AdAge spoke to our CMO Jim Nail this week about the role of celebrities in Super Bowl ads. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that there will be a big upswing in the number of ads featuring celebrities this year.
AdAge wanted to know how well this strategy works. Jim said:
"A celebrity alone is not a sufficiently strong message to support a brand," said Jim Nail, chief marketing and strategy officer for Cymfony. "It goes back to the sort of fundamental word-of-mouth-marketing principals that an [ad] needs to be something unusual, kind of unexpected, that gets people to say, 'Wow, why is that happening?'"
Jim went on to say that Nationwide and their Kevin Federline ad turned out to be a great success last year because they had an unexpected celebrity in a self-deprecating role. Other celebrity ads like Pizza Hut (Jessica Simpson), Revlon (Sheryl Crow), and T-Mobile (Charles Barkley and Dwayne Wade) fell flat because they followed traditional, safe patterns of celebrity endorsement.
"[Advertisers] have to take a risk," he said. "The safe, tried-and-true sports figures and actors with a product just don't do it."
We analyzed the impact of the Federline Nationwide ad in our study for the “Measuring Word of Mouth Vol. 3” book from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. You can read an abstract of that study here on our site.
You need the message as well, is not a one person show
Posted by: joaquin | January 16, 2008 at 03:36 PM