TomKat

Okay, so I am pretty much obsessed with celebrity gossip and celeb gossip blogs. I know that it is a pathetic habit, but there are worse ones. Since keeping up with their lives takes up a fair amount of my day (joke?), I decided that today I would blog about what I know, and something that has caught my eye this past week that involves PR.

The relationship between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes has been bizarre from the get go, re: Oprah couch jumping. The validity of the union has been challenged time and time again, especially recently in the rag mags with headlines like "His and Hers Houses" and "Katie Wants Out". So I've said all this to get to my PR point...all of their famous friends have been doing some serious image management for the couple in the past week, and as a PR major I recognize this lame attempt at trying to make this lame attempt at trying to recreate their public image. When everyone knows that Tom just paid Katie to marry him and have his baby and then he brainwashed her with Scientology (another joke seriously this time).

At http://www.people.com/people for the past week on the homepage there has been an article where some famous person is coming to bat to defend the TomKat relationship. From John Travolta to Jenna Elfman, they all say that they have a totally normal marriage and apparently Katie wears the pants. After noticing this phenomena I asked myself why are these people doing this? I think many people would agree that there is probably some larger actor guiding these folks, but I just don't understand the point.

Maybe I don't get it because as a PR major I can see what is going on, and so it isn't working on me. And maybe I just don't really understand how celebrity image management works, because there aren't any classes offered for that. I guess I just wanted to point out what was really going on there.

If anyone has some great insight about celeb image management feel free to comment or link! These are the best I could do...
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2007-01-03-celeb-image-repair_x.htm
http://www.brandchannel.com/brand_speak.asp?bs_id=76