Profit from De Love of Delebs

Forty years after the death of Elvis Presley, more than 5,000 Elvis-related products were being sold at retail and more than 600,000 tickets were being sold each year to tour Graceland Mansion, Elvis’s best-known home.
     Maybe no one else will ever achieve the postmortem brand success of Elvis Presley, who remains larger than life even after death. But Elvis does not roam alone. Delebs—dead celebrities—are such an important marketing aid that Forbes regularly publishes a list of the top earners. Researchers at Howard University, after pointing out how the total annual licensing and royalty revenues for Delebs is about $2.25 billion, explored why we hold such dear love for these departed whose marketing prowess refuses to die.
     One driver is contagious magic—the belief, often subconscious, that an item associated with a specific person will transfer some of the qualities of that person to anyone who grasps the object. But the key driver is not contagious magic. It is nostalgia. And then maximum effectiveness for selling requires the power of imagination. We want to pretend the celebrity is still with us.
     Technologies like virtual reality, digital morphing, and text-to-speech reduce dependence on live impersonators. But Deleb marketing researchers have also seen how potential customers get creeped out if the imitation is not just right. That is, when we can’t tell whether a representation of a human is real or not, we experience revulsion. If it looks exactly like the dead celebrity, we’re attracted to it. If it looks similar, but we can easily tell it’s not real, we’re amused. However, when the resemblance is very close, but we’re not sure if it’s real, a primeval fear flares up. That dip in the positive emotion is why scientists call it the uncanny valley.
     Other research touches on the appeal of Delebs coming from a fascination with death itself. Consider all the time consumers have been spending thinking about zombies and vampires.
     If your tastes are not tuned quite enough in that direction or your business pockets deep enough to license the rights to have a Deleb endorse your store, you can still join the march by carrying brands that use Delebs in marketing. There’s reason to think such endorsements are a little more effective at times of the year associated with the ghoulish (Halloween), rebirth (New Year’s Day, Easter), and death itself (Memorial Day, Day of the Dead).

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