Brands and Celebrities- All hail or epic fail?

We’ve come a long way since celebrities first started hawking products on behalf of advertisers. But why does it feel like sometimes we have learnt nothing? We have all seen those ads, the ones where the spokesperson telling us how good a product is just doesn’t connect to the product or service they are talking about. And in the end it just feels like a nasty grab for attention doing harm to both the brand and the celebrity involved. 

That said, the opposite is true too. Ads that embrace the character or persona of a celebrity and use that to help their brand message are still some of the highest performing ads. They are memorable, they are usually funny and importantly, they start the consumer from a place that is not zero, ie. “I already like this person, let’s listen to what they have to say.”

OK, so I asked around the office for the good, the bad and the ugly in terms of celebrity endorsements and here’s what they came up with.