Direct Response Marketing

Should You Use a Celebrity?

1 Dec, 2003 By: Rick Petry, Response Contributor Response

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There are 5 questions you should ask before deciding whether or not you should use a celebrity in your infomercial.

In October's Response, we explored the frequency of celebrity usage in advertising and noted that 43 percent of the top 50 infomercials used at least one type of the two categories of celebrities identified: famous celebrities, such as actors and sports figures, and DRTV-created personalities, or the pitch experts who populate so many shows. Given their prevalence in so many successful DRTV programs, you will invariably ask yourself when planning such a campaign, "Should I use a celebrity?" Following are five key questions you should consider.

Does your product need a celebrity?

The first and foremost consideration perhaps should be to examine whether or not the unique selling proposition of your product is compelling enough to stand alone. If it does, you may not need the extra expense required to hire a star.

On the other hand, if you are navigating a well-traveled infomercial product type, such as diet, having a celebrity can help you break through the clutter. Products that fall into vanity categories, such as health and fitness, employ celebrities more than any other group. With so much focus in the media on beauty, using gorgeous actors to ignite aspiration makes perfect sense.

Can you create your own celebrity?

This is easier said than done, but it has been accomplished. Have you discovered a pitch person heretofore unknown to endorse your product? Or do you, as the marketer or inventor, believe you have what it takes to launch yourself into the "Popeilesque pantheon"? One word of caution: everyone thinks they can do this, but few actually can so ask for honest opinions.

The housewares category employs DRTV-created personalities more than any other, perhaps because the "wow" factor of the demonstrations lends themselves to a straightforward show-and-tell approach. So whether you use home-grown talent or seek out one of the seasoned sales professionals who populate our industry, think about whether the human touch is the best way to communicate your product's attributes.

Do you have the budget?

This is a pretty basic question and one that requires understanding the financial dynamics of your program. Put another way, do you have sufficient margin in your product to afford paying the fees - most of which will be royalty-based - to a celebrity? In order to answer this critical query, you need to be able to answer the next question, which has two components.

Who would be appropriate and how much do they cost?

Many in the industry rely on good old-fashioned brainstorming. They examine the product and its attributes and then list out famous people they believe would be appropriate for varying reasons.

For example, if one were looking for a celebrity to endorse a diabetes drug, researching big names who have diabetes or who have done relevant charity work would be a logical approach. Often someone in the marketing mix may have a connection to a famous person who knows the inventor, has used the product, or is willing to endorse it. In any event, compiling such lists of celebrities and then categorizing them into high, medium and low silos of relative probability and affordability is a sound approach. From this process, a few favorites will emerge.

One method frequently used to determine the appeal of a celebrity under consideration is to look at their "Q Score." Developed by Marketing Evaluations Inc.(www.qscores.com), Q data enables marketers to review data based upon public surveys that measure the appeal of a particular personality against specific demographic groups. Therefore, one could look at how the Q scores of different celebrities they are considering stack up against one another.

However, Q data alone won't tell you how effectively a given star will match up with a product or how well they can sell versus act or hit a baseball. Nonetheless, once you have conducted your analysis, you can seek out the answer to the cost question.

How do I close the deal?

In chatting with David Woolson, a DRTV talent and business affairs expert from Portland, Ore.-based Big Catch Inc. and Los Angeles-based DRTV celebrity broker Jack King, one can learn much about negotiating celebrity deals. In both instances, they represent the advertiser versus the celebrity in such negotiations.

According to these experts, the overwhelming majority of celebrity DRTV deals rely on royalties (up to 85 percent of deals). Under such scenarios, the celebrity is typically paid some sort of up-front fee and then takes a royalty or percent of each sale against that fee for participating in the DRTV effort.

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