The Worth-it Risk Of Playing
Celebrity Roulette
By Robert Cherry

Drug busts. Sex tapes. Dog fights. Hateful name-calling. The occasional double homicide. We’ve all heard of the PR disasters, the celebrity endorsements gone horribly wrong when the endorser makes the wrong type of headlines.

But while it’s easy to shake your head and enjoy a chuckle at the brand’s expense, watching it roll up the red carpet like a window shade and race like Steve Prefontaine to distance itself from the tarnished star, the benefits of climbing into bed with a celebrity—figuratively speaking, that is—usually outweigh the risks for brands.

Why? Because the celebrity endorsement is the ultimate shortcut to the consumer’s heart and mind. This, we have known since the dawn of the pitchman. At least intuitively. According to evolutionary psychologists, we like familiar faces—preferably symmetrical—because as hunter-gatherers, crossing paths with the familiar was comfortable and potentially fruitful while encountering the unfamiliar was panic-inducing and potentially life-threatening.

Today we make similar associations and attachments as we hunt and gather infotainment from the safer remove of our couches. By sheer exposure “we unconsciously feel that the people we see every day on TV are our friends,” Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School Of Economics, told “Business 2.0.” “It makes us more susceptible to product messages because we're designed to trust our friends.”

Maybe so, but through the years, we’ve learned to trust only some of our celebrity “friends.” Oprah, Tom Hanks, and Michael Jordan are among the handful of stars that perennially tops the celebrity trust index compiled by Davie-Brown Talent from a survey of 1.5 million Americans. These are the sort of friends we might call upon to housesit for us, or at least recommend a good fictionalized memoir or gravity-defying athletic shoe.

But most celebrities? No matter how wildly famous they may be, most celebrities fall short on that same trust-o-meter. A household name like Paris Hilton, for instance, recently received a low 36.7 trust rating on the Davie-Brown Index—and that was before she modeled an orange jumpsuit for an L.A. county correctional facility. But could Hilton still sell young males a hot, juicy Carl’s Jr. burger? Absolutely.

In today’s mega-cluttered market, winning attention is the crucial first step toward winning hearts and minds, and that can be achieved with any number of celebrity friends, even if it’s that celebrity friend. Trust has its place—for charities and other serious institutions there’s no replacement—and brand fit is essential, but the playful associations conjured by a star, even those we dislike and distrust, are often more important to the message than straight-faced endorsement.

To take just one seasonal example, the latest Macy’s commercial features an ensemble cast of a dozen or so celebrity designers, most of whom are no strangers to controversy. There’s Usher, Martha Stewart, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Donald Trump, Jessica Simpson and more, all decking the halls of a Macy’s department store with their branded wares.

Usher cues up a vinyl side of a traditional recording of “Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy.” Stewart orders everyone to work, reminding them not to break anything; Simpson does. Trump hangs lights on an escalator, griping, “How did I get stuck with this job?” Diddy employs stylish female helpers to decorate his section, branding the results “a Sean John Christmas.” The tree is trimmed, lit—and then unplugged by Simpson. Stewart scolds her; Simpson chirps, “My bad!”

During the 60-second spot, each celebrity utters only a few short lines, if any, but their actions, interaction and mere presence speaks volumes in the consumer’s head. The novelty of the situation—celebrities interacting like a family performing mundane tasks—attracts and holds our attention, the stars’ willingness to play up to their stereotypes invites a smile if not a chuckle, and the public baggage each star trails behind him or her adds a subtext that encourages repeat viewings.

Ultimately, we’re left with a warm seasonal feeling, a sense of just-like-us connection to celebrities whose lifestyles many of us aspire to, and the knowledge that Macy’s puts the trappings of those lifestyles within reach, tangibly involving us with the brand. Or as a voiceover tag tells us, “Only one star can bring all these stars home for the holidays. That’s the magic of Macy’s.”

For the sake of their shareholders—and that whole good-will-toward-man thing—let’s hope that magic extends to keeping the celebrities out of career-torpedoing trouble this season.

Robert Cherry is a Senior Writer at Seed Strategy. As a freelance journalist he has contributed to “Rolling Stone,” “Entertainment Weekly” and Cleveland’s “The Plain Dealer.” Contact him at rcherry@seedstrategy.com.