It is okay to splurge on a celebrity ambassador, but keep a few things in mind while doing it
The 2016 Wimbledon Women’s champion was, hold your breath,
Serena Williams! She equalled Steffi Graf’s record of 22 Grand Slams and beat
her own record of being the oldest women’s player to win the record. I guess
most people were happy as they admire her tenacity, fitness and will to win.
None more than Nike the brand that she is endorsing. Let’s for the moment
ignore my disappointed friends who for some unknown reason were supporting
Maria Sharapova who too was an earlier Nike model. But let me come back to
Serena and invite you to view the Nike commercial if you haven’t already seen it.
Having been in advertising for two long, I can’t rate it as
an all time classic but it brings out an important feature of the brand and
that is “attitude”. Nike is all about champions who hate to lose and Serena
certainly is a champion and as her record demonstrates, the one thing she hates
is losing, even to her distinguished sister.
Catch them young
Nike has not always been the dominant brand that it is today.
In the early days Phil Knight would roam the colleges of the US with shoes in
his car, find budding athletes and exhort them to wear his shoes. Some of them
obliged and few of them graduated to being champions and they remembered the
brand that had supported them before they were stars. The brand’s essence
though was clear - it was for athletes who had the grit, desire and attitude to
put in the hard miles. People who hated to lose whether it was Tiger Woods,
Michael Jordan, Shane Warne or our own Serena Williams.
Match the celebrity
with your brand’s personality
While signing on a
champion athlete for your brand per se is no big deal, Nike’s best ambassadors
have been those who were at times at the edge in behaviour. People who didn’t
always conform. They have had their brushes with authority and often
controversy. They don’t hold back. A bit like Serena who spoke about the
disparity in prize money between men and women or wore clothes that made people
raise their eyebrows. Two such earlier champions were Andre Agassi and our
Shane Warne.
Since I am assuming you are cricket mad like me, let me wax
eloquent on the greatest spinner of my lifetime. One of the best commercials of
Nike featured the classic spinner. The script is worth recalling though the
commercial has been pulled off YouTube.
When would you give up asks the voice over. When the wickets
refuse to fall? When you are told your team is better off without you or when
your child is born on the other side of the world? And we have a dejected Shane
Warne on the frame but as they say you can’t keep a Nike model down. The film
cuts to his bowling Herchelle Gibbs with an unplayable ball in the 99 World Cup
semi-final and the rest as they say is history. The commercial ends with the
celebrated Nike tag line of “Just do it “. Yes, Shane Warne was the man of the
series in the 99 World Cup that I had the good fortune to watch live.
Think long term
This leads me to the learning from Nike a brand I admire.
Nike thinks long term when it comes to celebrities. Today, sadly many brands
and brand managers are obsessed with the short run and quick fixes. Its
celebrity strategy is not new and some of the greatest sportsmen and athletes
have been proud of this superior brand. This is an important aspect of
successful brands like Pepsi and Nike who have been consistent in their
strategy of always using celebrities. And in the case of Nike there is another
feature that I have noticed and admired. They have always looked for champion
athletes and sportsmen but like Warne they have always been people who live on
the edge, who are unafraid of speaking their mind and who have the odd
transgression as they are human after all. But they are all people with
“attitude” and people who hate losing.
So what’s your
strategy?
This leads me to an important question for your own brand. Yes,
it is okay to use a celebrity and pay an arm and leg for it. But is your
strategy in place and more importantly is it long term. And finally does your
celebrity’s personality match your brand’s personality?
Think
about it before just doing it!
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