A Star Is Torn

Branding isn’t just for large companies that spend years and fortunes ingratiating themselves with the public. Instead, it’s for each of us. The pictures you post on social media, the clothes you wear, your life story: That’s your personal brand, and it has the potential to earn you esteem and respect. “You have the power to define your brand by aligning your intentions with actions,” writes Harvard Business Review. “That is, changing your decisions and behaviors to influence how others see you and to help them connect both emotionally and intellectually to the image you hope to portray.”

The flipside of that intentionality is carelessly going against your self-curated persona, which can damage how others perceive you. According to Forbes, Director and Millennial Leadership Coach (ICF ACC) Fyiona Young said that “you have to demonstrate consistency across your communication, gravitas and appearance. Don’t underestimate how tiny inconsistencies can derail personal brand effectiveness.” Recently, Johnny Depp and Will Smith, who for years have portrayed strength and coolness on and off screen, rattled their images with uncharacteristically bad behavior. Here’s a look at what their missteps tell us about the impact of a PR nightmare on a personal brand.

A person constructs a personal brand from tangible and intangible benefits (the latter know as brand essence); simply put, it’s the work or service you provide and then the emotional response you elicit from others. So, celebrities define their brands by their talent and triumphs on a court, in a stadium or on a movie screen but also their personalities and how they strike us — controlled, cool, joyous, brash, kind.

Will Smith built a huge fanbase with his humor, musical ability and acting chops, but his outburst at this year’s Academy Awards has Hollywood and the public-at-large questioning what they thought they knew about the not-so-fresh Prince of Bel Air. “Will’s story is humbling because he didn’t come from much and he built his brand and accolades from scratch with no help or privilege to fund his endeavors,” writes LinkedIn. And his hard work has gotten him far. “For decades, Will Smith was driven by the desire to be the biggest movie star on earth — early in his career, he even came up with a formula based on the top 10 box office successes of all time,” GQ reports. “He achieved that goal so effortlessly,” but when Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars — shortly before winning the Academy Award for Best Actor — his seemingly perfect career rise took a dive. “It appears that the Men in Black star was not impressed with [Rock’s] remark that [Smith’s wife] Jada’s shaved haircut was reminiscent of famous film character G.I Jane,” says GoodtoKnow. “Jada has been openly suffering with the hair loss condition alopecia since 2018.” And so, Smith’s attack on Rock has led to his losing control over his once carefully managed public image and future. “Now that Mr. Smith may not be welcome at the Oscars and his public reputation has been tarnished, studios may be wary of hiring him at the moment for lead roles in their biggest films,” the New York Times writes. “Several public relations specialists who focus on crisis management warned that the incident could erode the good will that the Smiths have built up.”

Like Smith, Johnny Depp has spent the past decades cultivating an idiosyncratically hip brand that’s being tarnished due to a public meltdown. In a profile of the actor, Rolling Stone writes that “Depp is dressed like a Forties gangster, jet-black hair slicked back, pinstripes, suspenders and spats.” The magazine goes on to say that “Depp’s studious leer is reminiscent of late-era Marlon Brando.” The classic stylishness that Depp developed along with his exemplary roles in movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Alice in Wonderland made him a preeminent Hollywood earner. In 2018, Forbes wrote that “Johnny Depp has earned $10.03b thus far, and that’s about to go up with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” But as of 2022, an acrimonious divorce from actress Amber Heard and allegations of abuse from them both have culminated in a reputation-ruining trial for Depp that is also set to sink his worth as a box office asset.

Behind the most recent trial, “the catalyzing issue is an op-ed Heard wrote for the Washington Post in 2018 identifying herself as a survivor of sexual violence whose career suffered when she named a powerful man in Hollywood as her abuser,” according to The Cut. “Depp then sued Heard for defamation, and she sued back, and now their trial is underway in Virginia’s Fairfax County Circuit Court.” Depp and Heard’s prolonged real-life drama has crushed the former’s golden image and popularity. According to Vanity Fair, Depp “was released from his commitments to the Fantastic Beasts franchise after losing a libel case in which grim details emerged against The Sun, which had called Depp a ‘wife-beater,’ in 2020. Variety reported at the time that AT&T’s merger with Warner Bros.’ parent company, Time Warner, led to less tolerance for ‘courting mercurial — but historically popular — talent like Depp.’ ”

Depp and Smith’s fall from grace is telling not only for individual stars hoping to hold onto their hard-earned popularity but for an entire industry built around seamless personal branding. Yahoo! Entertainment writers that celebrities are “supposed to be aspirational figures, enjoying more glamorous, gorgeous lives than the rest of us poor slobs in life’s cheap seats.” It goes on to say that “when that facade cracks — or, as with Depp and Smith, utterly disintegrates in public, … it blows up the illusion for all celebrities.”