Celebrities to Creative Directors - Hits and Misses

When Alicia Keys was asked about her role at Blackberry, her first act was to tell how much she loves BlackBerry. 

What does it tell us about the role of a creative director in a serious company like Blackberry? 

To me it looks like it’s an endorsement candy wrapped in a ‘serious-looking’ responsibility wrapper which has got printed “Creative Director” on it to make the candy offering more credible!

Ms. Alicia Keys went on to say that she’ll be working with app creators, designers and carriers to make sure BlackBerry is the most efficient phone out there. And how does she intend to do that? Nobody knows.It is hence unclear that how much she will bring to the company other than her celeb status. The same applies to Lady Gaga's role while she maintained that she has substantially contributed in the new product designs revealed by Polaroid some time back.

will.i.am(Black eyed peas) though, has been vehemently averring that his role, unlike his industry peers (err…old industry peers) is very different since he will be contributing during monthly brainstorming meetings at Intel headquarters along with his new industry peers, Intel engineers and coders.

What does all of this actually mean? 

Does it really make sense to spend a fortune on these out-of-box ideas on toying around with designations that use to be serious once? 

Some real creative directors that had adorned these designations before doesn’t seem to be happy with this new vogue. George Lois, who created "I want my MTV" campaign asks if these celebrities even understand what is the job all about? Simon Doonan, the longtime creative director of Barneys opines that these roles are more ambassadorial in function rather than technical or designatory.

But there has to be something for which these companies are scouting for creative directors from a historically unknown territory for them, entertainment industry. Following are some benefits that such tactics are expected to pay off – 

• Improved, increased and expanded Brand reach and Identity 
• Access to a vast un-reached audience through celebrity relationship and network(Celebrity+Industry1+Industry2+Product) 
• Access to a huge number of fans and followers who instantly connect to the product or brand that the celebrity is so seriously involved with
• Higher celebrity involvement with the brand, makes its success or failure more important to the celebrity than what it would be if the celebrity was a limited tenured ambassador 

However, there seems to a fair number of problems as well in honking this horn. 

• The company/product brand association may suffer if the celebrity brand takes a hit
• It is always a big gamble in terms of money and reputation invested into such arrangements 
• Chances of irking the real brains working on a concept, product or a brand by throwing away higher designations like this as part of marketing strategies.
• The consumer base or loyalists of company or product have a brand image about the same and bringing in a celebrity for a serious role might create negative impressions in terms of companies attitude towards its consumer segment as well as seriousness of its ethos and work-culture 
• Investors and consumers may look at these attempts as desperate measures to fill in for real good marketing tactics pointing toward weak business strategy

Where does this trend leads these companies to and how does it evolve further, we will have to wait and watch!


Cheers,