Marketing With Celebrities and the Power of Micro-local

Forget A-List Celebrities. Go micro-local instead.

A few trivia questions.  Don’t look online:

1. Can you name Julia Robert’s husband?
2. Can you name Denzel Washington’s wife?

Chances are you can’t, because they’re married to mere mortals (small brand).  Unfortunately, the relationship between big brand and small brand doesn’t elevate small brand.  Instead, big brand outshines small brand.

Now, continuing the metaphor:

1. Can you name someone John Mayer dated in the last two years?
2. Can you name Tom Cruise’s wife?

I know, it’s a silly bit of logic, but I think it illustrates the point.  When two brands of similar stature and relevance team up, they can work together to amplify one another.  Tiger and Nike, Jordan and Gatorade, Phelps and Speedo, and yes, even Katie and Tom.  Unfortunately for small brands, dreams of meteoric rise on the coattails of  big celebrity endorsement are doomed for failure.  To steal from David Ogilvy, the celebrity is remembered and the brand is not.

There is one powerful (and little explored) exception to this rule:  Micro-local celebrity endorsement.

The web gives us the power to segment based on location.  Why spend $250,000 to get one A-lister, when we could spend $5,000 on fifty different local celebrities?

• If you market software to small business owners, you could run a micro-local campaign and contest to have lunch local mayors and donate $5,000 to a local kids charity on her behalf.
• If you make hockey goalie equipment, you could run a series of banner ads with local AAA goalies from teams across the nation and a contest to win a 2 hour goalie lesson.  Fifty AAA goalies, in fifty towns.  What would that cost?  Imagine the reach across your niche.
• If you sell music related products, you could team up the hippest small concert venues in cities across the nation and give away one year all access passes.  Two hundred and fifty local venues – $1,000 each.

With today’s technology, we’re able to splice, segment and serve-up communication based on location and niche with incredible precision.  Unless you’re a mega-brand, forget celebrity endorsement and dive into the world of micro-local campaigns.  Micro-local involves more effort, but as with most things, the extra effort pays dividends.

Of course, go ahead and break the rules if you can get this guy – because with him anything is possible.  (notice how the kids aren’t using hockey sticks…but some kind of field hockey hybrid).

Tagged as: advertising, Branding