How to create a standout celebrity ad campaign
Celebrity campaigns are everywhere. What makes some celeb partnerships more successful than others?
Partnering with celebrities is a popular marketing strategy. Famous faces garner attention (multiplying the impact of your media spend), and have the power to align your brand with desirable associations (increasing the effectiveness of campaign messaging).
But celebrity partnerships are not guaranteed success. For one, they are expensive, which raises the bar for the success of the campaign. Two, the wrong choice could impart the wrong associations on your brand. But going too safe is a risk in itself. The Business of Fashion recently reported that beauty brands are relying too much on the same celebrities. If you’re one of four beauty brands using the same face, will anyone remember your brand?
Finally, the popularity of using celebrities makes it tough to stand out, even with a big name.
“Almost every day I get an email that there is a brand with a new brand ambassador.” —Imran Amed, founder, CEO, The Business of Fashion, at BoF Professional Summit 2024
Nevertheless, the right partner can elevate a brand to new heights. Earlier this year, Calvin Klein debuted a new campaign featuring The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White in a pair of CK boxer briefs. The campaign went viral, generating $12.8M in media spending 48 hours. According to Business of Fashion and LaunchMetrics, this was more than 4X the performance of Bottega Veneta’s campaign featuring A$AP Rocky and Kendall Jenner:
“In just 48 hours, the White ads generated $12.7 million in media impact value…For comparison, Bottega Veneta’s Pre-Spring 2024 campaign featuring paparazzi shots of Kendall Jenner and A$AP Rocky generated $2.8 million in 48 hours.”
What made the Jeremy Allen White campaign such a success?
BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed interviewed Calvin Klein’s CMO Jonathan Bottomley at the BoF Professional Summit to understand the strategy behind the viral video. As they entered the stage, I heard murmurs about the CK campaign from the audience: “It’s literally just [Jeremy] walking in underwear.” The audience member isn’t wrong. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t significant strategy that helped propel the work.
A framework for celebrity partnerships
When I help clients select celebrity ambassadors, we will create a custom rubric with all of the desired associations, campaign parameters, and other qualifications to score talent and narrow a shortlist down to the final pick. Filling it out as a team gets everyone from creative teams to finance on board with the decision. Rubrics can be complex, but there are (3) general filters that a celebrity partnership should align to. And from Jeremy’s conversation with BoF, Calvin Klein nailed all three.
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