A top international entertainment news agency has hired freelancer Bill Hooey, a celebrity interviewer, to supply them with short videos of celebrity interviews. Hooey won’t identify the agency, but its client list consists of more than 3,000 media outlets worldwide.
These are easy interviews with softball questions that help the celebrity look good.
“I ask questions the celebrities enjoy answering,” Hooey says. “I’m not looking to do long interviews. The standard interview is less than five minutes. I’ll arrive, ask a few questions, and then leave.”
Interview topics can include:
- Comments about something in the news
- Information that the celebrity would like to clarify
- An important announcement
- The client’s marriage or divorce
- A milestone in the celebrity’s career
- A new CD, book or movie
- Attendance at a red carpet event or film premiere, fundraiser or major show biz party
Call Hooey at 323-397-8740 or email wildguy (at) earthlink.net.
You can see samples of his interviews at his YouTube channel.
Since moving to Los Angeles in 1981, Hooey has hosted two local television shows and four radio talk shows. For the last six years, he has been writing the weekly newspaper column “Life In The Fast Lane” for the LA Xpress Newspaper (weekly circ. 129,000).
Ingenious (and quite sinister when you look at it from a non PR perspective)! I’m surprised celebrity publicists and agents don’t keep guys like Bill on retainer.
Hi, my friend and I are planning to start a PR agency geared towards celebrities. Mostly up and coming and British or from New Zealand or Australia. These countries seem to have a plethora of young talented actors that are trying to break not only their local markets, but the very important American market. We plan to have an emphasis on social media type promotion, making sure the actors have all their bases covered.
I would appreciate some guidance or suggestions as to how to proceed with this. I have a few contacts, mostly through Twitter. I’m quite knowledgeable on the use of social media and communicate regularly with some of these actors.
Thank you!
PR for celebrities is a unique niche.
I suggest you find out where other celebrity publicists hang out and start to make contact with them. Go to LinkedIn Groups and see if there are any devoted solely to celebrity publicists. If not, join several of the bigger groups for publicists. Pay attention to the discussions. Ask questions within the group. Share interesting content with them.
Touch base with some celebrity publicists here in the states. Start at Gayl Murphy’s blog, and tell her I sent you. http://interviewtactics.com/2011/04/hollywoods-top-publicists-tell-it-like-it-is-so-their-celebrity-clients-don%E2%80%99t/. Also, Quora.com is an excellent question-and-answer site where you can post questions on just about any topic.
Thank you so much for the tips. Will pursue the links you provide. I really appreciate it.
Always glad to help. Come back here if you have more questions.
I will!!