Minor Celeb Endorsements Trip Up Sony, BMW

Use of minor or would-be celebs is a durable advertising trend. Aspiring "fameballs" -- well-known, if at all, simply for wanting to be famous -- are generally poised, presentable, and vaguely familiar, and don't bring the serious costs of using big names. In the era of Facebook, Twitter, and "lifecasting" blogs where wannabes stream their daily activies hoping for fans, there is a steady supply of talent.

But as Sony is now finding, one pitfall to using endorsements from these oversharing attention-seekers is that when you live your life in public for all to view, people can see when you're lying.

In new web ads for Sony, writer Julia Allison -- a notorious victim (or beneficiary) of media gossip blog Gawker's pump-and-bash approach toward intrepid self-promoters -- gushes over the "portabler" Vaio Lifestyle PC that "goes everywhere she goes." In a subsequent ad, she claims a different Sony model does "all the things I do everyday."Continue reading...