Celebrity endorsement - Never 'just do it' !

Nike and its tumultuous history with its brand ambassadors is a real case study. After Tiger Woods, Oscar Pistorious, Lance Armstrong, and very recently , it is now the Tennis sensation Maria Sharapova who has given a headache to Nike and heartache to her fans world wide.

Nike recently terminated its contract with Manny Pacquaio after what they termed as his 'abhorrent' comments on LGBT community.
In the latest round of strained relationships with its brand ambassadors, Nike this week severed ties with the 28 year old five times grand-slam champion Maria Sharapova after her shocking revelation of having been  tested positively for a banned substance - meldonium at Australian open earlier this year.

Back home, Snapdeal had to bear the brunt for its brand ambassador Amir Khan's comment on the intolerance issue in the country which took a political turn.

Such incidents demonstrate the risks that brands are exposed to, while nominating a brand ambassador. While having a celebrity brand ambassador is almost a norm and not a choice in several industries and product categories, the risks of associating with a celebrity are as high as the reward.

Obviously, any such association demands a great deal of focus on personality alignment between the brand and the prospective ambassador, an important but grossly ignored concept.

It is imperative to mention here that the celebrity personality in today's highly networked truly global world is no more only about how they do their job, like  modeling, acting or sports etc, but also their social, political and cultural views and inclinations. Again, while these are more public in nature, due diligence is of utmost importance about their personal lives. Tiger woods' and Oscar Pistorious' cases testify this argument.

Brand managers blindly expect the positive  personality rub-off from the celebrity to their brands without taking into consideration a host of other factors that must be looked into.

Some of the important factors are -
# The individual and the collective personality of the celebrity
# The desired brand image of the product
# The synergy between the first two personalities
# The overlaps and counter-laps between the endorser and product personality

While the first two factors are extremely important to derive at what are we dealing with in terms of possible association between two personalities, the third factor helps in understanding whether or not there is a broad alignment between the product and the celebrity. However, it is most often the fourth factor which is blatantly ignored, and often to one's own peril.


The counter laps or the points/occurrence/frequency of contrasts between the two personalities(the endorser and the product) must be closely researched and debated before closing a brand endorsement decision. The most important decision here is what aspects of the celebrity's personality may not/are not - align/aligned, with the core brand personality and its desired brand image.

Finally, a brand endorsement is a very expensive decision for any marketing manager and a thorough due diligence is not a choice but a compulsion to avoid foot in mouth situations that hurt the brand and the company. This may very well help in avoiding some issues altogether while mitigate ill-effects of others.

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,

Celebrities to Creative Directors - A Marketing Gamble?

Let’s jot down what does it take to be a creative director of a company, or to make precise sense, a technology company. A creative director of a technology company must have an acute understanding of technology, not just the one which the company deals with, but what is around it.

A creative director has conceiving creative solutions, programs and applications, planning project scheduling and execution, recruiting the right team to do the job, managing and/or overseeing the project execution and bringing the project to completion as some of the most important items on his/her job description.

Alicia Keys - Creative Director, Blackberry

 It makes the point clear that a creative director just not have to be “creative” to be adding value to his/her job and organization. A creative director must also be an excellent team leader having a keen sense of technology, be amazing at communication and have managerial skills to build a real house instead of imagining castles.

Do the recently anointed creative directors like Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, will.i.am, Justin Timberlake etc have it in them? No doubt they have been achievers in their fields of entertainment. No doubt that they have the passion of doing things what they like doing and doing it with the flair so as to be successful. But does being creative in their field make these ladies and gentlemen the right choice for a serious post like creative director for serious technology firms like Blackberry, Polaroid and Intel? We will have to wait for the answer.

It does make sense to mention here that inspite of all the efforts by these tech giants and their new directors to paint these affairs to be serious milestones, not many are taking them seriously. A majority of people take this pay-rolling of celebrities lightly calling it nothing but a marketing gimmick.Though this trend is not finding many serious takers in the technology industry, the sheer number of celebrities being welcomed into the executive list is alarming and hence cannot be ignored. However, if it is a serious business tactic or a tactless marketing maneuver, that remains to be established.

will.i.am - Director of creative innovation, Intel

So why did it happen and continues to happen?

The problem surface from the use of the word ‘creativity’ (as in Creative Director or Director of creative innovation) which along with ‘innovation’ and ‘strategy’ is probably the most abused word in today’s world. It has always been a misconception that anything to do with art (singing, dancing, craft, painting etc) is a lifetime membership to the “i-am-creative” club.

  

When this misconception is taken very seriously, the positions which were historically secured by professionals with exemplary qualification and experience starts getting adorned by celebrities who, in many cases, have a shallow or no understanding of the product, company or industry as such. Their creative credentials are deemed enough for them to sport a lanyard.

Victoria Beckham’s appointment as a Creative Director of Range Rover also baffles me in-spite of her claims of making serious contributions to the design ideas. Similar claims were also made by Lady Gaga while launching Polaroid products earlier. Will.i.am went on to say that he actually sits with coders and analysts and visits the Intel office every month for a meeting with his peers.

However, the question remains, does it really help the companies? The answer is yes and no.

I am sure you would be able to figure that out as well, We will take this in our next post anyways.

cheers,