Stars on Twitter: The Death of the Celebrity Publicist?

By Jo Piazza Posted Mar 24th 2010 11:00AM

Now that celebrities have a direct line to their fans and to the media through their Facebook and Twitter accounts, are they rendering the high paid celebrity publicist obsolete? Well, the spinmeisters who make their clients famous and take over the reigns when stars go bad certainly hope not.

The average celebrity publicist has typically been able to command fees between $4,000 to $15,000 a month per client to service any and all of their media needs. This can include getting them press for upcoming projects like books, movies and charity work and deflecting negative press about affairs, drug abuse and general celebrity bad behavior.

Insiders estimate that over the past year, those fees have decreased around 15-20%.

Why? When it comes to promotion, a celebrity can gin up interest and press just by tweeting about what they've got going on. One tweet from Jessica Simpson about Ken Paves new line of blowdryers was better publicity than a couple of lines in a fashion magazine.

And same goes for bad behavior. A Twitter apology has become an industry standard. Just ask John Mayer.

Of course, you'll still need some kind of go between to say yes, no and thank you.

"Twitter can never replace a 'celebrity' publicist or any publicist for that matter, simply because you'll need a verifiable source to deny, confirm and expand upon information you get from Twitter. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply not thinking!" explains Tamika Morrison, Director of PR and Communications for TWS Marketing.

But with the advent of social media, some celebrities have been able to at least scale back on the teams they need crafting their message. Mind you, not every celebrity tweet is coming from the celeb themselves. In some cases, they've hired folks (at a rate far less than a traditional publicist) to write blips and bleeps of 140 words or less.

"Twitter can enhance the celeb publicist by allowing them to personally control a short message, but there's no way it can replace them. Celebs need so much more than that -- aside from strategy, good counsel and creative ideas, they need personal interaction and hand holding that only a real person can provide," explains Rebecca Brooks, President of The Brooks Group.

So maybe a HootSuite won't be replacing a real live flak any time soon, but it is definitely making their job easier and trimming at least some of the fat from celeb's marketing budgets.