After Whitney Houston’s unfortunate death last Saturday, anyone turning on a TV or radio got to hear her signature tune, “I Will Always Love You,” countless times, whether it was Jennifer Hudson singing it on the Grammys or Amber Riley performing it, apparently coincidentally, on the Valentine’s Day episode of Glee on FOX.
Of course Houston had a slew of other massive hits, such as “How Will I Know,” “The Greatest Love of All,” and “I Want to Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” but the fact that one tune kept spilling out of the speakers over and over again didn’t speak well of her brand’s ability to stick around for generations to come.
Metro reports that Houston, whose funeral is taking place on Saturday (with a live-stream for fans via the Associated Press), has a chance to “have a legacy that can outlive our collective memory of her somewhat tainted past” of drug and alcohol abuse. That legacy may lie in the hands of marketing pros “who specialize in the act of ‘sanitizing’ the image of a deceased celebrity."
Why not? It’s worked for such folks as Elvis Presley, whose estate is throwing a big party to commemorate the 35th anniversary of his death on a toilet after consuming 11 different drugs, and Michael Jackson, who died from having too much propofol and benzodiazepine in his system.
Still, Jackson and Presley had much more extensive songbooks than Houston — and also had their names on the songwriting credits for the majority of their tunes, and publishing rights. Houston’s hits, however, came from the songwriting pens of others, including country legend Dolly Parton, who wrote “I Will Always Love You.” The 66-year-old Parton, of course, has bolstered her personal brand and legacy with the creation of Dollywood, “the Great Smoky Mountain's family fun vacation adventure.”
“The estates of dead celebrities these days are so savvy, and there’s a handful of people that manage it in Hollywood,” Jo Piazza, author of Celebrity Inc.: How Famous People Make Money, told Metro. “Whitney’s estate will likely sign on with one of them, because they know what to do to kind of sanitize a celebrity who has died in an unsavory way. They’re also bulldogs to make sure that the image is not used in a way that is one, not profitable for them, and two, will continue to damage the brand in perpetuity.”
The estates of Jackson and Presley both signed on with the same place, Piazza tells Metro, and now the two stars have thriving legacies that attract new generations of fans through, for example, branded shows with Cirque du Soleil as a partner.
As for Houston, the jury is still out on whether her legacy will thrive the way it has for other deceased celebs. “I don’t think that her brand was as strong as Jackson and Presley’s,” Piazza told Metro. “I don’t think that she had a strong enough catalog in one genre to be able to do anything in perpetuity.”
However, Dorothy Pomerantz, a Forbes reporter who “compiles the annual list of top-earning dead celebrities,” has a different take, telling Metro: “The way Whitney Houston died was incredibly sad, but what’s going to matter is how her heirs and her estate managers handle her name going forward.”
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