Talkback: Fronting up with a face for your brand

Mike Pepper

The celebrity outings connected to the recent "white collar" drugs bust raises bigger issues for brand owners as they consider attaching people to their brands.

When a public personality linked to your brand messes up, the bank of customer goodwill usually suffers a hit of some sort. What was once true and consistent is contaminated. But using people is much more complicated than just considering the lurking peccadilloes of your chosen one.

There are two types of leading brand characters - real and created. Real characters typically include a founder or CEO (notable for making promises); paid personalities; and customers (usually unpaid).

Created characters are just that - engineered. Think of House of Travel's Miss Lucy or the more 'authentic' storytellers used by Mainland and quality marks, like Betty Crocker (who as a person didn't actually exist).

Some of New Zealand's better known created brand characters include Vince Martin (do I need to say Beaurepaires?) and, of course, Goldstein. But they only reached elevated household name status because the characters resonated (though somewhat perversely and probably more by luck than design) and received enough exposure to ensure New Zealanders got to know and love them.

This approach is clearly the domain of the big boys. The upside of character creation is ease of control (do and say what I tell you to) and replacement, which is important because the repeated exposure required to establish a lead character ends up wearing them out.

Both approaches have their pros and cons. Real characters, by nature, are usually more authentic and credible than created characters. They don't require clever introductions to establish motives and the brand relationship.

Brand Virgin and its founder Richard Branson have worked extremely well together. But not by chance and without clear demarcation.

A key branding success factor has been to disentangle Branson himself from the functional use of the brand - you don't see his face plastered over his stores or any other aspect of Virgin's brand livery. Yet Branson has a huge profile as the people's champion for better service and value.

But it is brand Virgin that delivers the proposition. So if you don't like Branson or he messes up, the problem for consumers is smaller than if he were in every ad they ever made.

The same could not be said for Ansett/Air New Zealand CEO Gary Toomey when he became the face of Ansett. So when things went belly up there was nowhere to hide.

Using the endorsement of a public personality is popular with fledgling brands and those needing a jolt. Present favourites Sarah Ulmer and Hamish Carter are certainly riding this wave.

But the big issue here is control. Few brand owners can afford exclusive deals with big personalities like Ulmer and Carter, particularly in a small market like New Zealand.

So your endorser starts turning up all over the place. Everyone certainly remembers the personality but the rainbow-coloured exposure ends up diluting impact for individual brands.

Here are some key questions and scenarios to get you thinking right.

Fledgling or relative unknown brands stand to benefit most from an awareness jolt, in which case Carter might work, or opportunism like Untouched World getting a jersey on to Bill Clinton.

If what's needed is authenticity, and you're the owner wanting to share a vision, then consider putting your face on the brand (bearing in mind that you will be forever linked to it, so if it fails some of that sticks to you).

If your exit strategy is acquisition, think twice about this approach. Seeking out and promoting third-party endorsement works well when you have a fan base cheering on a good product, but it has to be at arm's length or it is seen as contrived and untrustworthy.

The big guys most often get personalities right, Mainland being a leading example; the right actors telling the right story with sufficient support to share it enough times with enough people. It's not cheap, but that's the price you pay for total control.

* Mike Pepper is a brand strategist at brand communications agency Brave New World.