Diana Vickers is the first celebrity collaboration for Collection 2000
When it comes to celebrity tie-ups, there is an absolutely crucial checklist of criteria which must be met for it to work, irrespective of product category. Gary Lineker has certainly been a marketing dream for Walkers crisps whereas Glenn Hoddle for Shredded Wheat failed miserably. We have years of experience marrying brands with celebrities, and here we reveal our golden rules for a successful collaboration.
Firstly, ensure that there is a genuine link between the celebrity and the product. Consumers need to believe, or at least suspend disbelief, that your chosen celebrity would engage with the brand, so it’s essential to research this fully.
Secondly, the new ‘face’ of a brand needs to act like an ambassador both on and off campaign (being spotted drinking Coke while working for Pepsi Max wasn’t Britney’s finest moment). To make this work, so much of it comes down to the quality of your relationship with the celebrity and their team. Mutual trust, honesty and genuine brand affinity will maximise your chances of success.
The more involved in the process the celebrity is, and the more they have invested emotionally in the tie-up, the better. Endorsements made purely for financial reasons, even with large sums of money at stake, can easily sound hollow. To paraphrase The Beatles, money can’t buy you love.
It’s essential to make sure you have a watertight contract which meets the needs of all parties. After the negotiations are over and the ink has dried, the hard work starts. If anyone’s feeling hard done by as a result of the contractual terms, it’s going to make it nigh on impossible to work together effectively!
Look at how else you can extend the campaign beyond the obvious advertising, point of sale and PR touch-points. Social media can play a key role in this respect. If all goes well, new commercial opportunities to extend the partnership could emerge, benefiting all parties and embedding the relationship for the long-term.
Collection 2000, long-standing Focus PR client and now fifth-largest high street cosmetics brand in the UK, had never worked with a celebrity until 2011 and its recently-signed partnership with Diana Vickers. Diana, girl-next-door-done-good, is a Northern lass just like Collection 2000 and has referenced the brand as the one she grew up with on many occasions. She is the girl that Collection 2000’s consumers would like to be: pretty, successful (but not in a scary way), approachable, aspirational. Diana loves makeup and experiments with her look, just as we encourage Collection 2000’s consumers to do.
Diana is fronting an autumn/winter PR and point of sale campaign for Collection 2000, a brand that rarely advertises. The media has been very excited about the partnership (we’ve already secured two front covers and an abundance of features in target titles) and retailers have been hugely inspired by having Diana’s image across all their stores. The marketing team has made ambitious sales forecasts and, in the very early stages of the campaign, the signs are all good.
