Manuel Angel Alonso Coto

Marketers have been using celebrities in commercials, print campaigns and promotions for years, because done properly, it works. Celebrities get the viewer's attention; but whether they work to sell the product depends on proper celebrity casting.

H&M and Madonna are one of the last to work together with great success in a spicy just-launched campaign:

The billions of dollars spent per year on celebrity endorsement contracts show that celebrities, like Liz Hurley, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Britney Spears and Tiger Woods, play an important role for the advertising industry. Female athlete Venus Williams, tennis player and Wimbledon championship winner in 2002, for example, has signed a five-year $40 million contract with sportswear manufacturer Reebok International Inc.1 Theory and practice prove that the use of super stars in advertising generates a lot of publicity and attention from the public. The underlying question is, if and how the lively interest of the public in ‘the rich and famous’ can be effectively used by companies to promote their brands and consequently increase revenues.

Selecting the right star to "pitch" your product means finding the person to whom your buyers can relate — the person your buyer wants to believe. This doesn't sound too difficult, until you factor in that in many cases the right celebrity is not always a celebrity you can afford. On the flip side, the right celebrity is not always the most expensive one. It is important, above all else, to consider whether the celebrity you select is right for your campaign and take the process from there.

Simply assuming that a person just has to be famous to represent a successful spokesperson, however, would be incorrect, with a considerable number of failures proving the opposite. Very well accepted and attractive super stars like Bruce Willis and Whitney Houston failed in turning their endorsements into success.
Among the possible reasons identified by several authors, including overexposure and identification, the ‘match-up hypothesis’ specifically suggests that the effectiveness depends on the existence of a ‘fit’ between the celebrity spokesperson and endorsed brand

Besides there is the certain risk of the tight tie established between the brand and the celebrity… And what happens one the celebrity falls in disgrace in front of the public opinion? You can ask Nike after NBA Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant was accused of raping a room service woman… No matter he was proven innocent months later, the damage was so huge he is only now –more than two years afterwars- starting to do commercials again.

That’s why sometimes it is easier to build a celebrity for your ads than using an existing one; this was the case of Schweppes in Spain during the ‘80s. They hired a quite unknown French actor and started recording ads in which he invited different groups of people to drink tonic water in a time when it was really weird to drink “tónica” in Spain. He soon became one of the most famous faces in the country and so more than 50 TV ads were launched with great success during 12 years. Who does not recall “el hombre de la tónica”?

Anyhow, celebrities in advertising is a marketing vehicle that will likely continue well into this new millenium, and as long as there continue to be new stars introduced into our entertainment arenas — with last season's stars being ushered out gracefully — there will be no shortage of talent to fill the need. Doing it right is the biggest challenge, a challenge that is answered in better response and higher sales volume.

Manuel Angel Alonso Coto

Posted on 11 March 2007 in ADVERTISING

Comments

Posted by: Jorge at March 14, 2007 12:17 PM

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