Music and brand endorsements are hardly a new concept, its been around almost since the beginning of the music industry. Music and the celebrities behind the music are very important and valuable to brands. THey have enormous power and influence, and can contirbute to making and breaking brands. Yes, a company still has to have a solid foundation, and a sustainable business model (recently we saw celebrity backed companies like Shoedazzle and 12 Society fail). There are several factors in when choosing an artist to endorse a brand, and there needs to be understanding of the actual value of what the celebrity endorsement is.
Celebrities are considered celebrities because of their influence in society whether its within arts, music, business, movies, or etc. Anyboy who has a strong influence can also be considered a celebrity, and this is measured by loosely trying to figure how many people you actually celebrity, or how big of a celebrity you actually are. The match between brands and musicians is now very common, how that we see Versace linking up with Madonna, and Drake linking up with Sprite. The celbrities are used to help the brand’s message stand out among all of the thousands of other intruding advertisements that consumers see on a daily basis.
Endorsements are mean’t to transfer the influence, personality, and status of the celebrity over to the brand. The talent that the celebrity is known for is supposed to be therefore linked to the brand which in turn should increase that brands credibility, appeal, and consistency. Brands that can get this type of celebirty support, will have the power even after tehier campaign is over. Many brands pick celebrities just off of intuition rather than going through some sort of criteria. There are some indexes and measurements avaialble, but none seems to be as effective. Therefore, there is a strong ambigutiy that is involved in trying to measure celebrity appeal, as its turning out to be more opinionated than anything. Luckily, there are tools that can measure lots of data (big data), and can be more helpful in more accurately measuring a specific celebrities appeal.
Brands also have many options in todays landscape to reach out to artists, whether its an independent artist or major artist. Most of the big brands will work with a major or artist on the rise to represent their brand, and they typically try and go through an agency to try and set this deal up. Today, this information can even be hard to find as artists hide their information, probably due to the fans abusing the information to send fan mail. The options available today are independent agencies that specialize in setting up these types of deals, or just simply going to a directory like Bookingagentinfo.com, to find information for a specific artists manager or their booking agent. Whichever route that you choose to go in, the key is to have a plan already put together and a general idea of how you would like to structure the deal. Popular deals in the past were just giving the artist a lump sum to represent the brand, but now artists are getting equity in the companies that they represent. The best example of success in the latter type of deal is with the 50 Cent and Vitamin Water deal that made 50 Cent one of the richest artists in the music industry.
Endorsement of brands by artists is soemthing that has great power when executed correctly. At times, the benefits may be short lived, but if it is measured effectively, the partnership can be leveraged to be beneficial for both sides for the long term. The goal is to yield brand loyalty and increase brand equity for both the brand and celebrity, leading to higer sales.
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Clay Lugo loves music and writes about ways that brands and artists can benefit each other. He is a musician himself, and likes to write based on his own experiences in marketing music and working with brands.