"Real value" is an attempt to draw a distinction where there isn't one.

Kim Kardashian brings in more "real value" to a clothing company than any one seamstress.

Welcome to marketing.

And yet a bad seamstress can tank a clothing company if a single bad article of clothing gets into the wrong hands.

This kind of makes Kim K a safer play than a bad seamstress. As unless you go full Kanye a spokesmodel isn't going to tank a company.

A single bad seamstress causing bad clothing to be delivered to customers is a process failure, the same way no single engineer should be responsible for Saleforce's production systems going down. And in most ways, implementing quality control on your product is a lot easier than controlling the personal life of your spokespeople.

Any company that's paying $10M to a spokesperson will have (maybe I should say "should have") a lot of employees dedicated to that spokesperson and the campaign. They might have a clawback clause if the spokesperson shows bad judgement, and can also get some additional good marketing if they are proactive in distancing themselves from their Kanye-esque spokesperson.

So I guess, like you say, there is a quality control process regardless.

I think the larger issues are probably the decisions of the pre-seamstress process employees. Bad choices in materials or cost-savings measures can turn off customers.

If an actor can directly bring more revenue to the business than an engineer then yes, they are adding more real value.

Probably does. Most engineers are fungible

given the hype-driven nature of our industry, that may well be the case.