Image & Marketing, Charlie Sheen’s Torpedoes of Truth

Found: Image & Marketing

Where: Episode 2: Torpedoes of Truth – Charlie Sheen

Charlie Sheen wants you to know he is battling trolls – the writers, executives and producers who put him in your living rooms weekly, spouting let’s face it, some clueless and sexist quips and wisdom to his brother, his nephew and of course us.

Like many, I’m addicted to the mess that is Charlie Sheen.

I have been trying to watch Sheen’s UStream videos. I say try because Episode 3 broke my heart in the first few minutes and I had to turn it off.

What struck me about Episode 2 is not the ranting about phones being the weapon of the trolls or his riff about “it is what it is’ and other redundant sayings. No, what interested me was Sheen’s conference call with his digital manager, “Bob” Marin.

The conversation starts with Sheen proclaiming that he’s “better solo” in fact, he “invented solo.” Which is a little conceited, I mean Two and a Half Men is an assemble. Yes, it was conceived as a star vehicle for Sheen and Sheen maybe be the gem in the ring, but he is not the foundation or the glue. Those would be his co-stars, particularly Jon Cryer, who serves as his Gracey, his Dean Martin. The punchline, whether it is boring or not, is nothing without the set up, ala the straight man. But defending an assemble, isn’t the purpose of this blog post.

What I want to do is talk about the  image and marketing building of Charlie Sheen.

In the conversation, Bob encourages Sheen to:

open your heart to your people” at 3:50 he notes “people will embrace you more, first, don’t give them too much, you don’t have to do an hour, keep the mystery, keep a little smoke and mirror between you and the people. So your not overexposing yourself. Also, I think if they want to call you bipolar, fine, give them both sides, give them the Charlie Sheen psychobabble, quit work shit, but then give them, open your heart up. Really be from “me to you,” talking to the people, so they see both sides of you.

Bob offers some sound media advice. He’s letting Sheen know that he risks alienating people through overexposure. To which Sheen responds:

here’s the thing, there’s only one side to me and its me, and it’s gnarly and crazy and its more than they deserve and its more than they can process but two sides to me is a fucking lie because all I am gong to give them is the truth and deliver it in a way that is fucking violent, focuses, and nothing like they are used to because they are high on vaccines and McDonalds and US Weekly and TMZ…

Bob, being a PR man, concedes:

dude, just talk like that, be yourself

Later Sheen and Bob discuss branding names and taglines. Bob’s suggestions don’t win, and in this case I have to give props to Sheen. Sheen’s Korner and Torpedoes of Truth are way more catchy than the garbage Bob was throwing out there.

One of my favorite moments was when they talk about whether they should address the disastrous night before via tweet. Sheen wonders if he should tweet to acknowledge that he didn’t “fit into the format” of the programming and Bob wisely counsels that he shouldn’t “address any of the bad press.” Sheen responds enthusiastically and even calls the format “cat shit.”

Then Bob announces there’s something he isn’t willing to do:

I’m not tweeting begging for an audience [UStream] because that ain’t you.

Sheen responds:

We beg for nothing… beggars beg, winners win…I didn’t make the rules

Bob then asks Sheen for a tweet about spilling orange juice. Which I didn’t understand and neither did Sheen:

Asking for a tweet about orange juice assumes I care about orange juice and have a kitchen.

Now you maybe wondering where I am going with this, so here it goes. What if this is a giant rebranding? Charlie Sheen has always “been” the bad boy; cast as the bad boy. What if this isn’t a drug and or mental health crisis but some horrific, digital marketing strategy to rebrand Sheen, ala Joaquin Phoenix.

Maybe this war against the trolls is Sheen’s way out of a show he could no longer stomach, a persona he no longer wanted to claim.

Charlie Sheen has watched previous generations of bad boys fade or become mockeries of their former selves. Maybe this whole “meltdown” is just a clever social recasting. When you think of Charlie Sheen the image that pops into your head is man-child vulnerability. You don’t think mature intellectual; you think sex and violence and self-absorption. And for a long time, Charlie Sheen was ok with that image, he didn’t care what we thought when we thought of him as long as we did it.

But what if he wants us to see more, what if there is more to Charlie Sheen than the sexy, bad boy?

I know what you’re thinking, it’s years of self mutilation ala sex, booze and drugs and you’re probably right. In the first week of this mess, my first thought was meth as it is known to cause such horrific time and logic disturbances.

But if you’re curious, watch Sheen’s Korner: Episode 4: Building the Perfect Torpedo

It is stream of conscious poetry. Hate filled, raw, burning with the intensity of the beat poets who were similarly scorned. Production values are now in play. There are lights, cameras clicking in the background and the aging playboy is wearing his glasses, reading off of cue cards.

This isn’t the rebranding direction most PR firms and publicists would have suggested – it’s messy, violent and only now starting to come into focus but its grabbed our attention and has held us spell bound for weeks.

Quite a feat in this digital flash-in-the-pan age.