The Brandcast

It’s a creepy trend, to say the least: dead celebrities reappearing in television and print commercials to endorse a product that emerged long after their demise. With the sophistication of modern graphics capabilites, it was just a matter of time (no pun intended) until someone tried to buy rights to the likenesses of our favorite deceased icons.

Which makes me wonder: should anyone have ‘rights’ to a likeness?

Awhile back, we were all treated to a clip of Fred Astaire dancing his heart out to a favorite tune with a Dirt Devil vaccuum, inserted via technical magic over the lithe frame of a female tapping companion. This spot, although somewhat erie, was rather light hearted: it depicted Astaire in his prime, and easily communicated the mobiliy of the vaccuum. ‘Nuff said. 

Most people will remember last summer, when the Gap used existing footage of Audrey Heburn wearing a classic ’skinney’ black pant that they revived and hoped would make a comback a la bell bottom jeans (they didn’t). The footage was edited in a style similar to early ipod commercials… but besides rotating a few images and cutting and splicing some clips together, Heburn actually did say and perform all of the motions seen in the ad.

Mr. Redenbacher was not so lucky.

Crispin, Porter + Bogusky have tapped a network of actors, voice over specialists and a talented team of digital artists to create a walking, talking ‘puppet’ version of Orville Redenbacher, who passed away no less than TWELVE years ago. In their first spot, Redenbacher can be seen wearing an MP3 player, saying “Can you believe this little baby holds 30 gigs?” Using a basic body actor, the design team later recreated the facial features and inserted the heavily produced vioce, in order to create the most life like dead guy of all time.

It freaks me out.

I understand that brands, especially classic and innovative brands, hold an enormous amount of equity. But when brands are closely tied to real people, the ethics line gets blurry. The people become the brand, when, like Orville, they only sold their product under their own names in the first place in order to give it a proprietary look.

And while Orville’s grandson thinks this latest effort is exciting, we don’t have any way to know what Orville would think about his marketing resurection. After all, the brand is now owned by ConAgra foods. I’m not sure if any of the sales or profits goes back to supporting this early entrepreure’s real family.

[ On a side note, if it’s possible to recreate somebody’s personal image so thoroughly, what does that do to video evidence? If someone wanted to frame another person for a crime, and they had enough money, couldn’t they just create a digital puppet robbing a bank or fleeing a murder? Creepy!]

In my opinion, this is too bizarre. I’m not sure that I want to buy products endorsed by dead people… the whole endorsement sort of loses its own purpose. 

W will never know what any of these dead spokespeople would think about their likenesses being traded as a commodity or being used to sell products. Talk about identity theft!