BLog 10: CeleBrities that Help (+) or Hurt (-) brand values . (Public Relations)

As we have seen throughout the course, advertisers always try to reach their target market by all kinds of original ways to enhance their clients to choose them from among the competition. Therefore, one of the most successful and common practices to advertise brands is through endorsement from public figures, in which celebrities act as the brand’s spokesperson and certify the brand’s claim and position by extending their personality, popularity, and expertise in the field to the brand.

One of the most successful examples of a company which has fruitfully taken advantage of a brand endorser is Nike. In the present, this company has created a very strong brand identity and a brand personality thanks to the use of the celebrity endorsement practice as one of the main channels of communicating its brand to a highly focused set of customers. Today, Nike is known around the world for being one of the most outstanding brands because it was recently ranked as the world’s 31st most valuable brand in terms of its brand value by the annual Business Week’s global top 100 brand survey. Nike has achieved this because it´s very well known for its consistent use of celebrities to endorse the brand. In fact one of the most successful collaborations between the brand and a celebrity is the one with Nike and Michael Jordan. So successful was the collaboration, that Nike and Jordan launched a new brand variant called the “Air Jordan” line of sport shoes. Moreover, Nike pulled off a very similar coup in the sports industry when it joined forces with the ace golfer Tiger Woods to enter the golf category with its apparel, equipment and accessories. Nike had no experience in golf before. In addition, golf being a very elite game, it was generally considered that a brand like Nike would not be very successful. But even if this might have probably been true, this made Nike choose to associate with the best golfer in the world and have him endorse the brand. And as it´s known today, Nike has emerged highly successful in golf. Consequently we can observe how Jordan and Woods have highly profited the company from their image and expertise in the sport industry by enhancing the value of the brand.

Another great example of a celebrity endorsement is the one of David Beckham with a number of important companies. For example: Armani underwear, Motorola's Global Brand, Adidas, Pepsi, Gillette, Vodafone, Police Sunglasses, Got Milk?, Snickers, TBC cosmetics, Marks and Spencer, Coty Perfumes, etc.

Just talking about the relation between Armani Underwear and Beckham we can decipher how this great endorser really has a positive impact on clients, because even if men are not physically attracted to the endorser, this was a very impacting campaign towards women who like to buy their partner their underwear clothing. Therefore, as this relation between Beckham and Armani, we can describe the other relations between Beckham and the other brands because this example show us how an attractive endorser (physical appearance, intellectual capabilities, athletic competence, expertise, trustworthiness and lifestyle) has most of the time a positive impact on the brand endorsed, and as a result, this positive endorsement helps to increase the brands value.

On the other hand, we can observe how brands strongly associated with celebrity endorsers who happen to be targets of highly unfavorable publicity are likely to risk losing their positive appeal and credibility fast. For example, the brand Hertz suffered in image ratings when its endorser, O.J. Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife and her friend. Consequently, this fact had a very negative effect on the brand value hurting the company´s position.

Finally, with this work I recognize that celebrity endorsements have several benefits, like building credibility and getting attention of the public, which can translate into higher sales. But at the same time I recognize that brands associated with endorsers who are targets of harsh publicity can just in a few seconds lose or diminish the companies´ brands value, so companies need to be very attentive when choosing their endorsers.

REFERENCES:
Jordan BrandHistory.RetrievedNovember8th2008.Fromhttp://www.sneakerhead.com/jordan-brand-history.html
Asis K. (2004) “Downside of celebrity endorsement” Daily Inquirer Business Features Section. RetrievedNovember8,2008.Fromhttp://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:JRV6S2emw3YJ:www.karendeasis.com/articles/downside_of_celebrity_endorsements.pdf+negative+brand+endorsers&hl=es&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=mx

PUbLIC RELaTIOnS: BriTneY SpEArs!!

Britney Spear´s image has drastically changed since the launch of her first album “Baby one more time” in 1999. At that moment, Britney Spears was the pop icon able to influence teens and young people, and today all her cute image and power to influence have gone. Today, Britney Spears appears on thousands of covers of magazines, just garnering controversy because of her personal life that began to gain substantial media attention after her marriage to Kevin Federline, because their marriage ended two years later resulting in an ongoing custody battle over their two children.

Few months ago you can just see Britney Spears in the latest gossip about her serious drug or mental health problems. But today, Britney Spears has started to reconsider her situation, because she knows, she can still be a music icon for many people. Therefore, a public relations campaign for helping Britney Spears to reinforce her image in a positive way, would include things such as that at first she needs to start to recover herself, she needs to be healthy and to be laid back. She also needs to take care of her complete image. She does not need to give any motive so that the media could talk bad things about her. She needs to be well dressed and healthy looking. She needs to take care of her kids by herself and perhaps with a nanny, but she needs to call the media´s attention by her acts. In few words, she needs to make the paparazzi just talk positive things about her.


On the other hand, she needs to give a social image by helping charity organizations. She needs to make people know that she is trying to give back to the world. She could start at first by helping mental health organizations or drug prevention organizations with money and with her personal experience. She should make her efforts be known all around the world, so that people could perceive her in an optimistic way, because today, when most people think about Britney Spears they think of her in the worst way. Spears´ needs people to know that she is trying to recover. She needs to stop crazy partying with Paris Hilton, and she needs to give the impression of a good looking mom who cares of her children and who cares about getting along well with her ex husband.

In summary, I think that Britney Spears could do so much with her life to turn it around, because she has all the resources. She just needs to be or to pretend to be mature. She needs to change her lifestyle radically. She needs to realize that she still has the power to influence the lost generations she moved before, as well as she needs to realize that she is still young enough to recover her successful music career, meanwhile having a successful personal life. And with these she is going to move again crowds of people, because she is going to have the popularity she used to have before just by acting as a mature and conscientious individual who follows these simple public relation´s advices.

BlOg 9: AnaLysIS oF SuPer bOwl aDs

The characteristics of successful television ads according to surveys and statistical information say that ads should be characterized for being creative, innovative and eye catching. However, even if the Super Bowl ads are fully covered with these characteristics they are also characterized for making the audience laugh, for introducing elements of shock and surprise, for putting more sight in the ad than sound, for using famous celebrities who promote their brands, for using memorable background music, for using talkative animated animals, among other things, in just a 30 second commercial.

For me, one of my favorite things about watching the Super Bowl football game is looking at the commercials. Throughout the years, I have considered that the Budweiser ads have stood out as being particularly funny. In fact, some of them have become a sort of pop-culture with regular people imitating them in real life. In particular I like the commercials of this brand because I consider they use the humor appeal as an effective method for attracting attention to the advertisements. Moreover, I like Budweiser´s commercials because they create a word of mouth buzz. In other words, they use extremely well the concept of Viral Marketing, which as we studied, refers to a form of online marketing where the customer passes on information to other potential customers, instead of companies contacting them directly. Budweiser was one of the first companies to embrace this, with the croaking frogs at the “Original Budweiser Frogs Commercial” in 1995 at the Super Bowl(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVcbasIb8lQ), or the “Wassup” parrots commercial launched in 2006 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgjxnHMF0zs) in the same event. The two previous commercials are well recognized for being eye catching and simple with “Bud-weis-er” or “Wassup” being repeated over and over. Additionally, these two ads were so memorable, that perhaps people might not remember who the winning football team was, but they should remember the commercials.

Furthermore, another commercial I really like about Budweiser at the Super Bowl is the “Bud Light Starring: Carlos Mencia” ad which is so funny and real. In this commercial, you can see how Carlos tries to teach some immigrants how Bud light gets it done all around the country… and if someone asks for a beer…. You must say: “I don´t speak English”. I think I like this commercial, because obviously it was targeted specifically for the Hispanic community who lives in the United States and who feel themselves identified with the context, as in my case.( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=670X2MCWzK0)

Moreover, I liked the Budweiser "Cedric" commercial which was launched in 2001 at the Super Bowl because I think it´s funny and humorous. In the commercial you can observe how the advertisers created a comical environment in which you can see how Cedric, an entertainer is romancing a very hot date, and when it's time to cool off just a little, he eases into the kitchen to grab two bottles of Bud Light from the fridge. Cedric was so "excited" with the prospect, so he does a little happy dance in the kitchen, accidentally shaking up the bottles in the process. The end of the evening comes too soon when he opens the bottles and the shaken beer explodes all over his date. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiECBowBa4c)

Another commercial I really like is the one called: “Bud Light, Apes”, which was launched in 2007 at the Super Bowl. This commercial, as all the commercials of Budweiser use a humorous appeal. In this ad you can notice how an ape is planning to steal a Budweiser with the help of another ape. However, the last one is so interested in smiling for a picture that it doesn´t realize what it needs to do to obtain the Budweiser, making the other ape mad. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oekYqamByD4&NR=1)

Finally, the last commercial I like of this same brand, is the funny 2006 Super Bowl Bud Light Beer advertisement “Roof repair”. I like this commercial because this is an awesome advertisement in which the ad features husbands who go onto their roof on the pretext of repairing it to chill out with Bud Light. But the funny part is that the one guy who actually is on the roof for repairs falls down. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q05QIp5qbnY).

In conclusion, throughout this work I have noticed that Super Bowl commercials are sometimes more exciting than the big game itself. I think for marketers and for people in general, it is a great way to see how creative the marketing industry can be, and I definitively believe that paying almost $3 million dollars for a 30 seconds commercial is worth it for companies who can obtain in just few seconds the same or a greater amount of money from their sales derived from the Super Bowl advertisements.

BlOG oF MY CHoICE: ADVErTISInG AT THE SuPER BoWL!!!

Throughout the years, the advertising marketing tool has been so successful to create brand awareness and to entice customers to purchase, that some companies today are willing to pay huge amounts of money just to advertise their brand. This is the case of companies who decide to promote their products in a 30 second spot during the championship game of the National Football League in the United States: the SUPER BOWL. However, the fact that a company decides to spend millions (2.7 million dollars in 2008 at the Super Bowl plus the expenses of creating and running an ad) in a 30 second exposure commercial has been seen by worldwide critics as a controversial issue, because they argue that Super Bowls commercials are risky ventures. Millions of dollars are dropped in less time than breaks between NFL plays, and the result may be viewers’ yawns and media pans, which makes one wonder: Considering all the major sporting events during the year, isn’t there a better way for companies to spend their ad money?

To clarify this point I would think that obviously companies spend huge amounts of money in advertising because they know that their actual expenses in advertising will be greatly compensated in the short term future with the sales they will generate. Companies know since the beginning that the exposure they will receive will be around 93 million viewers and that the money they will make will be tremendous. Moreover, companies who advertise themselves at the Super Bowl aside of wanting to create more money, want people to talk about them, they want people to create a buzz. Therefore, as advertisers know that commercials are part of our lives, and they know we watch them, enjoy them, and discuss them with our friends, it is evident that after the game there is going to be a flurry of opinions from people in general, from marketing experts and from focus groups of which was the most effective Super Bowl ad. I also think that advertisers invest at the Super Bowl because they know that they will generate crowds of Internet traffic in their web sites because the event encourages consumers to purchase their products, and this fact is sufficient to make the wise investment. Moreover, I believe that advertisers know that after the event there is going to be an Internet following on the ads that were publicized, and therefore they will get sort of a red carpet treatment for a few weeks that as a study suggests, this could inflate company stock values by 1.3 percent after the game. 1

In conclusion, I would say that if I were a companies´ advertising decision maker of a well known company, I would definitively decide to continue spending a huge amount of money to advertise the brand at the Super Bowl. I think that the event is really worth it because the Super Bowl is the greatest American showcase where football teams field highly paid players in an attempt to win the most important game of the season, and therefore the whole country specifically, has been waiting for this event to happen. Finally, I think that although this event is not exclusively targeted for women or for people who don´t like football at all, we could unquestionably watch it just to know about the appealing commercials, which definitely would create a buzz in the following weeks after the event.

REFERENCES:

1.YelkurR.(2004RetrievedNovember4th2008.Fromhttp://journals.cambridge.org/download.phpfile=2FJAR2FJAR44_012FS0021849904040085a.pdf&code=e536623654a64ca51339879b90c07d0cA study published in a 2004 issue of the Journal of Sport Management looked at eight years of Super Bowl ads to find out data of the most liked ads. This were 30 seconds long, humorous, appealing to emotions, features a product and not a service, made no mention of price.

2. Goldman, Kevin. “Advertising: Super Bowl Ads Looked Worse than Bills.” The Wall Street. Journal, February 1, 1994.

BLoG 8: MesSage apPeaL

One of the ads I definitely don´t like because it doesn´t works for me and I think for almost anyone is the Colgate ad that was printed in some magazines a few months ago in Mexico. In this ad, I guess that the marketing advertisers wanted to design a humorous ad, but at the same time they wanted this to conduct some type of fear. Colgate´s advertisers might have thought that by printing an old woman without teeth they were going to be able to at some point “scare” people because they will think that in the future they will look the same way if they don´t brush their teeth. However, I think the message they tried to transmit is totally contradictory to the product they are selling, because Colgate stands for whiteness, cleanliness and strong teeth. Indeed, the brand is the number one recommended by most dentists, and this fact is undermined by this ineffective advertisement according to my point of view. Moreover, I think that if it was really the objective of Colgate to create fear, they should have printed the ad on any outdoor advertisement instead of printing the ad in well recognized magazines, which were ineffective vehicles to transmit the message.

On the other hand, one Colgate ad that I really like because it is kind of original is the one in which Mona Lisa is smiling and it is carrying her toothbrush. In this we can see how Colgate´s advertisers used some kind of humor in a moderate way to enhance the product. In this advertisement, humor is used in an effective manner with the objective of attracting attention to the brand. For me the message is clear, and that is why I like it. Because when I see the big Mona Lisa I can center my attention on her red lips and on her white smile that obviously Colgate created. Therefore, I think the ad is creative because famous Mona Lisa is used as a portrait to create knowledge about Colgate by making a comparison between the real pictures of this famous celebrity with this obviously edited picture.

Moreover, one of the ads that I considered very interesting despite the fact that I don ´t really like because I can´t completely catch the messages that the brand advertisers want to send us are the ads from: UNITED COLORES OF BENETTON. I think that the message of this retailer doesn´t work for me, because even if I think their ads are really interesting and very eye catching, I think their messages are totally awkward and they do not transmit any information about their clothing. And even though if I recognize that the strategy of the store is mainly attention grabbing to keep people talking about their company, I will suggest that for reaching people just as me they should change the strategy and they should adopt another type of advertisement in which they show their product characteristics and not just odd things. Because even if I know that the different skin color of the people in their ads represent the “United Colors” of the brand, the ad doesn´t show the garments you can find at the store. Therefore, anyone who doesn´t know about the store or who doesn´t catch the message just as me won´t be attracted to go to the store to buy their products because obviously their advertisement doesn´t show anything about their brand.

Finally, one of the most interesting marketing campaigns for me is the one that was launched weeks ago by Coca-Cola for its newest product: Coca- Cola Zero. In this campaign the company´s main objective was to transmit the idea that their new product tasted the same as the original Coca-Cola. I think this ad was really appealing for me because the ads and commercials of this campaign are really creative and original. We can see in this campaign how Coca-Cola´s advertisers used the humorous appeal to get people´s attention. Specifically, the ads that I liked were the ones in which an eye tries to convince two tongues that what they are drinking is Coca-Cola Zero and not just normal Coca-Cola. The message for me is so clear: “Authentic flavor, no Sugar”, so definitively this type of advertisement works for me because the message is simple and well conducted.