Move over celebrities who endorse products! Although around for quite some time now, I feel that celebrities moving towards creating their own brands is the next step in the celebrity marketing world.
The media is flooded with reports another celebrity launching something almost every other week. While browsing newspapers today, I read about Halle Berry’s new perfume, and became curious. I looked up about it online. Within the past 3 days, two celebrities, Halle Berry and Sofie Vergara(of Modern Town) announced their own line of products. Does launching celebrity brands really work? Let’s try to analyze with a few examples
It all started with tennis player Jean Rene Lacoste who established the green crocodile that adorns most of our polos today.
As more and more brands start using celebrities to endorse products and we get habituated to them, some very smart celebrities(and firms) are teaming up with celebrities to create a line of products or even celebrity owned brands. Paris Hilton is the first one that comes to mind. Although not famous for anything really she started off with her own bottle of perfume from Parlux Fragrances which raised Parlux’s sales by 47%. Parlux followed it up with several fragrances bearing Paris’ name. Of course she now has her own line of hair extensions, footwear, fashion, and accessories line. At one point of time, she even had her name on certain nightclubs.
Finally, another example is former Spice Girl, Victoria (Adams) Beckham who has her own line of clothing(of which her denims are the most famous) and perfumes which is immensely successful.
So to conclude, I do agree that celebrity brands work extremely well. Whether it’s a successful athlete, a moderately successful pop star or a not so successful heiress. Some clever marketing can make all the difference.