Celebrity Endorsements Are Dead, And Kamala Proved It

There was a mildly successful commercial back in 2016 where LeBron James was promoting Sprite. He keeps looking into the camera and saying, “I won’t tell you to drink a Sprite.” It’s supposed to be engaging and funny because you see, normally, when celebrities appear in advertisements, they tell you to buy a product. But here you had LeBron James, appearing in a Sprite commercial, refusing to endorse Sprite. It really subverted everyone’s expectations.

Reverse psychology like this has become popular in advertising because the typical direct, straightforward celebrity endorsement doesn’t have the same impact that it once did. This is also why the idea of “reverse endorsements” has become a thing. This is when a company puts a celebrity on its board of directors to make them seem really invested in the company, when it’s basically a no-show job. Derek Jeter had a “reverse endorsement” deal with a company called RevolutionWear, that makes some kind of high-tech underwear. It all fell apart and ended in lawsuits when the company collapsed, because the world of high-tech underwear is apparently extremely cutthroat.

But the point is, this underwear company thought they’d get more value out of presenting Derek Jeter as a “director” of the company, rather than just going with the normal, direct celebrity endorsement. There are about a million other examples of this, because the memo has gone out. In the entertainment world, traditional celebrity endorsements aren’t as interesting as they used to be. If you want a celebrity endorsement to have an impact, you have to get creative with it. And even then, most people probably still won’t care.

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The only people who haven’t gotten this memo are in politics. Political endorsements by celebrities are all the same. They’re unconvincing, uncreative and patronizing. And yet for some reason, pundits and political strategists on the Left genuinely believe that these endorsements are game-changing. They think that, once the normal person hears one of these endorsements, they undergo a form of mind control where they’re hopeless to resist.

I’ve shared part of this clip before, but it’s worth seeing again because it may be the single best reaction video from MSNBC after they realized Trump was winning. This is Joy Reid trying to process how Donald Trump could have possibly defeated Kamala Harris. After all, Kamala Harris ran a “flawless campaign.” And as evidence of the proposition that Kamala Harris ran a “flawless campaign,” Joy Reid cites all of Kamala Harris’ celebrity endorsements. This is footage that belongs in a museum for future historians studying the downfall of the Democrat Party and the corporate press. Watch:

If you still haven't figured out the problem with the legacy media, this comment by Joy Ann Reid should set you straight. Reid says Harris ran a "flawless" campaign to the point that Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and "even" Queen Latifah who never endorses anyone, endorsed Harris. pic.twitter.com/N8IwIplhKn

— Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) November 6, 2024

There’s a lot to consider in that clip, but really at this point you can’t be mad at Joy Reid. Everyone knows she is what we may call, politely, a very special person. What’s kind of remarkable is that everyone else on the panel — people who are extremely partisan, but not clinically insane — just nod along when she makes this claim. She’s suggesting that a political endorsement by Queen Latifah is so rare and enigmatic that, if a candidate should ever obtain it, then that candidate must be blessed by the gods. That candidate would be destined to win. I guess that makes sense. She is royalty after all.

But that was a moment that should’ve been a bridge too far, even for an MSNBC panel. For one thing, the premise isn’t even true. We’re talking about the same “Queen Latifah” who performed at Obama’s inauguration after telling people to vote for hope and change. And then she did a skit with Kamala Harris just a few months ago at the “NAACP Image Awards,” telling everyone to register to vote because otherwise Trump will win. Yes, this is the Queen Latifah that supposedly never gets involved in politics.

But on top of that, even if we pretend Queen Latifah never gets involved in politics, the idea that her endorsement will sway anyone — or that it’s a sign of a “flawless campaign” — suggests that Democrats are suffering from a level of delusion that is truly unprecedented. And that becomes even more apparent when you look at this vaunted Queen Latifah endorsement they’re talking about.

She just sits in a chair and, instead of talking about makeup, she reads off some talking points from Kamala Harris’ campaign. Watch:

Today, so much is on the line.

On one hand, we have HIM, a felon, a comfortable liar, an impeached president, a misogynist, and a non-leader who doesn’t care about anyone, but the top 1%…which excludes over 300M Americans.

And on the other hand, we have HER, Kamala Harris, a… pic.twitter.com/6EhUwaa2z9

— Queen Latifah (@IAMQUEENLATIFAH) November 5, 2024

One of the many amusing things about this video is the comments section, and how it differs depending on the platform. If you go on Instagram, a lot of the comments are pretty supportive. There’s people posting heart emojis everywhere, saying it’s a powerful message, and how Queen Latifah is their hero and so on. One person wrote, “I’m going to always love you Queen Latifah ! Never change.”

And then you go on X, and it’s a completely different scenario. It’s like stepping out of a country club and into the Vietnam War. The top comment is, “Did you go to the Diddy parties too?” The next one is, “How much were you paid?” And then there’s, “Another weak man for Kamala.” It’s just brutal, if also hilarious, and completely justified.

It’s yet another reason the Left wants to destroy X. People on X generally reflect what’s going on in the country. But if you spend all your time on Reddit or Instagram, you might end up like Joy Reid. You might have thought Kamala Harris had this in the bag. After all, Queen Latifah’s on her side, and everyone else on the platform loves it. And then you go on X and everyone’s wondering how much she was paid.

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying Queen Latifah was paid for this endorsement. I would never suggest such a thing. But in general, it is worth noting that the Kamala Harris campaign raised something like $1 billion dollars, and they ended the campaign in debt by $20 million dollars. They had $120 million in the bank just a month ago, and now they’re in the red. And a lot of that money probably did go to some celebrity performances, like the one Megan Thee Stallion did at a Kamala rally. But in any event, it’s clear that this was a horribly managed campaign in every respect. So it’s not exactly unthinkable that these people truly thought an endorsement by Queen Latifah would help them win. They really seemed to think that people wanted to see stuff like this.

That would explain why they courted the endorsement of Cardi B, who’s so illiterate that it actually caused problems for the campaign. Mid-endorsement, her teleprompter went out, so she couldn’t say anything until someone ran up with a phone containing her prepared statement. Watch:

????????BREAKING: Rapper Cardi B’s teleprompter broke when she took the stage at Kamala Harris rally in Wisconsin and Cardi had to wait in front of a live audience for over a minute until a stranger brought her a cell phone with a script. This tells you everything you need to know. pic.twitter.com/kKL7q1lw35

— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) November 2, 2024

You have to wonder, again, who this is supposed to impress. Even if she had read all of that perfectly, who exactly is supposed to care about this? What demographic are they targeting?

Whatever they were going for, it didn’t work. Pretty much the only demographic group that Kamala Harris won on Tuesday, according to exit polls, was the same group Joy Reid belongs to: black women. She won by something like 92%. It’s a two-percent improvement from Joe Biden two years ago. But both of these numbers are actually low, by Democrats’ standards. Obama got more than 95% of the vote from black women. Hillary Clinton got 94%. So if anything, there’s some evidence that endorsements like this aren’t really helping, even among Democrats’ most loyal constituency.

The Guardian certainly seems to think there’s a good chance these endorsements aren’t helping anywhere. They just ran a big article that explores the question of why all these celebrities, from Bruce Springsteen to George Clooney to Taylor Swift, may have actually been counterproductive:

A poll from YouGov shortly after [Taylor] Swift’s endorsement found that only 8% of voters would be ‘somewhat’ or ‘much more’ likely to vote for Harris – with a surprising 20% saying the endorsement actually made them less likely to vote for her.

Yes, as we talked about at the time, Taylor Swift’s endorsement might have made people less likely to support Kamala Harris. And there’s evidence this took the Harris campaign by surprise. 

The article also states:

Back in July, Charli xcx posted a three-word tweet that some commentators thought might help swing the US election. Arriving the day after Kamala Harris announced her bid for the presidency, Charli’s tweet said simply: ‘Kamala IS Brat.’ It was a reference to Charli’s latest album, Brat, which had dominated the pop cultural landscape … The overall meaning was clear: Kamala was the presidential candidate with the most energy and authenticity. …. The Harris campaign leaned into the endorsement, changing the backdrop of its official X page to the same garish green colour used on the record’s sleeve. … Yet as the dust settles on an extremely depressing election result, it appears clear that not only did Charli xcx’s tweet have no meaningful impact on the election result, nor did the endorsement of any celebrity.

This was a big problem for Kamala because, to the extent she had a campaign strategy at all, it hinged almost entirely on endorsements. Kamala was endorsed by all of the most famous celebrities in Hollywood and the music industry. It paid off with a crushing and historic defeat. Why might that be?

Unlike the panel on MSNBC, I’ll answer that question. For one thing, as I mentioned earlier, celebrity endorsements in general aren’t that effective anymore. But they’re particularly ineffective right now, when inflation is high and people are struggling to afford essentials. In an economic environment like that, Americans aren’t particularly interested in sermons from obscenely wealthy entertainers — not that they’re all that interested even in a good economy.

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The other problem is that the power of celebrity in general has been massively watered down in recent years. There are just so many of them that even the biggest ones (like Taylor Swift or Beyonce) don’t have the kind of culture-changing impact that Michael Jackson or Elvis had decades ago. When a woman can become famous by saying “Hawk Tuah,” the whole concept of a “celebrity” loses a lot of its luster. 

This has been obvious to everyone for some time, which is why a lot of celebrities have found new ways to endorse products, like those “reverse endorsement” deals that I mentioned. But apparently, it wasn’t obvious to the Kamala Harris campaign. They believed, in all seriousness, that amassing a bunch of these vapid, cookie-cutter endorsements would win them the election. They thought Americans cared so little about substance that they’d vote for a candidate who can barely articulate a coherent thought, all because of the endorsements of some other morons who also can’t articulate coherent thoughts. After what happened on Tuesday, there’s no one — except maybe MSNBC anchors — who seriously thinks that these celebrities have any sway over anyone anymore.