In our youth, celebrity endorsement, although in its infancy, hit a rich vein of form.
Aligning a celebrity to your target market increases aspiration for that product and often results in luxuries becoming necessities.
Although on paper not a natural bedfellow, Michael Jackson famously endorsed Pepsi Cola, yet the go-to story was not the adverts themselves, but the fact that he somehow managed to set his hair alight whilst filming said ad.
Even endorsements that at the time didn’t align with their targets managed to hit the bullseye.
Before he became a squillionaire, football club owning ex-player, David Beckham was brought on board by Brylcreem and arguably saved the brand from extinction.
It was a product that my granddad used in lieu of hair lacquer, and, in the days of hair, and thanks to Becks, yours truly also became a Brylcreem advocate for a while.
In more recent times, George Clooney has cashed in with those irksome but enthralling Nespresso adverts where someone always seems to grab his Nespresso off him (just knock up another one, champ: job done), yet it has resulted in millions of households having used Nespresso machines clogging up worktop surfaces.
Now, smart meters are arguably a mass market product with an extremely broad target market. I only just remember the Rippon presenting the news so it’s debatable as to anyone under the age of half a century would have a clue who she is.
Not only that, but one must ask why on earth is she doing a spot of yoga on a worktop surface as she grins manically.
But possibly the oddest, nay, creepiest, advert of all is the British Gas Tom Daley advert currently tarnishing our televisual cultural heritage.
There must be something in the water with these energy companies and their advertising partners that they choose such a strange choice in which to convince you to use their services.
The truth is that the wrong celebrity endorsements can do little but harm your brand, as Bud Light using transgender Dylan Mulvaney shows. Profits dropped like a stone, and millions were wiped off the company’s value as the punters voted by buying other alcoholic beverages instead.
I, for one, can’t boycott smart meters as I already have one, but I will make a point to not sign up with British Gas service repairs until they do something to amuse and hit the target in the way they should. Fix my boiler? No thank you - Having Angela Rippon dirty the kitchen surfaces with her yoga moves seems a more palatable option than that.
- Brett Ellis is a teacher.
