By Claude Brodesser-Akner

Published: May 05, 2008

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- Last week, Miley Cyrus, aka Disney's billion-dollar girl, Hannah Montana, assumed yet another identity: piñata.

With a single, revealing photo taken by Annie Leibovitz for June's Vanity Fair magazine, the 15-year-old Disney starlet all but hoisted herself aloft with a sign that read, "Hit me! I have candy inside!" Many of the world's bloggers, journalists and parents grabbed their clubs.

Miley Cyrus made Billboard's list of the 20 top-earning artists of 2007 in the No. 11 spot, with $64 million from her CD sales and tour receipts.

Marketing executives who regularly deal in celebrity, as well as crisis-PR experts who specialize in protecting it, were taken aback at the heights the Cyrus scandal reached in the press and blogosphere. Some even posited it was, in fact, her billion-dollar value to Disney that caused both the company and Ms. Cyrus to overreact to the photo -- which, contrary to a report in The New York Times and elsewhere, did not show Ms. Cyrus bare-breasted.

"It's rather tame," said David Weisswasser, managing director of the New York-based Platinum Rye, a top provider of celebrity talent and music licensing for Fortune 500 companies and ad agencies. "And I am sure it seemed [to her parents and management] like an incremental movement in her public image: Everybody has a transition to make, from 'pop tart' to musician and artist."

He added: "That said, it's clearly not what Disney wants her to do."

Breadwinner

What's at stake? Quite a lot, for both Ms. Cyrus and Disney.

She made Billboard's list of the 20 top-earning artists of 2007 in the No. 11 spot, with $64 million from her CD sales and tour receipts; according to Pollstar, her "Best of Both Worlds Tour" grossed $36 million last year.

But the tour -- which has her performing both as Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana -- also highlights a central challenge for Ms. Cyrus: How to make the transition from Disney character to an artist with broad appeal who can stand -- and brand -- alone, as she eventually will need to.

No one, no matter how successful, can stay 15 forever.

Experts who track the power of celebrity disagree on how much damage has been done to Ms. Cyrus, who's apologized to her fans and says she was "embarrassed" by the Leibovitz photo.

'Misinterpreted'

Even Ms. Leibovitz has offered her own, albeit circumspect, apology, saying that she was "sorry that my image of Miley has been misinterpreted."

Hannah Montana: Will offended parents still shell out for her merchandise?