Tiger Blood! 7 Secrets to Charlie Sheen’s Marketing Genius
by
Alexis Abbey
Copyright 2011 Alexis Abbey
Smashwords Edition, License Notes This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Foreword
Thank you, Charlie Sheen. Just when I was getting ready to launch my book LIVING LIKE HUGH HEFNER: How to make lots of money, live an incredible life, and be surrounded with beautiful women all the time, Mr. Sheen has skyrocketed to the front of the headlines and has consequently revealed aspects of his incredible life that many people like me already knew about, but now everyone knows about. And in many ways, his life is more exciting than Hugh Hefner’s.
Sure, he is taking a lot of flack now. Mainly from women, and perhaps some - but not many - men. The fact is that most men would gladly switch their lives with Charlie Sheen’s in a heartbeat. He has been wealthy and famous for a very long time. He is talented. He is good looking. He is smart. He is ambitious, and has a lot of interests and friends. He clearly has a great sex life. And best of all, he is a marketing genius!
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Introduction
This is a book about marketing and branding.
People should not believe everything they see and read. Especially if it is generated from that marketing machine called Hollywood - where nothing is as it seems. After all, no one in the world ever goes out of his or her way to see a bad movie, but plenty of people have seen bad movies. How does this happen? Because the best marketing people in the world are working in Hollywood. They create amazing trailers and posters and generate buzz with critics and create word-of-mouth campaigns by hiring influential people in the media, and more.
What makes you think the Charlie Sheen scenes that are unfolding before you was not (and is not) some big plan to generate a heck of a lot of attention to a show that a heck of a lot of people (myself included!) never, ever watched? Sure, it was (is?) the #1 comedy on TV, but that doesn’t mean the Producers, Cast, Crew, Studio, and Advertisers did not want more viewers. Of course they did. They still do.
I can honestly say that even though I was always familiar with Jon Cryer (even before Pretty in Pink, I liked a film he did called No Small Affair, and I was familiar with Charlie Sheen thanks to Red Dawn and Lucas), I simply never watched TWO AND A HALF MEN. Why? Well, I don’t have cable because I don’t watch TV, but I suppose I could have caught it somewhere, at some time, if I really wanted to.
Well, thanks to Charlie Sheen’s media blitz, I am now familiar with the show and a few weeks ago I was interested enough to check it out. The next time I went to the gym, and was running on the treadmill, I put on TWO AND A HALF MEN instead of CAKE BOSS. Damn, Jon Cryer and Charlie Sheen are funny! They are a good team! They work well together. They’ve got chemistry. They are fun to watch. I am a writer and I have worked on plays and films, but my ego isn’t big enough to assume that writing is everything. It isn’t. Without great actors, you’ve got nothing. Nothing.
During the media blitz I read that Charlie Sheen wanted a raise if he was to come back, and I honestly believe that he would have deserved it. He would have earned it. Like I said, I never watched the show before and now I did. I am sure I am not the only one. And when people like me watched the show, then that means we watched the commercials, too. And many people will buy the products they see in those commercials. So does Charlie Sheen deserve a raise for generating a heck of a lot of FREE publicity? Heck, yeah! That is what marketing is all about. You cannot buy that kind of publicity. Charlie Sheen is a genius!
Even if he never goes back to TWO AND A HALF MEN, he has substantially increased the value of his own currency. People are watching him. Whether or not people like what he says or does is not important at all. He has a lot of value because he is a shining light in the darkness. People are attracted to that. Wherever he goes and whatever he does, people will follow. And in a marketing machine like Hollywood, that translates into money. And because Charlie Sheen is talented, too, then the world is going to benefit with some high level entertainment in the future as the best Producers, Directors, and Writers in Hollywood begin to scramble to put together a vehicle to show Charlie Sheen’s talents to the world.
Winning?
Yes you are, Charlie!
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What’s with the Title?
Based on my experience in marketing, I have a totally different outlook and opinion on “the Charlie Sheen situation” than most people. Whether what is going on is planned or not does not matter. Whether or not most people think he is crazy or having a melt down does not matter much either. Charlie Sheen does not need everyone in the world to like him or approve of his lifestyle in order for him to be happy and successful. With the exception of perhaps socks and pens and some other products, there are very few things in the world that appeal to everybody. The secret to marketing anything - from soda to food to clothes to music and movies - is to find the solid niche market and get them to pay attention and buy. That’s it. It is as simple as that.
There are a lot of people who respect Charlie Sheen’s talent. He can do and say whatever he wants to and his fans will follow him. There are only a handful of things that a famous person can do that will effectively kill his or her career (hint: Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic rant, screaming racial slurs at his wife) and Charlie has not done any of those things. Right now, he is just a very famous guy with a lot on his mind and from a marketing stand point, he is brilliantly branding himself while letting off a heck of a lot of steam.
As of the publishing date of this ebook, Charlie Sheen has planned “The Charlie Sheen Tour.” According to Ticketmaster, his upcoming mini-tour sold out in just 18 minutes ... and now he's planning on adding extra shows.
And to further illustrate his marketing genius (and to keep people from feeling defensive when they tell their friends they are attending the tour) it has been announced on Charlie Sheen’s website that one dollar from each ticket to "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not An Option Show" LIVE will be donated to the Red Cross Japanese earthquake relief fund.
“My father gave me some pretty bad advice - keep it honest, which I did. People ask, why am I so honest with the press? I don't have an answer. I suppose I'm honest everywhere else. Why should it stop here? Most of my shit sounds like lies. But all my stories are true, and that's the problem. They call me the last honest man in Hollywood. But I care what people think, we all do.” – Charlie Sheen