WHAT do you give the celebrity who has everything? For Hollywood’s awards-show organisers — who must find a way to reward the movie stars who hand out the gongs during televised ceremonies — the answer is a “goodie bag” worth up to $100,000 (£56,380).
Items can include a $500 pair of cashmere pyjamas or a $22,000 cruise to Tasmania.
At this weekend’s Screen Actors Guild awards, the gift bag will include a Vespa motorcycle lease and a cosmetic surgery voucher. And when the Oscar nominees are announced on Tuesday, the Beverly Hills Four Seasons — the hotel most favoured by A-listers on an unlimited budget — will send out a basket of goodies worth $5,000 to the female contenders, including a selection of Kerstin Florian “caviar facial” products from its ultra-luxury spa, and a couple of bottles of Krug champagne, worth $1,000.
“It’s our way of thanking them,” says Sarah Cairns, the hotel’s director of public relations. “Most of them come here anyway. It’s also about branding. Everyone is trying to be the brand that the nominees use. It’s about not getting lost in the crowd.”
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To some, such lavish thanking has gone too far. Spoilsports include newspapers, which find themselves running photographs of celebrities holding up free products — which might otherwise have been promoted via old-fashioned advertising in their pages. After learning of the $62,000 sack of gratis merchandise handed out to presenters at the Golden Globes, the Los Angeles Times grumbled: “Do we really need awards for which even the nominees care so little that they have to be bribed to accept them?”
Hollywood executives must find such perks a little galling: after all, last year saw the worst decline in US cinema attendance since the 1980s, with profits under severe pressure from, among other things, the size of actors’ fees. The cultural phenomenon of the goodie bag has also made life more expensive for upper-middle-class parents, who now find themselves socially obliged to hand out increasingly sophisticated freebies at the end of children’s parties.
Oprah Winfrey, the chat-show host, has done her own bit for the trend by doling out gift bags to her audience. On one occasion, they all got a free car.
As the goodie-bag industry grows, however, it must overcome logistical problems such as: how do celebrities physically carry their swag out of the awards venue? Karen Wood, the founder of a company called Backstage Creations, has the answer: a “goodie room”.
At this weekend’s SAG awards, Ms Wood has not only supplied a gift bag, but also a “talent retreat” — a backstage boutique where celebrities can browse and pick free merchandise from sponsors, including Lamarthe, the Parisian handbag maker, to the Natural Color Diamond Association.
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To make sure that the message gets to the public, detailed lists of the items will be handed out to the media. “For sponsors, this is more affordable than advertising,” says Ms Wood, a former talent co-ordinator for awards ceremonies.
She claims that a $10,000 product placement in a celebrity goodie-bag can result in $2 million of publicity. Some photographs become stock pictures, appearing for years alongside fashion or gossip features.
For the awards organisers, the beauty of the gift bag is that sponsors pay for it, with brokers such as Backstage Creations doing most of the hard work.
“[The gift bags] are for the people who take the time to do the show for us,” says Toni Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Naturally, the Academy hands out the daddy of all goodie bags to the 20 or so movie stars who go on stage at the Oscars to announce the category winners. One of the conditions of being included in the Oscar goodie bag is taking a vow of silence in advance of the ceremony. Excitement over the list of give-aways is already building in Hollywood.
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What will be the value of the 2006 Oscar freebies? Ms Thompson will not say. Sources, however, suggest that anything less than $100,000 would simply be lacking taste.
FREEBIE FRENZY
2006 Golden Globe Awards box included: