God I wish I were famous. Why aren’t entertainment bloggers more famous? If we were, we could get great promotion deals like Puffy, who just signed a deal to promote Ciroc Vodka that could be worth as much as $100 million over the next several years. They could do that for bloggers. I could promote… thinking hard… pens? Computers? Us Weekly? That’s got to be worth a good $45 right there. Damn you Puffy. Like you didn’t have enough money, you had to add another freaking hundred million to the pot? That means he can father at least four more illegitimate kids and still pay for them. That’s not right.

Just five years ago, Sean “Diddy” Combs asked Busta Rhymes to “pass the Courvoisier.” These days, it’s all about the vodka. The 37-year-old hip-hop mogul has inked a multiyear deal to develop the Ciroc vodka brand – one of Diageo PLC’s superpremium lines – for a 50-50 share in the profits. It’s the latest agreement in which a celebrity is going beyond the typical endorser role to share in a brand’s rise and fall, such as Jay-Z with Budweiser and 50 Cent with Vitamin Water.

Diageo said the agreement could be worth more than $100 million for Combs over the course of the deal, depending on how well the brand performs. “It is not an endorsement deal,” Combs told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. “This is something that will have my daily attention.” Combs said he wanted to work with Diageo because the company understood that “I’m not just a celebrity endorser, I’m a brand builder. I’m a luxury brand builder.” Combs said he will be responsible for everything from marketing the brand to deciding where to sell it, and will focus on attracting “movers and shakers” to the line. “They’re looking for something that tastes like their lifestyle,” he said. “It’s that trendsetter, that hipster, someone who’s looking for luxury and looking for something better. I can’t overhype someone into loving vodka,” he said. But once consumers actually taste Ciroc, “I think we can convert a lot of people.”

[From the Associated Press]

You know what P-Diddle or whatever your name is, you can suck it. $100 million for that? I would do that for $1.25. I’m not saying it’d work out as well, but it would be more fair. Really, as much as I joke, P-Diddle is nothing if not a phenomenal businessman. He knows how to turn himself into a brand and how to really market himself, his lifestyle, and his products. His Sean Jean label is doing incredibly well, and the guy really does control and participate in his businesses – he doesn’t just slap his name on something some company did all the work for. It sounds like this deal will obviously be a little more traditional, in that this is another company’s product, and not P-Diddle’s. But for that amount of money, most people would promote just about anything. So congrats, I guess. Jerk.

Did I hide my jealousy well?

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Puffy at the Sean John Womens Line Launch Party on October 19th in New York City. Image thanks to PR Photos.