Step by step breakdown of her popularity in the media (nepotism)

I've seen people asking this time and time again (I actually came on this board trying to figure it out myself) why this girl is in the media so often, where she came from and how she's such a success. My curiosity is in part due to my interest in the media and marketing, so I spent half an hour looking into it and here's a pretty detailed (for a forum post) explanation on how this girl basically appeared out of thin air and is now landing movie rolls without a background in professional acting (not that that's unheard of anyway).

This isn't supposed to be derogatory - there's some speculation, but it's otherwise pretty objective. Contacts and connections are huge in getting ahead in life, so it'd be pretty stupid not to use them - but whether Cara D knows just how much 'help' she's had is another question.

Here's the run through (based on another post I made on this board):

-Her godmother is actress Joan Collins (DBE).

Get the easy ones out of the way first. Joan Collins is a Golden Globe winning actress who's also recently been awarded a Damehood. You couldn't pick many better contacts to have in the acting world: she'll know agents in London and LA (and has houses in both), has drama school connections and has English theatre connections.

But I'd argue the real success is definitely from her family's links to media. If you look at her media track record she has been promoted from the get go to an incomparable degree. She was given the exposure almost as soon as she started modelling and the bulk of her exposure came before her modelling success. Let's look into why:

-Her godfather is Condé Nast executive Nicholas Coleridge

This guy is President of Conde Nast International and Managing Director of Conde Nast in Britain. Conde Nast International own and operate Vogue, Glamour, GQ, Tatler, Vanity Fair (to name a few). Obviously everyone knows most of these so I don't really need to go into it, but I'll just throw out some aspects of this which basically tell you everything you need to know. For one, her godfather is effectively Anna Wintour's boss. Anna Wintour, for anyone who doesn't know, is the editor-in-chief (basically runs) of American Vogue and arguably the most influential person in the fashion industry.

If we break it down: Tatler is the magazine which first gave her and her sisters attention. It mainly focuses on society girls from rich, well connected British families. CD would have been in there anyway, but as an extra kick her godfather runs the company who own it. All of the other magazines listed have also given CD a ridiculous amount of coverage - with exclusives and covers with GQ and Glamour.

But this is the easy stuff. It continues...

-Delevingne's maternal grandfather was publishing executive and English Heritage chairman Sir Jocelyn Stevens, the nephew of magazine publisher Sir Edward George Warris Hulton and the grandson of newspaper proprietor Sir Edward Hulton, 1st Baronet.

I won't break these guys down, but there's one thing which is especially worth noting and that's that Sir Edward Hulton's paper basically merged into what is now the Daily Mail, and it's likely (conjecture on my part) that somebody in her family will have some sort of considerable stake / influence on the paper. For info on the DM all you need to know is that it has 56.1 million global monthly unique users and is the biggest English language newspaper website in the world (source: http://mailadvertising.co.uk/uploads/files/MailOnline-Summary.pdf).

The Daily Mail played a key role in getting Cara and her sisters in the public eye. Even now if you go on the site I'd wager that there'll be at least 4 articles in the past month about her. The influx of articles on Cara Delevingne started back in 2011 seemingly out of nowhere, and just continuously rammed her down the public's throats. If you look at the comments from when those articles were posted people kept saying 'who the hell is this girl' or similar. Eventually, with the carefully oiled media machine, including the Daily Mail and the power magazines above
Cara actually started booking big modelling gigs and generating her own headlines. You've got to remember that the key element to marketing / advertising (which is what modelling essentially is) is to present your product to the largest audience possible. When CD is already attracting a huge audience (even if nobody knows who she is) then she's a safe bet to start giving campaigns / runway work too.

This is a prime example (check the comments) of early DM articles on the Delevingne sisters:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1384661/Theyre-socially-ambitious-make-Middletons-look-shy-retiring--meet-Dynasty-sisters.html

The Daily Mail also does this with other members of the connected's off-spring, although usually to a far lesser extent and it normally doesn't catch.

And then to top it all off she has direct connections to the Royal Family (from wikipedia):

-Her maternal grandmother Janie Sheffield was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret.


Once you look at it that way it's all pretty obvious. It's the perfect storm of the connections, and then the right look, personality and work ethic to make the absolute most of them.