When you flip to the entertainment pages of newspapers and magazines, you will find dozens of stories about celebrities are actually related to their appearances at commercial events. In a materialistic world, consumers flock to celebrities and the products they endorse likes bees to flowers, particularly in the “celebrity-obsessed” Greater China market. Why are we so fascinated by people who have no material impact on our lives? Why are we devoted to following the exploits of people we have never met, are never likely to, and who don’t know we exist?

ublic addiction to celebrity is a cultural fabrication in our region. Celebrities humanize the process of commodity consumption. Celebrities themselves are commodities in the sense that consumers desire to possess them. Put simply, celebrities impact on public consciousness.

Hong Kong’s consumer market is small, mature and even saturated. Every marketer is competing for the attention of consumers with what is often a very small budget so they need to get the maximum bang for their buck. Celebrities are useful as they are able to generate immediate mass attention when many other marketing tactics constrained by time and budget fail to deliver. Celebrities are also useful when your products are functionally indistinguishable from the competition or just plain ordinary. Celebrities get paid to make those indistinguishable products distinguishable, and turn those ordinary products extraordinary.

Celebrities have become products themselves. They are regarded as commodities or articles of trade that can be bought and sold in a marketplace. A celebrity’s fee is regarded as a “stock price” that varies according to various factors like demand and supply, popularity, speculations and market rumors. The agents of the celebrities are always ready to provide the marketers with a very well-structured rate card to facilitate their marketing planning.

Though comparatively cost-effective, celebrities are not necessarily cheap. The A-list celebrities may cost you HK$1million for just a 20-minute appearance at your event. But, publicity is not guaranteed. A marketer’s biggest headache is waking up and reading the newspapers the following day after an event and finding that all publicity generated was focused on the celebrity while the brand or products were completely lost and ignored.

To ensure a good return on investment on celebrity, here is a short checklist you should carefully go through:

Choose the right celebrity

When scanning for likely endorsers, credibility should be uppermost in the marketers’ minds. If consumers regard the celebrity as credible, they’re more likely to buy into the message. A credibility gap opens when there is a difference between what is being said and what is being perceived as the truth. One widely known story of a breakdown in credibility involved a coffee marketer and a local canto-pop king used to endorse the brand. To the surprise of everyone at the product launch, the pop star told the media he never drinks coffee! Therefore, do not just evaluate the celebrity’s appeal and influence on consumer behavior. Also take into consideration a celebrity’s relevance to a brand’s image and whether they embody the kind of values typically associated with your brand.

Popularity of the endorser is another important criterion as it determines news value. This is particularly important for one-off PR events where the expected result is immediate high-profile publicity. A C-list celebrity may be able to generate as much, as or more, publicity than an A-list star simply because of market rumor or scandal making a multiplied return on investment possible. Of course the bottom line is that the scandal or speculation should not negatively impact the image of the brand being promoted.

Be objective and put aside your personal affection when choosing a celebrity. Your target audience’s perceptions are more important than what you personally think of the celebrity.

The celebrity cannot replace the PR idea

Media come to a PR event undeniably because of the celebrity, not the brand, so you have to tactfully work against that reality to avoid being overshadowed. Always remember that the only thing that builds a brand in the mind of the consumer is PR and word-of-mouth generated by an idea rather than the attention generated by the celebrity. Think big and be creative. In addition to verbal endorsement, consider celebrity creation or celebrity cross-over. For example, fashion retailer bossini involves its celebrity names in creating its various seasonal collections. Or use entertainment industry professionals rather than celebrities. For instance, we used the make-up artist of a famous celebrity to help promote a skin-care brand, which proved to be a better and more convincing endorser at a much cheaper cost.

Another great idea for generating even bigger buzz is turning a PR event into an experiential marketing event by offering an exclusive consumer engagement opportunity at which the brand values can be communicated in an subtle and effective manner directly to the target audience. Chivas Regal’s “Live with Chivalry” party was a vivid example where consumers were introduced to the abstract values of “Chivalry” through carefully designed performances and interaction with celebrities they admired.

Build a strong association between the celebrity and the brand

Paying thousands or millions of dollars for a celebrity to just sit at your event like a doll is not good marketing. Endorsements should create a credible belief that the celebrity would be interested in buying and using your product or service despite being paid to do so. If that is not achieved, you have wasted your money.

Make the celebrity your brand ambassador. One way to do so is to humanize the association between your brand and the celebrity by creating an emotional attachment. For instance, include a moment in your event agenda for the celebrities to share their personal experience in the brand or the product with the audience. Provide them with a well-written script and make sure they are well-briefed to speak as a spokesperson.

Asking the celebrity to hold the product and say “I love XX brand” is too hard-sell and dull. To ensure brand or product exposure in the media, create imaginative photo calls to create the hype with the celebrity interacting with the brand. A good example is the launch of a Whisper sanitary napkin some years ago where we asked the celebrity to wear a skirt made with the soft and comfortable napkin cover sheet at the media launch event. This hit the major newspapers and achieved excellent message delivery.