A New Form of Public Relations? Perhaps.

Being a rather large fan of celebrity culture, I couldn’t resist posting about this particular topic. Perhaps public relations has gotten the best of me (thankfully), but this definitely got me thinking.

I am an avid reader of the celebrity blog, Oh No They Didn’t!, a LiveJournal community specializing in everything and anything to do with celebrities on list A through Z.

Today while enthusiastically reading the day’s dirt and gossip, I came across two posts dealing with the same topic (to a certain degree). The first post titled “Posh goes nude for cancer prevention T-shirt”, while the other is titled, “David Beckham with Posh Nude”.

There is no doubt in my mind that David Beckham doesn’t love his wife, and there is no doubt in my mind that these shirts don’t and won’t cause a second glance while being worn in public. But here is my question: what is actually being promoted, the T-shirt, the cause, the designer, the celebrity on the T-shirt, or the celebrity wearing the T-shirt?

The T-shirt campaign has been created by fashion designer Marc Jacobs and photographer Brian Bowen, who in the past, have put out other T-shirts like the Victoria Beckham shirt to help warn and educate the public about skin cancer. The main focus of each shirt is that the celebrity to grace the front is naked with only the words, “Protect The Skin You’re In” or ”Save Your Ass”,  strategically covering their most intimate areas. (Other celebrities who have taken part of Jacob’s campaign include, Heidi Klum, Rufus Wainwright, Winona Ryder and Jacobs himself among many others). The $20 T-shirts can be bought exclusively at Marc Jacobs flagship stores. The proceeds of the shirts and photographs will be donated to the NYU Interdisciplinary School of Medicine Melanoma Cooperative Group.

I think that Marc Jacobs has the right idea. What better way to help a good cause than to use celebrity spokespeople. Right? Judging by the comments on the ONTD! posts, the more than three pages of comments for each post are more concerned with how attractive Victoria and David Beckham are and how those commenting desire her T-shirt, rather than saying that he or she would like to purchase the T-shirt to support the hospital and the prevention of skin cancer.  

Is this a good form of publicity? Is this the kind of attention the NYU School of Medicine was looking for? I would love to look at a press release for this campaign or even have been present at the media conference just to see how things were worded and carried out. Or better yet, would a media release and conference even be needed for this campaign? Marc Jacobs and the celebrities he used for the Protect the Skin You’re In campaign are very well known, not only in the fashion world, but in mainstream/popular culture. Perhaps this is the newest form of public relations.

 

Three T-shirt pictures from 7 Confessions