The Hindu : International : The Oscars best goodie bag

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 28, 2005

International

International

The Oscars best goodie bag

By Dan Glaister

LOS ANGELES, FEB. 27. Forget the little gold statuette and all that guff about best supporting whatever. The big winners at the Oscar ceremony will walk away with cashmere pyjama bottoms, mink eyelashes and a coffee maker.

Presenters and performers at this year's Oscar ceremony will receive a ``gift basket'' — a bag of freebies — expected to have a value of around $150,000. It will include the latest ultra-thin mobile phone, a selection of free holidays, exclusive olive oil, a $1,500 voucher for dinner, and the coffee maker, which together with a toaster and kettle carries a price tag of $700.

This year there are even plans for an unofficial runners-up gift bag for all the nominees. Priced at around $38,000, it includes a voucher for a weekend in Las Vegas.

All this for some of the most privileged, mollycoddled and wealthy people on the planet. ``Really, it's a business transaction,'' Karen Wood, president of gift company Backstage Creations, said. ``It's not that the companies feel celebrities can't afford it. They are the trendsetters and can make the difference for a product.''

Awards season

The goodie bag, once just a staple of the fashion show, has become one of the most important elements of the awards season, from the Golden Globes to the Grammys to the Emmys. Around it has sprung up an industry of product placement, celebrity branding, fixers, gifters and grifters worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. he star at this month's Grammy ceremony was the $34,000 gift bag (actually more of a suitcase), which contained an iPod, a stereo system, clothing, holidays, a voucher for eye surgery and a bottle of Trump fragrance for men.

The pay-off for both sides is easy to understand. Celebrities get goodies, manufacturers get kudos by association and the opportunity to say that a star uses or at least owns their product. `I don't think there are many celebrities calling event organisers and saying, `What do you have in your gift bag?''' said Ms. Wood, one of the pioneers of the industry. ``Remember, they're not being paid for their time. What we're giving them is a fraction of what they would be paid, so it's a nice way of saying thank you. But it is also a business transaction. The celebrities are quite often being photographed and associated with the product but they're not being paid for an endorsement.''

Not only do companies vie to get their products included in the baskets, they pay for the privilege, though they also want guarantees that their products end up in the hands of the celebrities.

But the commercialisation of awards ceremonies starts before the great and the good even take their seats. While stars have long accepted the loan of clothes from designers for the ceremony, now agents, designers and representatives draw up exclusive contracts for stars to model their wares on the red carpet in exchange for tens and sometime hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Anecdotal evidence

While fashion and jewellery companies are loth to reveal whether they have paid a celebrity to wear their products, anecdotal evidence suggests the practice is widespread. Hours before last month's Golden Globes ceremony, Charlize Theron and Hilary Swank reportedly changed their choice of jewellery, dropping one brand they had been loaned for another that came with the promise of payment.

``I'm really sad about it,'' said Kelly Cutrone, founder of fashion PR company People's Revolution. ``It's the epitome of the carnivorous, capitalistic thing. It's big money.''

For the Oscars, she said, getting a celebrity to indirectly endorse your product can extend to the contents of the handbag. ``If you're going to spend $100,000 to get Natalie Portman to answer your brand of cellphone on the red carpet — saying `Hi, mom' when it's actually her publicist or your publicist calling — then you have a good deal. If a picture of her in your dress gets on the cover of magazines and it's cost you $200,000, then that isn't a lot of money considering a full page advertisement in Vogue is $60,000.''

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