Using a celebrity's name in vain

It’s always a clever trick when you can tie an issue you care about in to one of the biggest news stories of the week.  So what better than to link your issue to the X Factor Final?  After all you know the tabloids will be dedicating acres of news print to the topic.

I’m assuming that was the laudable aim of War on Want when they issued a press release titled ‘Dannii in M&S 'sweatshops' storm’.  They were talking about the claim that research showed that workers in two Indian factories which produce clothes for M&S were paying below a living wage. So the tenuous link was Dannii Minogue’s an X Factor judge; Dannii Minogue’s in the M&S ads; therefore ‘X Factor Judge is involved’.

They should be complimented for their creativity and also for the fact that they explained what a living wage was in India.  I get fed up with charities saying ‘look how little this person earns’ without explaining what a living wage is in that country.  For instance, to quote their figures, £126 a month is living wage in that area of India – which we would find miniscule but it’s always important to have the proper context otherwise figures are meaningless.

However back to the celebrity element.  Let’s ignore the tenuous link.  Let’s also assume all the information in the press release is accurate since I have no way of knowing.  Do they want Dannii to support them?  If so this is not how I’d have gone about it.  One she’s under contract to M&S therefore she cannot publicly speak about them, nor can she respond. Two Dannii is not in an M&S sweatshop storm.  This is guilt by association for the sake of a very slim topical peg.  Apart from appearing in the advert how is she involved?  Call me old fashioned but I somehow doubt she’d be making a decision about where M&S get’s its clothes made.

So what have they achieved?  Well they’ve linked her to something of which she probably had no knowledge or responsibility - so that’s a potential relationship they’ve lost.  They've used her name, without her apparent agreement, to try and gain coverage.  However it’s worst than that.  Whilst stars may come and go agents and publicists are around forever and have very long memories.  If you were Hackford Jones PR, (Dannii’s UK PR agency), how would you feel about a future approach from this charity?  Their other clients include Davina McCall, Ant & Dec, Denise Van Outen, Mylene Klass, Tess Daly and Vernon Kay to name but a few.

A quick Google search show’s very little take up by the media (two websites and a minor wire service).  Wouldn’t writing to Dannii in private have been a more effective way of letting her know about the issue?  Working with celebrities is all about building relationships over time.  Relationships that have to involve trust.  None of that appears here.  What’s more if I was an existing celebrity supporter would I become nervous about how the charity might treat me?

Whilst I don’t blame the charity for trying to gain support for an important issue I question whether the positives here (and there don’t seem to be many) outweigh the negatives from a celebrity relationship perspective.

Would you credit it?!

Yesterday saw the ICAP charity day.  The company describes itself as ‘the world’s premier interdealer broker and provider of post-trade risk & information services’.  Since 1993 they’ve been donating all revenues from one day’s global trading to charity.  In the last couple of years that’s been over £11m annually.

Picture from ES website

Like the BGC trading day, which it pre-dates by a number of years, the charities organise celebrity supporters to come along and encourage the traders, as well as getting a chance to make a trade.

 The event got great coverage and made the front cover of London’s Evening Standard, featuring a picture of former Doctor Who star, David Tennant and inside was a picture of Bond actor, Daniel Craig.  There was a great credit for ICAP – deservedly so.  What there wasn’t was a reference to the individual charities the stars were supporting. 


Picture from ES website



It reminded me of a couple of times when great celebrity supporters have failed to get a mention for the charity involved.  One was Nicole Kidman launching Cancer Research UK’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month at Madame Tussauds which got picked up but with no mention of the charity.  Another was when Hollywood A-Lister Ashton Kutcher visited a training exercise with the RNLI.  This one, which was tied in to a film launch, didn’t even get picked up. 

In the ICAP case whilst a mention for the charity would have been nice it wasn't essential.  The main reason for asking for the celebrity support is to reinforce the relationship between the charity, ICAP and its staff.  If the stars help raise the profile of the corporate supporter that’s great and worth using up an ask.

Getting the support of the sort of big names mentioned here is a terrific achievement and never easy.  However they do not guarantee you publicity.  Putting all your eggs in a celebrity basket is always a risk and doesn’t always pay off, which is fine if you recognise this, but it can be hard getting directors and trustees to understand.  Thus managing expectations in advance of an event is incredibly important.

I won't say he told me so....but he told me so......

In shock news it looks like Rob Dyson might have been right (see the tweets below). Last week I was extolling the virtues of Keep a child Alive’s celebrity ‘digital suicide’ fundraiser whilst he was taking a more conservative stance. Read Rob’s analysis here.

  

The aim is to raise US$1m.  Until then the stars will refrain from tweeting and facebook.

The big launch was six days ago and I’d have expected the bulk of the money to have come in in the first day or two.  However as you can see from the web site they have so far raised less than US$300,000, or under 30% of the target.

The question now is will it reach the $1m mark before the PRs, record companies and managers start telling the stars to get back online?  They haven’t broken ranks yet but I’d be amazed if they didn’t. 

In what will probably be a post mortem, rather than a debrief, the questions will be have they understood social media well enough?  Rob clearly didn't think so (see his blog mentioned above).

From a fundraising perspective did they get the price point right? For many peopel a fixed donation can form a barrier to entry. Think of the fan bases, they are frequently young, many teenagers, with more limited disposable income.  Maybe US$10 (about £6.40), when they get nothing in return, is too high.  Think of a 14 year old girl on a pay-as-you-go contract.  Is she likely to be happy with a $10 charge taken from her credit?  Maybe lowering the price point to $2/3 would have helped.  It's a difficult call to work out the price point at which you maximise participation.  For example 100 people paying $10 is good but 500 people paying $3 is better