Inadvisable Adverts: Shaq goes Steady
Inadvisable Adverts is where I wax poetic on an ad that I find to be distasteful, or ineffective.
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The twin fantasy of celebrity endorsement is that the celebrity, consuming and using products, becomes like us, human, and if we were to just consume a bit more like them we too could have the sweet, sweet life of the rich and famous.
So, why the hell is Shaq promoting "Steady"?
Steady is like Fiverr or Task Rabbit, a general freelancing app designed to expand the gig economy past delivery and taxi services to encompass all forms of work. On Steady and Fiverr, you can contract (or contract as) a social media manager, a videographer, a translator. Steady positions itself as the brighter, chirpier, community-oriented alternative to Fiverr. Whereas Fiverr's website focuses on employers looking to outsource their work to underpaid contractors, Steady focuses on the potential employee. Their app is a community, they say. They have analytics tools that their contractors can use to track their various income streams, to see their "financial health." They have cash back offers, marrying couponing, advertising and gig work in a novel and unsettling way. Steady has an "Our Impact" page, highlighting their cash grant program, something Fiverr does not. Steady promotes "government solutions" like UBI to help its contractors (though it wouldn't admit this as a tacit indictment of the gig economy). Its tagline: "Let's Steady our future together."
I don't care for Steady, as I don't care for the gig economy and what it's done to the American work force. I won't focus, though, on its merits, on the potential benefits of a gig app that provides cash grants and coupons to its workers, that includes traditional full-time job listings as well as gig listings, or its drawbacks.
I just want to talk about Shaq! Shaq doesn't need to make money by doing gig work. He's Shaquile O'Neal! He hasn't worked a real job since 1992, before the gig economy existed. That he ends his ad spots by mugging to the camera, saying he is going to "sign up right now" strains suspension of disbelief. While we can believe Rihanna uses her own makeup brand, that Travis Scott eats his own burger, that your favorite YouTuber uses Nord VPN, Shaq literally cannot be a Steady user.
The fantasy of celebrity is incompatible with work, with gigs. Part of the ideal of the celebrity is that they have money. That's another reason the celebrity works so well when selling a product: while we may not have the cash to live the entire celebrity lifestyle, we can eat a Travis Scott burger and become an economy class Travis Scott. It's the glamor of living like a celebrity without the price tag.
But, while this fantasy works to make the celebrity lifestyle seem affordable, it cannot democratize the celebrity way of making a living. The dream of working like Shaq is being able to play basketball everyday, to have widespread acclaim, to have a uniquely powerful body, and to make Shaq money. Steady offers none of this. It cannot offer an economy class version of this lifestyle because celebrity work is at odds with gig work.
As more advertisements aim not at consumers but at potential contractors, I think we'll see more ads like this, ones that fail to understand why a celebrity endorsement works so well for consumers and not so well for scouting employees. With the criticism that gig economy apps have received, it makes sense that they'd want to piggyback on the glamor of a celebrity. But there's no way to make work seem dignified through a celebrity cameo, because it mistakes what a celebrity actually is.