Some swag bags are swaggier than others.
For 20 years, L.A.-based marketing company, Distinctive Assets, has concocted their famously, fabulously expensive “Everybody Wins” gift bags meant for certain attendees of the Academy Awards.
The name “Everybody Wins” is a bit deceiving (or ironic), since only a select few nominees get to take one home.
This year, 28 people, including the Best Actor and Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Actress, and Best Director nominees were the lucky ones who got the goods. The three hosts this year – Wanda Sykes, Amy Schumer, and Regina Hall – also received the gift bag.
To call them merely “swag bags” doesn’t do justice to the riches that sit inside. It’s a bit more than "Oscars 2022!” t-shirts and commemorative bumper stickers, as this year’s haul is worth nearly $140,000.
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CNBC took a look inside the loaded gift bags given to people like Steven Spielberg, Jessica Chastain, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kristen Stewart, and, yes, even Will Smith.
This year, the bags include glittering goodies from designer popcorn to a voucher for $12,000 worth of liposuction.
Don’t worry that one of the nominees might've accidentally left their bag at some wild Oscars afterparty. As CNBC noted, usually the nominees who are in Los Angeles for the Oscars simply receive the bags at their hotel. Others have them delivered to their homes or production company offices.
Distinctive Assets founder Lash Fary explained that the company gets “calls from about 25% to 30% of the nominees each year who want to make sure we know where to get their bag to them. It’s incredibly expensive, so I try not to ship them if I don’t have to, but I will for the Penelope Cruzes of the world, that’s for sure.”
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Considering the smaller number of selected nominees, the Oscar gift bags are even more exclusive than those for the Grammys, with whom Distinctive Assets also partners.
“It’s a very small group of people [at the Oscars] compared to the 150 gift bags we create for the Grammys,” Fary says. “That allows for products or services that would never be able to give away 150 items to be able to give away much more highly valued things.”
Other gifts inside included, among other things: $25,000 worth of home renovations from Los Angeles-based Maison Construction; a small tea gift set from Oprah-approved The Chai Box; a $15,000 four-night stay for two at the Golden Door luxury resort in Escondico, CA; and -- seriously -- the title of “Lord” or “Lady of Glencoe,” along with a small plot of land in Scotland.
But the most expensive item in this year’s bag is a $50,000 three-night stay at Turin Castle in Scotland, inspired by Denzel Washington’s “Best Actor” nomination for “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Guests will have full access to the 17th century castle, “complete with butler service and a bagpiper welcome when they arrive.”
Ah, but you know what comes next. The taxman gets to slide his hand in that bag too. That's right, the value of the goods counts as taxable income, according to the I.R.S.
And there’s something comforting in that. Sometimes, celebrities are just like us.
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