Warren Says I Should Buy a Jet

By Michael Kinsley

Appearing in advertisements has long been something famous people do for money, but there used to be something slightly embarrassing about it. That's no longer true, and the proof is that people who now do it don't need the money. In fact, the two richest men in America have appeared in ads recently. Bill Gates has endorsed a brand of golf clubs, and Warren Buffett is pushing private jets. Peter Lynch, the investment guru, retired from Fidelity years ago but is back starring in commercials for the firm. Nathan Myhrvold, a Microsoft executive, also has endorsed a jet. The ads say he owns one, which is another way of saying he doesn't need to do the ads.

Meanwhile, the fad of corporate CEOs' promoting their own mugs with shareholder money becomes more brazen and absurd. Not so long ago, the sort of business executives featured in their own company's advertisements were local auto dealers and appliance-store owners. Then along came Victor Kiam (the guy who loved the shaver so much that "I bought the company") and Frank Perdue ("It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken") and, of course, Lee Iacocca. The distinguished silvery head of Iacocca's successor at Chrysler, Robert J. Eaton, is currently featured larger than life (or so we must hope) in a baffling series of newspaper ads celebrating himself and one Jurgen E. Schrempp, CEO of Daimler-Benz, as "two intuitive leaders" who had the vision to merge their companies.

Clearly the stigma is gone. Appearing in ads has become prestigious--a status symbol. Why? Mainly because in the 1990s the prestige of commerce and the glamour of money have soared along with the economy. This explains why zillionaires are wanted to endorse products and helps explain why they would do such a thing. There are other reasons, of course. Buffett and Lynch are both pushing products of their own companies. Those I'm-the-wonderful-CEO ads are also justified as being good for the company--at least in the CEO's own swollen head. There has been published speculation that Gates made the golf-club ad in order to seem warmer and cuddlier. This probably isn't true (as his employee, I already find him entirely lovable). But even the notion of making a commercial endorsement as a way of humanizing your image would have seemed, until recently, bizarre.

Another commodity has increased in social value even faster than money, and that is fame. Those blessed with a lot of one or the other want a more balanced portfolio. So celebrities cash in some of their fame for money by doing commercials, and rich folks cash in some of their money for fame the same way.

Well, it's not quite that simple. Traditionally, when celebrities endorsed products, their fame became slightly tarnished and therefore less valuable. Now, however, they just become more famous, and they get money to boot. (The only category of famous people of whom this is not yet true is journalists. David Brinkley took a big hit for becoming a spokesman for Archer Daniels Midland Co. But then pioneers often suffer when carving paths that soon become common and comfortable.) Similarly, rich folks who do ads buy themselves fame without spending their wealth. But most actual billionaires are probably as famous as they wish to be (given the special nuisances and even dangers that come from being famous for being wealthy). So the mystery of why they do it is not answered by the fact that it costs them nothing.

Specific business purposes aside, they do it partly for fun, of course. What appearing in an ad offers even the very richest is a chance to enjoy their celebrity. More important, though, for all but the most psychologically secure, it also is certification that there is indeed some celebrity in their portfolio.

Certification is important. Thorstein Veblen wrote in The Theory of the Leisure Class that the main challenge facing wealthy people is displaying--thus demonstrating the existence of--their wealth. In Veblen's day they did it by "conspicuous leisure"--not working. But today there is no prestige in not working. The fashion is for rich people to keep working very hard. Veblen's other suggestion was "conspicuous consumption"--spending a lot. But in the 1990s many folks have become rich beyond the practical ability to show it off by spending. The richest man in America has built a house that supposedly cost $60 million, which is a lot. But he surely didn't do it to show off his wealth, since there are dozens or hundreds of people you and I have never even heard of who could afford a $60 million house.

People you and I have never heard of, though, will not be invited to appear in an advertisement.