Singer Lady Gaga during an announcement of her long term partnership with Polaroid as the brand's creative director on a specialty line of imaging products at CES.David Becker/Getty Images
As I type this, there's a huge crowd of people standing around a small display put up by Monster , the company responsible for those celebrity-endorsed headphones (Beats by Dr. Dre).
The reason they're standing here has very little to do with anything Monster sells. They're here because, shortly, Lady Gaga will show up.
The pop superstar has her own line of headphones, hence why she's here. But she's part of a long tradition at these kinds of exhibitions: Hype-Your-Product-Using-Famous-People.
Last night, Sony kicked off their press conference by announcing their new brand ambassador: Taylor Swift. Ms. Swift was on stage for all of five minutes, during which time she talked about how much she likes Sony and then sang a song. Sony beemed her performance in 3D, and then she took off, presumably with a bag full of many times my lifetime earning potential.
Snark aside, the casual crowd here loves this sort of thing. The Lady Gaga crowd is now so big it's blocking corridors. People are clapping for no reason. She's not due for another 15 minutes.