Gallery: Steve-O and Other Shamelessly Self-Promoting Celebrities

Who can forget Gray's famous VMA gown, which announced "My new album drops September 18, 2001"? The girl's face in this photo adequately sums up everyone's reaction to Gray's playful advertising.

The 2001 awards took place on September 5 -- you can bet that if Gray had known that her album release date was slated for a week after the 9/11 attacks, she wouldn't have been so glib.

In February 2008, Haim put out this full-page ad in Variety to announce that he was serious about returning to acting. Unfortunately, he appeared only in some measly cameos or low-rate movies in the next two years -- aside from his reality show with Corey Fedlman, Vh1's The Two Coreys -- and he died of an accidental overdose on March 10, 2010.

This one we can't help but root for, since documentarian Spurlock candidly recorded his quest to get his documentary sponsored by major corporations, in return for wearing a NASCAR-suit-like tux emblazoned with all their logos, and consuming only their products during the filming process. You have to admit, he turned self-promotion on its ear.

Working it on the red carpet.

The Rachel Green of S Club 7, Stevens tried to get a solo career rolling after the band broke up. A writer at the Times Online claims that while working at another magazine he received paparazzi pics of Stevens walking across the street and passing by a poster advertising her new single -- clearly a set-up. While I can't find these photos (because at least one outlet ran them back then), it's too good a story to not share.

A lot of MTV teen stars think they can parlay their reality-TV fame into actual business ventures, as is the case with Gary Shirley (left), who changed his Twitter handle to @ItsGaryTime in the hopes of selling T-shirts with that phrase printed on them.

Then there's Kailyn Lowry, who's become involved with possible-pyramid-scheme Amway, which sells household products.

Possibly more painful than Haim's Variety ad was Leo's attempt to garner sympathy from the Academy for the 2011 Oscar season. The worst part is that she's right: She was fantastic in The Town but didn't get the same Vanity Fair coverage as the younger nominees. But despite her logic, these self-created "Consider..." ads were painfully awkward.

Then again, they may have been what helped nab her her first Oscar win!

When former U.S. senator Ted Stevens died in a plane crash in Alaska last year, Palin was unable to refrain from a little bit of self-promotion while offering her condolences to his family.

Sure, the man had been her political mentor, but the Facebook message expressing her grief at his passing quickly switched gears by claiming that Stevens supported Palin's natural gas pipeline project, which had fallen through by the time of his death.

In a photo that just sums up what's wrong with all this, a few years ago Speidi, caught by the paparazzi in LA, showed off their then-new book How to Be Famous and even flipped open to a chapter titled "The Paps Are Your Friends!"