Fame Sells

Marketing

Earlier on my blog I mentioned that endorsement deals are a great way for a company to communicate a “reason-to-believe” in their brand. I’ve been involved in my fair share of celebrity deals so I thought it would be fun to take you behind the scenes a bit regarding a couple of endorsement deals that stood out to me.

Like any good business decision, I’m always thinking about the problems our marketing strategies are aiming to solve. For me, two key questions come to mind when assessing a celebrity endorsement (and how should we approach their compensation):

What and how are we going to leverage the likeness of the celebrity?

We worked with celebrity chef Ned Bell for endive.ca. We shot a video series and a photo shoot, and used his likeness on brochures, the website, and packaging. He did two event appearances, and we also used a few of his recipes in a brochure. It was about five days of his time and expertise over a 3-month period. For this type of arrangement, we usually place a dollar figure on their time.

For example, we compensate a celebrity based on a simple ‘effort formula’ such as: No. of hours worked x $ per hour = $ big pay cheque.

Ned Bell was also using this opportunity to get his name out there and to start to build up his endorsement portfolio. So that made the exchange in value a two-way street which benefited everyone!

Note: There should be a premium for exclusivity within a category, but within a small geography and category, the price tag will be small.

Does the celebrity bring instant credibility and audience to the brand (and will this translate into sales)?

When I worked at Frito Lay our team created packaging for the World Cup of Hockey (remember that?) and we needed a ‘cool factor’. So we signed Martin Brodeur and Ryan Smyth to appear on in-store point-of-sale material and packaging.

The objective was that fans of these players, or hockey fans in general, would choose to buy our chips because of our association with the celebrities and thus increases sales in the short term, and increase brand loyalty in the long term.

For a one-time payment (the price tag was a lot more reasonable than you’d think) these players did nothing other than provide us with photographs. In fact, we had to superimpose Ryan’s head on another hockey player because the photos they supplied didn’t quite work on pack.

The campaign was a hit and we moved chips baby!

FYI: Athletes and actors have Twitter accounts, in part, so they can increase their endorsement value. Social networks provide a measurable way by which marketers can track impression counts and conversions and all that jazz.

Who would you sign to endorse your product or service? An athlete? A celebrity? A great customer? Your Mom? Brand fit, ability to emotionally connect, and their ability to drive sales is where to start to evaluate.