Social Media Influencers and Celebrity Endorsements
Social media influencers, Instagrammers, bloggers, and vloggers can positively impact a PR campaign along with celebrities, who are our famous film, music, sport stars, authors, and TV personalities. While it may seem very glamorous of working with celebrities, like everything there are pros and cons of working with them. These relationships, irrespective of who you are working with, will need a level of commitment from your side to invest and nurture these relationships.
Social Media Influencers
Social media influencers have boosted the PR media tool box when it comes to reaching today’s audience. The digital world has shifted the balance of power between consumers and brands, where now consumers are more likely to trust the people they see on their social media feeds than traditional PR marketing methods. We have become a society, irrespective of where we are in the world, of “scrollers,” where we are constantly going through our phones searching for information, ideas and things, and when we see something that we like, we click, and we buy it.
So, by incorporating the rise of these social media influencers into your public relations strategy, your business will be able to reach larger audiences, promote positive branding, and increase customer engagement and awareness.
Micro-Influencers
One of the ways to approach working with these social media stars, especially if you are a small local business or charity, is to work with smaller or otherwise known as micro-influencers who will have a close-knit community of less than 10,000 followers, instead of larger, national influencers (mega-influencers) who are more difficult to engage and get hold of. While being less known than their more prominent counterparts, micro-influencers have become a driving force behind the influencer marketing industry’s growth and development. They make up the largest portion of influencers and are across multiple niches and platforms.
Social media is part of their daily routines, which means they understand the importance of authenticity and of nurturing their online communities with valuable content in an accessible way. These characteristics means that their engagement is far stronger than the mega-influencer. Their smaller followings will actually be a far better fit to target the stakeholders you want to engage, as they will have higher engagement rates than influencers who boast millions of followers; engagement is key when looking at social media success. We see a lot of this kind of activity on Instagram, where Instagram stories are big and have power.
You could also think about collaborating with micro-influencers who are based locally to you; as again, being from the local area means they can influence high engagement locally, which will allow your business and the influencer to connect with actual people in your target market/community.
There is often a cost to engaging a social media influencer as you are paying for their time, engagement, commitment to your brand, and influence. Do look at your own social media following and see if you already have someone who fits the bill. An influencer who is already engaging with your brand can be easy to engage.
Where Do You Find Social Media Influencers?
YouTube is home to lots of social media influencers and before the advent of Instagram this was where many of them found their rise to fame. Research shows that YouTube’s audience are young because there is a little bit more depth to the story and they are more like TV shows.
The United States and the United Kingdom are certainly ahead when it comes to understanding the worth of Instagram influencers. That said, other countries are catching on and I am pretty sure that the trend of using Instagram influencers to market products and services will take other regions by storm too and this can be seen in countries like India and Brazil.
Case Stories
A new fresh online fashion brand for women that is based between Taiwan and the United Kingdom wanted to break into the UK market. The fashion market is notoriously difficult to enter, and our budget was small. We wanted to grow the brand’s social media following quickly, so we decided to work with two different types of social media influencers who would love the brand. We identified the two we thought had synergy and approached them both. One of the two was a micro-influencer with about 12,000 followers. During the collaboration she was quick to respond, easy, and friendly to work with, and posted photos and videos of herself in some of the outfits that she had selected herself from the fashion brand’s collection, giving her own thoughts why she liked the pieces she had chosen. This micro-influencer was not paid but kept the pieces that she promoted. Her followers trusted her endorsement of the brand, drove brand awareness, and boosted online sales. We were also able to share the posts and photos on Twitter and Instagram.
Another one of my clients was an American singer-songwriter, who had been well-known in the 1960s. He had just written his memoirs, but needed to be relevant to the current music industry and appeal to a new generation of listeners who had probably never had heard of him, even though his past work had influenced a lot of what they were listening to now. Luckily, timing wise, there was a current, young, and popular female artist who had recently covered one of his songs. She has a strong online influence and her followers would also be interested in this American musician. There was a connection and a commonality. I approached her to see if she would be interested to connect with my client and write the foreword to his book; she was happy to do so. This approach became a long-lasting relationship, where this female artist gave her full support and commitment to this artist. They did a lot of music events together, gained a lot of media coverage, and had success together.
Being in PR you get to work with lots of photographers and I met a new photographer starting out who was new to the photography world. She hailed from an advertising background, where she has successfully turned her passion and hobby into a business. She started to specialize in family portraits, yet at the same time she also wanted to work with some of the “mumpreneurs” who were storming it on Instagram as social media influencers. So, she started to go to the events where they would be, being the official photographer at these events. People got to know her and now she takes their pictures—and gets paid well, credited and is in demand.
Figure 4.1 presents a simplified formula to increase the impact and outcome often associated with the use of social media influencers in public relations.
Figure 4.1 Relationship of brand to social media influencer
Working with Celebrities
Working with celebrities is a little similar to working with social media influencers, though invariably you will not have direct access to them; you will have most of your conversations via their agents and managers. These high-profile personalities have a big team supporting them from their own publicists, and as mentioned agents and managers. Not all these various teams are under one roof and will be working at different companies, so the communication process can be frustrating and at times challenging. A lot of work and commitment goes into maintaining and supporting these relationships.
The first thing is to do your research and find the celebrities that you believe represent your brand, brand values, and business. Search and see what they have been up to and what they have been saying. If you are representing a charity thinking of working with a celebrity, it is important that you do your research. Find a celebrity who has publicly spoken about your cause, or who has been affected by the issue and overall is passionate about the subject.
All this information is important when you come to pitching to their agents why you believe the said celebrity is aligned to your brand/business client(s). You need to show them the synergy, the reason to collaborate, and why their celebrity client should be working with you.
Make a list of a few celebrities as you may not always get a “yes” from the personality at the top of your list and you will need to make your way down the list.
The next step is then to track down the celebrity’s agent or manager and create a relationship. You might be lucky enough to have a direct relationship with the celebrity, which is fantastic; otherwise, it is normal to go through their agent. It is important to remember that agents and managers are the doorkeepers to their celebrity clients and are being approached all the time, so you do need to try to stand out. Getting them onboard makes a difference, as they will be selling the idea to the celebrity.
There are a variety of ways to work with celebrities from turning up at your events, to endorsing your business.
Celebrity Endorsements
A celebrity endorsement provides an alternative to creative advertisements, where the celebrity endorsements tends to speak directly to the public.
Charities are known to use celebrities to promote their campaigns. There are many celebrities involved in charitable work whether as patrons or spokespeople, where they bring credibility and attention, a vital ingredient of success in a world flooded with so much noise generated by media messages. If celebrities are fully informed and engaged with the cause they are promoting, the message can really influence the process persuading people to support the cause.
Over the years I have worked with many celebrities and patrons who have supported not-for-profits and charities. Their support has made a positive difference to the work of charities from fundraising initiatives to awareness campaigns.
It is important to be mindful of how much you are intending to draw on their time and have a flexible plan with what you would ideally like them to do for you over the next three to six months. A year of activity might seem daunting for the celebrity with their own work commitments. There are ways of maximizing the relationship with little impact on the celebrity’s actual time—from getting them to sign T-shirts in advance, which you can then auction, to quotes that you can use on your website, and other promotional materials.
Brands with big budgets are able to pay for well-known celebrities from the worlds of music, sport, film, and books. Some of the famous ones of these are George Clooney for Nespresso coffee and the L’Oréal brand is known for having a host of different brand ambassadors, from Oscar-winning actress Dame Helen Mirren, to Eva Longoria and Aishwarya Rai. There is also the famous LeBron James’ celebrity endorsement of Nike. Or in India the Muthoot Group, which provides financial services, signed Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood megastar, as its brand ambassador.
Local Dignitaries, Politicians, and Influencers
If you have a small local launch event for your business, or if you are a local charity with an annual event or campaign launch, do not forget to invite your local Mayor, your councilor, or your local government official. They are very easy to work with and great supporters, as they like to be seen supporting good local business stories and charitable events. With a little bit planning, ensuring that you invite them in ample time, as they will have busy schedules, the presence of your local dignitary can instantly raise the profile of what you are doing. Your local media will be interested, and you can also take your own photos on the day and share online.
When Things Go Wrong
Working with well-known celebrities, however, is not without risks. I am sure we can all think of at least one celebrity partnership that we know of that has not quite gone to plan. I can think of a few and remember when actress Dame Helen Mirren said that she believed that moisturizer “probably does f*** all.” The moment of candor came when Dame Helen was appearing as a brand ambassador for L’Oréal on a panel at an event in the South of France. Dame Helen is the face of L’Oréal’s “Age Perfect” moisturizer range, where the advertisements she appears in are not digitally enhanced, a prerequisite made by Dame Helen when she took up the role. At the time of this “incident,” L’Oréal declined to comment.
Or, what about when Pepsi in 2017 included reality star and model Kendall Jenner in its advertisement, where Jenner was positioned as the peacemaker between protesters and law enforcement, at a rally alluding to the Black Lives Matter movement. The ad, in which protesters danced and smiled with a can of Pepsi, had a scene where Jenner—a white model—arrived to bridge the divide by offering a soda to a grinning police officer. The ad experienced a backlash, where the public and critics said it was not only trivializing protests, but also the killings of black people by law enforcement.
Another example is when Nike distanced itself from Lance Armstrong over his involvement in a 2012 doping scandal. The Tour de France winner lost contracts with Nike, Anheuser-Busch, Oakley, and other cycling industry sponsors.
These days’ digital media means everything is far more reactive and instant. It used to be a lot easier for celebrities and for brands to not be so under the microscope. Now that pressure is amplified tenfold when a person with millions of followers makes one tiny misstep. Do think carefully before you enter into the celebrity partnership and do not get swept away by their celebrity status. As much as they are supporting you, the celebrity is getting something from the relationship too, as they are being associated to a good cause or brand, which boosts their likeability and status.
When you are not paying A-list celebrity for their endorsement or for turning up at your event and it is a relationship based on goodwill, there is always a risk that they may not turn up or decide that they no longer want to support your initiative. This is because there is no contract and they are not obligated.
The bottom line is to do as much research as possible about the celebrities you are thinking of working with, to get a feel for who they are, so you feel you are creating the right relationship for your brand.
Case Stories
I used to work on the famous Pink Ribbon Ball, an annual fundraising event for a leading UK breast cancer charity; one of the things the success of the Ball hinged on was big celebrities turning up on the night. It was a Herculean task of dealing with schedules, egos, and demands. The work would begin at least three months in advance to invite celebrities to ensure we got the date on their schedules. We would work with their agents and invite as many celebrity guests as possible, as nearer the time many agents would call to say their clients now could not make it. We would ensure that they were all looked after well on the night and had their own table and transportation to and from the event. All this would go toward next year’s event, where they would want to come back again.
I also would secure a media partnership for the Ball with a leading magazine like Hello! or Ok! This was not just a big tick for the celebrity, but their agent and publicist too! This media relationship meant that both the Ball and the celebrities were captured on the night—great PR for all. My team would send out a press release to the UK pictures desks, diary reporters (who are also known as schedulers); news desks at all the various national newspapers, magazines, and TV stations; and of course, to the paparazzi. This ensured that a wall of photographers would turn up to capture the arrival of the celebrities. It always added a buzz to the event.
For a US restaurant launch, the restaurant owner invited local business leaders, the local Mayor, local food critics, and all the local media for lunch and to meet the chef. It was a coup, with fun photos that raised the profile of the restaurant. The restaurant also had created great content that was able to be shared across their social media channels and able to tag in the influencers and dignitaries that attended the event.
Local organizations in India are very good at drawing on the support of their local councilors and government officials to gain exposure and column inches (both of which are metrics often used as indicators of success). An organization doing groundbreaking work on educating rural children wanted to raise the profile of its work but had a small budget to do so. They held a colorful and special event for all the local influencers to experience the great work that they were doing. All the VIP guests were given tours of the classroom and met the children, and the children put on a short program of entertainment. The event gave everyone who attended a memorable experience within a very limited budget.
The Polaroid brand, known for its line of instant film and images, needed to be relevant again and in 2010 created a clever partnership with Lady Gaga, the global pop star, to help with its resurgence. Lady Gaga was named creative director of Polaroid and in January 2011, when I attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), in Las Vegas, I was fortunate to see Lady Gaga announce three new products that were developed by her. It was a standout moment at CES, which is always very busy and full of news stories, where every brand is competing for publicity. This partnership at that time gave Polaroid the marketing muscle of Lady Gaga.
It is important to remember whoever you decide to work with whether celebrities or social media influencers there are now rules where the influencer has to clearly label their posts when they have been paid to promote the content. However, this area is still a minefield and there is no uniformity globally.
Summary
Using celebrity endorsements is not a new idea in PR or marketing; and with the rise of social media influencers, there are numerous opportunities to be had. Wherever we may be running a business in the world— China, India, Africa, or the United States—one thing we all have in common is that our stakeholders love celebrities. When famous people are seen promoting a new product or are at an event, audiences are prompted to engage with that brand. We have learnt in this chapter that one of the main things to remember as a business, when collaborating with a high-profile personality, is the relationship you develop with them. A good relationship pays PR dividends.
Along with celebrities and social media influencers, other business assets to use in your PR activities are the creation of good images, video, and blog posts. When these are incorporated into your press releases, social media activities, and websites you automatically raise your “PR bar,” which is all discussed next in Chapter 5.