Celebrity Endorsements - Love 'em or Hate 'em

Are you tired of all those celebrity endorsements that instantly turn a commonplace product like an athletic shoe into a high-priced brand that kids might actually kill for? Are you tired of all the celebrity talking heads who cash out, shrug their shoulders, and say "What the hell. I'm getting paid"?

For nearly 150 years, celebrities have lent their images and names to a variety of products; even those celebrities, like Bob Dylan, who might be considered sacrosanct. Then again, there are those sacrosanct celebrities like Woody Allen and Leonardo DiCaprio, who wouldn't consider appearing in an American commercial, but have secretly appeared in foreign commercials.

The Beginning

In 1863, the popular European beverage Vin Mariani began earning some of the very first celebrity endorsements, including Britain's Queen Victoria and Popes Leo XIII and Pius X. The reason for Vin Mariani's popularity had a lot to do with the fact that it was a mix of Bordeaux wine and coca leaves exact. When it was imported to the United States as a patent medicine, Vin Mariani's cocaine content was higher than its European counterpart.

A side note: American pharmacist John S. Pemberton adapted Vin Mariani's ingredients to the American market, dubbing it "Pemberton's French Wine Coca." After Pemberton's home county in Georgia began prohibiting alcohol sales, the pharmacist created a new non-alcoholic product that used the coca leaf as a prime ingredient: Coca Cola.

Bob Dylan

For many years, rock and roll legends have held out against hawking products for Madison Avenue. After all, the icons of rock had always stood for the pinnacle of rebellion against the status quo. But, starting in the 1990s, celebrity endorsement from rock legends began to accelerate, particularly when The Who's music began showing up in all varieties of television venues.

In all fairness, The Who and Led Zeppelin (witness their Cadillac ads) had held out for forty years, while many of today's bands gladly "get paid" to be heard in ads for cars, shoes, and fast food before their first albums are even released. It's a different world.

In 2007, even Bob Dylan got paid for slinking about in a "Victoria's Secret" ad like a back alley flasher between shots of scantily clad lingerie models. More devoted fans have defended him, claiming that he was just demystifying his own legend. Others have called it heresy.

Dylan's landmark song "The Times They Are-A Changin'" has even been used in a Bank of Montreal ad.

Secret celebrity overseas endorsements

There are still those exceptional superstar hold-outs who (as of late 2006) won't do celebrity endorsements no matter how much money is thrown at them; most notable are Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, and Jack Nicholson.

And then there are the celebrities who hold out against American product endorsements, but gladly get paid for secret commercial appearances overseas, primarily for the Japanese market. In many of these cases, foreign companies have to sign secrecy clauses that prevent disclosure of a celebrity's participation in the U.S. These celebrities have included Arnold Schwarzenegger, Woody Allen, Harrison Ford, and Bruce Willis.

Davie-Brown Index

These days, celebrity product endorsements have reached a point where they've become accepted as commonplace. As a result, there's become a need for Madison Avenue to carefully measure and determine the effectiveness of particular celebrities in specific markets; thus, the emergence of the Davie-Brown Index, the most widely accepted of current celebrity market evaluation tools.

The Davie-Brown Index's eight-point measuring criteria includes Appeal, Notice, Trend-setting, Influence, Trust, Endorsement, Aspiration, and Awareness.

As of 2006, the stars with the highest overall Davie-Brown Index rating are Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Michael J. Fox, and Michael Jordan.

SOURCES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani

"History of Cocaine", Paul Vallely, Independent, URL: (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20060302/ai_n16204634)

"Popping off", D. Parvaz, Seattle Post Intelligencer, URL: (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/poppingoff/261659_popping04.html)

"Luxury brands & celebrities", Uche Okwonko, Brand Channel, URL: (http://www.brandchannel.com/papers_review.asp?sp_id=1234)

"How US stars sell Japan to the Japanese", Malina Watrous, Salon, URL: (http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2000/06/29/japancelebs/index.html)

"Seeing Stars", Louise Story, New York Times, URL: (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/business/media/12adco.html?ex=1188792000&en=88c94b0d1ff52b35&ei=5070)