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The Evolving Relationship Between Celebrities and Products
May 28, 2010 | Neal | 2 commentsThis article by one of my favorite business writers/reporters Darren Rovell (ex-of ESPN and now of MSNBC) got me thinking about the evolution of the relationship between celebrity endorsers and the products that they endorse. It used to be that there were two main purposes to paying (usually a lot of money) to a celebrity endorser. The first and primary reason for paying a celebrity was to associate your brand with the personal brand of that celebrity. Michael Jordon associated Nike with winning, competitiveness, and a fashion “look” acceptable to male sports fans. Martha Stewart tried to take KMart upscale to a new demographic of shoppers. John Madden gave Miller Lite credentials as a legitimate choice for the everyman football fan who would previously not have considered a light beer to be acceptable. You get the idea. The second reason for paying a celebrity was to help create an entertaining advertisement that would capture peoples’ attention in a way that advertisements featuring no-names wouldn’t. If you’re a fan of Michael Jordan already, you might give that Nike, Gatorade, or McDonalds commercial a chance to grab your attention whereas without him you might be off flipping channels, starting a conversation, or headed to the kitchen for a snack before your show comes back on. Let’s state this first, neither of these is a bad reason to bring on a celebrity endorser (assuming that there’s a good fit).
The interesting evolution is that many of these celebrities now have their own direct channel(s) to those who follow them and no longer depend only on media outlets or paid advertisements to connect with their fans. Oprah and Ashton Kutcher (along with CNN) staged the war to 1,000,000 Twitter followers a couple of years back and athletes, musicians, and entertainers have seen the benefits of creating a direct channel with fans. Like any other brand, if they keep up an interesting conversation with their fans they won’t have to worry about a reporter twisting an interview quote into something sensational because they in essence become their own reporter (or at least the direct employer of the person writing the status updates, blog entries, and Tweets). At this point, there are many celebrity-owned social media properties have exceptional reach. Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter following has grown close to 5,000,000 people. Tennis champion Serena Williams has over 1.5 million followers on Twitter. Again, you get the idea.
Now, let’s think for a moment about the products that these people endorse. Ashton Kutcher is the face of Nikon’s CoolPix line of digital cameras. I’m sure they’re paying him a lot of money to be in those ads and even more money for those ads to be placed on the sorts of high-profile shows that will attract a) the type of people who will identify with Mr. Kutcher; and b) have the money to buy a digital camera. At the same time, a quick scan of Twitter and Facebook show us that Nikon is leaving a fantastic opportunity on the table, those 5 million Twitter followers who have already indicated that they identify with Ashton Kutcher. I didn’t do a comprehensive scan but I went back about a month on Ashton Kutcher’s FB and Twitter activity and there is nothing related to his association with Nikon/CoolPix. No contests, no mention of his using one as part of the copious number of photos he’s posted (which appear to be taken mostly with his phone), no discussion of events, no promotions or deals targeted to the fans of the product’s pitchman. Did I mention that NikonUSA’s Twitter feed has fewer than 10,000 followers? AND no reflected glory from the relationship that Nikon is paying for with Twitter star Kutcher. All of this got me to thinking about the criteria that a product company SHOULD have as it engages with a celebrity endorser:
- Reach – Before engaging with the celebrity, how are they evaluating the reach that the celebrity will bring directly with fans (Serena Williams reaches 1.6 Million fans on Twitter while soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo reaches fewer than 100,000);
- Activity – How active is the celebrity (or their organization) on those direct channels?
- Alignment – What activities is the celebrity willing to take on behalf of the brand/product they are sponsoring? Most seem to Tweet or update FB status ONLY when they are actually doing something related to that brand – filming an ad, designing/approving a product, etc. – would they be willing to step up to be more active in promoting the product with contests, offers, etc.?
- Cross-promotion – How much reTweeting of each others’ feeds will the brand and celebrity be willing to engage in? Great opportunity for the brand to do the work and then take advantage of the celebrity’s reach.
Being a celebrity is fundamentally different than it used to be and that is all down to technology. If brands and product companies are going to get full benefit from the money they are already paying to celebrity endorsers, they should be evaluating those relationships more carefully and planning not only for the traditional activities but the increasingly important social media component of them.
Tags: Ashton Kutcher, Celebrities, Darren Rovell, Digital, ESPN, Facebook, Gatorade, John Madden, Kmart, Martha Stewart, McDonalds, Michael Jordon, Miller Lite, MSNBC, Nike, Nikon, Sports Marketing, twitter
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