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Fame by tweets… and a boob job
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[/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”] Alex McGregor [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]
By Alex McGregor
Rob Cooper had a four-year plan – to get as much media exposure for Jodie Cunningham, a former escort and self-described ‘boob model’…
He wanted to find a way to ‘cash in’. As Rob Cooper explained at a Mumbrella ‘Comms’ conference, Jodie’s stated ambition was to be in “every lads’ magazine with my bangers out.”
Two years in, and Cooper had transformed Josie into the ‘most hated woman in Britain’, and the road to their success was built on bricks of twitter.
“Anyone in the public eye and doesn’t use twitter properly is a fool,” Cooper says emphatically. “Gives you much more voice, people can’t silence you.”
Whether you want to hear what they have to say is, of course, a matter of choice. But Josie has over a 2,800 followers to date, but still remains in the shadow of her mentor who now has over 12,000 followers – 7,700 tweets.
And there is the value of twitter – whether you agree or not, any discussion of the issues is done online and in front of an audience. Your audience, their audience.
It helps if what you are selling is yourself. Outrage in the era of TV reality shows where the audience love to watch the proverbial personal car crashes and cheer, or better yet, tweet, is what works best. The greater the degradation and embarrassment, the greater the fame.
“People want to see people turn their life around,’ says Cooper. Perhaps that is Josie’s attraction, she hasn’t turned her life around completely just yet.
Described on his twitter handle as a ‘Celebrity Promoter/ publicist. Always act dumber than your mark’, Rob Cooper is quick to add that he is not her agent – “Jodie doesn’t have any talent.”
Jodie’s greatest ability was a willingness to do anything to provoke coverage, and preferably horror and scandal, starting with having breast augmentation on the National Health Service (NHS) in 2013. Follow up stories that were turned successfully into national public debates, included organizing the filming of her child’s birth, and then selling tickets to the birth. After an organized sortie on twitter, the tickets sold quickly. Her recent play was to announce a nose job, also courtesy of the NHS.
Rob admits that it takes planning, and while only one in ten stories that they put out work, every comment is designed to provoke controversy.
“You need to create value, to create drama,” he says, sounding much the same as any tabloid editor.
While Jodie has built a brand out of being the ‘Most hated woman in Britain’, Cooper says that 90% of the fan mail is positive. Certainly it has enabled her to get off” the benefits system”, says Cooper, and the selling of her brand of controversy – to the tabloids, through her own reality television show – has her owning her own house and securing an economic future for her children.
Along the way, what she is selling, mainly herself, is in huge demand.
“I don’t like the word celebrity, I prefer media personality,” says Cooper. “Celebrity is not a celebrated person, it is a talked about person.”
*Alex McGregor is a freelance journalist and publicity strategist.
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