Festive 'Spot the Difference' with the X Factor

Here at celebrity towers everyone seems to need a little Christmas – me, I’m a little more ‘Bah, Humbug’, at least until my third glass of champers.  Anyway, I thought I’d attempt to join in the fun with a suitably festive game of ‘spot the difference’.  So pop-pickers, can you spot the, rather expensive, difference between these two videos?

Here’s the spoiler sweeties….

It takes a while but if you pause at 48 seconds in you’ll see the frames below



Now you see him...



 




...now he's gone
...to Hollywood maybe?



As you can see M&S (okay, their ad agency, don’t get picky) has edited Frankie Cocozza out of the group scene from their X Factor themed Christmas ad.  This is different from the various versions where they’ve changed the soloists in the line up as people leave the show.  It’s specialist editing which needs to be done one frame at a time and, I’m guessing, can’t have been cheap – I would imagine it certainly won’t have been budgeted for.

But you might ask whilst this is all lovely, fluffy, Christmas frivolity and an excuse for me to put Crimbo cheer upon my blog what does it have to do with charities and celebrities?  Well pop on the reindeer slippers and ears, pull up a comfy chair, grab a mince pie and something medicinal, and I’ll tell you (you may want to turn down The Sound of Music).

Many charities work with celebrities and that endorsement can have terrific benefits for the charity…… but…… here comes the science bit (well they said Management was a science at my university)… when you work with a celebrity you are aligning two brands, yours and theirs.  Damage to one brand can affect the other.  Whilst 99.9% of the time it will be fine just occasionally something happens in the celeb’s life which means you want to distance yourself from them – after all you don’t want an interview being dominated about their personal life instead of their support for your cause or your key messages.

You might say that Frankie’s alleged misbehaviour falls into the category of predictable but I know of cases when it hasn’t been. What if you’d secured Frankie to headline an event? Put him on posters? Even worse signed him up to a front your new ‘just say no’ to drugs campaign?  If you’re M&S you quietly make him disappear (and of course have the funds to do it).  If you’re a charity you can cancel press interviews, that’s cheap, but can you so easily afford to cancel an event, reprint posters or even recall all your fantastic ‘just say no’ leaflets?

There are no easy answers but it’s something any charity that works with a celebrity should always bear in mind.  So my yuletide message is to not assume that once you have a celeb that everything’s solved and the world will be a happier place. Just occasionally what looked like a fantastic opportunity can turn into reputation management nightmare.

….and on that cheery note I’m off to look for last minute deals on a bauble-free winter break.  It’s been tinsel a-go-go wherever I look since the August bank holiday and, quite frankly, I’m beginning to get a little fed up of it.  Personally, I blame Charles Dickens!