A brand ambassador is usually an individual engaged by an organization to represent it or its product typically in a positive way. The idea is to drive brand awareness, deepen relationship with brand fans and promote sales.
Over time, engagement of brand ambassadors has become a strong marketing approach in the mix of advertising and other promotional methods. This is on the understanding, as stated by Milton Souza and Silvia Quintanilha Millward Brown, Brazil in their study, that celebrities can help brands stand out in the presently cluttered universe of products and advertising.
In their study, entitled ‘Does fame always lead to fortune? Using celebrities in advertising’ the researchers also noted that celebrities can help shape and communicate a brand’s image, values and personality. Brand ambassadors “can also help build brand attributes and even create aspirational appeal. As well as promoting established brands, celebrities are used to promulgate new brand images or introduce new ones”.
While the trend of the engagement of brand ambassadors to draw attention has caught up with organisations, however there appears to be misalignment in the appointment of many brand ambassadors.
Ordinarily, brand ambassadors supposed to be individuals, either role models or influencers who use the products they are promoting or have experienced such life or they are professionals in that field or were made through such life. This actual representation becomes significant and underscored because under social influence, consumers are expected to adopt the attitude advocated by the communicator.
Therefore, there should be a moral question in an event where, for instance a sports icon who built his or her life through playing football is now used to promote betting business as if his/her life was made through betting, or a lady who have not experienced dandruff be used to advertise anti-dandruff cream. More so, can a brand ambassador who doesn’t have a particular car be employed to promote such car or non-beer drinker engaged to advertise beer product and so on? Naturally, it is ideal to use a brand ambassador to create appeal and attention, but there must be proper alignment.
Customarily, brand ambassadors are expected to use their popularity to support good reputation of such brands but can they answer clients’ relevant and technical questions on the brands they are representing? This is part of the requirement of brand ambassadorship and not necessarily the TV show-off or the contract cheque.
Some organisations appear to be more focused in using the popularity of brand ambassadors to drive awareness and attention than answering the moral question of seemingly falsity in marketing.
Assessing this issue, Ekine Akonte, a PR expert based in Lagos agreed that brand ambassadors are expected to ignite the consumer make to make moves of favourable disposition to brands they represent.
“However, the question is that some products are using influencers based on the reputation of the influencer that was built that is completely different from the product. For instance, betting brands in Africa are using sports men and women that made name, as the content has no reference to the skill of the influencers as a sport man or woman. What this means is that the influencers are trading their reputation for that brand’s value which promotes quick gains against the brand ambassadors value of hard work and professionalism”.
Citing betting business as example, Akonte further said that while it is agreed that influencers are a good part of marketing initiative, there is a strong need to review the rationale behind the use of sporting icons and other characters as influencers of betting as it does only create awareness for the brand without necessarily showing both brands as having same value propositions”.
Similarly, in their study, Milton Souza and Silvia Quintanilha of Millward Brown further said all knowledge proves that one of the most important aspects when using celebrities is the link that person has with the brand, product and/or message that will be communicated.
They buttressed their point by quoting an article from the Journal of Advertising Research written by Roobina Ohanian, which says “for celebrities to be truly effective, they need to have direct connections with their endorsed products and who are perceived to be experts by target respondents.” The ‘right fit celebrity’ can enhance communication and can give credibility to the brand.
They further said that when the celebrity and the brand share the same values, the benefits are maximized both for the brand and the celebrity. Akonte further said that influencers are best used to demonstrate a value in a product when there are correlations such as Sensodyne toothpaste and dentists.
Daniel Obi
