Is Timothee Chalamet’s relationship and Kylie Jenner? Public relations experts weigh

Despite almost two years of observations, benches and sweet launches, the relationship of Kylie Jenner and Timothee Chalamet always looks like a problem in the Hollywood matrix.

Even when the couple made their long -awaited debut on the red carpet last week after several public outings filled with PDA, some still had trouble accepting the news.

“I still cannot believe that Kylie & Timothee is a real thing,” wrote a user on X.

The relationship of Jenner and Chalamet was defined by skepticism because the rumors of their twinning surfaced for the first time in 2023. Social media users wondered what these two stars – one which has become famous in a showing reality TV, the other in the world of Oscar cinema – might have been in common.

“I firmly believe that they are seated together in full silence,” wrote a person on X. Such reactions to Jenner and Chalamet are not limited to the most hyperactive posters of social media; I heard them with first hand. One of my friends recently said that she could not shake the feeling that Jenner and Chalamet “do not exist in the same chronology of celebrities”.

Conventional wisdom suggests a relationship that this period could be a bad deal for both parties. But it turns out that the confusion of the public culture monitoring can actually be an intelligent strategy.

Two public relations experts who spoke to Business Insider said that the continuous flow of confused responses to this coupling of celebrities is actually a job well done by the respective public relations teams of Jenner and Chalamet.

It is a sign that their two carefully cultivated individual marks are strong. So, if you feel the friction of these marks that compete, you are not alone – this is precisely what makes the couple so fun to doubt.

A story of two very different celebrities

Evan Nierman, CEO of the Crisis Public Relations Society Redly Banyan, Described the brand of Jenner as ultra-visible, heavy with social media and constantly self-promotional. Meanwhile, Chalamet wanted to present himself as an artist with discernment and taste.

“The problem that people encounter is that these two different characters seem to be in contradiction,” said Nierman. “The kind of actor brood, super serious and super-authentic collides with the Kardashian model, and I think that is probably why people have trouble understanding the twinning of the two.”

In reality, the public’s reaction to Jenner and Chalamet as a couple has nothing to do with their personality or their compatibility behind closed doors. This has everything to do with the brand’s positioning and integration strategies, probably orchestrated – or, at the very least, closely monitored – by large teams of publicists, image consultants and managers (in the case of Jenner, a “Momager”).

“Public relations can play a much more important role in the things you see getting out of Hollywood than most people at home,” Business Insider Mike Fahey, founder and CEO of the public relations agency Fahey Communications told Business. “Many of these things that seem to be happy accidents are actually by design.”

However, there is an important distinction between our traditional understanding of a “public relations relationship”, which has been orchestrated by the respective celebrities teams to generate mutually beneficial advertising, and a real relationship which was carefully managed by public relations to maximize its impact.

Yes, celebrities have a lot to win by pollinating their fans bases. But the curiosity of the “kymothy” feels different from, let’s say, Tom Hiddleston gets papper with a t-shirt declaring his love for Taylor Swift.

Jenner and Chalamet are simply too strange for people to believe that they have a calculated arrangement, or that they are pushed to make affection for cameras. What end? To the cross promotion “dune” on “the Kardashians”? To sell a makeup line inspired by Bob Dylan by Kylie Cosmetics?

So something should keep them together. Could it be… love? Well, yes, maybe. Why not?

The slow deployment of Kymothy was the perfection of the

The initial deployment of the media of the relationship of Jenner and Chalamet was written over several months, pushed by blurred photos of Jenner’s car in the Allée de Chalamet and anonymous advice sent to the aggregator of Potins Deuuxmoi before the two were finally seen during a Beyoncé concert in September 2023. last.

The beginnings on the red carpet of a power torque are a big problem in Hollywood – as a comparison, Swift never walked with a boyfriend – but Jenner and Chalamet have always kept it relatively discreet. Instead of taking photos together during a starry event such as the Met Gala or the Oscars, they organized their official debut during a ceremony little assisted in Rome: the David di Donatello Awards, where Chalamet received an honorary prize for cinematographic excellence.

The incremental and temperate launch of their relationship has created a lot of space for theories of suspicion and conspiracy to prosper. But countertily, Nierman and Fahey said it was not necessarily a bad thing.

“It leads to more confusion, but that also does exactly what it is intended to do, which is more and more interest,” said Nierman. “A series of slow strategic leaks which are then followed by beginnings on the red carpet is a public relations decision designed to generate buzz and to make people speak.”

If Jenner and Chalamet had opted for a hard launch – an official announcement, perhaps, or an interview with magazine coverage – it could have encouraged fans to adapt more quickly to their romance or to understand their connection more deeply. This would remove mysticism, which is the very thing that kept us interested.

“If I were a Kardashian and I was sitting on this relationship, I would do exactly the same thing. I would be like,” I want to draw as much mileage as possible. “They created this media fire storm while doing very little.”

More than two years after Jenner and Chalamet have been linked, they always have valuable cards to play – their first selfie shared on Instagram, for example, or the first appearance of Chalamet on “The Kardashians”.

“When this happens, it will be a big salary of milk cow for them, and that is why they are so deliberate in what they do,” said Fahey about the apparently inevitable appearance of the Oscar candidate in the Hulu reality show of Jenner. “There are no accidents in the Kardashian family.”

Each new step will probably reveal a new series of titles, Tiktoks and animated debates in my group cats. I plan to receive many more texts like: “I cannot believe that they are always together” and “I still do not understand”.

Here, “Still” is the operating word. The continuous disbelief that Jenner and Chalamet are a match is not the symptom of a deployment of public relations that has gone wrong. In fact, it’s probably the opposite.

“It was played perfectly,” said Nierman. “It makes us guess, it makes us speak, and that’s the goal.”