Paula Deen’s “Real Women” Contest….. Does Your Brand Need A Celebrity Spokesperson?
photo credit: dieyoungforeverpretty
Philidelphia Cream Cheese has been extremely active in the social media world lately. They launched a large outreach about 6 months ago in which they sent out Philly recipe books and encouraged people to make something and write them back about it. I got the recipe book but the outreach was really close to Christmas, I got busy, I’m not a great cook, and I prefer my cream cheese loaded on a bagel with nothing cooked about it. I doubt they wanted that recipe…. it’s pretty easy.
Anyway, Philly Cream Cheese now has Paula Deen. The copy on the site even sounds like Paula Deen with all of the “y’alls” they’ve thrown in. Paula wants videos of us amateur chefs and their recipes and in the end they’ll choose their “Real Women of Philadelphia” who will be featured in a recipe book and maybe win 25k.
What a lot of my clients want to know is “do we need a celebrity to endorse our contest or promote us online?”
My answer is probably not – here’s why:
1) Video: If you look at video online you’ll notice that videos that are being watched a lot aren’t the sleekly made celebrity endorsements. Some of the most watched videos are always the “guy with a camera” type. For example, when I was looking up videos on how to detail your car I found plenty that were highly produced and/or celebrity made. There were also some with a guy and his camera digging the lens waaaay into the floor of the car to show you how to scrape crumbs out of cracks. Those did a lot better. Like thousands and thousands of views better. This isn’t because we really love “guy with a camera” videos. It’s because when we want to learn something online we want to see what the person is doing. We want the crack close-up not the celebrity’s face.
2) Messaging needs to be from the company now. No offense to all the celebs out there but with people getting highly educated about their purchasing decisions they want to hear about how great a product or service is from either their network or the brand. People know that this celebrity or that celebrity doesn’t always know about the product they are hawking so why should we believe them?
3) Celebrity is a really loose term now. There are eleventy million “celebrities” these days (thanks internet) and finding one to represent your brand doesn’t necessarily mean signing Jessica Simpson. It can mean signing an amateur chef that’s really good at making videos and loves your product. It can be the person in the warehouse who knows the product inside and out. It can be a blogger or a tweeter or anything in between. This is why the Philly contest is going to work for them, signing Paula Deen was maybe not necessary but I’d bet anything they will be using their new “video celeb” from here on out.
Advice: If you’d like a spokesperson to represent your brand online you should be looking for someone who already likes your brand, can create great content online, and isn’t a total flake. Brands that can grow with their spokesperson / celebrity / brand advocate will be more believable than the ones who just sign the biggest name they can.
I agree with you, particularly with your advice at the end that a brand is better off hiring someone who’s socially active and is already an evangelist for the product. I personally prefer that type of pitch over the paid-for celebrity, cause at least there’s a bit of reality from the random guy. Plus there’s a sense of discovery as I learn this new character and wonder if he’ll add anything interesting to the conversation about the brand.
I like the part that says we should be looking for someone who already likes our brand. It certainly happened when I was looking for an editor for my blog – I found a professional playwright who already enjoyed my writing, so she has been helping me out by not only editing my blog but also contributing with her opinions and encouraging me all the way. Now she is one of my primary readers, those who you keep in your mind when you write anything. We enjoy the real bonding between us (even though it is ocean apart) and we respect each other as professionals.
Royce – I agree. The minute I see a celebrity (and maybe this gives away my marketing background) but I am thinking about what the elements of his/her contract were. With someone that I don’t have quite as extensive a knowledge about I can focus on messaging and product more.
Isao – That’s a great point! A brand advocate can also keep the brand itself on track, thinking about if their fans will like the newest and latest or not.
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