From Ellie Goulding To Lindsay Lohan – How Celeb Endorsements Go Bad

What’s the one thing better than a diva? A diva who knows she’s a diva. The second she acknowledges her reputation for, say, ordering a dog chauffeur for her pets, she’s in on the joke and is thus, by definition, no longer a diva.

That’s the magic behind the new Mariah Carey advert for hostelworld.com. To save ruining the joke, all I’ll say is Mariah plays herself, being slowly won over by the pared-back chic of one of those minimal-shabby European hostels.

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Just as wonderful is Lindsay Lohan’s ongoing partnership with lawyer.com. In a short advert, she cracks jokes at her own expense, knowing exactly how the collaboration looks.

Giving Twitter a much-needed break from the tedium of waiting for the actual ‘BREAKING NEWS’ moment that’ll end up in Donald Trump being dragged out of the White House, Lindsay also tweeted her old pal offering him some legal help.

Lindsay’s got form for laughing through the sadness of her premature demise. Remember the eHarmony campaign she did in 2009 following her much-publicised break-up with Samantha Ronson? The wonder of a self-deprecating advert doesn’t run out, though; I don’t know about you, but I can’t even spell ‘reverse’ without thinking of Holly Vallance.

Similarly, the average Debrief reader will know Kevin Bacon far better from his EE adverts than his stint on Footloose, or even the six degrees of separation game that borrowed his name and his acting credentials and never made him a penny.

That’s because the Hollywood actor is the most prolific sarcastic advertiser out there. He’s cool with it, though - after an investment banker swindled him out of millions in 2008, he had to get his money back somehow.

‘I like doing silly send-ups, making fun of myself,’ he later admitted.

What Mariah, Kevin and Lindsay have in common – apart from being no more than six degrees of separation from one another – is that they’re all, for slightly different reasons, faded A-listers. And when it comes to shilling product outside of their day job, they hit a self-deprecating tone.

After all, when celebrities sell things other than their art – yes, Mariah Carey’s We Belong Together is a modern masterpiece – we might buy the product, but do we have to buy the sincerity, too?

Advertising is par for the course for most famous people. Regardless of whether they always set out to convert their social media clout into a source of income or accidentally made products (music) that the internet has devalued, they’ll be sponsored by someone, somewhere.

On rare occasions, the celebrity clearly loves the brand, other times, the paid-for social media post is exposed as just a copy and paste from a marketing assistant. In the main, though,the promotion is earnest and whole-hearted and all the worse for it. It’s what makes Mariah, Kevin and Lindsay’s work so special.

You know the fat mouse in Cinderella? The rodent stacks up so many cheddar blocks between his hands and his buck teeth that it all pops out and he’s left with even less cheese than if he’d just picked up a normal amount in the first place. Now, I’m not saying Ellie Goulding is that mouse – she works out far too much – what I’m saying is she’s juggling a lot of cheese right now.

While it’s not my job to tell others how to do their jobs, can I take a moment to alert the public of the Emmental-wedged-behind-a-radiator stench of the hypocrisy of Ellie’s plainly conflicting endorsements?

Earnestly swishing her hair – and shadowboxing, because sport can be prettified too! – to advertise Pantene’s hair products, Ellie demands viewers ‘train your hair strong’. In case that makes no sense, the other part of her Pantene ambassador role is to promote the brand via interviews.

Yet things don’t get much clearer. Ellie recently told The Metro that she was asked to make her much-vaunted pro-woman jibe toward the Grammys director at the Brits this year, explaining: ‘I was asked to say that. I didn’t want to say no, because I thought it was something that should have been said by someone.’

She went on, in that Pantene-approved interview, to insist: ‘You have to remind women of the power they have in them’.

What if these pro-woman, brand-sanctioned mantras make no sense because, like that scripted Brits comment, they’re just part of a #sponsored repertoire? What if that repertoire includes an ambassador/co-investor role at Core, the bottled water company founded by none other than Kesha nemesis and all-round creep Dr Luke? (Adam Levine, Katy Perry, Diplo and Demi Lovato have all sold it too, FYI).

Maybe Ellie’s made her peace with not caring about how it looks to be financially siding with the guy who effectively stopped a fellow pop star from making music for years. Even so, how does Ellie manage to balance pleading her Instagram followers to use less plastic while using that same platform to promote a premium bottled water product that has little-to-no scientific merit and is only available in a single-use plastic bottle?

This, at a time when even our Conservative government and the Daily Mail are advocating for the eradication of plastic use, seems more than a little fishy.

Maybe I’m pushing too hard. Maybe feminism, concern for the environment and a presumption about what fuels gym-goers – is it the strength in their own bodies, or is it their pH balanced, electrolyte-infused water costing $2.50 (£1.70) an ocean-destroying bottle? – are just brand messages she’s been paid to promote. If so, what happens when they’re incoherent (Pantene), conflicting (all of them) or just don’t pay enough anymore?

Are celebrity endorsements our beacon of light in this dark amoral world? Or could it be that it’s this very co-option of wokeness and authenticity that can lead to those values’ demise?

Full disclosure: Ellie’s a patron of a women’s homelessness charity the Marylebone Project and sings at charity events. And it’s not as if Kevin, Mariah and Lindsay are doing thorough woke-checks on their brand work before accepting the cheques. But if a multi-platinum-selling, Grammy-award-winning artist not yet past the peak of her career is wholeheartedly tying herself in ethical knots to make a dime, then it’s anyone’s game.

Perhaps celebrities need to remember, as they stack up their plate at the buffet cart of brand sponsorship deals, it’s better to just admit how cheesy the whole thing is.

Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.