And the award for best goodie bag goes to …

Forget the little gold statuette and all that guff about best supporting whatever. The big winners at Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony will walk away with cashmere pyjama bottoms, mink eyelashes and a coffee maker.

Presenters and performers at this year’s Oscar ceremony will receive a ”gift basket” — a bag of freebies — expected to have a value of about $150 000 (R870 000). It will include the latest ultra-thin cellphone, a selection of free holidays, exclusive olive oil, a $1 500 voucher for dinner, and the coffee maker, which together with a toaster and kettle carries a price tag of $700.

This year there are even plans for an unofficial runners-up gift bag for all the nominees. Priced at about $38 000, it includes a voucher for a weekend in Las Vegas.

All this for some of the most privileged, mollycoddled and wealthy people on the planet.

”Really, it’s a business transaction,” Karen Wood, president of gift company Backstage Creations, said. ”It’s not that the companies feel celebrities can’t afford it. They are the trendsetters and can make the difference for a product.”

The goodie bag, once just a staple of the fashion show, has become one of the most important elements of the awards season, from the Golden Globes to the Grammys and the Emmys. Around it has sprung up an industry of product placement, celebrity branding, fixers, gifters and grifters worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Four years ago, the Oscar goodie bag was valued at $10 000. By last year, that had grown to $120 000 and included a gift certificate for a resort in Mexico. Gwyneth Paltrow, who presented an award that year, used hers for her honeymoon with Coldplay singer Chris Martin.

The bag included a 110cm high-definition TV. As unwieldy as that may seem, this year the Oscar goodie bag threatens to go further than ever to keep ahead of other ceremonies.

The star at this month’s Grammy ceremony was the $34 000 gift bag (actually more of a suitcase), which contained an iPod, a stereo system, clothing, holidays, a voucher for eye surgery and a bottle of Trump fragrance for men.

Even presenters at the relatively obscure Independent Spirit Awards, celebrating independent films, received a $30 000 goodie bag, which included a three-month loan of a scooter.

The recent Sundance film festival, another event supposed to promote small films, was overrun with companies eager to give their products away to the right people. Jewellery, clothing, hi-tech gadgetry, even an 18-carat gold vibrator and Krispy Kreme doughnuts were snapped up by eager celebrities.

The pay-off for both sides is easy to understand. Celebrities get goodies, manufacturers get kudos by association and the opportunity to say that a star uses or at least owns their product.

”I don’t think there are many celebrities calling event organisers and saying, ‘What do you have in your gift bag?”’ said Wood, one of the pioneers of the industry.

”Remember, they’re not being paid for their time. What we’re giving them is a fraction of what they would be paid, so it’s a nice way of saying thank you. But it is also a business transaction. The celebrities are quite often being photographed and associated with the product but they’re not being paid for an endorsement.”

Wood put together the gift basket for this month’s Screen Actors Guild awards.

”It had 68 items in it,” she said. ”It was pretty over the top, but it was fun putting it together.”

Highlights were gourmet peanut butter, tickets to the Los Angeles opera and a voucher for the Electric Candle Company, which offers to replace your wax candles with the electric variety.

”We always try to find things that are unique and unusual,” she said.

Not only do companies vie to get their products included in the baskets, they pay for the privilege, although they also want guarantees that their products end up in the hands of the celebrities.

Commercialisation

But the commercialisation of awards ceremonies starts before the great and the good even take their seats. While stars have long accepted the loan of clothes from designers for the ceremony, now agents, designers and representatives draw up exclusive contracts for stars to model their wares on the red carpet in exchange for tens and sometime hundreds of thousands of dollars.

While fashion and jewellery companies do not like to reveal whether they have paid a celebrity to wear their products, anecdotal evidence suggests the practice is widespread. Hours before last month’s Golden Globes ceremony, Charlize Theron and Hilary Swank reportedly changed their choice of jewellery, dropping one brand they had been loaned for another that came with the promise of payment.

”I’m really sad about it,” said Kelly Cutrone, founder of fashion PR company People’s Revolution. ”It’s the epitome of the carnivorous, capitalistic thing. It’s big money.”

For the Oscars, she said, getting a celebrity to indirectly endorse your product can extend to the contents of the handbag.

”If you’re going to spend $100 000 to get Natalie Portman to answer your brand of cellphone on the red carpet — saying ‘Hi, mom’ when it’s actually her publicist or your publicist calling — then you have a good deal. If a picture of her in your dress gets on the cover of magazines and it’s cost you $200 000, then that isn’t a lot of money considering a full-page advertisement in Vogue is $60 000.”

But good business, Cutrone said, is not good for everyone. ”There’s no place left for the smaller designers who can’t afford to play this game. Ultimately that means that the retail buyers who pick up on the red-carpet fashions buy from a smaller group of designers and in the end the sophisticated woman gets less choice in the stores.”

Keanu Reeves and Michael Keaton were notable at Sundance for turning down the gifts offered to them. It remains to be seen whether any of the Oscar celebrities will do the same. After all, who could refuse the opportunity to frolic in the waves with a ”personal surf butler”?

What prize guests get

Brits

A £2 500 (R27 500) selection including: