THE PRICE OF FAME
THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE WILDLY successful Chicago internet startup Cameo used to be outfitted with a gong, so whenever a celebrity would join the service, the cavernous West Loop office would resound with a loud bang. Each new signing was worth celebrating, after all, because it meant that one more famous person would be making custom video messages for fans and promoting the young platform. But soon Cameo was catching on more quickly than anyone anticipated, signing on as many as 80 to 100 celebrities a day.
Gonnnngggg! Gonnnngggg! Gonnnngggg!
It got to be a bit much, so they eventually retired the gong. Now when an A-list celeb such as Sarah Jessica Parker joins the ever-swelling Cameo roster, there’s just a lot of screaming.
If you don’t already know about Cameo, the idea behind it is seductively simple: For a fee, you can hire a prominent person to make a customized video message for yourself or someone else. You provide the talking points. Is your wife a devotee of The Real Housewives of New York City? Bethenny Frankel or Dorinda Medley will send a birthday greeting for $275 or $150, respectively. Is your dad a Bears fan? One of the team’s Hall of Fame linebackers — Brian Urlacher ($540), Mike Singletary ($200), or Dick Butkus ($151) — can record a video selfie just for him. (Current linebacker Roquan Smith also is available for $100.) Does your roommate have a thing for Stormy Daniels? That’ll be $250. Does your daughter like the devilishly handsome Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies? The actor who played him, Tom Felton, will reach out for $444. Not feeling so spendy? Cameo is largely populated by B-, C-, and D-list celebrities, and they are priced accordingly. But, hey, you can get Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen for a mere 50 bucks, viral-video comedian Nick Colletti for $69, and Laugh-In star Ruth Buzzi — Ruth Buzzi! — for $150.
The fees, of which Cameo takes 25 percent, are set by the talent and can change from day to day, depending on the celebrity’s estimation of his or her own market value and availability. Considering how easy it is to knock off a string of 30-second or minute-long messages on a cellphone, the money can add up in a hurry, for both sides. CEO Steven Galanis, a broad-shouldered 32-year-old with a trim beard who favors black T-shirts emblazoned with his company’s name, says the platform has produced more than 350,000 videos as of late 2019. Galanis won’t reveal revenue figures but says the current average Cameo video costs about $60, a number that has been on the rise. If you spitballed a $45 average and did the math, that means Cameo has raked in about $4 million. (To put things in perspective, that’s less than what Smith, the Bears linebacker, makes at his day job in a single season.)
At this point you may be whacking your forehead that you didn’t have this idea first. Cameo made ’s list of Genius Companies in 2018, and that was when a mere 3,500 celebrities were signed on to the platform. Now there are 20,000 and counting. Cameo has zoomed into the zeitgeist, the company name having become synonymous wi th the product. When Chrissy Teigen ordered a Cameo for herself in October from star Zied Hakimi, she tweeted about it to her almost 12 million followers. Garry Trudeau’s comic strip on Super Bowl Sunday showed Boopsie recording custom videos and explaining to husband B.D., “It’s a video shout-out. I
