Rihanna's Publicist Pulls The Covers off
Posted by Media Outrage on November 27th, 2008
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As we are all aware in the entertainment industry there are plenty of publicity stunts that take place every single day. That is what a publicist is for. Well let us clean that up a bit. Publicist are to gain media exposure for their clients but in the process the good ones are extremely talented at the art of manipulation. Anyway Rihanna’s publicist Jonathan Hay divulges some of the tactics he used to gain Rihanna a lot of publicity. By the way Jonathan has a book coming out exposing a lot more.
Via NecoleBitchie:
Jonathan Hay: Yes. I met Vada Nobles [the producer of Rihanna's first single, "Pon De Replay"] at a Starbucks in Orlando, Florida. I’ll never forget that day. Vada told me about this young artist named Rihanna who looked similar to Beyonce and he’d just finished her first single, called “Pon De Replay.” We went back to his home studio where he was working on finishing up the remix for it with Elephant Man. Honestly, the first time I heard the song I didn’t think it was going to work at all because Will Smith had a song out ["Switch"] at that time with almost that exact same beat. But I was intrigued by the project, nevertheless. At first, nobody seemed to really feel the song, so I started a publicity campaign, single-handedly. The whole idea behind the campaign was to get Vada Nobles out there as a producer so that ultimately people would forget about his past lawsuit and conflict with Lauryn Hill on her album The Miseducation Of Lauyrn Hill.
Jonathan Hay: Anyway, I sent the song to Jennifer Vineyard, my contact at MTV. She did me a favor and broke the story on Rihanna, “Pon De Replay” and Vada Nobles. Along with one of my partners, I then began to fabricate stories of Rihanna and Jay-Z, leaking false rumors to tabloids, working internet message boards, etc. We started to get an insane amount of media coverage very fast. There are so many things we did that people don’t even know about, not even Rihanna herself. She was completely unknown and I was paid by Vada Nobles to generate publicity. The mega Island Def Jam deal rumor, we fluffed and fabricated. Rihanna and Vada had no idea what I was doing behind the scenes, but my whole agenda was to get media for the song.
You are credited for breaking Rihanna out into the media. Can you please go into detail about that?
Jonathan Hay: If you check out Rihanna’s Wikipedia Page for “Pon De Replay.” you’ll see that it was on March 17, 2005 [through MTV News] that I helped break Rihanna out into the world. There was a lot more involved but I want to save that detailed interesting chapter for the book.
What do you mean by starting Rihanna rumors?
Jonathan Hay: I mean leaking out sensational stories and spreading them around in the news — to tabloids such as the National Enquirer, music and gossip sites and whatnot. Like when the rumor surfaced that Jay-Z had a new love life and was cheating on Beyonce…that was just to get attention. Rihanna had nothing to do with ANY of that, nor did she know what we were doing. I was just trying to break the single and stay employed by Vada Nobles. Even Vada didn’t know half the stuff I was doing. I kept my strategy a secret at the time because, honestly, everyone would have been against it, the tactics that I used. But I was only thinking about the end result – and look what happened…gossip sells.
Jonathan Hay: I feel awful but, yes, I leaked some of those stories. Looking back, I am ashamed of that; there was zero integrity in that maneuver. But this is entertainment and I wanted to obtain publicity – so I came up with some crazy stories and it worked. Rihanna is one of the biggest stars in the world now, and look at how she stormed into the business! Not to take anything from her – she is a great artist – but every artist needs a launching pad and there is nothing better than a good scandal to get the public’s attention. (Laughing)
To read more click here.
Mediaoutrage- Happy Thanksgiving To All!!!
November 28th, 2008 at 4:04 am
That is some dirty S@@T, but that’s how it works in Hollyweird!!!! Hopefully all of that pays off and she stays out of bankruptcy.
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November 28th, 2008 at 6:04 am
I can tell you from first hand knowledge that Hollywood for the most part is all smoke and mirrors. A certain beautiful actress that has a reoccurring role on a popular sitcom on the “CW” was actually short on money when I met her for the first time. It really amazed me that someone that you’ve seen on television for years can be broke. The average cat automatically assumes that people on television are well off, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
She explained to me exactly how the Hollywood machine operates and trust me, it is unforgiving. Needless to say, I didn’t have an issue with treating her to a few glasses of her favorite red wine while we talked it over.
To make a long story short, everything that glitters aint gold.
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November 28th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
wow they do a lot of lying for their clients. @ ExecutiveMuscle, did you like working in Hollywood with the stars?
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November 28th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
all this garbage about spreading rumors in hollywood can only lead to a book deal, come on now she dating chris brown it’s ever rumor-ville plus the book deal or believing her & chris makes a hollywood power couple….
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November 28th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Hey but I heard RiRi and Chris broke up and she is suppose to be dating Kanye…but who knows or who cares?!
But this just goes to show you that you can not believe everything you hear in the mass or print media!
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November 29th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
that just goes to show that everything you see you cant even believe. If the publicist had to do all those tactics and lies to break rhianna out in public, they should not buy any of her songs because most of them are beats from other songs, she is more of a pretty young woman walking around thats all, she can sing but some of her songs really are boring lately.
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November 29th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I also think that Rhianna and bey once is running serious competition against each other. All of bey once new songs really don’t sound too good, surprise they reach the top charts, and Rhianna didn’t put out a new good hit lately so why is she in the news and all lately, the publicist call the press every time she goes shopping or fly from country to country? who cares.
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November 29th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
@ Jennifer (I must be starting to warm up to my Media Outrage fam because I feel more comfortable with sharing my stories with you guys.)
I never actually worked in Hollywood, but I have provided protection for multiple celebrities when they come to the DC, Maryland and Virginia area.
On the particular occasion that I’m referring to, she was in town to perform in a play at the Lyric Opera House. After the play was over her manager invited my buddies and I back to the hotel for an unofficial after party. While everyone else went upstairs to the penthouse suite to do their thing, I stayed in the lounge area downstairs to converse with her (after all I did have a crush on her). She didn’t really start to open up until she had a few glasses of Chianti in her system. She kept drinking, so I kept buying. That’s when she explained the inner workings of Black Hollywood to me. It was very intriguing.
Black Hollywood is a very tight circle. Everyone “dates” one another. In fact she was secretly “dating” the R&B singer Tank at the time. She explained to me that she was upset with him because of something that transpired at club LOVE in DC the night before. She told me that she was turned on by the fact that I chose to hang with her as opposed to going upstairs and partying with everyone else. You see her manager had arranged for all of the fellas to “hang out” with a few popular video models upstairs in the penthouse. I was tempted to go up, but like I said before, I have always had a crush on her. We hung out until about 4:30 in the morning. That night was pretty interesting to say the least.
I’ll stop right there before I get myself into too much trouble. But to answer your question Jennifer, Yes I love hanging out with wild ass celebs.
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November 29th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Thanks Executive Muscle for sharing that. I have never really been around celebrities. I met Johnnie Gill years ago after a concert. I also met Allen Iverson who was not so nice. Thanks so much for sharing.
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January 7th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Hear about the latest in mw cheats? There’s some crazy ebook going around that is supposed to promise free cheats working or some kind fo thing. I am not sure it even works, but… It’s here: http://ultimatemafiawarscheats.blogspot.com :/ Tell me if it does work though.
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August 24th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
rolig reklam…
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February 29th, 2012 at 10:28 pm
Travel store…
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March 1st, 2012 at 4:59 am
Excellent article once again! I am looking forward for more updates=)
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