In the wake of the Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger scandals, some corporate marketers may be shying away from
using a celebrity as a spokesperson for their product or service. They may view the risk of some untoward actions off the field as too great to offset any goodwill generated by a celebrity endorsement. But that type of knee-jerk reaction appears to be short-sighted at best. An examination of successful celebrity endorsement campaigns proves that brands can indeed be built successfully around a celebrity
Ask yourself, where would Nike be today without Michael Jordan? Or Mr. Coffee without Joe DiMaggio pitching the brand? And who hasn’t witnessed the impact of a celebrity endorser such as Peyton Manning for such iconic brands as MasterCard and Sony?
A few years back I partnered Chicago Bears Legend William “The Refrigerator” Perry with a seafood company to help launch their new Monster Size Fish Fillet. The pairing of an athlete nicknamed the “Fridge” (with an apparent monster-size appetite) with a Monster Size Fish Fillet product was a believable, credible endorsement and an innovative way for the company to launch a new product.
One of the main points to remember is that athletes and celebrities are human beings, prone to the same lapses of good judgement as anyone. The key is to plan an exit strategy should the celebrity bring negative publicity down on the brand. For example, I signed Ben Roethlisberger when he was a rookie with the Pittsburgh Steelers to his first endorsement deal for “Big Ben’s Beef Jerky”. We had a great 5-year run with the product, but after his latest off-field incident in Georgia, we felt it best to terminate the contract by invoking our “morals clause”.
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