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by notmindthegap 1210 days ago
"Real value" is an attempt to draw a distinction where there isn't one.

Kim Kardashian brings in more "real value" to a clothing company than any one seamstress.

Welcome to marketing.

1 comments

And yet a bad seamstress can tank a clothing company if a single bad article of clothing gets into the wrong hands.

This kind of makes Kim K a safer play than a bad seamstress. As unless you go full Kanye a spokesmodel isn't going to tank a company.

A single bad seamstress causing bad clothing to be delivered to customers is a process failure, the same way no single engineer should be responsible for Saleforce's production systems going down. And in most ways, implementing quality control on your product is a lot easier than controlling the personal life of your spokespeople.
Any company that's paying $10M to a spokesperson will have (maybe I should say "should have") a lot of employees dedicated to that spokesperson and the campaign. They might have a clawback clause if the spokesperson shows bad judgement, and can also get some additional good marketing if they are proactive in distancing themselves from their Kanye-esque spokesperson.

So I guess, like you say, there is a quality control process regardless.

I think the larger issues are probably the decisions of the pre-seamstress process employees. Bad choices in materials or cost-savings measures can turn off customers.