Finding famous faces that fit: the UAE’s brand ambassadors

Celebrity sells… to the tune of about US$50 billion (Dh183.66bn) a year. But the world’s most sought-after faces don’t do it alone – the big bucks are made when celebrities join forces with a big-name brand, just as Nicole Kidman has done most recently with Etihad.

And that relationship – announced by the national carrier last month for the sole purpose of promoting its on-board penthouse-type cabin The Residence – raises the question: how do companies choose the celebrities they use to endorse their products or market their company?

“The most important thing in deciding who to work with is finding a person whose values align with your brand,” Paul Jankowski wrote in a celebrity-branding-partnerships piece published on the Forbes website in February.

“When you hire a spokesperson, you are telling your potential customers that this person represents your company and its values,” the chief strategist for a strategy/consumer engagement agency in Nashville in the United States wrote. “It’s tempting to team up with the hot celebrity of the moment in hopes of tapping into the publicity that emanates from their every move, but you’ll want to consider whether that partnership will benefit you in the long run.”

In the UAE, as in the rest of the world, consumers buy into “celebrity” every day, and this isn’t lost on companies in the Middle East. Marketing professionals believe that if a brand message is conveyed by a high-profile celebrity, it generally attracts a higher degree of belief in the brand than if the same message is touted by a non-celebrity.

Original article by Melinda Healy

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Finding famous faces that fit: the UAE’s brand ambassadors