YoIt all started, as so many things do, with a drama in the WhatsApp group. It was 2021 and a loose coalition of my friends and acquaintances were passing the intermittent lockdowns by playing a spectacularly cruel online game called Subterfugewhere betrayal and treachery are part of the way the game is played.
But this time people had gone too far and someone had become so angry that he had left the group. To get him back, my friends came up with a dubious plan: for Nigel Farage, among all those present, to record an ironic apology video urging his deceased comrade to rejoin the group.
Thanks to Cameo, which Farage had recently signed up to, this was easy to achieve: for around £100, Farage recorded and delivered a 60-second video clip via the app in less than 24 hours. The tactic worked, too: thanks to Cameo and a rather bemused reading by Farage of a bunch of inside jokes he had no way of understanding, peace was restored to the group of friends.
This was one of the many uses of Cameo, a service that allows anyone to request a personalized video from a celebrity or influencer for one of their friends and receive it within 24 hours. The site was an unexpected success during the Covid lockdowns and managed to raise investments that valued it at $1 billion in 2021.
But since then, he’s been through some tough times. Videos are still being produced, he still has a… eclectic A mix of celebrities and influencers (more on which later), but he seems to struggle to pay even relatively small bills.
Last month, Business information reported on an agreement that Cameo had reached with 30 US states. after it was found to have violated Federal Trade Commission rules on celebrity endorsements.
Cameo had been fined $600,000 (theoretically a modest amount for a billion-dollar company), but had shown in court filings that it could not afford to pay that amount, and had instead agreed to pay only $100,000 (split among 30 different states). What went wrong?
On a day-to-day basis, the site appears to be operating as usual, offering anyone who wants a personalised video a range of actors, comedians and influencers to make their videos with. UK names include actress Miriam Margolyes (£134 for a video), former footballer John Terry (£197), singer Gareth Gates (£47) and presenter and environmentalist Ben Fogle (£71).
American names include Lance Bass from ‘NSync’ (£235), Dean Norris, who played DEA agent Hank Schrader in Breaking Bad (£193), and former diehards of the American version of The office Kevin Malone, aka Brian Baumgartner (£154), or “Drunk Meredith,” Kate Flannery (£150).
While each has its own fan base and, in some cases, cult followings, Cameo has struggled to attract or retain A-list celebrities or influencers with large followings. Part of the reason for this has been that using the app carries significant reputational risks for big companies: people have scripted videos to try to trick famous faces into saying racist or other insults, and even used them for more sinister purposes.
Last year, a “group aligned with Russia” I commissioned and then put together a series of videos recorded from Cameo and similar services to make it appear as if a variety of American celebrities were calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy a corrupt drug addict while believing they were helping to organize an intervention.
The disinformation effort included guest appearances by actor Elijah Wood and convicted boxer and rapist Mike Tyson, who have since discontinued their guest appearances, as well as Norris and Flannery, who remain active on the site.
Cameo takes a 30% cut of the creator’s commission for handling the sale, transaction fees, and hosting and shipping of the videos. Larger creators appear to have decided to pass on this potential revenue stream (either because it requires making many individual videos that won’t be made public or because of the risks), but smaller creators say it’s a useful, low-effort source of funding with few downsides.
“I turn it off very often, which closes the booking window when I’m busy and you can choose which ones you want to do,” says one comedian who preferred to remain anonymous. “I don’t have any negative experiences using the app.”
Another factor that may put off big names is that Cameo has been associated with fringe or failed politicians. Nigel Farage has been on Cameo since 2021 and is one of Britain’s most divisive political figures (he failed to get elected to parliament in his first seven attempts).
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In the US, disgraced former Republican congressman George Santos ($99 and up) reportedly now makes £78 more money from Cameo than he did as an elected representative, while Mike Flynn (a far-right Christian nationalist election-denier and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who briefly served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser) was also a Cameo regular.
There is also the problem that Cameo tends to attract first-time buyers rather than repeat customers or subscribers. Subterfuge For example, the WhatsApp group hasn’t upset anyone enough in the three years since the Farage incident to require another Cameo video.
These are just some of the issues hampering Cameo’s valuation, explains technology analyst Joseph Teasdale of Enders Analysis.
“Cameo was a pandemic phenomenon. Celebrities could record selfie videos even when they couldn’t perform in stadiums or star in movies. In terms of demand, a Cameo video was a great experiential gift when other options were limited. Now, celebrities and consumers have better things to do than record and watch personalized videos,” he says.
“When your sales pitch is that your providers are famous and desirable, you run into a problem: they are the ones with the brand recognition, they are the ones who attract users, so they can capture most of the value being generated. They are not anonymous TikTok creators who can be replaced if they leave because they don’t like the conditions; Cameo lives or dies by the big names it attracts to the platform.”
Those big names appear to be sticking to the big platforms (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram), where the massive audiences are and where recurring revenue can be earned from advertising and monthly subscriptions, rather than one-off novelty videos for individual subscribers.
That necessarily leaves Cameo limited to smaller creators, influencers and second- or second-tier celebrities who might welcome the extra money and be willing to spend time producing novelty or tongue-in-cheek videos to make it. For those with a bit of time on their hands, who aren’t worried that their videos could be used to damage their brand, it’s a welcome service — though not one that will ever make Cameo’s founders or investors as rich as they hope.
Yet one of the site’s stars remains loyal and active. Despite having been elected MP for Clacton, and against a backdrop of violent far-right riots across the UK, Nigel Farage was apparently finding time to fulfil his requests for cameos: at the time of writing, the site showed his last full video was made at 10.30pm on Tuesday.
