How to Get a Celebrity to Endorse Your Product

A celebrity endorsement can be an extremely powerful addition to your marketing and promotion arsenal. Smart, agile companies are learning how to leverage the added credibility that celebrities can bring to your marketing campaign.

If a major celebrity endorsed your product, what do you think would happen? That’s right. Instant activity, social sharing, new customers and social media going crazy, all over you and your product.

True, you can BUY all of this with enough money spent on advertising, but there is one critical difference, no matter how much money you spend on advertising, people don’t believe it. They may not 100% believe in what the celebrity tells them either, but enough will that it gives you a powerful boost to your advertising effectiveness.

Major brands like Nike wouldn’t spend the hundreds of millions they spend on celebrity endorsements if it didn’t bring a great return, and now, even mid-sized companies can take advantage of this powerful marketing tool.

So how do you go about it? How do you get a celebrity to endorse you?

Most people assume that all they have to do is search for the celebrity name plus manager, or celebrity name plus agency, call up a cigar chomping manager, find out how much it is, and have them fax over a contract.

If you started on this process and got nowhere, here is why:

0) There are many other people involved with any given celebrity, in fact it is different with just about every celebrity, so there is no one person to call. We will explain all the key people and how it works later on this page

1) The cigar chomping manager that you picture (yes, they do exist) doesn’t want to take your calls, because its not really their job to do deals like this, it is their job to shop the celebrity around Hollywood and other places in order to get them real work.

– Not only that, but if you search all the big agencies, you won’t find any phone numbers. The agencies don’t want calls from the public, they just aren’t set up to handle all the thousands of fans and time wasters.

So, even if you do find the agency, it is really hard to find the agent, and even if you do there won’t be any phone number. Even if there is a phone number your phone call probably won’t be returned.

If you are able to get this far, and somehow do find the phone number of the manager, and do get him on the phone, in many cases he or she is not the right person that deals with endorsements, or the celebrity doesn’t listen to what they say or even like them. I know this is weird but this is Hollywood, and it does get even weirder.

We will go later on into the key people that you have to know and be able to contact related to a celebrity, but even if you find the exact right person then your deal may go nowhere because if you have never worked with that celebrity before, or if you have never done a celebrity endorsement before, you are considered a “one off”, which means that its relatively high risk, low reward and not really worth the time of most managers. This is true even if you have a $100k or higher budget.

This is why most companies don’t even try to get celebrity endorsements–

• – They never even thought it was possible
• – If it was possible they didn’t think they could do it
• – They started the process and couldn’t get the right number to call

95% of potential celebrity endorsement deals stop right there.

If you work for a Fortune 500 company, of course, all the rules are different. For one thing somebody does have the numbers you need, and people will take your calls. In fact, certain types of agents even cold call to get some of that big moola.

So, if you are not a Fortune 500 company are you out in the cold? Not necessarily. Stay with us, dear reader, we will make it worth your while.

Here is how the process usually continues:

• – If they got the right number to call, they never get a call back and the deal dies.

Most people actually don’t get the right person to talk to anyway, that would be responsible for the given celebrities endorsements.

• – If you do make it to the point of being able to talk to someone, because you are a “one off” you will be quoted a much higher rate to compensate them for what they consider to be a greater risk and less worth their time.
• – As the potential deal progresses, they are  given very little priority. This is assuming they even reach the right person.

You might be saying to yourself, “this is a terrible way to do business”, and in other industries, you would be right. The big difference between Hollywood and the world of celebrities and their personnel is that everyone already wants the “product”. That is not in question. Everyone wants to meet and spend time with a major celebrity, or have them do an appearance, or promote their product. Most businesspeople spend the majority of their time getting people to want and buy their product. In the world of celebrites, that is already accomplished by the Hollywood machine, that is why this world is so baffling and frustrating to many businesspeople trying to get a simple appearance or endorsement deal done.

So the big problem the managers have, assuming you have the right person, is that not everyone is really serious, can pay, and is business-like about actually doing a real deal.

People go crazy with and about celebrities, stalk them, and try to find any pretext to meet with them. This means that for the agents and managers they get people that flake out on deals and make them look bad. They might even lose the right to represent that celebrity. That is why they tend to trust companies that have an ongoing need for celebrities that they have worked with before, and it is hard to get “in” with that agent or manager.

How It Really Works with Celebrities

So if there is no cigar chomping main manager that I have to call? Who do I call? How does it work?

First of all, every celebrity works a little differently. There is just no substitute for knowing people, knowing the celebrity, their people, the best approach, and the best strategy for getting the deal done. There are, however, some commonalities that you should know. Most celebrities have the following in their “team” or entourage:

1) The “primary” – This is the main manager who commonly works with one of the big agencies and has as their main duty to shop the celebrity around, and get them work in the industry, including auditions, meetings, offers, etc. Sometimes the celebrity doesn’t even talk with this person and what they say about a deal carries no weight, and can backfire if you present the deal to them, especially if they like it. (Welcome to Hollywood.)

2) The “business manager” – Often the business manager is also an accountant and handles the celebrities money, but not always. They handle many duties for the celebrity and sometimes are the key people that have the celebrity’s ear regarding going forward with an endorsement deal. We should also point out here that this manager is in a position to know if the celebrity is more likely to do an endorsement that they wouldn’t ordinarily take on because they are buying a new house, going through a divorce, want to get a new car, have a big tax bill coming up soon, or any other financial situation that works in your favor in getting the deal done.

3) The attorney or entertainment lawyer – The attorney doesn’t always have the clout, and sometimes has no clout in getting the endorsement done but this is not always true. Attorneys have their own back channel network and sometimes deals come to one of the other managers via the celebrity’s attorney or some other attorney. Generally you are wasting your time chasing down attorneys though.

4) The “rep” manager – This manager is all about opportunities for the celebrity via licensing, and sometimes handles endorsements and appearances. Not every celebrity has one of these, and they carry varying amounts of clout in the big scheme of things.

5) The BFF, or BMF of a celebrity – we aren’t saying this is logical, but certain celebrities, many celebrities in fact, only trust their “inner circle” of lifelong friends, which are often times other celebrities. Some celebrities only take on anything that is “approved” by these inner circle people. How do you get past this? You have to know who they are, and who they aren’t. Sometimes there is nothing you can do about it, the deal can go along fine, until it is killed by one of these people.

6) The publicist – People commonly think that a publicist is a good person to go to to help the celebrity endorsement along, but the publicist’s job is to keep the celebrity in the press, deal with journalists, assist or plan public relations events, and they sometimes reject commercial proposals out of hand to “protect the celebrity’s brand”. Not all publicists are like this, in some cases they can be a great ally, but as a person on the celebrity’s team they have either a great positive or a great negative influence. Approach the wrong publicist the wrong way and your deal is dead.

The “inner circle” of a given celebrity is not listed anywhere, but if you are going to do business with a given celebrity you should know who they are.

SUMMARY

So far you have seen that the “business” of being a celebrity works in some ways the opposite of how you might think it does, and certainly not how you would expect it works compared to what you were taught in business school. We can help you through this process and greatly increase the likelihood of getting your deal done, and the good news is instead of adding to the cost, we can actually reduce the cost, which is counter intuitive, but true. People often want to “cut out the middleman” but in this industry you will not only pay a better price going through someone like us, but have a much higher likelihood of getting your deal done, because we have a high deal flow, people take our calls and trust us because of past deals.

*By yourself you are operating at a considerable disadvantage.

*Getting the right celebrity and having alternates for your project is important. We discuss this on other pages of our website.

*Understanding the right people to contact and not contact for a given celebrity is critical to getting your deal off the ground.

*If you can secure a celebrity endorsement, you will have a significant advantage over your competitors with equal adspend, so it is well worth doing.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO NOW

What you need to do next is very simple, either fill out the form below or call us at 888-359-4521