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COVER STORY

A STAR IS BRANDED

Celebrity usage is on the increase as advertisers utilize the undeniable appeal of star power to win consumers’ attention, interest and favorable attitude towards their products. But as more celebrities become associated with certain products, choosing the right star for the brand is becoming all the more important.

BY REHAB EL-BAKRY

Advertising has undergone an extensive facelift over the past decade. Gone are the days of clumsy billboard designs and low-budget television commercials that characterized the ad campaigns of the 1980s. Back then, companies would spend £E 200,000 to £E 400,000 on an annual advertising campaign. Today, companies spend that much on a single TV commercial.

An expanding private sector, including the arrival of a number of highly competitive multinationals, has given consumers more choices than ever and forced advertisers to employ more effective tools. Ad campaigns are no longer haphazard – they can’t afford to be. They’ve evolved. Branding has become critical and advertisers seeking the highest possible brand recall are tapping into the power of the stars.

Celebrity advertising is nothing new. During the 1980s, local football star Mahmoud El-Khattib promoted razors, actress Sahar Ramy endorsed hair dye and actor Hassan Abdeen promoted soft drinks. What is new is the significant improvement in the quality of the advertising, both in terms of production and branding. Today’s ads are not based on scripts jotted on a napkin, they are a team effort that require storyboards, casting calls, strategy sessions and production specialists.

In turn, viewers’ tastes have become more sophisticated. “Television ads have become a form of entertainment for many Egyptians [and] people are more capable of differentiating between commercials, understanding which ones are more expensive and which ones are not,” explains Amr Darwish, client service director for the local arm of Chicago-based advertising giant Leo Burnett.

He says the growing trend towards high-budget ads has raised the public’s expectations of advertisers. “Companies promoting a particular service or product have had to figure out ways to make their ads stick out among the sea of ads bombarded people. One of the most effective ways to get someone to notice your advertising campaign is to feature a celebrity in the ads.”

Star search
Celebrity usage can be an effective tool for television and print advertising because celebrities provide a set of characteristics that support consumers in evaluating the presented brand. Anonymous models can attract consumers to a product, but celebrities complete the image transfer process by adding extra depth and power through consumers’ association with their lifestyles and personalities. Done right, celebrity advertising helps people remember or identify with a particular brand.

Selecting the right celebrity, however, is no easy task. A good match will catapult your product into double-digit sales growth. A bad match can bury your product in notoriety. Or worse, a scandal. “In the past, selecting celebrities was more of a hit-and-miss process,” says Darwish. “There wasn’t a methodological thought process behind the use of the celebrities and how they would further the branding of a particular product. Instead, the selection of the celebrity was based solely on who was perceived as being particularly popular during that time.”

State-owned Bisco Misr is said to have made this mistake when it used young actress Merna El-Mohandes to promote its cookies in the mid-1990s. The ad campaign failed because the poorly produced TV commercial in which the actress sang and danced made no clear association between the relatively obscure celebrity and the product. In fact, the commercial was one of the most forgettable.
Darwish says companies contemplating celebrity usage can benefit from market research and brand strategy. “Today, using a celebrity is based on a set of criteria that advertisers draft in order to reflect the nature of the brand, target the right consumer and achieve brand association,” he notes.

For example, if you’re trying to market a luxury item, there’s no point getting shaabi crooner Shaaban Abdel Rehim to endorse it. “He entertains the masses who are probably unable to afford the product you’re trying to sell. At the same time, you could alienate your target clients because they might not really appreciate sharing the same taste for something that Shaaban endorses.”

On the other hand, the illiterate makwagi (laundry man) turned pop sensation proved a hit for Philips, who used Abdel Rehim to promote their mid-range clothes iron. “This was a brilliant move because the public found him an entertaining as well as credible spokesperson for giving your clothes a perfect pressing,” says Darwish.

Following the airing of the ad on Egyptian television, Philips reported a surge in iron sales. The company could not keep up with the demand and ran into supply shortages.

Mahmoud Osman, general manager of Savola Sime Egypt, believes it is crucial for companies to understand their brand, its position in the market and their clients before launching a celebrity advertising campaign. In 2001, Savola sought a celebrity to endorse Rawaby samna (ghee) after seeing their product’s market share drop. For the marketing team, selecting the right celebrity was essential. The team was aware that featuring the wrong celebrity could alienate consumers and damage Rawaby’s positioning in the market.

Savola brought in comedic actress Soad Nasr, best known for her role as Soad in the television series Sonbal Qabl Al-Millione (Sonbol Before the Million) to endorse their product. “We wanted an actress who was funny but not a clown because there is a fine line at which a person can go from being a spokesperson with a sense of humor to someone who clowns around and has zero credibility and persuasion ability with the audience,” explains Osman.

The company conducted market research to see how consumers would respond to Nasr. They discovered she fit the bill perfectly. “She is funny, but she still looks like a traditional housewife so other women could relate to her. She looks like someone who would buy ghee and actually use it in her cooking,” says Osman.

For Savola, that was important because housewives are the prime decisionmakers when it comes to determining which type of ghee the household uses. Earlier television advertising campaigns for ghee by the company failed to connect with consumers. Osman says the ads seemed to get lost among the dozens of ghee commercials featuring teenagers dancing around while singing the praises of their particular brand of ghee. “[Teenagers] don’t buy ghee and [these ads] certainly aren’t what most housewives relate to. So it’s surprising that this trend spread and became the stereotypical ghee ad,” says Osman. “We had confidence in our concept and the timing of bringing in Soad Nasr as the celebrity in our ad campaign. We knew that we were actually taking a risk because we were departing from what the market had dictated as normal.”

The risk paid off. Nasr’s humor was a hit with the audience and her catchphrase, “oooh tahady” (It’s a challenge), became part of Egyptian pop culture. More importantly, Rawaby’s sales climbed, increasing its market share by 39 percent.

Big stars, big budgets
Savola’s gamble paid off, but had it not, it could have been a costly mistake. A high-quality 60-second television commercial can cost as much as £E 500,000 to produce, plus the cost of the celebrity, which can run from £E 100,000 for a minor celebrity to over $1 million for a superstar.

Part of this cost is to ensure the celebrity remains loyal to the product for the duration of the ad campaign. “When you opt to use a celebrity, you pay for the celebrity of course, but you also pay to use him or her exclusively for a certain period of time during which they can’t promote any product that is similar in nature to yours,” explains Osman. “In our case, for example, the contract between us and Nasr stipulates that she cannot be featured in any other ad in our sector – meaning ghee or any other food product – for the duration of her contract [plus an additional] period of three years. This doesn’t prevent her from becoming a spokesperson for a mobile manufacturer, for instance, because these products do not compete with ours in any way.”

As celebrity use has grown, so too have their paychecks. Superstars such as Amr Diab, Nancy Ajram and Nawal Al Zoghby are rumored to demand over $1.1 million for appearances in television commercials. Of course, they’re also willing to appear on billboards, in magazine ads and on the products themselves. But naturally this costs extra. 

Television ads are perceived as the most effective form of celebrity usage, but also the most expensive. “How much a star is paid for a commercial is becoming a benchmark of sorts of where a particular celebrity ranks on the popularity scale,” says Darwish. “Papers write about the cost of stars used in ads and celebrities talk to one another. They become more and more demanding and that’s making the matter completely unreasonable for advertisers.”

He cites the example of a client that hired a celebrity to promote a skin care product. After signing the contract, the celebrity allegedly found a rival company offering to pay her more for her endorsement and started trying to “weasel her way out of the contract.” She was permitted to terminate the contract, but because this caused damage to the client, she was required to pay a penalty. In the end, the celebrity paid a hefty fine that is said to have amounted to more than what the competitor paid her.

Having spent a fortune to secure a celebrity and produce a high-quality ad, companies have to shell out still more money to actually run the ad. Egyptian terrestrial channels typically charge £E 10,000 to £E 25,000 per 60-second slot. During Ramadan, when television viewership peaks, it can jump as high as £E 80,000. Add thousands more if the company intends to plaster the celebrity’s face on billboards or on the product.

It’s all in the timing
Despite the ballooning cost of celebrity usage, some companies argue that the value added to their product’s branding is worth the expense. Egyptian GSM operator Mobinil, for instance, has used celebrities for four of its campaigns, each time to achieve a different purpose, and each time achieving a milestone in the branding process. “For a company like ours, where we are offering a service to people, one of the key selling points is to provide good quality service but also to make people feel good about their choice of our brand over another,” says Mobinil CEO Osman Sultan.

He says companies selling services need to have large advertising budgets because to successfully market their products they need a “constant flow of ads” in order to build the image of their brand in people’s minds. “The trick is to use the right celebrity, at the right time in the brand’s life cycle.”

He explains that when Mobinil used singer Amr Diab in its 2000-01 ad campaign, the intention was to brand the company as a whole, not a particular service. Back then, Mobinil was a relatively new company and the goal was to create an advertising campaign that appealed to Egyptians with the highest income. Diab seemed the answer.

“At the time, he was the most popular star in Egypt,” explains Sultan. “His image sent the message of sophistication.”

Mobinil cast the popular singer in a commercial with no singing or dancing – just Diab being himself. “It really worked for us,” says Sultan, explaining that the ad gave viewers a rare look at Diab’s offstage personality and that translated well for the brand. Mobinil, by association, appeared talented and successful, yet thoroughly Egyptian.

Sultan contrasts this ad campaign with one launched a year later for the company’s prepaid mobile service, Alo. Since prepaid services are most popular with people living on a fixed income, the company opted to use Hakim, a shaabi singer who is popular with the masses. As luck would have it, the singer was about to release an album with a song, “Yaho Yaho,” whose lyrics could be easily altered to include the name of their product. Mobinil representatives signed Hakim on, creating a television ad in which the singer belted out “Alo Alo.”

Hakim’s voice propelled Mobinil’s prepaid service, while Mobinil’s commercial catapulted Hakim’s song up the charts. “In essence, he was promoting our product, but we were also promoting his new song,” says Sultan, who insists Mobinil got exactly what it wanted out of the deal. “Until today, when people hear this song, they still sing the lyrics of the ad and not the real lyrics of the song, which means that we had branding success with this ad. At the same time, the ad also achieved one of our primary goals, which was boosting Alo sales.”

Adapting to the market
While local companies such as Mobinil have the freedom to decide when and how to use celebrities in their advertising, multinationals are at times bound by the global vision of the headquarters. Soft drink giant PepsiCo, for instance, manages a worldwide advertising strategy from its headquarters in the US, supplying its local subsidiaries with advertising concepts and materials. “These global directions can fit 95 percent or 98 percent of the markets,” says Tarek Kabil, PepsiCo president of Egypt and North Africa.
PepsiCo’s current global campaign is putting international football stars in Pepsi soft drink ads and on the products themselves. “These trends work for every market with the exception of markets where football is not that popular, such as Pakistan and India, where it’s cricket players rather than football players,” he says.

Kabil explains that it is up to the local subsidiary to decide how best to use the concept and material. “We adapt the concepts to fit the specific preferences of the market,” he says. In the case of the football stars campaign, Pepsi-Cola Egypt has created its own ads with Egyptian football stars to run alongside the international ones. “These campaigns complement each other well because they help to reinforce the fact that Pepsi is an international brand and the use of the international celebrities is a reflection of this fact. But we also have a local element because we’ve been here since 1947 and we have to reflect that. We’re as much a local brand as we are an international and global one.”

By combining local and international stars in its ad campaigns, Pepsi-Cola Egypt is able to appeal to a broad segment of the consumer market, from simple, poor fellahin (farmers) to wealthy, cosmopolitan Cairenes. “In the case of Egypt, we’re talking about nearly 75 million people – not all of them know Beckham or Roberto Carlos. Only 20-25 percent of the population knows who they are, but 75-80 percent know Hazem Imam and Emad Meteb – the local players. That’s why we use both the international and national campaigns,” Kabil explains.

The soft drink has also capitalized on the fact the many of the high-caliber Arabic music stars it uses in its ads are popular on a regional level, appealing to some 250 million native Arabic speakers. Despite the hefty price tag of signing on Amr Diab, Elissa or Nawal Al Zoghby, Pepsi-Cola Egypt can split the bill with PepsiCo’s other local operations.

Lately, PepsiCo has been testing another ad formula. Last year, the company released a television commercial featuring singing superstar Enrique Iglesias as an emperor, entertained in a coliseum by international pop stars-turned-gladiators Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Pink. In a special version of the ad for Middle East audiences, a scene with Amr Diab (replacing Iglesias) as emperor has been inserted.
PepsiCo’s idea to create a big-budget ad that local subsidiaries can tailor to taste by simply inserting a scene could be the next trend in celebrity advertising for multinationals. Apart from obvious advantages of cost sharing, they have widespread popular appeal. “Most Egyptians find it amusing to see their stars alongside international ones,” Kabil explains.

There’s no place like home
An international connection is often seen as a plus, but Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom (OT), says it’s sometimes equally important to highlight your company’s local connections. “There are some companies which believe that part of their strength lies in using an international brand. Our concept here at OT is to go local and not to brand ourselves as the multinational.”

Sawiris says branding OT’s local subsidiaries is more important than branding OT itself. “We wanted to touch the hearts of people locally because [each subsidiary company’s] business is local and you need to incite the local people to choose you as an operator versus your competitor. So that’s why for us, we’ll always pick names that somehow strike a [patriotic chord] with the people of any given country.” He explains that this is why OT’s GSM licensee in Egypt was called Mobinil, playing on the importance of the Nile to the country, and why the GSM network in Iraq was named Iraqna, a reference to the fact that the Iraqi people own Iraq.

Given OT’s localization strategy, Sawiris continues, there is no reason to have any particular celebrity associated with the parent company. Nor is there any need for the subsidiary companies to emphasize their connection to OT in their advertising. For the telecom multinational’s subsidiaries, however, celebrities are a useful tool to position themselves in the local market. But only if the time is right.
Last June, OT launched an international ad campaign broadcast for Iraqna on Arab satellite channels and CNN featuring Iraqi singer Kazem Al Saher. The choice seemed obvious. “He’s Iraqi with a strong fan base in the country. People will recognize and relate to him much easier than they would if you use someone like Amr Diab or any other celebrity,” explains Sawiris. “They’re also very proud of him being Iraqi and famous. In this case, he becomes a great way to reach out and connect the people in Iraq with the brand.”

Al Saher appeared the right guy for the job, but Sawiris says running such an upbeat ad campaign back in 2003 when Iraqna first got its license, given the highly volatile situation in Iraq at the time, would have been in poor taste.

But now, with Iraqna facing increased competition from Iraq’s other GSM networks, Sawiris admits the company needs a little branding boost. “We had a monopoly over central Iraq, but we’ve recently gotten competition so people can now choose [their mobile service],” he says. “In addition, our license is up for renewal. This means that we need the advertising and the branding. So right now is the perfect time to bring in a celebrity to push the brand forward.”

Who’s selling who
Companies that use celebrity advertising must make sure the celebrity is promoting the brand and not the other way around. According to Darwish of Leo Burnett, the moment the celebrity begins to overshadow the brand it’s time to cut ties and move on. “It’s a very fine line that advertisers have to walk,” he says. “While in most cases, the advertiser is capitalizing on the celebrity [status] of the star, the star is also counting on the ad to promote them.”

And unless the celebrity’s values and those of the product are closely linked, there’s a good chance the celebrity will be remembered more than the product he or she is promoting. Some suggest Coca-Cola’s latest ad campaign is going this way. The soft drink giant’s commercials with Lebanese superstar Nancy Ajram have many wondering who’s promoting whom. The sultry singer’s persona seems to eclipse the brand, focusing attention instead on her.

Mobinil was in a similar situation with Hakim, but Sultan insists it was hardly a case of a celebrity “vampiring” their product. “There are select cases where you’re branding the star,” he admits. “Any company that goes into this type of campaign is aware of the [symbiotic] nature of the relationship. There’s really no harm in it as long as the product is still getting the focus.”

He says advertisers must be acutely aware of their targets, and be prepared to end the campaigns once they achieve them or the ads begin working against them. “Using a celebrity must have a purpose,” he says. “Once this purpose ends so should the relationship. This avoids getting into the dilemma of who’s promoting who.”

Knowing when to pull the plug on a celebrity is difficult, but important, insists Darwish. “People might be intrigued by a particular celebrity for a while and influenced by their taste in products or services. However, at a certain point, people get bored. The equation then becomes how do you, as an advertiser, get the benefit of the celebrity’s star power without it turning into a burden on your branding process.”

Pepsi avoids this dilemma by constantly changing celebrities and, at times, using multiple stars. By having no particular person associated with its brand, it reduces the risk of brand damage should the celebrity lose popularity, while increasing the chance that consumers will identify with one of its many celebrities, and hence its brand.

For Kabil, the logic is that as long as the celebrity Pepsi uses is hot, then so are they. “We always survey the market to figure out who are the most popular stars,” he explains. “As long as they’re popular, we keep using them.”

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