How to Harness the Power of Celebrity Endorsements

Michael Jordan for Nike: Michael Jordan’s endorsement of Nike’s Air Jordan sneakers is one of the most famous celebrity endorsements of all time.

When you advertise a product or service online, you’re not only competing against thousands of other businesses in your niche, but you’re also up against the millions of gigabytes of content that people are exposed to every single day.

You can win this battle for attention in many ways: You can come up with a new hook, image or video that will make people stop scrolling to read your ad, or you can use content generated by other users — and so on.

All these tactics work, but they take a lot of time and skill to master. Luckily, there’s another way that is almost guaranteed to make people pay attention to what you’re offering — getting a celebrity to endorse your product.

Celebrity endorsements aren’t just a great way to boost brand awareness and build a strong reputation. A recent study demonstrated that celebrity endorsements can increase a company’s sales by 4%.

The only downside is that it can become very pricey for small businesses to hire a celebrity and, in some cases, risky. So, how do you get a celebrity to endorse your product when you are not a huge brand without wasting your entire marketing budget?

What to consider before deciding which celebrity to pursue

One thing to consider is that celebrity endorsements look very different today than they did in the past. Today, it doesn’t matter so much that a celebrity is endorsing your product, but what celebrity you associate with your brand.

Working with a celebrity who isn’t in line with your values and what you stand for isn’t just useless in terms of expanding your brand and growing your business. It can even backfire and damage your reputation.

So, it’s important to understand who your target audience is and what they believe in, and it’s also important to find a celebrity who is liked by your ideal customer. Endorsing a product that helps people ease their psychological pains made perfect sense.

Once you’ve identified the perfect celebrities to endorse your product, the question is how to get them to endorse it. As you can imagine, this isn’t always easy.

How to get a celebrity to endorse your product or service

One way is to find their agent and ascertain how much they charge for an endorsement.

Another option is to hire an influencer marketing agency.

Finally, you could send samples of your product to the celebrity and wait until they repost it on their social media account. Once they do so, you can reach out to them and propose a partnership. I used this method to get on the radar of people like Tai Lopez and Grant Cardone.

Having said that, although these strategies work, they might require a big budget or the need to find a good agency to work with.

Here are some examples of celebrity endorsements:

Beyoncé for Pepsi: Beyoncé signed a $50 million endorsement deal with Pepsi in 2012 and has appeared in numerous Pepsi commercials since then.

George Clooney for Nespresso: George Clooney has been the face of Nespresso’s ad campaigns since 2006.

Jennifer Aniston for Aveeno: Jennifer Aniston is the brand ambassador for Aveeno skincare products.

Taylor Swift for Diet Coke: Taylor Swift has been a brand ambassador for Diet Coke since 2013.

David Beckham for H&M: David Beckham has his own line of underwear and casual wear for H&M.

LeBron James for Nike: LeBron James has a lifetime endorsement deal with Nike that is estimated to be worth over $1 billion.

Scarlett Johansson for Moët & Chandon: Scarlett Johansson has appeared in ad campaigns for Moët & Chandon champagne.

Selena Gomez for Coach: Selena Gomez is a brand ambassador for Coach handbags.

George Foreman for the George Foreman Grill: George Foreman’s endorsement of the George Foreman Grill helped turn it into one of the most popular kitchen appliances of all time.

Micro influencers

Ignore the pretty girls who just flog ads on instagram, they have no credibility and stories quickly disappear and get forgotten. Being famous for being a boyfriend of someone is not what your brand needs.

Mark Boardman is a freelance journalist, content creator, copywriter and showbiz editor and founder of MarkMeets.com and is best known for promoting London film premieres besides being a regular guest on BBC Radio London.

An alternative for people with a smaller budget is to build a brand that puts you in a position to meet and work with celebrities. Being good at what you do isn’t enough anymore. If you want to access opportunities to work with bigger brands, you need to be known. You need to be invited to events and places where celebrities hang out, meet the people who handle their marketing and branding and have assets and skills you can exchange for access to their audience.

This is the path I took. I was one of the top Facebook ads experts at the time, but no one knew who I was. It can take years to build ay brand — maybe you don’t need to reach out to A-listers but a good alternative is to work with micro-influencers who have 1,000-100,000 followers. They can grow your brand quickly by attracting the right audience. From there, you can then transition to bigger celebrities as you become more established.

Author Profile

Michael P
Los Angeles based finance writer covering everything from crypto to the markets.

Leave a Reply