Most brands prefer to depend on celebrity endorsement when it comes to launching campaigns. Celebrity endorsement is such a powerful factor in driving your brand and its campaign towards virality, this is why we see many brands collaborate with certain celebrities to be their ambassadors.
What you have to know is that brands never randomly choose a celebrity; there are a few important things to consider when selecting a celebrity to represent your brand or campaign; here are some of them.
1- Consider The Budget
Before choosing a celebrity, consider your budget.
You can’t have a small budget and still want to collaborate with a megastar. In fact, the bigger the star you collaborate with, the more expensive the whole campaign will cost you.
So, before choosing a celebrity to represent your brand, create a full detailed plan and check if your budget will actually allow you to use celebrity endorsement or not.
2- Look Into Their Background
You have to be sure that the celebrity you’re choosing doesn’t spark any type of controversy.
Choose someone with a good history and reputation. You can’t collaborate with an artist who’s always making headlines for controversy and expect your campaign to be a success; in fact, you might receive a huge backlash from your audience for collaborating with this artist.
In fact, many brands were attacked for collaborating with artists who have troubled history and had to cancel this collaboration. Therefore you have to be really careful when choosing a celebrity for your brand.
3- Make Sure They’ll Stay Involved
This won’t be a one-time collaboration, put in mind that they’ll be involved for a while.
You should create a program for your campaign or your brand if you want to use a celebrity endorsement; this program should contain how the celebrity will be involved with the brand on their social media platforms. This collaboration could last for a long time, you need to be sure that they will be constantly encouraging their audience to use your brand.
Pick someone who’s active on social media so they can always promote your brand and campaign.
4- Make Sure They Can Represent Your Brand Well
Both the brand and the celebrity have to relate to each other, which can be spotted in multiple collaborations between other brands and celebrities.
For example, you can’t collaborate with a celebrity to promote a fast food brand while they’re always encouraging people to stay healthy.
In fact, back in 2013, the iconic singer Beyoncé collaborated with Pepsi after being a part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move fitness campaign. Both Beyoncé and Pepsi were under backlash, especially since Beyoncé misrepresented both campaigns.
So, do some research on the celebrity and what they encourage people to do and see if it is aligned with your brand.
5- Put A Backup Plan
You’ll never know what could happen whether to the actor or your campaign, so you better have a backup plan to save the day.
Many brands ended their contract with their celebrity because they caused controversy. For example, we were always used to seeing the actor Mohamed Ramadan representing the telecom brand Etisalat. After a couple of controversial situations, he had caused, suddenly the brand stopped the collaboration and we started seeing more of the great actor Ahmed Helmy’s collaborations with Etisalat.
So, put a backup plan for your second-best celebrity to represent your brand in case the current one is failing.
To conclude, as a brand owner you have to create a smart plan for your celebrity collaboration and you have to be sure that they will be able to represent your brand as people will always relate them to your brand.
