There is a long tradition of featuring celebrities in advertising to promote service brands. Do they really work – or are they a substitute for a strong proposition and an original creative idea?
In an earlier issue of The Invisible Brand, Lucian Camp wrote a piece examining the perennial issue for agency creatives when promoting services – what on earth do you show in the advertising?
A handy solution for generations of advertisers has been to feature a well-known personality. Rather like the use of television in the early days of ITV, fronting a celebrity has been seen as one of the easiest ways to achieve a rapid build-up of awareness for a new or undistinguished brand.
This conceptual route is not, of course, exclusive to services but it is particularly tempting for them. In the absence of a physical product to show, it offers a high profile visual property and the implication of endorsement as well as the potential transfer of desired brand values from a respected or popular public figure.
Barclaycard chose their first celebrity, Alan Whicker, for his brand values.As the writer and presenter of Whicker’sWorld he was seen by millions to be a seasoned traveller with journalistic integrity. They followed up with a different type of celebrity: Rowan Atkinson and Angus Deayton were comic actors who could memorably engage the audience with specific propositions. By all accounts, Barclaycard achieved considerable success with both approaches, but the use of personalities who have no specific relationship to the proposition is a riskier one. Bruce Forsyth probably did as much harm as good for Courts furniture, while John Cleese’s last commercials for Sainsbury’s were widely perceived as damaging to the brand.
Sainsbury’s evidently learned something from this because its next choice was Jamie Oliver, a personality who can certainly be said to know a thing or two about their central proposition – good food. However, the advertising industry has an uncanny knack of seizing on celebrities just as their fifteen minutes of fame reaches an unsustainable peak and neither Jamie Oliver nor Sainsbury’s are likely to be immune from the negative effects of such over-exposure.
Elsewhere in the Barclays Group we have recently been treated to dissertations from Anthony Hopkins and Robbie Coltrane on the benefits of a Big Bank. This is a curious use of personality, because it does not appear to be drawing on any particular values from this pair other than that they are both well known and respected as actors. If acting is what they are principally good at, then it is all too easy to deduce they don’t believe a word of what they are saying but can ham it better than most if the fee is Big enough.
How does the appearance of Billy Connolly in the Goldfish ads differ? He certainly isn’t any kind of authority on financial services and hardly stands as an icon of the Presbyterian rectitude potential customers were once thought to favour in financial providers.
However, Goldfish sought to position itself as a fresh new flavour in its market and Connolly’s humour, intelligence, imagination and alternative lifestyle fitted the bill perfectly. His left wing credentials probably stood Goldfish in good stead, too, as Connolly comes across as a character unlikely to take money to promote a ‘capitalist’ product of which he disapproved.
BT have probably spent more money on celebritybased advertising than any other UK brand. Maureen Lipman was a popular face for the BT brand for some years in her role as Beattie.Whether this was character or personality-based advertising is perhaps debatable, although the subsequent use of Stephen Hawking and Bob Hoskins certainly fell into the latter category.
Hoskins and Lipman were both engaging individuals with whom it would be ‘good to talk’ but it is almost impossible to understand the logic by which ET was subsequently threaded onto this campaign string.
BT… Beattie…ET… sounds similar…no, surely not? Elsewhere, we cannot overlook the Rent-a-Past- Personality division, so perfectly illustrated by Frank Windsor’s myriad daytime DRTV insurance offerings to the 050s and Thora Hird’s advertising monopoly on stairlifts and other accoutrements for the frail and elderly. Neither of these actors brought with them any real relevance to these markets, but one senses they have acquired authority in their sector simply because they have done so many of its ads.
This is fine if the principal object is to make the phone ring, but not so good if you are trying to build a brand – which brings us to the final (and perhaps most ubiquitous) category of celebrity-based advertising. This is the category where the advertising gives the celebrity high profile but the brand and the sales message are largely, if not totally, obscured. We’ve all participated in conversations along these lines:
Clients and their agencies have learned a few lessons over the years about the use of celebrities but – rather like banks over-lending in boom times and regretting it in bust times – these lessons seem to have to be re-learned quite regularly. So, to wind up this piece, here’s a ‘cut out and keep’ reminder of the key pointers: 1 Never, ever, let a celebrity be used as a substitute for a real brand proposition (though it’s fine to let them enhance the communication of one).
2 Don’t fall into the trap of believing you can stamp a star’s personality onto your business unless it really is complementary to your own culture.
The illusion will die the second a tired telesales executive covering three separate brands picks up the phone to deal with your lead.
3 Ask yourself what relevance and values you believe your celebrity is bringing to your brand and what might be the downside if other ‘values’ come into play (it’s easy to downplay this issue, but just remember the fiasco of Pepsi’s relationship with Michael Jackson).
4 Consider what ‘legs’ your campaign really has should your presenter move on – this should readily identify whether you have a central idea or just a personality on a soap-box.
5 Try to avoid personalities who are rented out to one and all (unless it’s cheap and tactical). 6 Be honest with yourself and your celebrity if you are looking for overt endorsement rather just than dramatised presentation. Failure to do so may result in uncomfortable media coverage later. 7 Be wary of the over-exposed, famous for 15 minutes personality – they can become tedious and passé to your market before your first on-air date.
8 Be even more wary of Soho Square chic in the choice of personality – this is absolutely no guarantee of sales to middle aged women in Scunthorpe.
Who has really done the celebrity thing well? Stand up One2One. It uses personalities as an engaging dramatisation of the central proposition, which is never lost from sight. Furthermore the use of a roster of personalities, rather than one ‘face of the brand’, leaves no room for doubt about who’s the hero of the communications. Arresting, entertaining, and totally relevant.
What a shame it’s being subsumed into a dull global brand…
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