Paris Hilton coming to Dubai: MY New BFF.

Are you lonely? Need a friend and a shoulder to cry? It’s very easy, just run a reality TV show searching for a new friend. Being a celebrity might help. Being Paris Hilton will indeed help. Or else why should Ms. Hilton visit Dubai looking for a BFF?

To become a celebrity is like making a successful box office film: everybody knows why a film is successful after it becomes successful, but nobody can predict it beforehand. Doing things that will make public interested will make you a celebrity, but that alone does not guarantee press coverage when you breakup with your boyfriend or your African parrot is sick. That needs some secret ingredient “X” and I think Ms. Hilton has it abundantly. You have to consistently do things that will make people amused, do weird and controversial things. And you have to make sure that you look, smile, breath and even sleep differently compared to common folks like you and me.

Yes, it’s all advertising. It’s public relation working at 10, 0000 rpm. It’s defining a pseudo reality that will make you or I seem weirdly different and using financial, advertising & PR muscles to create, sustain and reassure this weird image, consistently…

Public Relation Agencies love celebrities (& big corporations). Big corporations need PR as they have something to hide from the public, something to correct, something to be tamed and made appropriate. Celebrities need PR to do the opposite, something to be seen as weird, something to undomesticate and to do or say inappropriate. When things go wrong, companies hire PR to make public believe everything is alright. Conversely, when public see nothing wrong in a celebrity, he or she hires a PR to make something wrong so that he or she can be the center of attraction again.

Yes, this is what you have to do. Always do something that will make you stand apart, even if doing that will make you look like a jack ass.

Ms. Paris Hilton, hereby I heartily welcome you to Dubai and UAE. May you find the friend you are looking for in the first episode of the program itself!