Celebrities - walking talking brands

Thanks largely to Big Brother, locally we're now at a stage where the man in the street has been exposed to the force of celebrities at close range. It's a massive public lightening bolt which illuminates the cult of stardom and will open new avenues for marketers looking for innovative ways to position their products.

Effectively, M-Net's hit TV reality show has spawned 12 new brands. Each of the dozen contestants has a distinct brand personality. As they exit the show, they can either fade into obscurity or they can leverage their media profile for various marketing, endorsement and sponsorship opportunities. All of the UK contestants, for instance, have secured publicity management representation.

Big Brother has opened the door for other individuals to walk through – and these are not necessarily those who have similarly exposed themselves on national television. In fact, we're moving into a marketing future where every single person has the potential to become a brand.

Current research indicates that 95 percent of new products coming to market are brand extensions. What should be borne in mind is that it takes a very long time and a lot of marketing money for a company to build a brand personality (trusted, caring, etc) yet since brand personalities are comprised of human attributes, it's very easy foran individual to enjoy those associations, provided he or she behaves in ways that are consonant therewith. Hansie Cronje now has a very different brand personality, for instance, to that which he enjoyed before the match-fixing scandals erupted.

Moving beyond celebrity endorsement

As it's that much easier to craft a brand personality after an individual, it stands to reason that we'll be seeing more and more product innovations introduced on the back of human beings. Famous human beings that is. Several generations back, marketers developed the concept of the celebrity endorsement. That was merely ad agencies pinning their client's flag to a particularly high-profile mast. Nowadays, the mast is starting to sprout its own flags. Oprah Winfrey has a highly crafted and controlled brand personality which has assumed a life force outside of her TV talk show. Oprah is a magazine, she's a bookclub. Martha Stewart is any number of products and brand extensions. She's not letting her name be linked to something simply because her fame quotient will draw eye-traffic, her products are absolutely consonant with her reputation – her brand.

Impact on future product development

Following the logic here, if it is very expensive and time consuming for a company to develop their own recognizable brand personality from scratch and inversely, if it is very simple and inexpensive for a famous person to do the same, then the odds are that a lot of future product development is going to be driven by the celebrity impulse.

As recently as ten years ago, personal publicists were considered the idle frippery of movie stars, a hedonistic Hollywood indulgence. However, in the last decade, we've seen a new trend develop where individuals across a variety of industries have secured PR representation as much for their companies as for themselves, and where having a publicist is less a status symbol than it is a marker of career success.

Who fits the bill?

Two categories of individuals benefit from the celebrity impulse. The first are people whose career depends on them maintaining a high profile. The obvious ones are actors and entertainers, but this has now spilled over into the glamour professions of fashion designers, interior decorators and that late twentieth century construct, the Supermodel.

In his heyday, Pierre Cardin licensed up to 200 products bearing his name! For these people, their name is their calling card and they need to be up in lights for the good of their careers.

From there, it's not a huge leap to the professions where people practice under their own names and this would now include attorneys, doctors, architects and the like. All of these people depend as much on their reputation (i.e. the quality of their work) as their profile (i.e. the extent to which other people know about their work and reputation). Publicity is acknowledged as being the most effective way to get oneself and one's work spoken about.

The second category of individual is one who has already achieved some degree of fame for their accomplishment or achievements. He or she may be a CEO of a listed company or a radio DJ. The challenge is to convert these people into brands. The CEO wants to be recognized as a market leader, an expert commentator, an industry spokesman. The DJ may aspire to a TV talk show or opening a sports bar. These enterprises will be markedly more successful if the individual fronts the business enterprise because he is a brand and brings all the attributes of his brand personaltity to the endeavour. It is impossible for an individual to become a recognised brand without becoming a celebrity first.

The difference between being famous and being a celebrity

Fame is linked to breaking news and reflects the extent to which the media give coverage to someone who has just done something. Once the media moves on to another story the individual's fame quotient fades. Roger Bannister was very famous once as the man who broke the 4-minute mile. Other runners subsequently bettered his record and now Bannister is famous no more. He's somebody who used to be famous.

Celebrity is a state of media attention which isn't linked to any particularly newsworthy or noteworthy accomplishment. Posh Spice is a classic example of a celebrity. She shops, she diets, she cuts her hair like millions of other women around the globe, but unlike the faceless others of her sex, Victoria Beckham's every move is reported. Celebrities are famous for being famous.

So, even if you despise the dreaded Big Brother telecasts, don't expect the media hoopla to die off when the show stops flighting. Once the contestants leave the house and with the right celebrity management, they can parlay their 15 minutes of fame into a lifetime of celebrity status.

Marcus Brewster is an award-winning publicist based in Cape Town. At the end of November, he launched a new division, Marcus Brewster Celebrity.

This article appeared on MarketingWeb, SA's most exciting, most controversial marketing information and resources site.