Anyone who has ever attended a business conference or a political convention has been given a souvenir of some sort, usually a computer bag with promotional logo containing brochures and a fancy ball-point pen. At least that's all I have ever got. But as is well known, the richer you are, the more you get.
The freebie way of promoting products was taken to its ultimate at the 74th Academy Awards in Hollywood. The broad grins of the award winners and performers as they left the podium on Sunday might be partly due to what they knew was waiting for them backstage. This year, 125 of the actors and performers were presented with bags containing up to $30,000 (€34,203) worth of luxury goods. The 40 or so gifts inside, from $5,000 Diamond Edition bras from Victoria's Secret to Motorola's new V70 swivel-flip mobile phones, have become the most lucrative publicity tools for high-end companies.
Competition among firms for permission - from an Academy committee - to place their wares in the goody bags is fierce, so great are the commercial rewards. After $35 pairs of Wolford fishnet stockings were given out free to the Hollywood celebrities two years ago, sales increased tenfold.
This year Ms Tamara Yapp said the inclusion of her quilted-velvet, reversible CJ & Me handbags for the first time would enable the company to expand into the world of opinion-making celebrities.
Despite their multimillion dollar salaries, the stars apparently grab the bags shamelessly. Here is a sample of what nominees got this year, mostly in the form of gift certificates: a $350 Gaiam meditation chair, a $1,700 Tempur-Pedic mattress, a $1,600 Ebel watch, a $400 bottle of Joy perfume, a $228 Piquadro black leather carrying case for cigar and flask, and a $100 tin of MingCha tea. Estee Lauder sent each nominated actress a spa day certificate plus cashmere robe, thongs, leather case and make-up, total value $10,000. The stars also got tokens for a $460 rub-down at the Ajune health spa and a $600 teeth-whitening session at BriteSmile, along with essential accessories for the movie set, like $285 Tag Heuer Sport Vicion sun glasses and bathrobes with American flags on the pockets.
The annual Oscars ceremony is also big business for the world's top couturiers and fashion houses, who vie furiously to drape the megastars with their outfits. One minute of exposure to Sunday evening's 41.8 million television viewers was worth more than several glossy advertisements in Vanity Fair.
Valentino, Gucci, Versace, Richard Tyler, Armani, Chanel, Gand Carolina Herrera, all hawked their creations to nominees in the run-up to the Oscars, taking suites in five-star hotels and inviting actresses to pick through or discard $20,000 gowns. The stakes are as big as the egos. Prada transformed itself from a hand bag store to a fashion house with its lavender chiffon dress for Uma Thurman in the 1995 Academy Awards. This year was a triumph for Lebanese fashion designer Elie Saab whose transparent creation on best actress winner Halle Berry was splashed on front pages around the world.
Julia Roberts did the same last year for Valentino. It's a risky business though and can all go horribly wrong, as it did this year for top designer Alexander McQueen whose meshdress for Gwyneth Paltrow was widely labelled hideous.
Even shoe-makers see the Oscars as a major business opportunity. Mulholland Drive actress Laura Harring wore a $1 million 64-carat platinum and diamond open-toe stiletto heel supplied by designer Stuart Weitzman, who, basking in the publicity, said he would donate $30,000 to a charity nominated by Ms Harring.
But this year, the real winner is ... AOL Time Warner, jointly with Vivendi Universal of France. Vivendi owns Universal Pictures which won the award for best movie with A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe, which has already added $30 million to its US take since the nominations were announced and has now grossed over $211 million worldwide. AOL Time Warner's New Line movie, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring won four Oscars, which will boost its worldwide earnings of $800 million and promote the next two films in the trilogy. It also claimed the best actor award for Denzel Washington, giving momentum to another AOL Time Warner film, Training Day.
The movie studios and the cinema chains - staging something of a comeback despite the junk that Hollywood produces outside of its Oscar efforts - make the real financial killings at the Academy Awards, not just in the following weeks but for years to come. American Beauty took in an additional $108 million after winning best picture in 2000, for example, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer last year sold two million DVDs and videos of Silence of the Lambs which took best picture 10 years ago.
The promotional effort for each nominated movie is huge, and sometimes vicious, judging by the smear campaign against A Beautiful Mind. 20th Century Fox, which hasn't won a best picture Oscar for 30 years, sent director-producer Baz Luhrmann on an ultimately futile six-month world tour to boost Moulin Rouge.
This year, the major studios spent an estimated $60 million just in promotion and advertising. That would buy an awful lot of computer bags.
