Going down the celeb route

Forster recently managed PR for the Royal Parks Half Marathon, featuring Ben Fogle, who proved to be the perfect celebrity ambassador. Here we chart the advantages and pitfalls of using celebs, plus a simple list of tips if you decide to take the plunge.

You can’t move for them. They dominate prime time TV, stare down at us from billboards, ghost vacuous columns in magazines we are ashamed to read and produce books and DVDs by the dozen.  They have become self proclaimed experts on everything from birth to breast augmentation. Celebrities – sometimes used as a swearword but you cannot deny the profound influence celebrity culture has on our lives.

So the conundrum is this: you have a campaign that you care deeply about, you need help to get it the publicity it needs, to get through to the audiences you want to engage - how can you use celebrities to help you, and how do you avoid the pitfalls?

Get celebrity endorsement right and you have an incredible powerful advocate for your cause or campaign - someone who will give you a national media platform to communicate your message to millions.

Get it wrong and you could alienate your core supporters or stakeholders, end up with negative or inaccurate coverage in all wrong places and watch years of careful profile raising and brand building come tumbling down with each ill-chosen word or action.

The ideal celebrity would have an obvious passion for and commitment to the cause, a personal link they can talk about and time to get fully involved in the campaign by visiting projects, attending photo-calls, and giving interviews across the media spectrum.  They also need to have appeal with your target audiences and a public profile that does not contradict the campaign.

Here’s a few simple tips to help you get it right

• Be realistic – While you believe your cause or campaign is the best thing since sliced bread, that doesn’t mean George Clooney will feel the same and drop all his commitments to visit a project.
• Do the research – don’t just draw up a list of random celebs and fire off invites. You won’t get many responses and those that you do might not be for the right celebrities. Match your cause or campaign against the interests and passions of celebrities and check their background before you approach. Do the leg work now and save yourself a lot of time and trouble
• Be personal – the theory of 6 degrees of separation and the sheer number of celebrities out there mean that you will know someone who knows someone – getting an “in” with a celeb through a colleague or supporter is much better than a cold contact
• Be specific – when you ask for support, be very clear about what you want them to do and when, and have tiered levels of support – if they can’t attend an event, can they give a quote, offer a photo etc
• Be assertive – the temptation with celebrities is to pander to their every whim, but once they are on board you need to manage them not the other way round. Be certain from the outset on what they are going to be doing, and the support you will provide, such as a car to collect them
• Brief and brief again – if the celebrity is going to represent your cause or campaign, then make sure they know what to say, and what not to sayMake the most of it – If you have a celebrity on board and they have done a good job, make sure everyone knows about it, including internally, and view the celebrity the way you view any supporter; this should be the start of a long term relationship