by Laura Ries
It’s always a risk to hire a celebrity as a spokesperson.
Then there’s the expense problem. A-list celebrities are frightfully expensive. In the 15 years before Tiger Woods ran into trouble, according to Golf Digest, he earned $951 million in endorsements.
That’s an average of $63 million a year.
Then there’s the credibility problem. Take Tiger’s endorsement of Buick automobiles. On the surface, this might seem like a good idea.
A young, charismatic, world-class athlete drives a Buick. How could this not improve the perception of the Buick brand?
But wait. In addition to making more money than any other athlete in the world, Tiger Woods also owns a $20-million, 155-foot yacht.
And several years ago, he paid $40 million for a 10-acre property on Florida’s Jupiter Island and promptly tore down the house. In its place, he built a new mansion, including two pools, a hundred-foot running track, a 5,000-sq.ft. gym and a four-hole golf course.
And he drives a Buick? Highly unlikely.
As you might have expected, Tiger Woods’ endorsement of Buick failed to work in the marketplace. Buick sales in the U.S. declined dramatically. From 432,017 vehicles in 2002 to 137,197 vehicles in 2008, a decline of 68 percent.
Another point. If Tiger Woods endorses Buick, who is left to endorse GM’s top luxury brand, Cadillac?
God?
(Cadillac needs some help with its hammer which is way too complex.)
It’s a stretch, but Tiger in a Cadillac is definitely a plausible endorsement. To quite a few people, the best American cars are on par with the best European and Asian cars. So Tiger drives the “best” American car. A Cadillac, of course.
That’s why Tiger’s endorsement of Nike, the No.1 athletic-shoe brand in the world, makes sense. But suppose he had endorsed Reebok or Adidas instead?
Would that have worked? Of course, not.
You need to be consistent. The world’s best athlete (Tiger Woods) needs to be coupled with a strong leader brand. Not Buick or Reebok.
It’s also why Tiger Woods was a good choice for Accenture, one of the world’s leading technology and consulting companies. Unlike automobiles and athletic shoes, technology and consulting services are invisible. A celebrity hammer is a particularly good choice for an invisible product. The celebrity can visualize and humanize the invisible.
In the six years that Tiger Woods was the visual hammer for the brand, he greatly improved the visibility of Accenture. The company’s revenues also increased from $13.4 billion in 2003 to $23.2 billion in 2009.
In spite of Tiger’s domestic troubles, I’m not sure that Accenture should have dropped him. But in hindsight it probably was the right decision. With Tiger’s inability to win on the golf course he isn’t the hammer he used to be.
After an athlete leaves the field, he or she is quickly forgotten, but not always. A good example is John Madden and “Madden NFL,” an American football video game developed by EA Sports.
First introduced in 1988, the game has sold more than 85 million copies, racking up total sales of more than $3 billion. Although retired in 2009 as a broadcaster, John Madden still lends his name to the video game. Will Madden NFL outlive its spokesperson?
There’s no reason it can’t. Madden is a brand like Orville Redenbacher and Paul Newman. When properly nurtured, a brand can live forever.
One of the most famous recent brand endorsers is Isaiah Mustafa, “The man your man should smell like.”
Mustafa is the spokesperson for Old Spice, a Procter & Gamble brand that has been around since 1938.
There’s no question that Mustafa energized the old-fashioned deodorant brand. Sales skyrocketed after Isaiah Mustafa videos appeared on the Internet and went viral.
Mustafa became the poster boy not only for Old Spice, but also for social media. He generated millions of unique views as well as a lot of online activity with tweets and blogs. Marketing people went gaga about how Old Spice had reinvented itself.
The real question is, What comes next? And that’s always a major problem for a brand like Old Spice with no real connection with its young, handsome spokesperson.
Even the brand’s trademark (a sailing ship) is inconsistent with a guy who is more likely to be riding a motorcycle than a 12-foot dinghy.
The verbal idea, however, is strong. “Smell like a man.” This reinforces the heritage of the brand and serves as a direct attack on Unilever’s Axe, the super-successful fragranced body spray.
Teenage boys bathe in Axe body spray with the hope of attracting teenage girls. Unilever advertising and publicity has humorously labeled this the “Axe Effect.”
Years ago, 15-year old Brooke Shields created a similar sensation with her television commercials featuring Calvin Klein jeans.
"Nothing comes between me and my Calvins” was the campaign’s memorable verbal nail.
As sensational as the Calvin Klein advertising was, it was obvious that a teenager like Brooke Shields would eventually get older and outgrow her ability to project the right blend of innocence and sexuality.
In the fast-moving fashion category, it probably doesn’t matter. Over time, many fashion brands tend to become obsolete. Or the brand just moves on to the next hot model.
Calvin Klein moved his brand to Marky Mark Walberg and Kate Moss and striped them down to demonstrate both their underwear and their bodies.
Can an endorser ever be too old?
Who won the 2010 Super Bowl? You might remember the New Orleans Saints won the football game but do you remember who won the advertising game?
It was the television actress Betty White.
According to USA Today, the Snickers commercial featuring the 88-year-old actress playing football was the most popular advertisement during the Super Bowl. Theme of the spot: “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”
If there is one critical thing you need to know about marketing it is this: Marketing is not a short-term fix. (If you need to do something in the short term, run a sale.)
Marketing is a long-term proposition. Don’t think in years, think in decades.
Unfortunately, Betty White is not in a long-term position to endorse the Snickers brand. But even worse, where is the connection between Betty White and a chocolate bar?
There isn’t any connection.
It was one funny commercial that did little for the brand.
One of the best examples of the value of long-term consistency involving a celebrity is Charmin toilet tissue.
For 25 years (from 1965 to 1990) Dick Wilson played the role of Mr. Whipple, the retailer who couldn’t stop himself from squeezing the Charmin toilet tissue.
In his long career, Dick Wilson did 504 separate TV spots promoting the Charmin brand.
(At one stage of the Charmin campaign, Mr. Whipple was named the third best-known American, just behind Richard Nixon and Billy Graham.)
Charmin is also a good example of the value of a narrow focus. The longtime leader in toilet tissue was Scott Paper Company (now owned by Kimberly-Clark) which started manufacturing toilet tissue in the late 19th century.
But like many companies, Scott couldn’t resist line-extending its brand.
So in addition to Scott toilet tissue, the company introduced Scott towels, Scott napkins and Scotties (facial tissue.) Scott maintained its paper leadership position for an awfully long time, but something happened in 1957 that would seriously affect the Scott brand.
That was the year Procter & Gamble bought the Charmin Paper Company.
Not surprisingly, the Charmin family of products included paper towels, paper napkins, facial tissue and toilet tissue, the same range of products made by Scott.
But in those days Procter & Gamble was run by marketing people, not by management types.
So in a classic “narrow the focus” strategy, Procter & Gamble discontinued all Charmin products except toilet tissue and then hired Mr. Whipple to promote the brand.
And instead of promoting al
l the features of its toilet paper, Procter & Gamble focused on softness.
“Please don’t squeeze the Charmin” was the verbal nail to the Mr. Whipple hammer. And the humor evolved around Mr. Whipple’s inability to resist squeezing the tissue himself.
The Charmin brand has been the toilet-tissue leader for decades. Recently, Charmin toilet tissue had 30 percent of the market with Scott in third place with just 12 percent.
Another long-running advertising campaign featuring a celebrity spokesperson was Maytag’s “Lonely repairman.”
Launched in 1967, Jesse White was the character actor who played the role, replaced in 1989 by Gordon Jump and in 2007 by Clay Earl Jackson. For a number of years, Maytag was the largest-selling washing-machine brand in the country.
One Maytag competitor said: “Their machines cost the same to make, break down as much as ours, but they get $100 more because of the reputation.”
How can you visualize the reliability of a washing machine? You can’t. So most brands use a variety of verbal approaches.
Except Maytag.
Even a totally-absurd concept (Our repairman is lonely because a Maytag washer is so reliable it doesn’t need service) can be turned into an effective campaign because it can be visualized.
Did you ever see a marketing plan with pictures? I haven’t. A marketing plan is usually nothing but words.
In the future, marketing plans are likely to include visuals along with the words. Take O, the Oprah Winfrey magazine, perhaps the most successful publication launched in the last decade (current circulation of the magazine is more than two million.)
No publisher would say that using the Oprah name on a magazine wasn’t a good idea.
But how many of these publishers would have taken the next step: Using Oprah’s picture on the cover of every issue?
That’s the visual hammer that accounts for much of the success of O magazine.
On the other hand, not using Oprah on most of the OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) television shows is what accounts for the network’s lack of success.
Sometimes, however, the use of a celebrity can actually damage a brand.
Especially when the person chosen is the exact opposite of what your brand stands for.
Take Dell. Back in 2000, the company was eager to get into the consumer market to complement its leadership in business computers.
Not a good strategy, but what was worse was the verbal nail and the visual hammer the company chose for its launch into consumer computers.
"Dude, you’re getting a Dell” was the verbal nail in a series of television commercials starring Benjamin Curtis, a 21-year-old college student.
(It didn’t help Dell’s image that three years later, Curtis was arrested for criminal possession of marijuana.)
Dell sells its products primarily to businesses, not consumers. Even today, more than a decade after the Benjamin Curtis campaign, consumers still represent only 23 percent of the company’s total sales.
What do you suppose corporate computer buyers thought when they saw Ben Curtis hawk Dell products? Suppose a chief executive of a major corporation asked his or her IT manager, “What kind of computers are we buying?"
"Dude, we’re getting Dells.” In a corporate environment, that’s not likely to be an appropriate answer.
Dell used to be the world’s largest seller of personal computers. No longer. Today, Hewlett-Packard is.
One reason? Dell lost its focus. Yesterday, the brand stood for “direct sales to businesses.”
Today, the brand doesn’t stand for anything except, “just another personal-computer company.”
If you study advertising history, you will find many examples of celebrities (both real and invented) used in marketing campaigns. Most of them last for a few years and then disappear into history. And the companies that hire them are determined to do better the next time.
But the problem is not usually the hammer. The problem is usually the lack of an effective nail.
Dick Wilson did a marvelous job as Mr. Whipple, but what built the brand was the “softness” nail.
It was the ability to connect the two, the celebrity hammer and the softness nail, that were the essential ingredients in the brand’s success.
And Jesse White, Gordon Jump and Clay Earl Jackson were believable Maytag spokespeople, but what built the brand was the “reliability” verbal nail that made the Maytag repairmen lonely.
Pick the right nail and almost any celebrity will turbo-charge your brand. Pick the wrong nail and even George Clooney will have trouble energizing your brand.
CHAPTER 11
ANIMAL
ANTHROPOPATHY WORKS.
We often attribute human motivation to animals. Courageous people are “lionhearted.” Cowardly people are “chicken-livered.” Greedy people are “piggish.”
People who are playful, but not very serious, are just “horsing around.” People who blindly follow a leader are “sheep.” People who gossip are “catty.”
People who never give up are “doggedly” pursuing their dreams. Lawyers are “sharks.”
People who seldom say anything are “quiet as a mouse.” People who cling to the past are “dinosaurs.”
Animals are also popular as pets in America. We own 86 million cats, 78 million dogs, 16 million birds and some 13 million reptiles. (My two kids own one poodle and two pet rats.)
Because of our familiarity and love of animals, they can also make extremely effective visual hammers.
Look at the visibility of Jaguar, an automobile brand that sold only 12,276 vehicles in the American market in the year 2011.
Compare Jaguar with some brands that sold more vehicles that year. Suzuki (26,618), Land Rover (38,099), Mitsubishi (79,020), Infiniti (98,461) and Acura (123,299).
The jaguar visual and the Jaguar name give the Jaguar brand considerably more street visibility than many brands with much greater sales volume.
What’s missing from the Jaguar marketing program? A verbal nail, of course.
What’s a Jaguar? Most people have no idea.
Take the high-end Nissan brand, Infiniti. Many people know the trademark for the Infiniti brand is a variation of the mathematical symbol for “infinity.” But it’s a weak visual device because it’s used out of context (on an automobile instead of a mathematical paper.) Sometimes out of context is all right, as long as there is some logical connection. But what is the logical connection between the concept of infinity and an automobile?
Does an Infiniti run forever on one tank of gasoline?
A Jaguar automobile, on the other hand, looks like a jaguar animal. Sleek and fast. A great visual hammer, but unfortunately an almost non-existent verbal nail, a fact that has seriously hurt Jaguar sales over the years.
A BMW is the ultimate driving machine. A Porsche is the ultimate sports car. A Mercedes-Benz is the ultimate prestige vehicle.
But what’s a Jaguar? It’s a brand in search of a nail.
Another sleek-and-fast animal is the greyhound, the perfect symbol for Greyhound Lines, still the largest North American intercity bus company with 16,000 daily bus departures to 3,100 destinations.
Combined with the Greyhound visual hammer was one of the most memorable verbal nails in marketing history. “Take the bus…and leave the driving to us.”
Today, however, the verbal nail has been modified and in the process has lost its poetry. “Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us.”
To a logical left-brain executive, the new slogan might seem like an improvement, but it’s not.
“Go Greyhound” implies there are plenty of alternate bus companies you can choose.
“Take the bus” (and letting the visual communicate the brand name) implies that Greyhound is such a dominant brand that nobody would ever consider choosing an alternative.
Greyhound Lines has also tinkered with its hammer, at one point adding red and blue stripes, perhaps to symbolize its focus on the American market. Two symbols are never
better than one. They only cause visual confusion.
In marketing, simplicity and consistency always trump complexity and variety. While a jaguar seems appropriate for an automobile and a greyhound for a bus, what kind of animal would you pick for a $38-billion conglomerate that’s into everything?
Television, motion pictures, theme parks and consumer products, among other things.
How about a mouse? Mickey Mouse made his first appearance in the Walt Disney cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Since then, Mickey Mouse has been featured in some 120 Disney cartoons.
According to one source, Mickey Mouse’s image is the most reproduced image in the world. Jesus is No.2. And Elvis is No.3.
Walt Disney once said: “I hope that we never lose sight of one thing: That it was all started by a mouse.” It’s a hopeless task to try to find an effective visual hammer to symbolize an entire company. Especially if that company is a big conglomerate. A better direction is to look for the spark that ignited the brand.
General Electric, the company founded by Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb, uses symbolic filaments of a light bulb to spell out the letters “GE.”
Locking the visual to the verbal should be your No.1 objective. One way to do that is by using a double-entendre. One of the best examples is the Merrill Lynch bull. The verbal nail, “Merrill Lynch in bullish on America,” is one of the most memorable slogans ever developed. But what makes the slogan memorable is the visual hammer, which instantly identifies the brand and connects with the slogan.
