Celebrities: yay or nay? It’s the big question major brands face in the coming months, as agencies and marketing teams finalise their upcoming plans for their big holiday season or Super Bowl creatives.
For many brands, celebrities are the bedrock of their advertising – theses are the stars that underpin some of our biggest campaigns. This is especially evident during certain calendar moments, with more than 50% of Super Bowl adverts employing a celebrity last year, for example.
But are brands short-changing themselves by over-relying on star power?
System1’s chief customer officer Jon Evans argues they may well be – and they may even drive better brand recognition and commercial impact by creating their own stars.
The fame factor
Bringing in a famous figure can offer both short-term sales activation and long-term brand-building benefits.
Celebrities, after all, have large established followings and often evoke powerful emotional responses; they have unique skills they can leverage to entertain audiences, such as comedy or athleticism – and they add a cool factor to the brand at hand.
But it’s how they are deployed that defines their impact.
Plonking a celeb down in a commercial and assuming their star power will do the job is a recipe for failure. Simple endorsements don’t move the needle, nor do ads which have nothing to do with what the celebrity is actually known for.
And if an ad has nothing else that entertains the viewers – no story, no humor, and no ideas – a celebrity isn’t going to save matters.
The right way is to give the celebrity material which plays on what they’re famous for – either using it in a larger-than-life way, celebrating it, or even subverting it by putting them in an incongruous or comical setting. The rule of thumb with celebrities is this: could a different celebrity work just as well here?
If you can imagine swapping one star for another with no difficulties, your ad isn’t making distinctive enough use of a famous face. If the ad would make no sense without your star, you might well be onto something.
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But there’s another solution to the celebrity problem which is actually far more effective: grow your own. As Orlando Wood noted in his bestselling book Lemon, there is a better way to connect with customers – and that’s by using a fluent device.
Fluent devices are recuring characters with agency, such as the much-loved Compare the Market meerkats or Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot, or a recurring scenario played out by people in new and different contexts, such as ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’.
They build brands by driving fluency – that is, the speed of processing and time it takes to recognise a brand quickly.
Fluent devices at their best are creative and emotional. They work a bit like great sketch comedy shows – think Saturday Night Live, or The Fast Show in the UK, which thrived on creating a series of memorable characters who could keep turning up and pleasing the audience every time.
A great fluent device can make the viewer happy quickly by showing them characters they already know and like, or can deliver a payoff which is all the more satisfying for being a running joke.
Proving the brand boost
At System1, we’ve worked to prove this. We tested consumers’ emotional reactions to Super Bowl ads from the past four years and found that commercials featuring brand characters consistently outscored celebrity spots for appeal, brand recognition and commercial impact.
Fluent devices beat celebrities in Super Bowl ads by over a full Star Rating , 3.8-Stars to 2.7-Stars, out of a maximum 5.9-Stars.
What’s more, 88% of viewers remember the brand in a fluent device ad, compared to 83% for ads without fluent devices. This is especially crucial when brands are shelling out millions for a media buy and are under pressure to deliver return on marketing investment.
For brands, the benefits of a fluent device translate into a tangible commercial impact too: research from Orlando Wood and the IPA found that advertising campaigns which include a fluent device are 73% more likely to report a large profit gain than campaigns with no fluent device.
Of course, there are a couple of caveats. To benefit from their brand-building power, advertisers need to invest in fluent devices throughout the year, not just during the holidays. Fluent devices also take time, patience and strategy to build.
The more familiar they become, the better they work, and it often takes a few ads before brands start feeling the effectiveness benefits. Just look at Kevin the Carrot, who transformed from a 3-Star campaign to 5-Stars over the last eight years, and achieving the maximum 5.9-Star result over the last two.
Feeling the fluent device
Fluent devices went into decline in the ‘00s and ‘10s, and are only now beginning to slowly make a comeback. They are a way to incorporate events into a lasting, ongoing campaign that builds in effectiveness, rather than being at the mercy of the event calendar.
The fact that they take investment and time to see returns is partly why they have declined in popularity. But give repeating characters and ideas some time, and they’ll most likely reward you with impact beyond any rented celebrity at Christmas, Super Bowl or the World Cup.
Perhaps best of all, these owned characters don’t run the risk of tabloid scandals or changes of plan like hired devices do and they’re more affordable than hiring a well-known figure. These savings can be put towards enhancing the reach of a campaign.
So, what are you waiting for? Let a fluent device unlock entertainment and creative effectiveness for your brand by pairing a lovable character with engaging narratives and interactions, humour and cultural references.
