It’s a marketing trick as old as time — get a celebrity to endorse a product, wear a new product line, or become the face or voice of a new campaign. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Pepsi have used this kind of partnership to great effect over the years, spending millions of dollars to work with people like Justin Timberlake, Travis Scott, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Britney Spears.
The rationale behind it all is simple. People like to mimic their favorite celebrities in a variety of ways. Just as lots of Nirvana and Metallica fans became musicians, the Kardashian legions tend to have an interest in fashion, social media, and other elements the family is associated with. Sales of all sorts of things go up when famous people are pictured with them.
Of course, due to the costs involved, it could be argued that this kind of promotion is far from the norm in marketing circles. The average advertising budget doesn’t exactly lend itself to hiring star-power. However, smaller campaigns usually provide a better return on their overall cost. A good example from the world of entertainment is pre-order games, which also serve as a yardstick for how much a title might sell.
In fact, interactive media of all kinds tends to rely on small promotions to get players interested in their products. The website Buzz Bingo uses a series of ongoing and rotating bingo promotions that range from free bingo to deposit bonuses. These campaigns are designed to serve new and existing players equally so that the shine remains on the proverbial apple long after the player joins.
Brand Ambassadors
Celebrities earn a lot from businesses for a reason, though. USA Today notes that our brains are hard-wired to recognize faces as friends, strangers, and enemies, and that’s about it. This means that the celebrities we see on the TV all the time are considered as familiar as family by our grey matter. This is why people have such a strong interest in what famous people are doing, wearing, or driving. We “know” them.
Magazine site Chron (citing Social Media Week) claims that having a celebrity drink your soda can increase sales by 4% and stock value by 0.25%. The article points to the decades-spanning success of the Nike Air Jordan shoes as a good example of what a celebrity’s name can do for a product line. Jordan-branded shoes still make up the majority of basketball shoe sales today.
Of course, there’s a catch. Celebrities are just as human as the rest of us and can get themselves in trouble. Travis Scott, who has recently been in the news due to an accident on his Astroworld Tour, has been dropped by McDonald’s. Let’s not forget about the number of sponsorships that Tiger Woods lost in 2010. These included Gilette, AT&T, Accenture, and Gatorade. EA’s Tiger Woods PGA Tour game was also canned.
Overall, celebrities can serve as fantastic brand ambassadors, provided that they behave themselves in public.