Was every celebrity couple of 2023 really a ‘PR stunt’? Experts weigh in

‘PR stunt’ was the buzzword of 2023, as celebrity couples like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce were accused of being manufactured for publiclity. Meredith Clark speaks with public relations experts to decipher which 2023 celebrity pairings may actually stand the test of time

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This year has come to an end, and it’s safe to say that 2023 was marked by unexpected and completely out of left field celebrity relationships. We started the year off strong with supermodel Emily Ratajowski and comedian Eric André’s short-lived but nude-filled relationship, proving that any man can win over a woman if he’s just a little goofy with it. Matthew Lawrence, known for his roles in Mrs Doubtfire and Boy Meets World, and TLC’s Chilli made 90s babies everywhere do a double take when it was revealed they were dating. And who can forget the random generator relationship that was rumoured couple Bill Murray and Kelis “my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard” Rogers.

But no celebrity pairing had people talking quite like the ones that were deemed fabricated for publicity. It seems the buzzword of 2023 was the phrase “PR stunt”, as TikTok gossip pages and even The View panelists claimed this year’s most headline-grabbing couples weren’t actually dating at all.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the reigning supreme of this year’s celebrity couples, were largely the subject of publicity stunt rumours. The 12-time Grammy winner began dating the two-time Super Bowl champion over the summer, taking their new relationship public at his Kansas City Chiefs game in September. However, chronically online users believed the couple was manufactured to catapult not one but both Swift and Kelce into higher levels of fame.

The “Shake It Off” singer and the NFL star weren’t the only celebrities thwarting PR stunt allegations this year. Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet and Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny were all rumoured to be manufacturing their relationships for publicity, but what Kardashian-Jenner romance hasn’t faced PR stunt rumours before? To set the record straight, The Independent spoke with public relations and relationship experts to decipher exactly which celebrity couples of 2023 may have been PR stunts and which ones may stand the test of time.

Waylon Tate is the founder of J Waylon Associates, a public relations and marketing firm located in Dallas, Texas. According to Tate, a PR stunt is generally any action, item, or campaign that is created to drive media in a certain direction. “You’re wanting to create some type of brand awareness, some type of consciousness about a particular person or product. It’s an understanding of how the public at large is going to respond to any situation at a time and they’re intentionally created. They’re fabricated, timelined productions,” he told The Independent.

There’s three purposes to the relationship PR stunt, says Tate. The first is the promotion of projects - when a publicity team orchestrates a PR relationship to generate buzz for an upcoming movie or TV series. The second, what’s commonly referred to as damage control or crisis communications, is created after an event has perhaps caused some potential damage to a celebrity’s reputation. And the third is simply for the relevancy factor, especially in a 24-hour news cycle where anyone on TikTok or Instagram can become a celebrity overnight.

“Celebrities are brands in and of themselves, and a PR relationship is just another way to market themselves, to appeal to more people if they have a project coming out,” said Sabrina Alexis Bendory, a New York City-based dating coach and co-author of the women’s relationship site, A New Mode. “Being in a high-profile relationship is a good way to get people talking about them and the more people talk about them, the more they’re referencing the new project.”

Surely, this can’t be the case for someone like Taylor Swift, who makes headlines simply for grabbing dinner at a five-star New York City restaurant on a Tuesday night. The “Bad Blood” singer is unquestionably more famous now than ever before, with her record-breaking Eras Tour grossing $2.2bn in North American ticket sales alone and being named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. As for Travis Kelce, he’s famous in his own right. Among the NFL’s legion of “dads, Brads, and Chads”, the Kansas City Chiefs player is considered one of the greatest tight ends of all time - having reached three Super Bowls and won two of them over the past four seasons. That’s why public relations experts aren’t too convinced this relationship is as manufactured as people have made it out to be.

“Both of these characters are so popular in their own right. They have so much celebrity that they would not need an additional mechanism to create more buzz or publicity,” said Tate.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Taylor Swift machine over the years (including her infamous publicist, Tree Paine), the pop star doesn’t do anything without considering how it may affect her brand as a whole. When it came to publicly endorsing Democratic congressional nominees in Tennessee back in 2018, Swift was seen arguing with her father about making her first political statement in her Netflix documentary, Miss Americana. During her Time Magazine interview, Swift took the opportunity to call out what very much was a PR stunt according to her - her “leaked” 2016 phone call with Kanye West. But as for her relationships, it’s unlikely that someone as strong-willed as Swift is sitting back and letting someone else decide the subject behind her next chart-topping single.

“Taylor Swift as a brand, she doesn’t do anything without really thinking it through. If she’s going to be spotted out, there’s a lot of thought and consideration that goes into it. If she wanted this relationship to be private, it can be private,” said Bendoury. “She was with Joe Alwyn for six years and we never saw them; she’s with Travis for a few months and we haven’t stopped seeing them.”

While Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet have been much more discrete with their romance, that hasn’t stopped the public from sniffing out their relationship as a potential PR stunt. Really, it’s hard for pop culture fans and reality TV critics alike to categorise any Kardashian-Jenner relationship as something not intended to boost their image. Even Kim Kardashian herself has admitted that she was only taken seriously by the fashion industry when she began dating her now ex-husband, Kanye West.

“Everything with the Kardashians is just so calculated. They really are just a brand,” said Bendory. “He seems very different from her normal type. Dating a guy like him does work in her favor too, because he is a pretty serious actor. But with the Kardashians, there’s always an angle.”

The pair have kept their public appearances minimal, apart from their PDA-filled attendance at a Beyoncé concert and a US Open date over the summer. Jenner and Chalamet first began dating in early 2023, shortly after her breakup with rapper Travis Scott - who faced his own controversy for the fatalities caused by a crowd surge at his November 2021 Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas. Meanwhile, Kendall Jenner began her short-lived romance with Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny around the same time. However, it didn’t take long for people to point out the supermodel’s past controversies as well - namely for an infamous campaign video for her tequila brand, 818, which faced accusations of cultural appropriation.

“Lest we forget that horrendous PR stunt of her being in that migrant outfit in the middle of the field, which made no sense. She’s repeatedly getting slapped on the hand for that, and she’s also been accused a number of times of cultural appropriation,” said Tate. “Could that be the reason that she’s jumped into something that is so foreign to her, because he is of a completely different, predominantly Spanish-speaking background? Is she using this to ease over and potentially build crowds for a particular brand?”

Have Hollywood’s top publicists and PR agencies become more obvious with their tactics, or is it that consumers and pop culture fanatics are no longer buying the narratives being fed to them by the media? While “PR stunt” may have been the buzzword of 2023, publicity teams have been using romantic relationships to their advantage since the beginning of celebrity itself. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall may be one of old Hollywood’s most iconic off-screen couples, but big studio producers didn’t hesitate to capitalise on their on-screen chemistry and turn it into box office gold.

These days, it seems the industry has become far more transparent. Internet sleuths have turned to certain photo agencies as a tell-tale sign of a conveniently-timed pap walk, while fans have noticed that a blossoming romance may occur around the same time as a celebrity’s new project or forthcoming brand launch.

In a year that was defined by heartbreaking public splits, it seems almost equally as heartbreaking that we’re unable to accept a celebrity relationship for what it is. Instead, we must rationalise why an A-list singer is spending her precious time with a B-list athlete, for no reason other than publicity. If 2023 was the year of breakups, perhaps this year will bring about more positive and uplifting prospects for celebrity romances - and the examples they set for our own love lives.