Like so many of today's Big Pop Albums, Ariana Grande's new record, Eternal Sunshine, is the product of many months' quiet toil, a process that necessitates countless late nights of social media-free studio sessions. But the album's reveal needs to be a Moment like so many other Big Pop Album Reveals that came before it.
A press release? Too formulaic. A spontaneous Instagram post? Not likely to make waves beyond the fans already plugged in. How to invite the greater public to pierce the veil?
Grande settled on the semi-staged paparazzi photo, a technique that's quickly becoming de rigueur due its impressive effectiveness.
Thank Bottega Veneta, thank Rihanna but these photos are getting normalized as the go-to method for social media-savvy celebs breaking bombshell news
On January 4, Grande made a rare public appearance in a parking lot, blonde hair in ponytail and black "Yes, And?" sweatshirt poised to cleave social media in twain.
Since the photos of her look were uploaded to photographer Diggzy's Instagram page, things on the Ariana Grande side of the internet still haven't settled.
For days, the internet was flooded with rumors, speculation, allegations, and ebullient ululations from music-starved Arianators. Surely "Yes, And?" was the album title and surely this was to be the album of 2024.
Not much had been clarified even a week later but eventually, almost abashedly, a bit more info trickled out.
Like, it was gently clarified that "Yes, And?" was actually the title of Grande's lead single and the album was called Eternal Sunshine, a reference to the classic Jim Carrey vehicle Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that released 20 years ago this year.
That news alone — the single and album titles — wouldn't have made quite the ripple that they did make thanks to the semi-guerilla marketing strat, though, demonstrative of the power of subliminal advertising.
Around summer 2023, A$AP Rocky and Kendall Jenner were unceasingly seen wearing a parade of new-season Bottega Veneta clothes.
There they were getting dinner in Bottega, getting dinner in Bottega, getting gas in Bottega. A lot of getting and a lot of Bottega.
Because these moments all happened irrespective of each other and with two unrelated celebrities, no one knew what was happening 'til the game was revealed.
In 2023, Bottega revealed the ruse and clarified that all of these amazing Rocky and Kendall outfits that'd happened by happenstance were actually planned in advance as part of a fairly brilliant marketing stunt that then became the house's Spring 2024 campaign.
Perhaps Bottega tapped Rocky because they've both been so friendly for so long, perhaps the partnership came about in light of how Rihanna, Rocky's partner, ingeniously revealed her pregnancy to the world by way of a sudden paparazzi photo back in 2022.
No official announcement, no press release, no Instagram post, just a paparazzi photo so lightly staged as to be incidental — tellingly, veteran shutterbug Miles "Diggzy" Diggs is the man behind both Grande and Rihanna's big reveals (in his captions, Diggs frequently thanks the women he works with, betraying the collaboration).
There's some precedent here but the contemporary form was born like this: Rihanna demonstrated the power of candid paparazzi pictures for personal use, Bottega brought it back with an emphasis on clothes, and Ariana Grande's outfit cemented it as a viable marketing move.
This could very well be how celebrity marketing works the post-quiet luxury era.
It can't be a coincidence that Bottega Veneta, one of the signature purveyors of stealth wealth, masterminded one of the first big examples of stealth celeb marketing and that Ariana Grande really got things going by while toting a handbag from The Row, right?
There's a real quiet luxury influence here, a sort of IYKYK attitude that's communicated in winks in nods, faint vibrations that can only be picked up by people looking for cues.
Sometimes it's more obvious — a big "Yes, And?" print versus a couple consecutive Bottega Veneta outfits — but the idea is the same: spell it out without spelling it out. Let the audience put the pieces together, Pepe Silvia style.
This promotional method gamifies advertising. It encourages the audience to find and broadcast the message so that the celebrity doesn't have to.
Ariana Grande's casual fitpic surely garnered double if not triple the media buzz compared to an ordinary album rollout (press release, tweet, YouTube vide, whatever). That's not just free advertising, that's free reach.
It also pushes us into an interesting framework, one in which every celebrity outfit is a potential ad, every "Yes, And?" sweater is never just a sweater. Ceci n'est pas une sweater.
It's not like the lines between real life and ads have held up terribly well these days anyhow. Welcome to life without coincidences. Yes, and?
