By Jose Uli. on 08/02/2017
We all have seen in ads the art of linking celebrities with brands, right?
One of the more obvious cases to my opinion was the Bruce Lee and BMW ad that a Spanish agency created a while ago. Still remember the so called ‘be water my friend’ which lead to the question at the end of the ad: Do you like driving?
The interconnection brand-celebrity is as powerful as deadly.
It’s powerful because the attributes of a given celebrity is naturally projected onto the brand’s product or service its representing.
It’s deadly because persons can be unpredictable sometimes, what may happen if a brand influencer performs a action that goes against that brand philosophy? Then the negative attributes of the influencer are also transferred back to the brand itself.
Case Abercrombie & Fitch vs Sorrentino
This is an interesting example about the relation brand-celebrity. A bit of background first, in the one hand we have Michael Sorrentino, a popular person thanks to the MTV ‘Jersey Shore’. In the other hand, we have Abercrombie & Fitch, with more than 1000 stores around the globe and 2 sister brands: Abercrombie Kids + Hollister Co.
During the ‘Jersey Shore’ show Sorrentino used to wear Abercrombie & Fitch clothes, it seems the was no agreement of any kind between the brand and the celebrity, simply this person liked the clothes and dressed them. Without getting into more personal or behavioral details about Sorrentino, it was clear that the image he projected was the kind of party naughty guy.
Abercrombie & Fitch were really worried about this and sent official correspondence stating their thoughts about this unwanted connection between the two.
They were worried that the negative side of Sorrentino’s personal brand would then be transferred back to the label and cause some damage. Therefore, they offered him a lump sum to stop him from wearing the clothes he liked the most.
So, what now?
As you can see, renowned companies and brands understand the impact of positive vs negative connections that may arise, so when posible they try their best to control any kind of connection to their product or service.
Now you tell us, what kind of persons you would definitely not like your personal brand or company to be related to?
