You’re hosting a non-profit fundraiser to help the homeless, fight a disease, or address some other worthy cause. Who would you rather have as your celebrity endorser: Kate Gosselin of Kate Plus 8 fame or Bristol Palin, teen mom and daughter of former Alaskan governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin?
Hey, if they’re both good enough for Dancing with the Stars (DWTS), they should be fine for your event, right?
Maybe Gosselin, because more people know her? Maybe Palin, because she is trending high right now?
Both have what may be called “image baggage.” So, which one? Or, do you perform your fundraiser without either one?
Fact of the matter is, if a celebrity wrangler presented both options, depending on your cause, you’d have to strongly consider both to appear at your fundraiser. That’s the power of celebrity.
Celebrities are generally created by a mix of a person’s desire to be one combined with the newsworthiness of whatever qualifies them to garner public attention. Prior to having eight children and a reality TV series about raising them, Gosselin was not a celebrity. Since then, she has enhanced her brand with appearances in places like People Magazine and DWTS.
Palin may not have any notoriety, if her mother had not been chosen as a vice presidential candidate. Yet, here she is, in tabloids and on DWTS.
As a non-celebrity, it’s always interesting to see the circumstances that create a celebrity. A guy like Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed a US Airways jetliner in the Hudson River last January, was a celebrity for a brief period, regarded as a hero, then quietly slipped out of mainstream view. (That is, until DWTS taps him to appear on the show.)
If you are considering celebrity marketing – whether for a fundraiser or multi-million-dollar ad campaign – ensure that there is a brand match with that person’s image and your business goals. Having Glenn Beck come to a national Young Democrats of America rally may or may not be a good idea, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Once you find a celebrity match, you’ll go through all the negotiations that typically occur to define exactly what you want that person to do, whether or not he/she will do it, when and where he/she shows up, etc.
There are a lot of ways to leverage a celebrity to achieve your business goals. Make sure you include a mobile component. You can perform brand marketing, charitable giving, volunteerism, and a host of other applications over people’s mobile devices. An effective campaign should include a call-to-action from a celebrity delivered via the mobile channel.
More than 260 million people in the U.S. have a mobile device; many of them have multiple ones. Of course, that number is growing, as is the penetration rate (close to 20 percent) of smartphones that enable speedier, easier viewing of video.
For many savvy brands, they figured out the power and reach of mobile a while ago. If you are just now investing mobile, that’s fine. Check out the Mobile Marketing Association website for tips on where to start and best practices.
So, back to the question at hand: Gosselin or Palin? Which would you choose?
