What are the benefits and pitfalls of celebrity branding for food and drink products?

It’s always a tempting creative strategy to think about how sidling up to a celeb can burnish your brand.

A bit of that showbiz fairy dust can boost a product's appeal, confer trust and credibility, and create instantaneous brand cues. None of us consumers after all are immune to those deep evolutionary drives to follow the lead of high-status individuals by aligning to their behaviours and basically copying them.

But in a world where there are more willing celebs to throw money at than ever before, the trick of course is to find a proper fit, rather than forcing it.

Walkers Crisps longstanding relationship with Gary Lineker still sets the high bar.

It may be lost to the mists of time now, but Gary was once not only a feared goalscorer, but also – remarkably – a player who never received a yellow card in his career. So as football’s ‘Mr Nice Guy’ he was the ideal antagonist against which to pit Walker’s brand promise of irresistibly good crisps. So irresistible that even the saintly Lineker couldn’t resist nicking them.

It provides a brilliant lesson for us all of the value of a smartly considered endorsement rather than just a sweaty pursuit of celebrity sheen

 Read the full article in Inside Food & Drink

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