Celebrity Endorsement

The greatest brander in the entertainment industry today is Jennifer Lopez. She’s gone from being a hottie singer-actress to being a household name.

Almost every business has a trading name but only a minority of those businesses however, have what could be classed as a ‘brand’, a ‘brand name’ or ‘celeb brand’. Branding is a word commonly referred to by advertisers and marketing people, but what does it actually mean?

The most effective description is that a celeb brand is a name or symbol that is commonly known to identify a company or its products and separates it from the competition.

The greatest brander in the entertainment industry today is Jennifer Lopez. She’s gone from being a hottie singer-actress to being a household name.

Companies have products or services they want to sell. Most products or brands start life devoid of any personality. Let’s be honest, a brand by itself will never walk, talk and get photographed. But by linking it with a sports, movie or TV celebrity through a celebrity endorsement deal, the name of a product or a company can instantly acquire enormous lashings of glitz; glamour; charm; mass sex-appeal and, in the process, generate tremendous sales and revenues. It suddenly comes alive in multi-dimensions.

For this reason, using Celebrities and the Celebrity Endorsement Deal have long been a favorite brand marketing tool of marketing executives.

A lucrative celebrity endorsement deal is one of the major benefits of being a celebrity in our star-conscious world and culture. Simply for being famous, for whatever reason, you can land a celebrity endorsement deal worth $millions. No special talent is required. All that you have to do is to be yourself and be seen wearing a particular item of clothing such as a shoe, a swim suit or a fashion outfit of a certain designer or drinking a particular beverage.

A cornerstone of many recent celebrity brands has been a fashion line, which offers another opportunity for an artist to convey an image and a message to the consumer and in the process, profit financially from the celebrity endorsement relationship.

Having a celebrity in your advertising is a great way to attract attention and create excitement for your products, and build awareness among your prospects and customers. The celebrity serves as a testimonial, an endorsement for your product or service. That endorsement may be enough to turn a tyre kicker into a buyer.

How do you choose a celebrity and close a celebrity endorsement deal for your brand? Credibility is at the core of the best brand, celebrity and celebrity endorsement deal tie-ups. It is an organic process. With the best celebrity brand tie-ups, the deal fits the celebrity’s personal story and sometimes it works the other way around. Some stars fit the bill so perfectly, that they become nearly synonymous with the brands they are paid to pitch. For example, ‘Be a Pepper’ Guy. “I’m a Pepper. He’s a Pepper. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too? Be a Pepper. Drink Dr Pepper.”

Dr Pepper’s breakthrough to the mainstream came with this effective campaign. It ran from 1977 to 1985 and featured the singing and dancing talents of 26-year-old David Naughton as the original Dr Pepper guy. He is also well-known for starring in ‘An American Werewolf in London.’ More recently he has been seen in sitcoms such as ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Murder, She Wrote.’

Marketers in some fields spend weeks or months vetting potential endorsers, using consumer surveys and focus groups. Fashion companies, on the other hand, commonly rely on a designer’s instinct, a strategy that some say does not necessarily work. The consensus of most fashion marketers is that celebrities and the celebrity endorsement deal are more effective than models now in imprinting a brand in the customer’s mind.

Fashion companies seem to be so dependent on celebrity endorsement and endorsers that they sometimes appear to practice what could best be described as celebrity speed dating…courting and then discarding celebrities with increasing rapidity. Some years ago Louis Vuitton signed a celebrity endorsement deal with Jennifer Lopez to promote its status handbags, then replaced her less than a year later with starlets including Diane Kruger and Scarlett Johansson. Then it soon replaced them and enlisted Uma Thurman to appear in ads for its cherry-emblazoned monogram bags.

During recent years, the line between person and brand has blurred as more and more celebrities, in addition to their celebrity endorsement role, have started to apply techniques from the corporate world to their careers by marketing and protecting a brand identity, trade-marking and licensing their names, launching their own product lines whilst at the same time, embracing product celebrity endorsements to boost their perceived value to consumers.

Without doubt a celebrity endorsement deal can make or break a product, and it is financially lucrative and rewarding to link your product to a particular name. But it does not always work out. Which probably explains why some firms drop one star, while keeping others. Also, when it all goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong and uncomplimentary headlines are inevitable. The brand suffers as a result. It can also be affected by how the celebrity behaves in public. If he or she hits the headlines for the wrong reasons sales plummet. Two notable examples are Hertz Car Rental (O.J. Simpson) and Pepsi Cola (Michael Jackson)

There is also another downside to celebrity branding and the celebrity endorsement contract. As the celebrity moves down the list from A to B list status the sales of their brand products also start to slide into obscurity.

Also the current economic climate is having an effect on celebrity endorsement in some countries. For example, recently, in England the price of celebrity and the celebrity endorsement deal appeared to be too high for some retailers.

George at Asda, one of the largest UK supermarket chains, has revamped its image with a new logo and a “real people” marketing campaign. The supermarket brand, which for the last couple of years has used stars including Coleen McLoughlin, fiance of a well known footballer, to push its clothing offer, has stepped away from celebrity endorsement claiming that customers now want to see the brand on real people.

George has developed a 10,000 strong customer database that it regularly quizzes about the brand. It claims that 72.3% of those customers would rather make a decision to buy an outfit based on seeing it on a “real” person than on a perfect celebrity body. Surprisingly, 79.1% of women told George they were not interested in what celebrities are wearing. George maintains that the survey’s findings signal a shift in customer sentiment away from celebrity culture and claim that this is due to the credit crunch.

Tags: brand, celeb brand, Celebrities, celebrity, celebrity brand, Celebrity Brands, Celebrity Endorsement, Fashion