Advent Blog

Celebrity Sells, Celebrities Sell, and Consumers Buy

Why fuel­ing your brand with star power works: AUTHENTICITY

What can Lebron James, Tiger Woods, and pop-star upstart Rhianna teach us about expe­ri­en­tial marketing?

Marketing is about open­ing the door between con­sumer and brand.  Marketers con­tin­u­ally search for other keys, picks, sledge ham­mers, or what­ever else they can find to cre­ate a con­nec­tion and open this door.  Since the olden days of Bob Hope and American Express to Michael Phelps’ recent record set­ting post-Olympic endorse­ment deal, celebrity adver­tis­ing has been a favorite pro­mo­tional tool.

If celebrity endorse­ment is the key that unlocks the bar­rier between con­sumer and brand, then the hinge upon which the whole con­trap­tion swings is authen­tic­ity.  A brand can take off faster than Super Mario flash­ing with star power if con­sumers believe that a celebrity actu­ally uses their prod­uct.  That is the real star power.

Sports com­pa­nies find celebrity endorse­ments espe­cially lucra­tive.  In 2007 Tiger Woods gar­nered an esti­mated astro­nom­i­cal $100 mil­lion from endorse­ments alone.  He is on pace to sur­pass 1 bil­lion (that’s right, bil­lion with a ‘b’) by 2010 and become the world’s first bil­lion­aire ath­lete.  Of all this wealth, only bout one-tenth of it comes from prize money.

It is not uncom­mon that the sum total of endorse­ment deals to vastly exceed ath­letes’ per­for­mance related earn­ings.  But why are com­pa­nies so eager to throw their money at star ath­letes?  The returns are phe­nom­e­nal.  In Tiger’s case, he has been cred­ited with the explo­sion of Nike Golf, which was non-existent in 1996 and last year recorded over $600 mil­lion in sales.

In the world of mar­ket­ing Nike reigns supreme.  Look at Nike and Lebron James.  The beauty of the rela­tion­ship is that you can turn on your TV and watch him careen­ing through the lane like some sort of ter­ri­ble fly­ing freight train over and through would be defend­ers; all the while you can see the Nike logo swooshed across his air­borne feet.  You can­not get more authen­tic than that…

…Or can you?

EVEN MORE!

Celebrities are increas­ingly look­ing to develop a real con­nec­tion to what­ever they do.  By offer­ing cre­ative input on the design of the shoes that bare his name, Lebron has effec­tively blurred the dis­tinc­tion of where Nike starts and he ends.  That is great marketing!

Rhianna, the grammy win­ning teenage upstart from Barbados, created and endorsed her own line of cus­tomized glit­tery umbrel­las for Totes Isotoner after her hit song enti­tled, appro­pri­ately, “Umbrella.”  In a recent New York Times arti­cle she says,

“We’ve worked hard to build me and my name up as a brand. We always want to bring an authen­tic con­nec­tion to what­ever we do.  It must be sin­cere and peo­ple have to feel that.”

Rhianna designed a prod­uct that she was proud to be con­nected with.  Totes is proud to be con­nected with her pop­u­lar­ity.  And con­sumers are pleased to be con­nected to Rhianna’s suc­cess through the prod­uct she endorses.  What results is a big happy sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship in which all par­ties win.

INCREASE YOUR AUTHENTICITY

Celebrity endorse­ment may not be a good fit for every brand but the prin­ci­ple behind its suc­cess is uni­ver­sal.  Consumers crave what is real.  You must nur­ture a rela­tion­ship with your cus­tomer that lets them expe­ri­ence the true nature of your prod­uct in a way that is mem­o­rable and rel­e­vant.  You should be heav­ily involved with your company’s mar­ket­ing strate­gies just like Lebron and Rhianna.  If you are look­ing to strengthen your brand and boost sales here are some tips to increase authenticity:

Tips to increase authenticity:

• Honesty — Enough said.
• Create Experience — Personal expe­ri­ence is as real as you get.
• Creativity — Search for new ways to cre­ate high impact per­sonal experiences.
• Consistency — With any deci­sion ask, “Is this on brand?”
• Face-to-face — It is proven to be the most effec­tive form of mar­ket­ing. Through tar­geted events, par­ties, and meet­ings you can cre­ate real relationships.
• Imagery — Choose mean­ing­ful imagery to con­vey the true essence of your brand.
• Convey Emotion — Convey the hon­est emo­tional response to your product.
• Internal brand­ing — Make sure your employ­ees know what you are about. They are your ambassadors.
• Brand man­age­ment — Hire a mar­ket­ing firm with a strong lis­ten­ing and learn­ing phase. Your mar­ket­ing team must under­stand your brand before they can com­mu­ni­cate it.

The hey­day of generic mass mar­ket­ing is gone.  No longer will plas­tic molded iden­ti­cal TV com­mer­cials dom­i­nate mar­ket­ing.  These tac­tics are los­ing effi­cacy as con­sumers are bom­barded with a daily bar­rage of cor­po­rate adver­tise­ments, images, and mes­sages.   More per­sonal meth­ods are win­ning out.

High touch, believ­able mar­ket­ing tech­niques like face-to-face tar­geted events or cus­tom cre­ated envi­ron­ments res­onate with con­sumers.  These expe­ri­ences are per­sonal and mem­o­rable.  Experiential mar­ket­ing works.  Why?  Because Tiger Woods wears Nike and and you know it’s true.  Because, with your own eyes you can watch him, hob­bled and des­ti­tute, over­come a des­per­ate deficit to win the U.S. Open; and do it wear­ing his Nikes.  Authenticity is the nitro that fuels a suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing machine.

Related Articles:

• Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want
• Presentation and Authenticity in Marketing
• Nothing Sells Like Celebrity
• Olympic Gold Medalist Dives into Endorsement Deal
• Path to the Zoom LeBron IV: LeBron apparel preview
• Tiger Woods, The Next Billionaire?

Advent thrives at the fore­front of the cut­ting edge expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing indus­try.  Through qual­ity ser­vice and imple­men­ta­tion Advent has helped rapidly grow­ing com­pa­nies com­mu­ni­cate the essence of their brand and vision domes­ti­cally and abroad through exhibits, events, and office envi­ron­ments.  Based in Nashville, Tennessee, the com­pany is a cre­ative indus­try leader with Fortune 500 clients like VF Corp and Mars, International. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.adventresults.com.

Tags: authenticity, brand, Experiential Marketing, promotion, sponsorship, tips