Celebrity sells… to the tune of about US$50 billion (Dh183.66bn) a year. But the world's most sought-after faces don't do it alone – the big bucks are made when celebrities join forces with a big-name brand, just as Nicole Kidman has done most recently with Etihad.
And that relationship – announced by the national carrier last month for the sole purpose of promoting its on-board penthouse-type cabin The Residence – raises the question: how do companies choose the celebrities they use to endorse their products or market their company?
"The most important thing in deciding who to work with is finding a person whose values align with your brand," Paul Jankowski wrote in a celebrity-branding-partnerships piece published on the Forbes website in February.
“When you hire a spokesperson, you are telling your potential customers that this person represents your company and its values,” the chief strategist for a strategy/consumer engagement agency in Nashville in the United States wrote. “It’s tempting to team up with the hot celebrity of the moment in hopes of tapping into the publicity that emanates from their every move, but you’ll want to consider whether that partnership will benefit you in the long run.”
In the UAE, as in the rest of the world, consumers buy into “celebrity” every day, and this isn’t lost on companies in the Middle East. Marketing professionals believe that if a brand message is conveyed by a high-profile celebrity, it generally attracts a higher degree of belief in the brand than if the same message is touted by a non-celebrity.
For Mark Rooks, Pepsi’s senior marketing manager of multicultural marketing, celebrity endorsements are “truly vital” to the soft-drink conglomerate’s customer base.
“Not only does a celebrity bring new value, excitement or humour, but they bring an energy and memorability that you don’t get sometimes with non-celebrity advertising,” Rooks says.
It’s said that out of about 3,000 visual images that consumers see every day, 300 of those reach the subconscious mind, and only a small percentage of those lead to conscious behaviour.
So by associating the brand message with a celebrity, it’s possible to increase the chances of the product being endorsed to reach the consciousness of the consumer.
“On a general empirical level, celebrity endorsements yield results,” says the senior commercial agent Ron Mowlam, of The Celebrity Group, a company based in the United Kingdom, but with representatives in the UAE.
According to the bosses at Etihad, the company not only wanted an A-list star, but also a credible spokesperson with “a shared vision” for their latest campaign push. “We thought it was time to work with a really prominent celebrity,” said the airline’s chief commercial officer Peter Baumgartner when the partnership with Kidman was announced last month. “It had to be someone who shares the same values as the brand or that the brand is portraying, and Nicole Kidman was the ideal candidate.”
He went on to say that the Oscar winner was the perfect fit for Etihad, keeping in mind its ambition to become the best airline in the world.
“Just looking at her body of work; she is always someone looking for the extraordinary … to push the boundaries.”
While on the surface the Kidman/Etihad marriage seems like a match made in heaven, don’t be fooled. Behind every branding decision lies a measured, calculated process.
“Firstly, there should be a real synergy between the brand and the celebrity,” says Mowlam. “A celebrity should not be used simply for their own sake, but rather to enhance a big idea that’s steering the brand.”
Mowlam says there are some important questions a company needs to ask when vetting potential partners.
“Which celebrities are known across the UAE? And to what demographic do they resonate? Who is popular on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter? What other endorsements is the celebrity involved in – do they already represent a conflicting brand or even a non-conflicting brand, which could cause confusion in the mind of the consumer?”
The Celebrity Group, like many global agencies, has its own celebrity database that includes information on celebrities’ favourite airlines, banks, what car they drive, what sports they play, what languages they speak, and so on.
“This information comes straight from our celebrity … all this can be used when determining which celebrity could best enhance the brand’s creative proposition,” says Mowlam, from his base in London.
But it’s not just about the celebrity’s interests. There are some measures used to determine popularity and consumer sentiment as well.
“Celebrity-indexing services can help with the selection process. E-scores or the Celebrity Intelligence Buzz Index are examples,” the industry veteran adds. “These indices are designed to enable brand marketers to make more informed decisions on which celebrity to work with.”
Aside from Etihad, there are a number of companies in the UAE that use recognisable faces as ambassadors for their brands. These include Audi Middle East (the Dubai-based DJ Kris Fade), Canon Middle East (the Egyptian artist, producer and director Khaled Abol Naga), Land Rover (the Emirati filmmaker, director and producer Ali Mostafa), Splash (the Indian actor, artist and producer Salman Khan), and Dubai Duty Free (the tennis stars Ana Ivanovic and Caroline Wozniacki).
When asked how Audi Middle East’s partnership with Kris Fade came about and what it means to the luxury car brand, the company’s marketing director Chayne Brand says it’s all about appeal and synergy.
“All Audi ambassadors are carefully selected in terms of how they best embody our brand values of sportiness, progressiveness and sophistication.”
Fade moved from Australia to Dubai in 2008 and was a founding member of the team that started Virgin Radio Dubai. He’s a regular on the club and concert circuit and, according to Brand, his “popularity in media and social media with both the young and the old” provides the “perfect synergy” for Audi, and has done for the past two years.
“We have known Kris Fade for a number of years, and have closely watched his development,” Brand says. “Kris is trendy, quick-witted, articulate, intelligent and also appeals to a wide target audience.”
For Audi, company ambassadors differ from market to market for the car company – for example, in Qatar it has a relationship with Mohamed Al Kuwari from beIN Sports Arabia, while in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Fade is the company’s preferred choice.
“Since the dynamics for each market vary considerably, we are empowered to select ambassadors who suit the country demo and psychographics.”
For Canon Middle East, it’s passion that creates the perfect partnership.
“Our ambassadors represent class, excellence, creativity and innovation. Khaled Abol Naga, the multi-award-winning Egyptian artist, producer and director, has been a Canon ambassador for the Middle East region since 2012,” says Mai Youssef, Canon Middle East’s corporate communication director. “Through our partnership with him, Canon is supporting budding filmmakers in the Middle East.
“Khaled is a fresh, modern and prominent figure in the industry,” Youssef adds. “He stands for excellence and creativity in the Egyptian film industry – these are the same values Canon adheres to.”
Youseff says Naga’s blend of spirit and style resonates strongly with the brand, and the company generally engages top artists as ambassadors in a bid to encourage and inspire young talent in cinematography and photography.
Just like Canon, the UAE fashion brand Splash demands its chosen ambassador reflects the company’s brand values, and in determining who’s the right fit, it considers personality, image and how Splash’s loyal consumers relate and react to them.
“When we sign on an ambassador, we are looking at a long-term fruitful relationship that benefits us both,” says the company’s chief executive Raza Beig.
For Splash, Khan was that person.
“We first met when Splash agreed to retail Being Human merchandise, and from there we just clicked,” Beig says.
Being Human is a charity that Khan set up to assist the underprivileged. It sells T-shirts and other products as part of its fundraising efforts.
“We have had Salman with us since 2013, and we continue to strengthen our bond purely on the basis of trust and a solid working relationship – I share a very personal relationship with him now; he is family,” he says.
According to Beig, Khan, who’s one of the most commercially successful Bollywood stars, is “the ultimate style icon, effortless and confident in what he carries”.
“He has a large fan following among Asians and Arabs, and the association definitely helps our brand. The most endearing thing about him is his mass appeal – he is loved by people in all age groups.”
For Dubai Duty Free, their partnerships with Ivanovic and Wozniacki came about as a result of the company’s global sponsorship of the women’s WTA Tour.
“Dubai Duty Free ... had the opportunity to select two top women players to represent our brand, and also promote Dubai, over the past few years,” says its executive vice chairman Colm McLoughlin. “This initial discussion revolved around finding two players who would represent our core values and we decided that the player[s] selected should at some time have held the No 1 position in the world. Both Ana and Caroline have done so, were passionate about their sport as we are passionate about our business and were determined to succeed, which is very much in the spirit of DDF and indeed Dubai itself.”
McLoughlin says the company uses brand ambassadors because they are a “good way of reaching a wider audience, in particular a young audience, who will learn a lot more about Dubai Duty Free and Dubai as a result of following their favourite players”.
While it seems that most of the companies across the UAE who use celebrities to promote their brands have a good handle on what they’re looking for in an ambassador, that doesn’t always mean what they have to offer the celebrity is always of interest.
For example, the golf champion Rory McIlroy’s five-year relationship with the luxury-hotel company the Jumeirah Group was a long-standing one formed when the Irishman was still an amateur. But two years ago, that partnership ended. Not long after, McIlroy signed a lucrative deal with Nike, one of the biggest sporting brands on the planet.
"Celebrities, like anyone else, are looking for the maximum amount of money for the least amount of work," says Mowlam, referencing a book his company has produced called Celebrity Sells. "Celebrities normally look for a long-term association of at least one or two years with a prestige brand."
This certainly rings true for the relationship the Emirati filmmaker Mostafa has developed with Land Rover in recent years.
According to Mostafa's agent, Jimmy Poon of the Boqin Group, the high-profile director of the films City of Life and From A to B sees the role he holds with the Range Rover Evoque as a very "successful business transaction".
“It is about revenue. We don’t take on something that is not long term – we are not interested in splash and dash,” says Poon. “The policy for Ali is that he only ever takes on an ambassador role if it makes sense to him, and he is very happy with Land Rover.”
According to Poon, he and Mostafa fight hard to keep it local when it comes to branding relationships, and while Mostafa gets a lot of interest, Poon says he turns down about 80 per cent of the requests, because they don’t fit the 33-year-old’s image or the longevity he’s looking for in a branding partnership.
Mowlam, whose company has the likes of Gwen Stefani, Geri Halliwell and Andy Murray on the books, says that before a deal is signed, a celebrity and their agent will usually assess a number of factors including: fee; how much the celebrity can benefit from the association; whether the campaign is positive for them; whether the celebrity is able to do what they’re good at; and whether or not the celebrity in question is passionate about the product.
“High-profile celebrities earn a lot more money from brands wanting to be associated with them,” Mowlam says. “David Beckham has made far more money from his product endorsement than from kicking a ball.”
Most of the companies in question refuse to be drawn on a fee or their marketing spend. Etihad’s Baumgartner would only say this about the biggest campaign in its history: “The money that we put into it will give us payback in brand awareness and actual response in terms of sales on our website.”
mhealy@thenational.ae
