Celebrities: Better Loved Dead or Alive?

You can’t imagine all of the press releases that flood my email box on a daily basis, but one just came in Thursday morning that I thought was interesting.

I’m talking interesting from the information and interesting that anyone would actually bother to keep track of such things.

Q Score - the mysterious marketing number that gauges a performer’s popularity - is out with some numbers showing some celebrities become more popular in death than when they were alive.

I don’t know how they determine these scores. It may be as complex as the formula to determine pro football quarterback passing ratings.

Caryn Portnoy Public Relations put out their Q Score evidence due to the recent death of Michael Jackson. Here’s what Q Score says about their updated ratings on some deceased celebrities:

- Elvis Presley had a positive score of 25 when he was alive, but since his death has a number of 34.

- Johnny Cash went from a score of 19 when he was alive to a 33 today.

- Actor Peter Boyle (Everybody Loves Raymond) went from a 15 Q Score prior to his death to a positive score of 27 now.

Johnny Carson, Steve Irwin and Christopher Reeve also saw similar increases in popularity following their deaths. All of these performers saw their negative Q Scores go down after they passed.

Q Score says their latest figures on Jackson were a 9 positive score and a negative number of 67.

But the quote that got me is this one: “We expect to see significant improvement in Michael Jackson’s consumer appeal in death, as of our next Dead Q study scheduled for late-September,“ said Henry Schafer, executive vice president of Marketing Evaluations, Inc., The Q Scores Company.

Dead Q study.

Sounds like a dream job.

No openings to predict traffic fatalities?