Celebrity endorsement – from Josiah Wedgewood to Lance Armstrong

Here’s some history for your dear readers. Did you know that one of the first people to pioneer celebrity endorsement was Josiah Wedgewood way back in the 1760’s? He actively promoted the fact that his pottery was used by Royalty to add to the perceived value of the products he sold. Once Queen Charlotte started using his wares he immediately called himself “Potter to Her Majesty” and increased his prices for the nobility. He then lowered his prices for the middle class but the Royal stamp of approval on certain ranges meant he could charge a premium.

From that simple but brilliant piece of marketing insight we can fast forward over 250 years to a world where celebrity endorsement is now the norm. Today Hollywood film stars promote luxury goods for millions and often low cost goods in the Far East so long as they are paid enough and also given a guarantee that the ads will not appear in the West to tarnish their reputation. Today a new breed of television “celebrities” such as those from The Only Way Is Essex are paid “low” wages and told they can expect to gain large on photo deals and product endorsements.  I suspect Josiah would probably be caught between pride and shame at how far his initial concept has gone.

However history also teaches us that although we tend to put celebrities on a pedestal they can often fall off and, if closely associated with a product or service, can damage that as well. High profile celebrities can make lots of money from brands wanting to be associated with them. David Beckham has made far more money from his product endorsements than he has ever made from actually kicking a ball. However for every Beckham there is also an OJ Simpson or a Tiger Woods. High profile celebrities with big product endorsements whose sponsors disassociated themselves as quickly as possible when things turned in their private lives.

In the last week we have seen sponsors finally start to desert Lance Armstrong. Even Nike, whom he has worked with since 1996, cancelled agreements and even using the strongly worded press release stating: “…has misled Nike for over a decade”. This shows the scale of the issue with Armstrong as they stood by Tiger Woods when his personal life exploded in 2009 when other brands left him. Within hours of the Nike announcement the cycle company Trek and brewers Anheuser-Busch also cancelled with more following. To put a sense of value to this Nike alone was worth and estimated £4.6m a year to Armstrong.

Unfortunately there are no hard and fast lessons here. Our fascination with celebrities means that their endorsement will continue to sell products and services. So while that is the case, brand and service owners will continue to pay them in the hope it will help them grow their bottom line.  However even those who once seemed beyond reproach can have hidden issues that can bite those who closely associate with them. Armstrong is not the first example and he will not be the last.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on twitter @timyoungman

Animee and a beer for women - a lesson in product targeting and gender neutrality

In a week when Adnams was voted into the list of the UK’s coolest brands I thought it only right that I dedicate this week’s column to the subject of beer. This is not a shameful attempt to solicit free samples from those fine local producers Woodfordes, Greene King and Adnams but a genuine interest in the closure of a beer brand.

Before any female readers turn the page, this column is also all about you! A question to start with then. How many of my female readers have heard of the beer brand Animee? Any of you with your hands up I will ask the question did you actually try it? Animee was actually a brand of beer created by Molson Coors designed specifically for women. It was launched last July and backed by a £2 million ad campaign specifically targeting women. Fourteen months later the brand was pulled.

The reasons behind the launch were clear. According to recent research 77% of women say that they ‘never’ or ‘very seldom’ drink beer with only 13% of beer serves in the UK attributed to women. You can compare that to 33% in the Republic of Ireland and 44% in Spain. So in a market that has suffered from falling sales at public houses and the growth of home drinking fuelled by supermarket price promotion sales, any growth opportunity has to be explored.

Of course by saying that this beer is for women you immediately make the statement that it’s not for men who make up the vast proportion of beer consumption in the UK. Likewise, by creating a brand that is particular to the smaller purchasing segment, it has to work very hard to make inroads in that segment and will not attract sales from the bigger consuming segment i.e. men. Suddenly the £2 million marketing budget does not seem that big.

Interestingly it seems that beers that take a non-gender approach to branding and marketing have managed to attract a following. Peroni, for example, reports that it has a strong female following and attributes it to its brand positioning of Italian cool versus lads down the pub. Molson Coors themselves as part of the announcement of closure noted that its own brands Coors Light and Carling Zest attracted a higher proportion of women drinkers without even trying because they were gender neutral in their advertising. In the case of both Peroni and Zest the advertising included both men and women and was more aspirational and inclusive than for example the Carlsburg “Probably….” campaigns which perfectly targets its chosen market demographic.

So will this current failure mean that brewers will stop scratching their heads coming up with beers targeted at women, probably not. I suspect though that the lessons being learnt that creating a beer that is brewed and marketed as being great for both sexes might be.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on Twitter @timyoungman

Waitrose and Twitter - A lesson in PR or a lesson in brand management?

One of the more amusing stories in the last week came from the middle class bastion that is Waitrose. On Monday it decided to ask its twitter followers to complete the sentence “I shop at Waitrose because…#WaitroseReasons”. I am sure that some well meaning young marketing exec had been at a conference about social media and sat in workshops about engagement; brought that back and thought this was a great idea. The purist in me would completely agree with him, however the old cynic in me of 20 years hard experience thought light blue paper and stand well back and duly the firework exploded.

This spread quickly giving us another example of why this is the nation that gave the world Monty Python and the Goons. My favourite responses were: “I shop at Waitrose because it makes me feel important and I absolutely detest being surrounded by poor people” and the all time classic “I shop at Waitrose because I was once in the Holloway Road branch and heard a dad say ‘Put the papaya down Orlando!’”

Within the storm of amusing asides there were positive as well as negative comments which would have pleased Waitrose but most of the negative ones were based on the clear perception that Waitrose is expensive and middle class. I suspect the reaction was quite galling to key executives. Particularly to Waitrose managing director Mark Price who announced in May that it was going to spend “tens of millions of pounds” to price match Tesco and back this with a major television campaign in attempt to show its value compared with competitors.

Many have argued that there is no such thing as bad PR, however there is if it reinforces a popular perception that you are trying hard and spending good money to dispel. For me this issue is not about the gags or whether it’s been good or bad publicly. It’s actually about the bigger question of what is wrong with being perceived as middle class and expensive if that is your core audience. 

Let me give you an example from America of the fast food chain Chick-fil-A. You might not have heard of it but last year it had sales in excess of £2.5bn. This year it also caused a major storm in the US when its president told a North Carolina Baptist website that the company supported the “biblical definition of marriage”. Cue massive debate about its anti-gay marriage stance. To help understand why he said this, the company was stared by the Presidents father to run on “biblically based principles”, donates millions to Christian charities and closes all stores on a Sunday. Although this stance made it universally unpopular with a vast majority of the US population it gained massive support from its core audience of Southern Right Wing Christian Republicans so much so that its restaurants struggled to cope with demand for the following month.

There lies the example of one of the most important principles of brand management. It does not matter if you are not universally well liked by everyone, or if people have a different perception to reality. It’s about making sure that you drive patronage and loyalty from your chosen target market and that might mean allowing certain perceptions to stay if the end result is keeping your profitable customer base happy in their choice of supermarket.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant, follow him on twitter @timyoungman

How to engage your customers? Social Media, UX, Content Markerting - all of the above please!

From time to time I am asked to present at conferences on topics on anything from the newspaper industry to digital to marketing and media. I like to think that I am asked because of the high quality of content and presentation style that enthrals my audiences, at least that’s what I tell myself. Next week I am hosting an event for the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce entitled “Engaging Customers - Using technology and social media to grow your business through content marketing and customer care”. Under this expansive title will see speakers from local agencies to national brands such as Dell and King of Shaves share experiences of how they have used social media and technology to grow their businesses and businesses they work for.

As I was creating my introduction presentation it struck me how different customer engagement is from 10 years ago and even 3 years ago and how much of that is down to speed of change. If you are eating at a national chain restaurant and have an issue how many people have not just complained to the local staff but also tweeted the chain to complain at the same time? How many people now use the airlines twitter feeds at airports as a more reliable source of information about delays and issues than the information boards?

Customer engagement however is much more than dealing with complaints. Engaging with your customers to create and build customer loyalty is far more important to brands in the longer term. Understanding that consumers now have more complicated needs that include the desire to be recognised, share opinions and form groups around those opinions and interest all facilitated and grown by the rise of social media brings new challenges to businesses both big and small.

Some businesses have reacted to this by engaging with customers via social media, others by making their online presence more user friendly and others offering value add in the form of useful content for their target consumers. The really clever businesses of course do all of these things within an integrated strategy targeted at delivering growth through customer engagement and retention.

Many companies are already doing this and some are going further by rewarding customers who actively engage with them. Tesco for example have recently run a trial where users could get double clubcard points when they liked, shared or bought products on its facebook page.  Likewise online retailer play.com is looking at how it can reward customers who promote it and its offers on social networks.

Of course to any business there is a difference in value between simply sharing or consuming some of your content related to your product offering or following or liking you compared with actually parting with hard cash. The effect though is the same, that customers can and want to engage with brands and now can do so in more complex and instant ways that businesses need to understand and react to.

That pace of change is not going to slow down and will increase as customers push harder and businesses look to exploit new ways to engage and build loyalty and ultimately growth. Sharing experiences on how to exploit these new trends will become even more important so I suspect next week will be busy!

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on twitter @timyoungman

Brand GB – capitalising on the Olympics and TeamGB

A strange thing has happened to me over the last two weeks. My eyes on repeated occasions have had grit magically appear in them and cause tears. This complaint started during the Olympic opening ceremony and was at its worse on Super Saturday but re-occurred often while watching all manner of sports. I of course am not alone and the whole country has been taken along on a journey that I don’t think anyone outside of Boris and Lord Coe imagined.

Now the flame is close to being extinguished, big questions will be asked of who has made the most of the games and how brand Great Britain can capitalise on the success of the games and a positive worldwide reaction.

The biggest winners are of course the athletes, in particular the medallists. Even those who didn’t win a medal will have increased visibility which will help in the search for sponsorship. For the big names though, big numbers are possible.

Jessica Ennis’ current earnings have been estimated at £1m from sponsorship from brands such as Aviva, P&G and Addidas. Her gold medal and increased media presence could see this rise to £2m over the next 2 years according to sponsorship experts.

If you just look at cycling, Victoria Pendleton already has various beauty deals and also a range of leisure bikes with Halfords. The other big name cyclists from Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and the upcoming Laura Trott, will be targeted as potential sponsorship opportunities. From Mo Farah, to the Brownlee brothers all could, and probably need to, seriously capitalise on their success to help support future efforts.

The big Olympic sponsors themselves will also be evaluating whether the millions spent delivered. Although defining ROI on this activity is difficult, ultimately shareholders expect some form of bottom line return from this level of activity. From McDonalds to Cadbury and BP, all will be reviewing how they performed and what value it delivered.

But what about Brand GB, will we be able to emulate the commercial success of the Sydney games? There have been plenty of stories about the supposed ghost town of central London. This changed and even Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber has had to go on record and apologise for doom mongering and happily admit that bookings were up in his theatres. All of this is short term gain; the real money will come from long-term investment from overseas and export of product and expertise.

So while the Olympics have been running, a number of investment drives have also occurred. A British Business Embassy has been set up during the Olympics at Lancaster house to showcase British business with an aim to boost the economy by £1bn. Activities include investment conferences with speakers of the likes of Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, and Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design head. Engineering tours of the Olympic Park have also been popular especially with Chinese representatives.

To our athletes the Olympics is a chance to fulfil a lifetimes dream and years of dedicated hard work. To some, medal success will bring personal wealth from sponsors keen to piggyback their new found adulation. To Great Britain this really has been the chance to put Brand GB in the spotlight and all that we can achieve. The world has been watching. I hope they liked what they saw.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on Twitter @timyoungman

Don’t mess with the Olympic brand police!

By the time you read this the Olympics will have started. Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening will have happened. The world will have joined the 60,000 who witnessed the dress rehearsal mainly in awe according to twitter feedback. Many may have found the 24 dedicated BBC Olympic channels followed by the same again in HD making sure we don’t miss anything even if we want to.

My favourite description of the Olympics is that every four years the world's greatest advertisers get together and compete, and there also happens to be a sporting event at the same time. Now before anyone starts, as an individual I am an Olympic fan. I look forward to witnessing some of the superhuman feats I expect we will see in this country.

My issue is not with the event, it is also not with how it is sponsored. Lets be realistic, this thing costs a lot of money and even King Midas would run out of household furniture to touch to fund a modern Olympics. My issue is with the extensive actions the Olympics “brand police” are taking to protect sponsors exclusivity rights.

The first sight of this was in 2007 when a butcher in Tamworth, where the Olympic sailing will be held, was told to remove a sign showing sausages in the shape of the Olympic rings. That’s right, 5 whole years before the games started. As the games get closer this is getting worse. In Plymouth a café was told to remove its “flaming torch breakfast baguette” off the menu. In Stoke on Trent one florist had to remove an Olympic rings window display, made of tissue paper, or risk a £20,000 fine.

Evan Davies interviewing Lord Coe on Radio 4 asked him if he would be allowed to turn up in a Pepsi t-shirt. Lord Coe’s response? "No, you probably wouldn't be walking in with a Pepsi T-shirt because Coca-Cola are our sponsors and they have put millions of pounds into this project but also millions of pounds into grassroots sport. It is important to protect those sponsors” A Locog spokesman later went into PR retreat stating that you could wear one but if there seemed to be an “ambush marketing” activity with lots of people turning up then they would be stopped which is fair enough.

It was an Englishman, Michael Payne, former free style skier and the International Olympic Committee’s first marketing director who created the Olympic Partner programme. It was his savvy dealings and ideas that turned an almost bankrupt movement into the multi million pound operation it is today through long term big money sponsorships and TV deals. Unsurprisingly he now works for Formula One. However even he, in an interview in the Independent Newspaper, accused Locog and the IOC of taking the brand protection too far and that they may even create a backlash from sponsors worried about negative publicity.

However this will all now be forgotten for the next three weeks and the focus will rightly be on the athletes as they chase glory. I hope though that the lessons will be learnt and although the big sponsors are required, the draconian protection of their sponsorship is not.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant follow him on Twitter @timyoungman

Barclays, Natwest and the banking confidence crisis – PR disaster or PR opportunity?

I am going to start this column with a quote: “We need to recognise that you’ve got to solve it from the top down. If the leaders have the collective will to recognise that they have a reputational problem to solve, then its more likely to produce the right answer” That was Marcus Agius the then Chairman of Barclays Bank speaking just last October.

Consumer confidence in the banking sector is rock bottom. NatWest’s recent IT meltdown was followed quickly by Barclays £290m fine for fixing the libor rates leading its chairman and CEO to go. Barclays YouGov Brand Index score, a survey which measures the average of how customers rate the brand in terms of impression, quality, value and reputation slumped from -0.8 to -24.2 the day after the fine. Clearly it and other banks have a lot of work to do to repair their collective reputations in the eyes of the general consumer. The question of how to do this is probably high on the lips of the senior management team and especially the marketing heads. So for a professional opinion I asked two leading local PR agencies for their view.

Rachael Paddick is from Jungle PR and is Chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in East Anglia. Rachael comments:

“Barclays has already bolstered its PR resource (why wait for crisis point before taking the influential power of communications seriously?) and the first job will be to refocus its communications strategy. Serious questions need to be answered - were internal communications to blame? What sort of organisation does it want to be?”

“The bank needs to engage with its customers on an honest and human level; after all, ‘sorry, we’re working on it’ is better than ‘no comment’. Values, ethics and codes of conduct need to be scrutinised, adhered to and then reflected across all communications. Restoring faith and showing a commitment to positive, ongoing change is the key.  And on the upside? If handled correctly this could be an opportunity for Barclays to improve perceptions of the banking industry as a whole, not just for itself.”

Liz Cooper, Head of PR at OneAgency in Norwich agreed adding:

“First and foremost, we’d be advising Barclays to put a revised crisis comms plan in place that considers all the mistakes made. Research into their reputation with their audiences will dictate messaging and tone going forward, both completely misread by the bank first time round.”

“Particular attention should be paid to timings. In a social world, which saw the news in 49 percent of twitter feeds by lunchtime on the day the news leaked, prevarication is not an option. You can’t be too proud to learn from your mistakes and an improved comms plan will provide the basis for better PR – for when a similar situation arises.” 

Public relations is often an undervalued channel, like many other undervalued marketing disciplines such as market research, with many dismissing it as simply writing the odd press release and hoping for a few column inches.  PR expertise though will now be at the forefront of the banks attempts to re-gain consumer confidence. Unfortunately it often takes a crisis for many business owners to recognise the value of such companies and their work.

Tim Youngman is head of digital marketing for Archant - follow him on Twitter @timyoungman