Guy Pewsey considers the shallow yet successful world of celebrity endorsement. Would you like to smell like Celine Dion? No? How about Gwyneth Paltrow? No? Mariah Carey? I didn’t think so. And yet the sheer volume of celebrity-endorsed scents on the market has recently reached ridiculous levels, to the point that even Jade Goody released her own last year (called Shhh, ironically enough.) Other big names who are queuing up to give you a whiff include the Beckhams (his and hers), Hilary Duff (part of her ‘stuff by duff’ range. Pure poetry) and Paris Hilton, and while many may scoff at the long list of products available, it’s a lucrative business. When greeted with a sign in the middle of Superdrug informing me that I should be celebrating the fifth anniversary of J-Lo’s Glow by purchasing the supposedly classic scent, I of course declined, but thousands do not follow my example. Instead, they flock in their masses to pick up a bottle of Cliff Richard’s Devil Woman or Summer Holiday, or a vial of Naomi Campbell’s originally titled Naomi Campbell. Apparently it stinks. Do such customers hope that somehow the perfumes of their favourite celebrities will somehow rub off on them, as if they are buying a bottle of Naomi or Cliff’s hormones? I suspect they won’t turn into stroppy has-been supermodels or over-tanned closet homosexuals overnight. Even the names of some of them are frankly ridiculous; My Insolence by Guerlain, endorsed by Hilary Swank, for example. Who would want Hilary Swank’s insolence, at £25 a pop? I could borrow some off my chav sister for free.While celebrities have been boosting sales of signature scents for more than five years now, it is perhaps signature clothing lines that have truly exploded recently. The country was attacked by stealth, as George at Asda began to stock Mary Kate and Ashley accessories. The trend snowballed, and now we’re bombarded with clothes by Kate Moss at Topshop, Penelope Cruz at Mango, Madonna at H&M and Fearne Cotton at New Look. Her range is all made of cotton. You can’t make things like this up. And what role did these women play in designing these lines? None whatsoever. Most were sent samples before being asked if they prefer the jeans with the patch or without; the dress in the plum or the maroon. It’s not rocket science, just big business. But sometimes, even the big companies get it wrong. Lily Allen’s New Look line was a marketing disaster, showcasing the singer’s severe bad taste manifested into a myriad ruffled prom dresses worn with baseball shoes. While ‘Kate Moss at Topshop’ sold out in hours, ‘Lily Allen at New Look’ was as effective a campaign as ‘Gary Glitter at Toys R Us’. And yet, it would be stupid to suggest that such an issue is present only in the typically female worlds of perfume and clothing. Men are as easily led as women, buying Gillette razors endorsed by David Beckham and Renault Clios driven by Thierry Henry. Anyone remember those light-up trainers from more than ten years ago? ‘Hi, I’m Gareth Southgate. With these shoes you can be a champion.’ I believed it, and so did a hundred thousand other kids.While we may therefore have been awfully gullible as children, we are equally unforgiving when the fresh-faced stars who sell us our stuff step out of line. We all remember Kate Moss being dropped from campaign after campaign after being photographed snorting cocaine (What? A model? Do drugs?). Perhaps most interesting is the controversy surrounding American pro-basketball player Magic Johnson. American fans discovered that Johnson’s ‘stomach ailment’ – his cover story for a while – was actually HIV, contracted from a woman who wasn’t his wife. National campaigns were scrapped, publicity deals went up in smoke, and while his career eventually recovered, the magic had gone. Despite such a concept, personalities such as Kerry Katona of Atomic Kitten fame somehow manage to keep their endorsements even though they keep showing themselves up, and I can’t help but wonder why even Iceland would want her as the face of their business. She may come across as fairly chirpy during those adverts for the prawn rings, but that’s just the feel-good amphetamines talking. While Ms. Katona goes on working, others are dismissed for the most unbelievable image changes. TV queen Jennifer Aniston was ditched by Barclaycard after being dumped by Brad. Why? Because the company felt that customers would not buy a product from a woman who couldn’t keep hold of her husband. Rumours that Angelina Jolie was sleeping with the owners of the company as well as Aniston’s spouse are sadly false.
There is something just a little embarrassing about celebrity endorsement; it seems as if by lending products their semi-famous faces they are acknowledging their own vanity and their public’s shallowness. When on the red carpet, on stage or on the catwalk, the stars can at least tell themselves that they are loved for what they are doing, whether that’s in music, film, television or fashion. The moment the billboard goes up, their fate is sealed. The shame of such a revelation leads to many international celebrities avoiding the mainstream American and European markets. Instead, they go straight to where most of the world won’t see them: China and Japan. Brad Pitt and George Clooney have both done it, and since attaching a celebrity to a new product is around two hundred percent more effective in the East than the West, it’s a guaranteed big pay cheque for the celeb in question even though they’ll never use the product in their lives, a concept displayed to great effect by Bill Murray in 2003’s Lost in Translation. So why does it work on so many people? Most apparently resist, preferring to make an informed decision from other issues such as word of mouth and their own common sense, but there are still those who see that Lewis Hamilton has an Omega watch and think that one of their own will make them more like their beloved sports star, or see the recent Keira Knightley campaign for Coco Mademoiselle and think that some new Chanel will help them feel as sexy as the young, beautiful and severely air-brushed actress. Surely though, we learnt that we cannot always copy television years ago, back when we tried to jump out of the window because Peter Pan could. If you never had that lesson given to you, it’s been a long time coming. Celebrity endorsements don’t do anything except raise the profile of another person. That’s the point. You will never look as good as Kate Moss in her Topshop range because she picked out clothes that she looked good in. You will never be as good at football as David Beckham just because you’ve just bought his trainers. It is a concept that has made a lot of people a lot of money, and cost everyone else twenty five pounds for a bottle of smelly water, or a hundred quid for Michael Owen’s trainers when you’d be better off getting a pair for a tenner down the Westgate centre. The whole idea stinks of materialism, but you just smell of Celine Dion. Sorry.
