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Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

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Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#41

I hadn't heard of cameo before, but my wife and I went to a broadway show, she very much enjoyed one of the performers, and afterwards she looked him up on twitter and sent me his twitter feed to show me some tweet or other. On his twitter profile he had a link to his Cameo profile, and for $20 I had him send my wife a little video about that performance we were at, and to talk about the show generally. A couple days…

your anecdote makes me understand a little bit of the value of cameo, despite otherwise being baffled by the product. celebrity culture is fascinating, not because i care much about celebrities, but because its value seems on the surface of it both out of proportion and hard to pin down. and our emotional and social systems seem to be subverted somehow in the process. the entertainment value of a movie, show or conce…

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Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#42

I hadn't heard of cameo before, but my wife and I went to a broadway show, she very much enjoyed one of the performers, and afterwards she looked him up on twitter and sent me his twitter feed to show me some tweet or other. On his twitter profile he had a link to his Cameo profile, and for $20 I had him send my wife a little video about that performance we were at, and to talk about the show generally. A couple days…

I used to be member of a subreddit where people used to get cameos from people like Chris Hansen and get them to say inside jokes they weren’t aware of.

By far the best purchase was Norm MacDonald which I believe one of the board members paid $150 just to make us laugh.

There’s a real market in novelty with these things.

It’s like gift shop level celebrity stuff with more personalization. But better for social media.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#43

I hadn't heard of cameo before, but my wife and I went to a broadway show, she very much enjoyed one of the performers, and afterwards she looked him up on twitter and sent me his twitter feed to show me some tweet or other. On his twitter profile he had a link to his Cameo profile, and for $20 I had him send my wife a little video about that performance we were at, and to talk about the show generally. A couple days…

your anecdote makes me understand a little bit of the value of cameo, despite otherwise being baffled by the product. celebrity culture is fascinating, not because i care much about celebrities, but because its value seems on the surface of it both out of proportion and hard to pin down. and our emotional and social systems seem to be subverted somehow in the process. the entertainment value of a movie, show or conce…

I think people might be underestimating how the meaning of celebrity has changed - I have two kids who follow all sorts of different people on Youtube and elsewhere from whom they would be far more thrilled to get a personalized video message than from some "real" A-list celebrity, and I would even go so far to say the same for myself.

$20 bucks for a 1 minute personalized clip for a special occasion is pocket change (how many hundreds of dollars do we spend on toys that we know very well are going to end up on the shelf with all the others), and for all but the biggest Youtubers, $20/minute (plus overhead time, etc) is easy money. Plus, 3 years later the kid gets to rewatch the video and laugh at how dumb they were for liking that person!

It's a shame it's no longer an option to invest in startups like you could back during the dotcom boom, although any of the big platforms could probably knock off this technology in a weekend or two.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#44

Will a funny 30 second video to kick off your fantasy football draft ever not be worth $100?

Exactly. I'm really blown away at how others cannot see how this is a license to print money, now that they have amassed such celebrities who are constantly responding to fans.

Sure it might be a fad, but network effects are already kickin' and they might just win this market. They might very well be cash flow positive and just not lucrative right now bc focusing on growth/marketing.

Personally, like the first response above, I race in an amateur, local kart league, which is not a cheap sport, and we have a site, instagram, video coverage, everything. The list of F1 & Indy race drivers who could do a video saying "hello" to our league, comparing to what we indulge on a hobby already, is peanuts. I'm sure my friends would take doing a few proposals very seriously.

IMO wannabe YT-IG influencers would FLOCK at the chance of having a celeb saying hello to them and posting on their timelines ("look who just sent hi").

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#45

I hadn't heard of cameo before, but my wife and I went to a broadway show, she very much enjoyed one of the performers, and afterwards she looked him up on twitter and sent me his twitter feed to show me some tweet or other. On his twitter profile he had a link to his Cameo profile, and for $20 I had him send my wife a little video about that performance we were at, and to talk about the show generally. A couple days…

your anecdote makes me understand a little bit of the value of cameo, despite otherwise being baffled by the product. celebrity culture is fascinating, not because i care much about celebrities, but because its value seems on the surface of it both out of proportion and hard to pin down. and our emotional and social systems seem to be subverted somehow in the process. the entertainment value of a movie, show or conce…

I think it's more practical to ask why anyone enjoys anything. The value of going to a concert might be clear to you, and he value was clear to myself at a younger age. But these days, most of the time I find most concerts kind of boring, as I have a hard time focusing on the music in front of me because I start dreaming about something else.

Personally, I think getting a shout out from a celebrity would be pretty cool.

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#46
Whilst I think 300mm is pretty punchy, I'm with a lot of commenters here that they make an excellent novelty gift.

We used https://www.celebvm.com/ (an English competitor that doesn't seem to have taken off in the same way) a few years back to get John Challis (Boyce from Only Fools, for the UK readers) to do a message for a relative. Which to be fair was very good and absolutely worth £20.

The relative was delighted - but I think a lot of that was "wow, how did you get him to do that". If Cameo becomes as big as the valuation, I think some of the magic sauce is lost. "Wow, how did you get that?!" becomes "oh, you paid X to get me a video from Cameo."

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#47
I used this service a while ago, when I saw the host of podcast I follow was available as a "cameo", my request for the video was a in-joke from the podcast, I was sent the video a couple days later, I watched it, laughed and waited for the next podcast where I hoped he would talk about it, when he did it was equally as funny as the original video and took the in-joke deeper again.

I think this use case provided a lot more value and depth than a more pedestrian "congratulations on graduating".

Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#49
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also wondering if deepfake could eventually disrupt them

Surely no one actually cares all that much about the video itself? The novelty is the fact the actual celebrity took some time to do something involving you or someone you know. You can already happily Photoshop a hugely convincing signed celebrity photo, I don't see people who want such things affected by this or feeling the real thing is worth any less. Giving someone a deep fake as a gift or novelty would feel som…

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Re: Cameo raises $50M to deliver personalized messages from celebrities, influencers

#50

Will a funny 30 second video to kick off your fantasy football draft ever not be worth $100?

Check out RGIII's examples. He seems to really enjoy doing it - he could absolutely make something funny.

https://www.cameo.com/rg3

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