Hall of Shame
11 Celebrity Endorsements Gone Wrong
#4: When you have a hair endorsement, don’t shave your head
Haven’t got a good marketing strategy? An easy fix is often to pay a celebrity and feature them in your advertising and use them as a celebrity brand ambassador. It is expensive but is often an easy solution.
There are, however, three challenges;
- Finding a celebrity that aligns well with your brand and its values.
- Ensuring the star actually uses your product and not that of a competitor.
- Hope like hell that the celebrity avoids any scandals while they are the face of your brand.
This list below highlights some spectacular fails of those three challenges. Celebrity scandals happen. Lance Armstrong reportedly lost $75 million in sponsorship deals when he was found guilty of doping. Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, and Michael Vick are all famous athletes who damaged the brands they were associated with costing them, and the brands they represented, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then there are the brand ambassadors who don't even use the product they are being paid to promote.
Once again it’s time to take a stroll down the dirty off-red color carpet to the Hall of Shame.
1. Samsung and Lebron James
Samsung would have been delighted to secure the services of the best basketballer in the world to promote their new Samsung Galaxy Note III. This would be a way for them to win market share away from Apple. Sadly for them, when Lebron’s Samsung phone had a meltdown he decided to tweet about it to his 12 million followers.
Oops. Product fail. Celebrity endorsement fail. Hey Lebron, at least it didn’t catch on fire!
2. Pepsi and Madonna
Pepsi loves their celebrities. From Michael Jackson to Kendall Jenner, many have been featured in Pepsi advertisements. Back in 1989, they chose Madonna to fight Coke in the latest battle in the ongoing cola wars…