have more flexibility to develop a relationship with the “client” for better opportunties down the road without the middleman/platform interfering.
That's quite different to say a session musician getting the call can you by at Abby Road tomorrow at 9 "big name star" needs a guitar player.
Gig in the original sense originally a musicians term for a Job
Whether it's throwing huge cash at A list celebrities, or jacking up the rake on their existing celebrities, or deciding they're a "platform" it's going to be very difficult for their management not to explode their own company through greed.
That’s...a lot. The App Store strategy I guess.
I suspect this is one of those startups/services that the HN crowd just doesn't get–but the average person probably thinks its pretty cool.
Celebrities bring their distribution (followers) and Cameo gives them the toolS to monetize. They have teased upcoming features like merchandise which is not a surprise since many artists make a lot of money from merch nowadays.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. A random Instagram celebrity is probably not great at finding branded deals or creating a e-commerce to sell merchandise. They probably don’t have the skill time and/or talent.
Cameo is also likely a challenger to something like Patreon since they have created a transactional 1-1 model that can be easily converted or repurposed into a Patreon type of model.
Last but not least, Cameo is getting a massive influx of data about the value of influencers. They have the opportunity to help people monetize what Instagram or YouTube can’t currently monetize which are mentions or sponsored content.
This also makes them an interesting acquisition target just on the merits of the relationship that they are trying to build with those influencers.
Soon a client would use a Cameo to humiliate and destroy the credibility of the performer. Word will get around the celebs and it'll be seen as a trash market.
Is some down-on-their-luck celebrity wishing you Happy Birthday in order to keep the debtors at bay really that special?