On Marketing, and the Increasingly Slippery Slope of Celebrity Endorsements

Notes on a short story by Medium writer Paul Myers MBA

Last night I read a quick piece by my fellow Illumination writer on using a celebrity to help promote your product. Poor Paul, I had way too much to say in response. In all fairness, that’s because I’ve just been researching stories about celebs and Influencers who have done a pretty good job of embarrassing both their existing and potential sponsors, to say nothing of the fans who thought highly of them. Once.

That said, Paul made a terrific set of points about the importance of scoring a celebrity, or an Influencer. My lengthy response touched on the essential issues that our current Conditions have begun to force to the surface. Paul’s piece is here:

I’ve had some experience with this, in that the two books I wrote needed some kind of endorsement. It is common practice for authors to solicit the positive words of celebrities. Usually we make a polite inquiry, and if there is interest, we send an excerpt — a brief one-- to which the celeb can make a positive comment or two. They rarely read the whole book; they’re usually far too busy. I got a few, and from trusted sources.

Trusted. At least for now. Aye, there’s the rub. For now.

Every time we engage someone who is in the public eye, when we develop some kind of public relationship, we bank on the assumption that the person is going to behave well. Have integrity. That they, like the terribly public situation with Jared the Pedophile who was Subway’s front man for fifteen long years, won’t turn out to be dangerously twisted. Horrifically, Jared Fogle’s interest in children was known to the execs long before his arrest, which may be one reason that the company is skidding on thin ice. I find it both sad and hilarious that a company whose product looks like a dick, hired a dick for a front man and then behaved like dicks for years by effectively subsidizing the man’s evil proclivities before the real dicks (detectives) brought this awful man down.

I’ve been lucky so far in that the CEOs and celebs whose names grace my two books haven’t dragged my-not-very-famous name through the sewage of poor judgement.

Today I got an Linked In invitation from a woman who refers to herself as a personal trainer who can get me “Jacked Up and Rich.” It wasn’t just that I found the title on her profile offensive.

She is a fan and follower of Tony Robbins.

Bad. Move. Jacked.

I’m NOT a Tony Robbins fan. Not ever. Many years ago I was an attendee at one of his coal-walking sessions, back in the early days (1987) when he was building his name recognition. The slavish behavior of the people who were screaming and clapping for him sickened me. It twisted my gut because I was looking at a cult being formed. I immediately walked out, disgusted, and very clear, as I stepped out into the free San Diego night air, that there was no way I’d ever, ever be affiliated with this creature. He struck me as deeply dangerous. Apparently I was right.

I don’t need to walk over coals. I jump out of airplanes, kayak icy seas and rivers, ride half crazy horses, climb enormous mountains, river raft Class V rapids…kindly. Robbins has nothing on my life. And I don’t need a goddamned celebrity trick to prove to myself I have personal power.

That same story about being disgusted with the cultish behavior of this fans showed up in a piece I read today by Gillian Sisley:

Robbins is an abuser. Period. For my money, anyone who affiliates with him shows seriously poor judgement. As a result there is no way I will accept the Linked In invitation from Miss “Jacked and Rich.” The people we list on our public profiles, those we affiliate with define us to the public eye. Robbins, like so many very charismatic and powerful people, abused his power. If his name were on my profile I’d erase the man immediately and disavow all relationship with him. This is what happens when people abuse power, and as a result abuse their entire brand. Claiming affiliation with such lowlifes directly impacts our integrity and lack of good judgment.

I have been abused by people in power. One was a Presidential candidate. Others were senior military officers, when I was in a powerless position. Power makes people crazy, especially those whose moral backbone is wobbly in the first place.

Robbins is hardly alone. Urges tend to topple many who can’t handle them, and who abuse them, and get caught. You and I don’t want to get caught behaving badly in public, or at least I hope so. Celebs do all the time. And when those people touch our brand, we can get branded. Like Miss “Jacked and Rich.”

When the celebrity has a much higher profile, so are the stakes.

Like Tiger Woods. In December 2009, Woods had an altercation with his wife, slammed into a tree, and things rapidly went downhill from there.

From the above article:

Over the next few weeks investors in firms that used Woods in advertisements lost $12 billion as share prices fell.

Again, from the article:

The researchers began by examining news databases for examples of publicly- traded U.S. companies whose celebrity endorsers generated negative publicity from 1988 to 2016 while under contract. This yielded 128 incidents involving 230 companies. Fifty-nine percent of the endorsers were athletes, 24% TV or radio personalities, and 17% musicians; 70% were male. (Nike experienced the most incidents — 23.) Despite the 29-year time frame, half the incidents occurred from 2010 to 2016, suggesting that the pace of celebrity scandals has accelerated.

Interestingly, the Harvard Business Review Article noted that Nike doesn’t seem to suffer from the same moral code that led other (wiser, to my mind) brands to distance themselves from badly-behaving athletes. Each company gauges its relative liability in terms of its customer base. While this is my opinion only, when the misbehaving cretin is an athlete, Nike- and others, like beer companies- appear to make the probably safe assumption that the boys are more quick to forgive bad behavior because after all, he’s one of them. Apparently, to a degree, they’re right. However, when the behavior is extreme, Nike has indeed withdrawn its sponsorship. To wit:

A more recent example is that of Maria Sharapova, world tennis champion and highest paid female athlete, who failed a drug test at the Australian open in January 2016. She admitted the charge and the brands she was endorsing withdrew their sponsorships — Nike, TAG Heuer and Porsche (Harris & Murray Brown, 2016).[88] Nike alone has cancelled many deals with sports stars including Oscar Pistorious, Manny Pacquiao, Lance Armstrong and Ray Rice. (Harris & Murray Brown, 2016)

It appears that Nike draws the line at shooting and/or beating the crap out of one’s girlfriend, or publicly castigating gays. Lance Armstrong deserves his own cretin category, but I don’t have time for a tome.

Although increasingly fans have been shown to be loyal to celebrities no matter how ill-behaved or evil they may be (with Trump as exhibit #1), the women’s market can be lost or severely damaged when certain celebrities are shown to be less-than-honorable.

As with all things, it depends, including on how deluded fans choose to be.

Our current Conditions have led to some very public mistakes by tone-deaf celebrities:

From Arnold to Gal Gadot, Eve Peyser’s article skewers the ugly behavior of celebrities who are showing how insensitive, selfish and thoughtless they really are. Worse, Gwyneth Paltrow has sullied her brand Goop repeatedly with inane, patently inaccurate claims for products such as jade rocks to insert into the vagina, and an affiliation with the dangerously misguided Dr. Kelly Brogan, who has recently gone public claiming that the current virus is false and that we are dying from fear.

This is my personal response to celebrity quackery:

Power is immensely seductive. The younger and more impressionable we are, the more seductive the power seems, as in the case with so many sexual abuses by celebrities, musicians, actors, politicians, and perhaps most appallingly, religious leaders. To that it might be fair to say that the Catholic Church’s worldwide brand has suffered terribly, for good reasons, causing more and more to leave the flock, and fewer committed to joining it. That applies to devotees or to wear the frock that so many hid behind after abusing so very many of the innocent in the name of Our Father. Indeed.

The business of Influencers is even more slippery, because most are unknown and unproven. Lifestyle brands that speak directly to women can suffer even more if the endorser turns out to have questionable morals (in their eyes) or if they have made statements that prove to be false.

Here is a potent piece addressing the very public and patently awful behavior of Influencers when the virus drew back the carefully curated curtain on these cretins:

However, as I’ve noted before, it depends.

Trump has his insane, rabid followers no matter what his abuses. Including, strikingly, Evangelical Christians who apparently will sell their soul at any price to be right about the unborn. Their integrity is cheap indeed.

Manny Pacquiao is serving as a Senator in the Phillipines. Clearly, the politics of hate work well in that island nation.

Goop still gathers in the dollars from fans who, in my humble opinion, have Goop in lieu of brain matter.

And Robbins still holds sway over many.

If anything, bad celebrities, after being outed, tend to polarize people. Gillian Sisley found that out when she wrote an article about content thief and false expert Rachel Hollis, whose fans roundly attacked her for being “jealous.”

Here’s her response to the haters:

This kind of unpredictable loyalty leaves those in search of a safe celebrity endorsement in a quandary. While Paul is indeed correct that a celebrity can bring much-desired visibility to our brand, you and I, as does every multi-billion dollar corporation, risk a great deal when we choose a potentially corruptible human to be our spokesperson. For if they are found to be genuinely evil, do we want our brand affiliated with truly misguided but deeply loyal supporters, or do we choose to take the far more difficult high road of disavowing ourselves of sick celebrities?

For my part, the question is, how willing are you to sell your corporate soul in the name of profits? The executives at Subway, who effectively contributed directly to the abuse of minor children by not outing Jared Fogle the moment they were informed, are going to have to answer that very question.

Is money more important than morals?

Ask Nike. Ask the Catholic Church. Ask….well.

I guess we have to ask ourselves.