Are you using celebrity endorsements to boost your sales?

A new ad campign with celebrity endorsement launched here in Australia last night. Hollywood star Al Pacino fronted the new campaign for Australian-owned coffee brand Vittoria which premiered during the broadcast of MasterChef.

My clients and closest friends will know I didn’t get to see it as I don’t watch television, however the marketer in me was fascinated to hear about the new ad and the use of a celebrity to endorse a product. It’s claimed this is the first time that Pacino, star of films such as The Godfather and Scarface, has agreed to endorse a product.

Vittoria is a 100% family owned Australian company, set up by two Sicilian brothers in 1947 who saw an opportunity for Italian food and beverage products in Australia. The ads were filmed in New York City in May, and aired for the first time in Australia last night.

Les Schirato, CEO of Vittoria Coffee, said: “We’re incredibly proud and honoured that Al Pacino has agreed to star in a commercial for Vittoria. What’s even more incredible is this is the first time the star of Godfather, Scent of a Woman and Scarface has agreed to endorse a product. The fact that Pacino is from an Italian migrant background – just like our family –makes him feel like a true ambassador for our brand.”

Levinson joined the project at the suggestion of Pacino, who worked with the director on the television drama You Don’t Know Jack, which recently aired in the United States.

“We are proud that as an Australian business, Vittoria coffee has been able to secure one of the world’s leading stars to endorse our brand,” added Schirato.

It isn’t the first time an Australian brand has used an American star to front its advertising. Recently the Greater Building Society surprised everyone with its deal for comedic star Jerry Seinfeld to front its ads.

In our celebrity-obsessed world, getting a celebrity to speak for a product or service is seen as an effective advertising method. But I want to encourage all business owners, before they search for a celebrity of their own to consider a few things.

Sure, it’s great to get a celeb to speak on you/ your product or company’s behalf, but the best method of advertising a product or service is the product or service itself. If your goods are good, they will sell themselves. In the career market - if you are good, your skills and expertise will sell itself.

How many times in your life have you used a product solely because of a celebrity endorsement?

Also you need to be realistic - unless you’re cashed up with lots of money you’re just not getting the big “A-List” stars. So what can you do? Try local celebrities like radio DJs. Many local radio personalities are expected to advertise for a certain number of sponsors.

Bus most importantly have an excellent product first. Remember, when a celebrity speaks on your behalf, you’re putting their reputation out there as well as your own. In the case of your career and having someone be your referree you want to be sure they are 100% happy to endorse you and will say only great things!

Heidi Alexandra Pollard - The Living Leaders Advocate

To your success

Have fun while boosting your brand

So you’re already well versed with social networking sites - you regularly update your Facebook profile, you have hundreds of professional connections on LinkedIn, and you manage to share most of each day in bite sized a 140 character Tweets.

So what’s next I hear you ask.

While you may be well up to speed with adding value to your business through social media, do you know how to use it as a tool for successfully marketing your personal brand?

no? Well here are some quick easy tips for leveraging your brand on the web:

Utilize services that allow you to post to multiple sites and services with a single post. For this purpose, I highly recommend Posterous.com. It’s a free service that allows you to post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn by sending a single email.

Trial and error is the best way to learn: try different things to see what people respond to most. This is especially true when you have a diverse audience with varying interests, it’s important to experiment and test to see what works and what people are responding to. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see what gets your audience interacting.  

Join the conversation. Social media is all about online conversations. It’s a place to listen to your users and encourage participation. If you are too heavy handed with your “marketing” you may well run the risk of alienating your community of followers. Respond to other people’s posts, interact, be yourself and join in the conversation. Remember your followers follow you because they believe you are interesting ans share content of value - never ram your stuff down their throats.

Be real. People want to follow someone they can relate to - the real authentic you. Including  photos, quotes, things that have happened to you - let people see who’s behind the brand.

Make it fun!!! Social media is about having fun and interacting. Show your passion, be a little silly, don’t be afraid to show your quirky self.

In light of this last point I have been playing around and having fun with my brand - check out my new animation video here and make your own to boost your brand! http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6516217/

Yours in prosperity, passion and purpose

Heidi Alexandra Pollard, The Living Leaders Advocate

Get more social to boost your career

I guarantee almost everyone has done some level of ego-surfing and googled their name to see what comes up. While it may sound like a trip down vanity lane googling yourself on a semi regular basis is a great way to track and measure your professional online presence.

Using quotation marks around your name eg: “Sarah Smith” is the cleanest form of searching and will ensure you just get results for your own name (as well as any others with the same name)

It’s a great way to track and measure your presence as well as get a feel for the topics and themes associated with you on the web. Why? Because I guarantee you many prospective employers these days are googling applicants names to confirm resume claims and get a feel for what others say about them as well as what they get up to on the weekend! Sound scary?

With Facebook leading the way and Twitter activity on the rise, Australians are rapidly increasing their participation in social media, content sharing and personal brand building. A recent study showed nearly four in five of Australia’s nine million social media users sent or shared a photo in the past year and nearly three quarters shared a link. The biggest increases in social media usage were reading and posting on Twitter and reading wikis.

Twitter’s audience levels grew by more than 400% in 2009 so if you’ve got something to say, that’s the space!

“The opportunities for brands and companies to tap into the social media phenomenon are really just beginning to emerge and to date we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” states Melanie Ingrey, Research Director for Nielsen’s online business.

Your personal brand is the most valuable asset you have - what are you doing to build your brand online?

Yours in prosperity

Heidi Alexandra Pollard
The Communicator’s Coach

Is your brand as clear as Epsom salts?

My own coach from the US Therese Skelly recently posted the following article and I thought it had some great points of interest relevant to communicating your personal career brand. Enjoy and thanks Therese!

Is your brand as clear as Epsom salts?

This has got to get the award for the WORST marketing ever. Reading a bag of epsom salts (don’t ask!) I was surprised from a marketing perspective at what it said “Epsom Salt – Magnesium Sulfate U.S.P – Natural Mineral” (and here’s where it gets interesting….)

A soaking aid for minor sprains and bruises

A saline laxative for the short term relief of constipation

A plant nutrient for vigorous lawns, flowers, plants, vegetables and trees.

Now I don’t know about you, but I doubt even brilliant marketers like my friend Michele PW or the famous Dan Kennedy could come up with copy for a product that helps with bruises, constipation, and gardening! All the marketing messages I teach about having to have a unified message just get thrown out the window with this thing.

As I re-read this bag of Epsom salts, I had the fantasy that a bunch of marketers were sitting around brainstorming, and finally they said, “What the heck, let’s just throw it all in.  We can’t figure out what to say, so we’ll just list the uses and let it go from there.”

With epsom salts, you pretty much know what you use it for.  And unlike coaching or whatever business you are in, there’s only one variety.  There’s not mint flavored, low fat, west coast, designer salts.  You get one thing.  Where you put it is your own business!  But it makes it easy because there’s only ONE way it’s delivered.

But in your business you don’t have the ability to have a crappy marketing message because you can’t figure out if you work with business owners, or mom’s, or teens, or people in transition.

That’s what this article is about.  Just because Walgreen’s can get away with having a generic product with bad packaging, as a small business owner, you can’t.  Your only choice is to narrow your focus, get crystal clear about who you serve, and what they get, and then go about creating compelling language around that.

So where do you start?

The things you need to be able to clearly articulate are what you do (as in your unique expertise) who you do it for (target market) and what problems you solve for them.  Most people start out as generalists, but the goal is to refine your market, offering and services even tighter as you get more and more sophisticated.  If you are stuck here, grab a mastermind partner or survey some old clients to get more information about how they benefited from working with you.

Why is this important?  Success is about being seen as the foremost expert in your industry. 

Well I hope you enjoyed Therese’s article - something to ponder because unlike Epsom salts, there’s no one else like you!

All the best

Heidi Alexandra Pollard

The Communicator’s Coach