The emerging market for “Delebs” (dead celebrities) - An ethics-based, sustainability analysis of key stakeholder positions

The market for dead celebrities (“Delebs”) is large and growing. According to recent estimates, it is now worth $2.25 billion in annual licensing and royalty revenues. The practice is now so prevalent that Forbes began its annual ranking (in 2001) of the post-mortem earnings of the “top-earning dead celebrities”. In this paper, we examine this practice and do the following. First, we define key terms that are used in this paper. Next, we look at the major players that have a stake in the market for Delebs, the benefits they reap, and the harms they cause. Following this, we look at how the benefits reaped collectively stack up against the harms caused collectively, from a societal point of view, using a well-known ethics framework. We then show how the overall balance (of benefits vs harms) affects the long-term sustainability of the market for Delebs. Following this, we make a few key ethics-based recommendations and cautions for marketing practitioners, especially those who are concerned about the long-term viability (and sustainability) of this nascent market for a non-fungible product (i.e., Deleb images and personas). We conclude, by suggesting future directions for scholars interested in ethics-based, sustainability-focused Deleb research.