It’s undeniable thatDwayne Johnsonis taking a very different track than the average actor. For once, it has nothing to do with aging out of roles or growing out of them. Being one of the highest-paid and most recognizable faces on the planet evidently wasn’t enough for thewrestler-turned-actor-turned-aspiring mogul bent on carving out a chunk of the business world. Marketing execs take notice; he doesn’t need to lay a finger on you to put the smackdown; he can buy your entire business. Whatever your taste in beverages, lifestyle, or financial transactions, The Rock has a deal for you.
Dwayne Johnson Is a Master of Marketing
Imagine the Brahma Bull uttering the line “synergy” in front of a boardroom of investors, and you have a good mental image of the current incarnation of The Rock. Instead of delving into more complex characters like he did inSouthland TalesorBe Cool, he’s gone decidedly corporate. He let the veil slip, doing live ad reads for Acorn on theTonight Showthree years after investing in the financial business. And for all you lawyers out there, yes, he acknowledged the connection like a seasoned pro.
Not content to focus on wrestling or movie fans domestically, he’s taken to cultivating intimate ties with Chinese distributors,making films “engineered”–Variety’s words, not ours–to work specifically in China. Cozying up to the Chinese censors presents a host of moral conundrums;Chinese censorship laws heavily restricteverything from ghosts to members of the LGBTQ+ community on screen. If this reflects the direction of the new Dwayne Johnson, his days of challenging himself with more interesting roles may be long gone.
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Dwayne Johnson Is a Modern-Day Tony Robbins
The center of an empire of cross-promotional branding deals, Dwayne Johnson is no longer selling his services; he’s selling himself as a larger-than-life personality. A cornerstone of his brand is the inspirational, or maybe that should be aspirational, public testimonials, usually centering on self-improvement through positive thinking and physical fitness.
The thing is, nobody ever wanted to be Tony Robbins or Richard Simmons. Fans want to live the life of the Rock, have his abs and charisma, andstar in the big moviesthat he does. Fans want to be him … just not when he shills his products on live TV, trying to disguise it as some altruistic, organic act of kindness.
Presented awkwardly, alongside the products he is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to endorse, are sincere talks on subjects like depression and poverty, undercutting his credibility. The life of the entrepreneur is the life of the hustle, and it looks exhausting with all the decorum of your door-to-door salesman uncle trying to close a limited-time deal with your brother-in-law at Thanksgiving dinner.
Thanks to his ownership of the XFL, he’s been able to cross-promote his Teremana tequila. Shocking, right? In a sit down withForbes, Johnson didn’t deny that his social media presence offers himunique sales opportunitiesthe average sales team lacks. “I have a very powerful tool of social media, and I’ve built some trust equity with fans from all over the world,” he said, before explaining somewhat disingenuously, considering his eagerness to monetize his Instagram account, “And I’ve said this internally over and over to my team, we don’t want to promote, we don’t want to market, we have a relationship with the people.”
Presenting the ultimate male fantasy of alpha male (minus the insecure machismo and baggage of Andrew Tate), he’s walked a fine line between genuine good guy and gym rat, selling himself to every imaginable market and demographic possible. Depending on your viewing choices, he’s the toughest dude and most vulnerable, offering his twist on the celebrity-origin sitcom model with the somewhatrecently canceledYoung Rockthat borrowed heavily from the earlier hitsEverybody Hates ChrisandYoung Sheldon. But in doing so, he’s spread himself impossibly thin.
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What Is Dwayne Johnson’s End Goal?
There’s a brilliance to his strategy, and if it were any other schmuck, there would be no reason to care. But The Rock has gone from the rebel who talked trash to the boss' face as a WWE performer to the guy deciding who gets laid off in the next round of budget cuts. From inspirational tweets in front of a private airplane to his secret diet regimen of supplements, he has become a caricature of a social media influencer. Though you wouldn’t know it from the broad grins and tweets, The Rock has a lot to prove, the newly-rebooted XFL football league mired inlosses tallying 60 millionin 2023. Hopefully, those $200 branded sweatshirts put him back in the black.
Irrespective of those setbacks, Johnson appears bulletproof, his wheels never ceasing their forward motion. As if to signal his ascent up the rungs of the entertainment industry’s treacherous ladder, he was named a board member of the WWE-UFC board of directors, per SEC paperwork filed in late January 2024 via CNN reports. Take note that as of the signing, he acquired the full legal rights to name “The Rock” and the assorted catchphrases and branding iconography associated with this wrestling career. It’s a very rare exception in the WWE’s long corporate history, demonstrating his eminence in the WWE power structure. In addition, it seems as though he is making moves within his acting career, starring in an upcoming A24 film,The Smashing Machine, with Johnson stating he wants to “make films that matter.”
Johnson’s role in the sports entertainment world will be interesting to watch. Countless media personalities have forecasted his executive ambitions, culminating ina presidential run. He’s not exactly done much to dispel those rumors. Rest assured, he never really wanted to settle for being only the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oprah, a global icon and brand herself, is perhaps a better comparison. At this pace, he might get there.
