Star Quality: Celebrity Endorsements

A celebrity sell isn’t a new concept and unless you have a unique idea, putting a pop star by your product seems to be the standard response. But with the advent of tweeting and 24/7 access to your idol, are celebrities in danger of losing their status, as we simply get bored and turn off? Laura Swinton goes stargazing

Beautiful people sprinkling stardust over brands or overexposed wannabes out for a quick buck? Opinion on celebrity in advertising is divided. But there’s no denying that celebrity has infiltrated every corner of the media and, whatever your take on the phenomenon, it’s big business. Celebrity endorsement is worth upwards of $50bn a year worldwide.

What’s more, the model of celebrity endorsement is evolving. Traditionally, the relationship between brands and celebrities involves a commercial shoot and a lot of money. Now that relationship has changed. Celebrities have become brands in their own right, connecting with their audiences via Twitter and they use their fame to embark on creative projects with other brands.

Stripping the mystique from celebrity interaction

We’re better able to enjoy the celebrity lifestyle by proxy than ever before, as stars become ever more accessible. Where there was once mystique and glamour, we have access all areas and the public has come to expect to connect with their idols. That’s the thinking behind campaigns like the most recent venture from mobile provider O2 and rapper Tinie Tempah that seeks to reward fans with celebrity interaction. The campaign features a ‘flash-exit’ (think the opposite of a flash mob) at a crowded Tinie Tempah gig, leaving one lucky, though bewildered, fan to experience a one-on-one performance. “Tinie Tempah wanted to reward his superfans in a unique, personal way and O2 was aiming to demonstrate how far they would go to turn its own customers into fans. The key thing is that Tinie Tempah and O2 both believe in being thoughtful about their audience,” explains Mo Saha, planning development director at agency pd3 who were behind the campaign.

However, these days, fans don’t have to wait for one-off occasions and stunts to get close to their favourite celebrities. Social media – particularly Twitter – allows the public to follow the daily lives of their favourite famous figures. Brands and agencies have been quick to take advantage, creating a new model of celebrity endorsement.

Leading the Twitterspheric star hunt is Ad.ly, a celebrity network for the social networking age. With hundreds of celebs on its books, Ad.ly runs Twitter campaigns by matching brands with a group of appropriate stars and sending out paid-for tweets. Traditional celebrity endorsement deals usually involve an agency hooking up with an expensive celeb who may then become embroiled in scandal, while costly poster campaigns linger as an embarrassing reminder (almost definitely not looking at you, Tiger Woods). Conversely, the Ad.ly model suits the transience of the internet age. 140 characters lasts just long enough.

So what makes a successful celebrity tweeter? “Number one, it has to be the celebrity tweeting themselves. There are celebrities who pay people to tweet for them, and I think consumers can tell the difference after a while. We certainly can tell the difference from the results of our campaigns,” says Ad.ly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh.

From Snoop Dogg to, err, Snooki, Ad.ly has pre-agreed legal arrangements with a host of stars who can be responsive to more or less any brief. But their most famous (or perhaps infamous) project to date is a dramatic illustration of this speedy new model. On 1 March 2011, Charlie Sheen joined Twitter and broke the Guinness World Record for accumulating one million followers in the shortest time. Sheen’s management team had contacts with Ad.ly, who helped get him set up on the site, and a few days later, Ad.ly and Sheen ran a sponsored tweet with Internships.com, which achieved 95,333 clicks in the first hour alone.

But beyond the social media angle, the Charlie Sheen example tells us another story about the relationship between the public, advertising and celebrity in the 21st century. While it’s harder for celebrities to hide dark or dirty secrets (even in the age of the super-injunction), scandal doesn’t have to prevent or impede endorsement deals. If the scandal is handled deftly or if the brand is hoping to reach a younger demographic who revel in irony and mock-shock, the issue can be navigated, or even capitalised on. Brand ‘Charlie Sheen’ brings with it an expectation of controversy. Scandal can be more damaging to brands and celebrities whose public image is based on unrealistic wholesomeness, but even then it’s all part of the real-life celebrity soap opera that underpins their appeal. Given that many celebrities these days emerge from the confusing world of reality TV, where the line between real life and narrative is blurred, it’s no wonder that the public has come to treat famous people as characters in a play.

Celebrity school for scandal

 “I think people expect a little scandal. Actually I think people want scandal. Nobody is interested in a celebrity who is squeaky clean and boring,” reflects Gareth Goodall, head of planning at Fallon London. “Great brands accept this and take it on the chin: Nike don’t talk about dropping Tiger or Rooney, like other brands have done. There is a degree of commercial pragmatism to this but I also think it’s ‘cos they know that people love a story. We love to see the mighty fall, but we also love to see them rise, Phoenix-like, above their troubles. When Tiger Woods wins his next Major, Nike will probably be all over it.”

Nonetheless, while it might be entertaining, there is a risk that scandal can distract from the brand itself. It’s for this reason that brands can be wary of engaging with celebrities – scandal or no, it takes a strong brand to shine next to a supernova.

Robert Campbell is founding partner and creative director at (Beta), and has worked with celebs like Steve Buscemi, Eva Longoria and James Belushi on brands ranging from Virgin to L’Oréal. He has found, rather than pushing for celebrity involvement, clients can prove initially nervy about the idea of endorsement campaigns. “One of the things, in my experience, that clients fear is the celebrity vamping the advertising and being bigger than the brand. Rarely does that happen, though, and I think they fear it more than they need to fear it because the truth is, you can always chop the celeb and get a new one if you need to. Gary Lineker and Walkers Crisps for example has been running for 15 years and yet he still hasn’t vamped the brand. You could still get rid of him tomorrow. People might complain, but Walkers would be fine as a brand. They could bring someone else in and they may do even better, who knows?”

When a brand is strong enough in its own right, the relationship with a celebrity becomes truly symbiotic. Image-building stars may even find themselves basking in a brand’s reflected prestige and kudos. Sid Lee’s adidas Originals’ campaigns have seen stars such as David Beckham and Katy Perry and many more flock in the hope that involvement will bolster their cool credentials. 

Branding their way to stardom

Whereas the stars of yesteryear might have viewed endorsement and advertising as simply a means of making a quick buck, contemporary, media-savvy celebs understand that advertising is a useful channel through which they can connect with their fans and keep themselves in the public consciousness. “Think back to reality TV shows even a decade ago. You would get 15 minutes of fame and then disappear. Now you get your 15 minutes and you turn it into a career. Because of social media and advertising, you can keep your audience engaged while you figure out what to do next,” says Guleev-Singh.

One of the most common criticisms levelled at celebrity-based advertising campaigns is that they lack creativity. However, it takes creativity to weave together a strong idea and a famous personality in a way that both suits the brand and feels natural. Moreover, argues Campbell, celebrity involvement in advertising is simply a reflection of popular culture and the world we live in. “I think there are still some agencies who feel that using celebrities is cheating in some way, which I think is silly because everything has converged now; advertising, music, popular culture and celebrity endorsement is absolutely central to the process of marketing now.”

Integrating with the brand

Director Luciano Podcaminsky has worked with countless celebs over the years (most recently an all-singing, all-dancing Hugh Jackman in the global campaign for Lipton Ice Tea) and he has experienced a real shift in the creative approach to celebrity advertising. “I think that in the past commercials that had celebrities involved obviously just wanted to hard-sell a product. Now you can see a commercial like Nike Sharapova where the celebrity is part of a nice story and looks integrated into the whole thing.”

“It seems to me that the spots have evolved from straight-up talking heads. Now they are clever ideas where the celebrity is an integral part of the concept,” agrees director Harald Zwart, whose first celebrity commercial featured the Spice Girls for Polaroid and who has most recently finished working with Alec Baldwin on a job for Capital One. “I pick spots based on the idea and, of course, that means I have to execute it well. If the script itself is strong and isn’t relying solely on the fact that there’s a famous person in it, I’m interested. The celebrity has to make sense as a pure casting idea.”

And there it is, the key to a successful celebrity-brand relationship: fit. The best relationships are those where there is the sense of something genuine bringing together the celebrity and the client, whether that’s simply a creative idea or something more profound. Nowhere is this truer than in the celebrity relationships that go beyond mere endorsement. A flipside to the transient Twitter model of celebrity engagement, some brands are entering into creative, collaborative associations with high-profile stars.

Intel is one such firm. In January, they announced that they had joined forces with Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, who has come onboard as ‘director of creative innovation’. Intel are hoping that will.i.am’s creative insight and enthusiasm for technology-driven music creation will result in a different approach to product development. They’re hoping that new products with a heavy will.i.am flavour will start hitting the market in the next 12-18 months, and in the longer term they have some technologically ambitious projects planned.

In similar fashion, Lady Gaga has been Polaroid’s creative director since January 2010. As with will.i.am’s relationship with Intel, the Lady Gaga project involves innovation and product development. As an entertainer, Lady Gaga is as much a visual artist as musical, with her attention-grabbing costumes and art direction, so the fit with Polaroid feels appropriate. Earlier this year Polaroid and Lady Gaga announced Grey Label, a line of products co-designed by her.

As exciting as this strategy sounds, it’s hard to remain completely free of cynicism. How much input can a celebrity actually have? And isn’t this little more than a marketing gimmick? Not necessarily. In the case of Intel, it was will.i.am who approached the brand, and since the first meetings last September, he has met regularly with teams of Intel engineers. “As well as being a phenomenal musician and creator, he is also a geek – in the most positive sense of the word. He’s heavily into music technology,” explains Intel’s VP of digital media, Johan Jervoe, of the genuine passion shared by both parties.

Weighing up the risks

Nonetheless, while celebrities inhabiting these roles may bring a particular cache and insight, such relationships are not without risk and they are certainly not always replicable. “Celebrities aren’t team members. They’re celebrities,” warns Grant McCracken, an author and anthropologist at MIT who specialises on the interaction of culture and commerce. “I can’t help feeling that if the objective is to make us look ‘in the know’, there are more efficient, less expensive ways of making that point.”

Nonetheless, if brands are truly interested in learning from a celebrity and forming an honest and open relationship, it can be a worthwhile experiment.

For now, the proliferation of celebrity advertising shows no sign of slowing down, and brands have more options than ever before when it comes to the kind of relationship they can enter into. But all this rests on the assumption that the public’s appetite for celebrity is endless – it is quite plausible that this star-spangled oversaturation might turn consumers off. So does celebrity have a shelf life, after all?

“Celebrities have always attracted attention. The only thing that has really changed is the level of access we now have to them. I don’t see the fascination with celebrity going away,” argues Fallon’s Goodall, who has worked on many celeb-centric campaigns, including the award-winning Orange Gold Spots. “But it’s also untrue to say that everyone has this fascination. There is a hardcore of consumers who’ll buy three or four celebrity-obsessed magazines per week, but there is also a huge swathe
of people who couldn’t care less and who will turn against your brand handing out another fat cheque. Again, you have to work out why you’re involving a celebrity.”

Hard-wired for celebrity

But while advertisers would do well to exercise a little sensitivity to consumers who are already sick of the media’s obsession with fame, ultimately the power of celebrity is unlikely to disappear. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that the all-pervading influence of fame may be an enduring by-product of our past – we’re hard-wired to gossip, and the more scandalous the chat the better. Back in our paleolithic past, we gossiped about our high-status tribal leaders and sexual rivals – and it seems that old habits die hard, with celebs filling the alpha caveman Ugg Boots.

What’s more, neuroscientists reckon we actually process familiar faces differently from unfamiliar faces, meaning that well-known celebs can trigger an instant connection. For our prehistoric ancestors, familiar faces would always belong to people they had personally met; that’s not the case in the multimedia 21st century, but our poor old brains haven’t quite caught up. That means whenever we see a familiar face, it also triggers an emotional response, as if we’ve seen a friend.

And if that wasn’t enough, it turns out that beautiful, symmetrical faces are not just easier on the eye – they’re easy on the brain. Gullov-Singh reckons that the wish fulfilment also plays a large part in the enduring appeal of celebrity. “No wonder consumers keep getting more and more infatuated with celebrities – they appeal to us because, ultimately, they live their lives as we wish we lived ours.”

So no matter how irritating one might find celebrity culture, when it comes to beautiful, famous people with not-so-private private lives, it seems that resistance is futile.