The version of The Mail's story that I'm linking here, headlined "No 'Oops' when she did it again," points up two important trends in mass media. One is about Britney's brand, of course, and what she's done to protect it, or, as some would argue, to run it into the ground. The other is suggested by where I found the story. It wasn't in The Mail, but a rewrite that appeared Nov. 13 in The City Times, on the Khaleej Times website from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Don't think we live in an age of globalization? Here's an Arab newspaper's website picking up a story from a London tab about an American celebrity.
Here's how they set up their story story about Britney's financial arrangments:
She has been dismissed as simply a bubble-headed pop princess. So when Britney Spears filed for divorce last week after two stormy years of marriage to Kevin Federline — now dubbed Fed-Ex — many assumed it would cost the 24-year-old singer a hefty chunk of her reported £65million fortune. But it can be revealed that, far from facing financial ruin, astute Britney safeguarded her global business empire with an iron-clad 60-page prenuptial agreement, prior to her wedding in October 2004.So the news "peg" or hook is Britney's upcoming divorce. And the journos play up the angle of starry-eyed romance -- or lack thereof. Apparently, she and Federline staged a wedding for the celebrity press, but did it for real in private, and only after "after Federline had signed the agreement that banned him from making any future claim against any assets his wife had prior to their marriage."
Britney wanted every penny protected by the pre-nup and ordered her vast legal team to draw up a list of all her worldwide assets, held in a myriad of companies including Britney Brands, BritneyFilms, Britney Online, Britney Touring, Fairy Zone Productions, One More Time Music and Britney Television.
To find out exactly how much she was worth, they gathered together hundreds of financial and tax statements. These documents have now been seen by The Mail on Sunday, and they offer a fascinating insight into the finances of a pop phenomenon.
Britney's financial show her to be anything but starry eyed. Reports the paper in Dubai:
A source linked to the prenuptial negotiations said last night: 'Everyone thinks Britney is this hick from Louisiana but, in reality, she is an extraordinarily astute businesswoman who has built herself into a global brand.'But there's another side of the story, and The Khaleej Times gets into that, too, reporting rumors that she's about to start performing in Las Vegas, "kitsch graveyard of the once famous."
A great deal of her fortune was made prior to her marriage and, when Kevin signed the pre-nup, he waived any right to any part of Britney Incorporated.
Without a prenuptial agreement Britney, who built her fortune off the back of bubblegum hits such as Oops! I Did It Again and Baby One More Time could have been forced to split her empire 50-50.
The financial statements gathered for the 2004 pre-nup list total personal cash and assets at the time worth £16.92million.
Her biggest year for earnings, according to her income tax returns, was 2001 when she made £10.2 million. Current estimates put the value of her fortune now at £65m.
Britney, who has two sons with former back-up dancer Federline — 14-month-old Sean Preston and eight-week-old Jayden James - broke the news of the divorce to her husband via text message.
Her apparent relief at being free may also be down to the fact that, with her mighty fortune protected, she is still able to laugh all the way to the bank.
Like Branson, Mo., the clubs in Las Vegas have a name for attracting performers whose careers have peaked. Elvis Presley, for example, wound up in Vegas long after songs like "Hound Dog" and "Hearbreak Hotel" made music history.
See how the branding issues play out in The Times' account of Britney's career and how she manages -- or mismanages -- her public image:
A series of dreadful personal and professional decisions has wrecked a career that could once do no wrong. It has changed Spears from being compared to a young Madonna into a favourite butt of watercooler gossip.But as the Khaleej Times says, and the details of Britney Spears' financial arrangements suggest, "it might be possible to launch a credible comeback."
Her first, brief, marriage, to childhood friend Jason Alexander, was conducted in a Vegas wedding chapel. Then came Federline, who was widely seen as using Spears to piggyback his own career. Then came Spears's disastrous decision to turn her second marriage into a reality TV show, Chaotic.
After that there was a series of incidents involving her young children, including one in which she drove with her baby in her lap. Finally, there is also a rumoured Spears and Federline sex tape. Spears recently sued an American magazine that reported on the existence of the tape. Bizarrely, she sued not over the existence of the tape itself, but because the magazine had suggested she was blase about it. A judge threw the case out, saying Spears had made a career out her sexuality.
That judgment, sums up what went wrong with Spears's career. She symbolised the hyper-sexuality demanded of American women in the modern era. It was the core of her appeal — but society wants younger, less maternal idols than her.
If you want to find out more about branding ... and you do, if you want to major in communications or just to understand why you pay more for Tommy Hilfiger than you do for a knock-off you get at a "big box" retailer ... DNA Design, a communications firm in New Zealand, has a website called Allaboutbranding.com created to "to begin to reconcile the many and conflicting views of what constitutes brand; and to help our clients and others arrive at clearly defined views of their own brand, how to develop and manage it and how they would like to see it expressed." It is also clearly intended to attract business for the consuluting firm by giving away a free sample of its product.
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