Brand owners have long used celebrities in an ambassadorial role in an effort to associate their brand with the celebrity lifestyle and hope to reflect in their glory. Using a famous face can be a real shortcut to brand recognition and is therefore a tempting strategy. Whether it’s an A-list film star or a family friendly D-list soap star, having the right ambassador to represent the brand can boost the bottom line. But, whilst the celeb can bring Midas touch rewards at the height of their fame and popularity, it’s a risky strategy, as it can become a minefield when something goes wrong, with the fall-out often reflecting equally publicly on the brand.
It was back in January 2008 that Kerry Katona was finally dropped from Iceland’s advertising campaigns after reports of her alleged drug taking became too much for the frozen food chain. Chosen because of her status as one-time ‘mother of the year’, Katona seemed to epitomise the brand’s slogan ‘That’s why mums go to Iceland’, but the reality was somewhat different.
More recently, the golden boy Tiger Woods’ tarnished private life lost him the brand ambassador roles with both Gillette (lending a whole new meaning to ‘the best a man can get’) and AT&T (when ‘scoring birdies’ in the US PGA Tour had nothing to do with golf clubs!).
But brand owners don’t always drop celebrities going through a rough time. When Kate Moss’s alleged cocaine use was on the front of all the newspapers she suffered the blow of having her contracts with Chanel, Burberry and H&M cancelled. Conversely, Rimmel kept Moss on and rode the storm. Whilst possibly not back to her peak of popularity, Moss has since rebuilt her reputation and now has a clothing line in Top Shop and her own perfume.
A new celebrity tie up announced this week leaves me rather perplexed; Victoria Beckham was appointed the creative design director at Range Rover with her first project being the new interior of the Special Edition Range Rover Evoque. The brand owners say that this is a smaller, sleeker vehicle so can only assume Victoria is doing her own version of ‘Pimp My Ride’ for size zero fashionista WAGs?!
A great article that includes this and another 11 celebrity endorsements that went wrong is on T3 http://tinyurl.com/34vvbmm and includes the classic of Bill Wyman endorsing a metal detector (not very rock and roll but perhaps because of The Rolling Stones ‘Money, that’s what I want’?).
Back to the everyday, Morrison’s is another supermarket that has used celebrities to raise their presence, particularly in the south. Who can forget Denise van Outen and Top Gear’s Richard Hammond wheeling their trolleys across open countryside to get to the fresh food in a Morrison’s supermarket. In a change of strategy, their new ad, which breaks mid July 210, uses children instead of celebrities. So is the power of the celeb fading or are there still sufficient numbers of us gullible enough to believe that Sharon Osbourne shopped at Asda to keep this phenomenon alive?
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