Do you love HBO's hit show Succession? (I do!)
Have you been following the real-life family drama that recently concluded at Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications? (I have!)
Oh, do I have a treat for you...
A few days ago, a Cameo video of actor Brian Cox, who plays the ruthless family patriarch Logan Roy on Succession, began to circulate on social media.
In it, Cox congratulates Rogers Chairman Edward Rogers for his very Roy-like maneuverings to take control of his "family business".*
Warning: there's some NSFW language in this clip. But if you've ever watched Logan Roy on Succession, you probably should have already suspected this to be the case.
What's a Cameo? Cameo is a unicorn platform that allows the average person to buy personalized messages from their favourite celebrities.
Who commissioned this particular video? We don't know for sure... but according to the Financial Post, "Cox indicates it is from Suzanne, which is the name of Rogers’ wife".
A spokesperson for Edward Rogers declined to confirm who sent the video, but said it was "shared with Edward as a practical joke.”
So if it was shared with Edward, how did it get released onto the Internet?
We don't know that either...
... but how Roy-esque of a move would it be for Rogers to have leaked it himself?
Why am I sharing this here?
Well, I love how it illustrates a unique (albeit crude) way to use Cameo.
And the video lives at the intersection of business and entertainment, two areas of fascination for me that I write about often.
But most importantly, I'm curious to see if Cameo can capitalize on all this free publicity.
When you have a great product (like Cameo), at some point, something might happen that will generate some free publicity for your company (like this video).
And when that happens, you should absolutely be ready to take full advantage of it.**
Logan Roy certainly would.
* I feel the need to put "family business" in quotes because Rogers is a publicly-traded company... although you'd certainly be forgiven for thinking otherwise given all the recent family drama and lack of proper corporate governance that clearly exists.
** Cameo may have already started to do so; The Globe & Mail shared a version of the Rogers Succession video on their Instagram account yesterday that prominently features the Cameo URL in the top-left corner, which generates free brand awareness every time it's viewed and shared. Did Cameo provide this edited video to The Globe & Mail, or did the media organization obtain the video from another source and add the URL themselves (to give proper credit to Cameo)? I don't know. But if it's the former, it shows Cameo was ready to pounce in order to leverage the free publicity this video is generating, and they deserve kudos for that.
h/t to Jessy Bains (whom I don't know) for sharing this on Twitter and to my friend Jason Pereira for commenting on it (which caused it to appear in my feed).
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