Celebrity watch: Do they use what they sell?
Sure, hip-hop CEO Jay-Z makes the big bucks shilling HP Notebooks on TV – but in the wild, he’s been spotted using a MacBook. Actress Kate Walsh hints at the sexual gratification she gets from her Cadillac CTS in commercials, but in the real world she’s often seen driving a decidedly un-erotic Range Rover.
Shocking as it might seem, brand disloyalty among celebrity endorsers happens every day. But thanks to www.coolspotters.com, a site that encourages ordinary citizens to tie celebs with people, places and products in real life, such flagrant displays of brand-philandering can be captured, shared and stored – in one place, for all eternity.
As if causing them to flee the paparazzi wasn’t enough, Coolspotters forces celebrities to face the ceaseless vigilance of phone camera-toting citizen-stalkers on the lookout for even the slightest infraction against product loyalty.
In Walsh’s case, Coolspotter “Speed” claims to have seen the “Grey’s Anatomy” star driving a burgundy Range Rover Sport “about as many times as I’ve seen her in the Cadillac commercial.”
It gets worse: Candid-camera photos aren’t the only means by which celebrities can be “spotted.” Say you happen to catch an interview in a magazine or on cable in which a politician or athlete mentions their favorite song of all time; with the advent of Coolspotters, it is now your civic duty as an American consumer to spread that information online, because once an association is made on Coolspotters, that information is available to everyone.
Developed by Connecticut- based startup Fantzer, Coolspotters lets users track celebrities, products, brands, media, places, events, animals, books, art, organizations and more.
The site aims to link people and things through “spots” while sharing details about both.
Functioning like a structured data wiki, users can change or remove information, add new people and products, and ultimately buy stuff.
In the first sense, Coolspotters is one of the only celebrity-based sites to ask users to do most of the legwork in discovering which name brands your favorite actresses, athletes, rock stars and politicians are really using in their everyday lives.
On the surface, Coolspotters might seem a purulent symptom of our entertainment-obsessed culture. But as the site continues to amass more brand defections, it could turn the world of product endorsements on its head.
There’s the good: actress Nicole Richie endorsing Seventh Generation organic diapers and laundry detergent; The bad: Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of what is arguably the nation’s most environmentally friendly state, cheering and gripping the passenger-side of a gas-guzzling Hummer H2; and the downright deadly: actress Lindsay Lohan clutching a pack of Parliaments, the notoriously ghetto-fabulous cigarette.
Of course, no celebrity-gossip column would be complete without a reference to troubled pop-princess Britney Spears – Coolspotters reveals the former Pepsi-lover in a candid photo clutching a bottle of Coke. Now, if only we could see what brand of underwear she’s wearing. …