shots 159: K is for Kardashian

Celebrity branding has come of age. Tim Cumming tries to find that special something – the X factor – a celebrity needs in order to win millions of fans on social media, the type of fan who will follow them wherever they go, and buy whatever they tell them to buy, whether it’s a gaming app, a whisky bar or eco baby wipes. The question is, how can brands get their share of that precious cultural influence juice, without coming across as the embarrassing old dad at the celebrity party?

What is the X factor that differentiates contemporary celebrity brands from merely very successful footballers, cyclists, golfers, singers, actors, models? What distinguishes celebrity self-branding from the endorsement model of the pre-social media world, or the more adventurous cross-branding of, say, Beyoncé with O2 or David Beckham with Haig? And what are the perils and pay-offs of a big brand drawing a celebrity into its web of influence in an aim to make them both shine like a set of new veneers?

Matching the right product with the right celebrity name is the Holy Grail of advertising, the gift that keeps on giving, but when it goes wrong – well, consider the case of Lance Armstrong, a sports and lifestyle brand whose adventures in enhancement medicine finally put his career six feet under in 2013, with little chance of resurrection. Further back in 2009, Tiger Woods’ sexually complicated fall from grace left him below par virtually overnight – and his game never has recovered. Gillette, Gatorade, Accenture, AT&T, Buick and Tag Heuer all abandoned him. However, Nike, which had sponsored Woods since the 90s, loyally stayed on board.

Similarly, cosmetics group Rimmel chose to stick by supermodel Kate Moss in 2005 after a drug ‘scandal’ tarnished the face that launched a thousand container ships of make-up. Although Chanel and H&M dumped la Moss like radioactive waste, it seems her brand was bigger than theirs – a demonstration of celebrity branding’s dominance over corporate product, including tabloid exclusives. Moss strode through the storm as if it was just another catwalk. Ten years on, the Moss brand shows no sign of dwindling.

The brands so big you can see them from space

In the 20th century, stars were larger than life; today, celebrities are a part of life, something communal made large. The massive cultural changes wrought by mobile, digital and social media, in which everyone becomes a player, mean that celebrity branding isn’t about static endorsement via poster or TV, but a product in itself, just as celebrity has itself become self-generating, no longer the by-product of success in other cultural areas. David Beckham, once famous for playing football, recently replaced filling underpants with filling glasses with the launch of Haig Club whisky, tying his brand to a whisky label backed by a pop-up whisky club in London’s Wellington Arch and a Guy Ritchie-directed TV spot, all orchestrated by Diageo, Beckham and Simon Fuller. adam&eveDDB won the Haig Club account, but remain tight-lipped about the mechanics of working with Beckham, or what’s in store. What’s certain is that the old static endorsement model is no longer ready for its close-up. Today it’s all about involvement – an interactive, access-friendly 360-degree celebrity turn.

Take O2’s Priority campaign with Beyoncé, featuring an opulent Louis XIV at Versailles-style video, advance UK tour ticket offers for members, and The Walk, a live, exclusive feed from dressing room to stage – a trick that’s been repeated by the likes of Coldplay, Gorillaz and Ed Sheeran. As the man behind it – Darren Bailes, ECD of VCCP London – explains, it began with Michael Jackson’s ill-fated series of concerts, announced for the O2 in 2009. “I had the idea to stream a live TV ad of Michael’s walk from dressing room to stage…” he says, “ending just as he hit the first note. Priority endframe. Fade to black.” Alas, that fade to black was all too real for Jackson.

“But out of this came the idea of The Walk,” continues Bailes. “Dressing room to stage door. Access only we can give you because of Priority. First off, we had to pay artists to appear in our Walks. But pretty soon the music industry worked out that giving us an artist to film and put in a spot in the middle of The X Factor to help sell their gig tickets was good business, and no more fees exchanged hands. We started off with JLS and Leona Lewis, but before long we were filming Gaga and Beyoncé. Pepsi had just paid her a reported £33 million. We didn’t pay a penny. The deal worked for everyone.”

Bailes stresses how crucial the celebrity brand – as opposed to mere fame or notoriety – is to modern-day campaigns. “Nowadays the celebs are the brands themselves,” he says. “Brand Beckham and Brand Kardashian are mega, almost visible from space. George Clooney making coffee could be awful, but it works because he’s so likeable.”

While it’s true you don’t get celebrity without the attending furies of social media – Twitter storms are the standard meteorology of the celebrity age – celebrities feed their devoted audience from these same platforms. They have, as Bailes points out, “millions of followers that hang on to their every tweet or Instagram post. Actual fans. Brands think that they have fans – but that’s not always the case. So they love nothing more than having access to a real celebrity fan base.”

To hear from the source how a world-crushing celebrity can work that fan connection, this year’s Cannes Lions featured among its 560 speakers one Kim Kardashian, owner of the derrière that broke the internet, and doyenne of the heaving cleavage selfie. It was a low-key affair.

“The Forum stage is where delegates can explore more specialist topics,” says Cannes Lions CEO Phil Thomas, who gave the green light for Kim to Cannes-do. “It’s a place where you can see more familiar faces talking about topics you might not expect. Kim is a world-famous celebrity, but the story at Cannes was about her work with Glu on her gaming app. The discussion and press conference were both focused on the game development story, which is very relevant to the audience at Cannes. It was a discussion panel that explored the back story and creation of one of the most popular mobile games of the year. We deliberately kept her appearance relatively low-key.”

Not for the branding professionals the rolling thunder of celebrity entrances and exits, and Thomas happily reports that KK and her entourage presented no challenges at all on the day. “There were no demands, no riders, not even a green room. She was an absolute professional – polite, punctual and prepared. She came with a tiny entourage that included her mother, an assistant and a bodyguard.” Handily, her bodyguard knew the backstage layout of the Palais pretty well. No “Hello Cleveland” Spinal Tap moments here.

The ascendency of personality as product

Elsewhere at Cannes, there were numerous sessions on the power of celebrity brands – Maurice Lévy and David Guetta, the MAC Presents panel featuring Lars Ulrich, Ketchum Sounds with Natalie Imbruglia – and, like them, Kardashian’s appearance worked because it was relevant and in context. When it comes to social, brands want to know how she works it. “When there is no relevance or relationship between the celebrity and the host,” says Thomas, “the session loses authenticity and the audience sees right through it. Cannes Lions isn’t a celebrity arms race.”

However, if it’s full-frontal assault you want, there’s always The Rock. The movie star and wrestling icon Dwayne Johnson recently signed with Droga5 in New York to prepare the launch of Project Rock, which goes beyond the cross-branding model of Beyoncé-O2, Beckham-Haig or Kardashian-Glu, to a new world of total, 360-degree lifetime branding, working directly with the audience.

Droga5’s director of brand influence Matthew Gardner explains: “Project Rock is a result of the partnership between us, Dwayne Johnson and WWE. Very early on in that relationship we took a meeting with [Johnson’s] manager. At the time he was the highest grossing actor on the planet, which doesn’t sound like a heavy problem that would require an advertising agency. But they knew they could build and capitalise on that success, and he needed the next step to build on that. So we went through a process that we always do with brands, to figure out what his brand should be about, what is his brand purpose.”

They also needed to shift the demographic. “He’s been around a while, and a lot of his fans are older, and they really wanted to capture an idea that was relevant to a millennial target audience, so we gave him this idea of Project Rock, which is a collaborative mission using his strengths to get everyone to achieve their goals, and to actually get up and do something about them.”

While the likes of The Rock and Kim Kardashian (“people like to make fun of her, but no one’s got a better POV on social than she has,” says Gardner) are well established, Gardner is also tasked with sifting the wheat from the chaff when it comes to upcoming trends. “You’re not playing God, where you’re making the emerging culture and defining it, but you are spotting what will happen. It’s knowing about the emerging culture and knowing who knows who is emerging. In other words, knowing the most influential networks in the audience is just as important as knowing the most famous and the most talented person on stage. If they’re clapping, you’re on to something. They’re the ones who have good taste and a good eye.”

The mechanics behind self-branding as opposed to endorsements and collaboration is all about big, big numbers and big, big authenticity. “Every single celebrity now, or at least those on a level with people like The Rock, is a single media platform,” says Gardner, “with dozens of millions of followers – a TV show might get two million. And that’s a new landscape for them, but what you need to make sure is that what you’re saying is super authentic to what they love and who they are and that you’re not going to give them something that’s not true to them. If it’s true for you, it’s going to be true for years.”

It’s the ascendency of personality over product, or rather, personality as product, opening up a land of opportunity that, for Gardner, eclipses the old models of engagement. “The way brands use celebrities, that’s not really my world,” he says. “To me, that feels like a pretty stale way of working with celebrity. You can trace that back to TV ads going back decades, whereas I’m thinking more of the opportunities for culturally influential people to create more culturally influential content.”

Gardner describes that new cultural space as “a Wild West, where you can do it really haphazardly and still make a killing, just because that space is growing. But at the same time, you’re going to start seeing the bubble burst, eventually. The people like Jessica Alba [whose startup The Honest Company has been valued at $1.7 billion] or Dwayne Johnson, who have managed to really find something solid to stand for, that’s crystal clear, and a way to monetise that and make that into a real business – those are the kinds of people who are going to come out of it looking super, super smart.”