Choosing the Celebrity Endorser

Advertisements are everywhere we turn, either in print, on billboards and in magazines or in the form of television commercials. The power of many of these advertisements come from ad endorsements. Even though a celebrity will naturally capture attention, companies select their endorsers much more carefully than we might expect.

For example, companies don't just select a television or movie star who has recently been in the spotlight, but an individual who carefully represents the company's brand. For example, Target refused to have Anna Sui's new clothing line worn on the set of Gossip Girl, despite the fact that the show inspired the collection in the first place. An Anna Sui advertisement recently publicized the new clothing line at Target based on each of the Gossip Girl characters. This television ad ran during the break of the actual Gossip Girl show, which airs Mondays at 9PM.

Anna Sui clothing line available at Target loosely

based on the distinct styles of each female character

on the television hit, Gossip Girl.

Despite this original plan for Anna Sui's clothing line to be featured on the show, the designer was not able to send her clothes to the set of Gossip Girl for the young female stars to actually wear.

Leighton Meester and Blake Lively, who star on Gossip Girl.

Executives at Target feared that their company would be "too closely associated with the show." This is clearly a disclaimer of sorts for each of the star's debased television personas. With themes of debauchery, drunkenness and sexually promiscuous behavior, Target refused to have the stars of the show concretely associated with the clothing line, despite the fact that the inspiration had been drawn from the celebrity cast itself.

This is one example of how companies not only seek to make a profit from celebrity images, but the celebrity selection is under close and careful inspection. Similarly, supermodel Kate Moss originally had a contract with Burberry and Chanel, but cancelled the deal because of her use of cocaine. More recently, due to her outburst at the U.S. Open could have cost Serena Williams two of her largest sponsors, Nike and Kraft Foods.

Just as companies seek to eliminate stars with tarnished images, they also harness the positive energy and reputations of others. Based on an ad I recently saw in a fashion magazine, Walmart and L.E.I. Jeans did not only select Taylor Swift because she is popular teen star at the moment, but because she is considered one of the more upstanding young female stars. The ad depicts a photo of her onstage, with the words in white print across the center: "Life Energy Intelligence Taylor Swift." The lack of punctuation not only makes these three qualities synonymous with Taylor, but then attaches these qualities to creating an all-American image for both the classic jeans and the Walmart store.

All of these examples suggest that companies are very much aware of the reputations and images of the celebrities that they hire.

The bottom line is celebrity endorsers can drive the success of an ad campaign, but choosing the wrong celebrity becomes risky business...

Popular Celebrity Endorsements

Desperate Housewives Star Eva Longoria for Bebe Sport

Madonna's ad for her clothing line at H&M

President Obama and his daughter (left)

have an intentional resemblance to the

father & daughter in this

Tropicana Ad from January 2009 (right)

Hayden Panettiere for the Got Milk? Campaign

High School Musical Star Vanessa Hudgens

for Ecko Red Sneakers

George Clooney for OMEGA Watches

Tiger Woods for a 2007 Buick Enclave

Focusing on the Power of Celebrities

When I first started this blog, I expressed my interest in exploring advertising. I began contemplating which aspect of advertising I wanted to look into and I realized that most ads possessed a very powerful common denominator: the celebrity. Think about it: almost everything is sold with the power of the celebrity. The news is sold with the face of Obama. Barnes & Nobles sells it's books with the face of Oprah. Paris Hilton sold us Guess clothing for a time and Katie Holmes gave us Neutrogena. Essentially, almost everything we buy and consume has a famous celebrity plastered all over it!

In this blog, I want to investigate why celebrities--from politicians and athletes to actors and socialites--become such a powerful selling point. Aside from popularity, it is clear that corporations indeed put a great deal of thought into who becomes a part of their brand image. It is through this lens which I will explore the meaning and impact of celebrity endorsements and how it affects consumer behavior.

Amazon Has “Magical Business Model,” Says Analyst

The New York Times article that I just came across suggests that even Wal-Mart is looking to Amazon on how to increase company revenue. Founder Jeffrey P. Bezos intended Amazon to be an online bookstore, but the company has expanded from its original media products, including books, movies and music to become an online general store.

Amazon’s allure not only lies in its diverse selection of products, from Legos and kayaks to Cheerios and diamond rings, but its ability to ship these orders out so quickly. In fact, Amazon has gotten so good at predicting consumer demand, that the company rarely has to hold products for long in the warehouse, essentially eliminating inventory carrying costs and allowing for the further expansion of product categories.

In addition, even though Amazon’s revenues are not as large as the billions of the Wal-mart empire, Wal-mart is imitating Amazon’s third-party marketplace, which allows individuals to sell their products. The third-party marketplace on Amazon is now a venture that now brings in about 30 percent of the company’s profits.

Amazon has become a greater threat to independent stores, which have no ability to compete with the low prices and high range of products that are available on Amazon’s website. For example, Amazon has been responsible for depressing profits margins at Lombardi’s Sports in San Francisco. The owner of the family business, Ken Lombardi, can only hope to carry some products, like sneakers, at the same price as Amazon, and perhaps offer competitive edge with the store experience that online shopping cannot offer. Independent stores may also be able to compete with Amazon, if they carry luxury brands, such as Nike, Ralph Lauren and Chanel, which refuse to have their products sold on online to prevent prices from being cut.

I think that this article sheds light on how Amazon is able to move quickly ahead of its competitors in the race to deliver any product imaginable at unprecedented rates. Amazon’s success shows our preference for speed, and efficiency in everything we do and our reliance on the Internet to achieve that.

Google's New Ad Exchange System

This semester, I am not only taking Business of Media, but also Intro to Marketing at Stern. Even though I am a Media and Communication Studies major, I am very interested in a career centered upon marketing and advertising. I hope that through this blog that I will be able to learn more about the business and economics of the media saturated world that we live in, as well as explore my growing interests in marketing.

I recently read an article from adweek.com entitled, "Google Upgrades Ad Exchange," discussing Google’s reinvention of online advertising. It’s fascinating that our society is obsessed with advertising that appears everywhere from billboards to magazine spreads, but I haven’t noticed much of a dialogue regarding the strategic importance of Internet advertisements, despite the fact that Americans continue to spend more and more time connected to the Internet. In fact, according to a Pew Internet survey conducted in April 2009, 56% of Americans have at one point accessed the Internet from a mobile source, such as from a laptop or cell phone. As we literally carry the Internet in our pockets, the content of the sites we browse online become even more prominent in our lives and this must have some correlation to our exposure to online advertising. I would like to possibly investigate such a theme throughout the semester and as I write this blog.

This article from adweek.com caught my attention because it addresses the reinvention of online advertising. Recently, ad campaigns online have often been very expensive, but the ads have very low click rates. To rejuvenate this system of advertising, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, will measure the effectiveness and value of an online ad campaign with real-time bidding, ensuring that launching ads matches the preferences of those who will view them. The New York Times actually describes it as a stock market, “where advertisers and publishers can buy and sell advertising space, filling spots in Web pages on the fly.” Google’s new partnership will compete with Yahoo!, which purchased Right Media in 2005 and Microsoft’s AdECN, purchased in 2007.

This strategy of real-time bidding will both successfully reach target audiences and boost company inventory without wasting revenue on ads that will never even be clicked on. While this seems like a reasonable plan, however, the purchase of ad space online in response to niche audiences doesn’t seem like anything new. Progress on this will enable us to see how the DoubleClick Ad Campaign really sets itself apart from other systems in the purchase and sale of online advertising space.