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The Celebrity-as-salesperson
It would seem we live in a world infatuated with celebrity. Some people would have it that celebs, major and minor, are our new religion. We venerate them, we want to be like them, we want to watch them and read about them at every opportunity. At the same time, on a different front, we’re bombarded with messages from advertisers to the extent that we’ve grown cynical. We tune them out, we go and make the tea, increasingly we zip through the ad breaks in recorded programmes, junk mail goes straight in the bin, unread.
Given these problems of getting through to us, any sensible ad executive might put two and two together and hopefully come up with a whacking great profit: Get the current stars of our firmament, the people we’ll really listen to, to do the job for them. Sometimes their idea of who should do what raises more questions than it answers: Bob Dylan advertising frilly underwear was perhaps puzzling. Sometimes, though, it’s sheer magic: Gary Lineker and Walkers’ Crisps, Prunella Scales and Tesco -- and love it or hate it, who doesn’t remember Michael Winner’s “relax dear, it’s only a commercial”?
So, it’s no surprise that advertisers use the rich and famous to flog their stuff to us. But does it always work? Are the famous worth the six-figure fees they are paid? Do these bumper pay-packets guarantee that a celebrity will uphold the integrity of the brand their lending their name to? Is this advertising at its most lazy, and are we perhaps growing a tad tired of that sub-species: Celebrity-as-salesperson?
Guests:
Hamish Pringle
Director General of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and author of 'Celebrity Sells'
Peter York
Cultural Commentator
Chris Searle
Executive Director, Bacardi-Martini
Claire Lewis
Celebrity Co-Coordinator, OXFAM
Adam Cluer
Advertising 'Fixer' (contract broker)
Peter Walshe
Global Account Director, Millward Brown
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