Using a celebrity to champion your brand can bring glamour, instant fame and good endorsement. However before you make the final decision to do this, you need to consider the following:
1. Fit
Does he/she ‘fit’ with the brand, idea, and target audience? Tiger Woods worked well for Accenture.
2. Fame
Is this star famous as far as your audience is concerned? Martin Droz won the FIPS-Mouche World Fly-Fishing Championships in 2008 – great for a fishing brand, but not so good for a defense industry product…
3. Finance
Can you afford to use a star? What if you just used their voice-over? Think of Geoffrey Palmer intoning “Vorsch sprung durch technik”. There are six ways stars can get involved with a brand:
Customer – Check your database: you may already have a star on your books
Placement – get him/her to use your product free like Kangol did with Oasis
Sponsorship – pay them to use your service – see Rolex and Wimbledon.
Testimonial – contract any sports star and corporate entertainment is part of the package.
Employee – recruit him/her: Jackie Stewart is an RBS consultant
Owner – star joint venture: Elle Macpherson and lingerie brand Bendon.
Finally remember while celebrities are used in 20 per cent of campaigns this technique is no more, nor less likely to succeed than any other. Using a star is not a ‘silver bullet’- there has to be an underlying ‘big idea’
