Why is it that companies think that if they mention the Charity word they’ll get celebrities for free? In my inbox today I’ve seen two requests from PR companies; one asking for a celebrity to front a campaign, the other asking for someone to judge an event.
Celebrities get paid good money to do work for commercial organisations. The first said that in exchange for support they’d make a donation to a charity they support - yet the campaign isn’t for that charity and I’d be willing to bet they aren’t planning on donating the normal commercial rate for the celebrity.
The second wanted a full day of the celebrity’s time at an event where they were raising funds for charity but this was clearly a promotional day for the PR’s client. In exchange they promised lots of publicity in a particular leisure pursuit’s press. So they want a day of someone’s time, don’t want to pay and think that the celeb is going to be desperate to get publicity in a niche market, which they obviously wouldn’t get if it weren’t for this fantastic PR company.
Please. Get real. It’s requests like these that give charities a bad name amongst agents and publicists. It makes the jobs of those who do this properly a great deal harder.
There is nothing wrong with using celebrity supporters in conjunction with corporate partners but the celebrity is always representing the charity and never endorsing the partner.
One of my favourite examples of getting it right is this TV advert for Andrex and Teenage Cancer Trust. At the end McFly encourage people to buy an Andrex Puppy soft toy. But McFly aren’t endorsing Andrex. They’re opening words are “We’re supporting Teenage Cancer Trust”. They go on to say if you buy the toy you’ll be raising funds for TCT. What they don’t say is “buy Andrex”. If they’d said that their management would have quite rightly been expecting a fee.
Come on PR’s don’t use the charity sector as a cheap way for you to get celebrity support for your clients.
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