:: adgruntie :: Fewer Celebs in UK Ads

+ Steven Brook over at the MediaGuardian, reports on the decline of celebs being used in ads in the UK. Here's a couple key points.

"Potentially they give your brand clarity - it makes your brand stick out in a way that's different to other people's," said Peter Walshe, the global account director of the CelebZ research unit at Millward Brown.

Matthew Bull, the worldwide creative director of the advertising agency Lowe, said that many adverts used celebrities to mask a weak idea, but if an idea was strong celebrities could enhance them.

Thing is the majority of celebs used in ads end up in Mr. Bull's category, rather than in Mr. Brown's. For example, Buick's print ads have Tiger Woods is in the foreground with the car smallish and in the background. Hardly any copy. So, just because you throw Woods into the ad it's going to make people run out and purchase it? I doubt it. Throwing in a celeb for the sake of it is bad advertising, bad strategy and bad creative.

Then there's a whole other can of worms when you have one celebrity in so many adverts that viewers can't remember if they watching an ad with, say Beckham, for Gillette or Pepsi, or Adidas. It's not a good thing.

If you choose to use famous folk in your ads, you need to make sure that you're not advertising them. The product or service you're selling has to be the star, not the, well, star. They should also be relevant to the message you're trying to get across. Otherwise, you're just wasting money on a star/personality/celeb or stroking an ego by "getting to work with X".