It’s disappointing, albeit not surprising to see the kind of “content” Camila’s team is willing to push right now, on the heels of the teaser for her movie. Their unwillingness to switch promotional tactics, when it’s been so thoroughly shown that the “couple's” brand has failed to attract the general public’s attention, in a way that would translate into interest for their respective careers, is honestly buffing. Every major project of theirs that has been released under the pr has underperformed. Romance underperformed, his documentary underperformed, his album severely underperformed (14 weeks on the billboard 200 and not even a gold certification for either of the singles or the album 7 months after its release, is a total commercial failure and by far his worse performing album). I don’t see why Cinderella would be the exception.
Truth be told, hype for the movie is limited so far. Even in her own fandom. Of course, it’s still too early to accurately predict how the movie will do, but the response so far isn’t exactly a positive sign. They’re not trying to market her in a different way, if they think it will suddenly start working then they’re even dumber than we thought.
The image they’ve been cultivating for her these past 2 years,, is unflattering. The couple is thought of as joke by the public at large. It’s still widely acknowledged as a publicity stunt, and most of the people (that are members of the general public) that believe it’s a real relationship think they’re annoying and cringy. They’ve relentlessly pushed the pr in everyone’s faces for last 2 years now, at the cost of her career and her mental health (but hey, Roger bought himself a new mansion so it’s all good). They have done such a successful job in alienating any fan of hers, casual or a stan, that isn’t a hardcore showmila shipper. For the past year and a half her primary exposure to the public and to fans, has been through the pr. She hasn’t released any new music in 19 months, the Christmas song (which was clearly a last minute, panicked response to the poor numbers of his album) does not count. She hasn’t even been particularly active in social media, nor has she been interacting with fans (which I truly don’t blame her for considering the current state of her fandom, but her team should have taken care of that in her place.) It’s not a cute look when “she” comments on practically every post of her “boyfriend” who she has supposedly been living with for a year, but hardly bothers to engage with fans. It’s not surprising that there isn’t much active hype and interest in her career at the moment. And with her poor image and all the other preexisting versions and adaptations of the story, the lukewarm reception of the movie (so far that is) is also not surprising.
Her team has been so focused on creating headlines about her at any cost of her public image, that they’ve forgotten her brand needs to be likeable. The constant drama around her persona is exhausting to witness as a fan. In 2017-2018 it was all about her split from fifth harmony and ever since 2019 it’s been all about her joke of a relationship and a boyfriend that loses his shit over yogurt when he’s a multi millionaire and can easily afford to buy a whole yogurt shop if he really loves that stuff this much. That really needs to stop at some point and they should work on building her image around her and her music, not dumb drama and an even dumber fake boyfriend. It drives away fans, casual and not, and it makes her seem unlikable and attention seeking.
They really need to stop marketing her as reality show celeb and remember she’s an artist. They shouldn’t resort to such lowly levels of publicity for her. Her music have always been secondary to the cheap headlines her team prioritises, and that’s a real shame. And also really insulting to all of her hard work. You would think that building a solid relationship with your fans and having a likeable public persona would be obvious, but apparently not. Again, it’s disappointing but not shocking. If the movie ends up underperforming, (I really hope I’m wrong!!) they shouldn’t have the audacity to be surprised.
(Also, do they actually believe that her going on vacation literally a day or two before the teaser drops, does anything other than show that’s it’s obviously not a vacation, instead it’s a work trip? She’s been overworked to the point of being hospitalised multiple times, but now she can fuck off wherever she wants without any work schedule restrictions, right before the teaser dropped??? Makes sense.)
