In its quest for promotional success, the industry has turned to celebrities to help merchandise product
by Larry Aylward, managing editor
See former NBA basketball stars Michael Jordan and Larry Bird shoot hoops for a Big Mac.
Hear actor Robert Mitchum say in a proud and convincing tone: "Beef. It's What's For Dinner."
Welcome to the glitzy and glamorous world of celebrity marketing. Although television and radio are inundated with popular names, faces and voices promoting products, celebrity marketing is nothing new, even to the meat industry. Hormel Foods Corp. is credited for being the first company to market the first singing advertisement back in 1940.
The Austin, Minn.-based company contracted with George Burns and Gracie Allen to advertise Spam over network radio airwaves. Artie Shaw and his 23-piece orchestra backed the duo as they sang a jingle to the tune of "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me."
According to Hormel, the endorsement helped Spam sales reach a new level. By 1941, Hormel had sold about 40 million pounds of the product.
But do celebrity endorsements help sell all products? Is it worth it for a food or meat company to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a celebrity to say: "I love this hamburger?"
Jordan was reportedly paid $3 million by McDonald's and between $3 million and $4 million from Sara Lee Corp. to help sell Ball Park Franks. Hardee's recently approached singer Tony Bennett about appearing in TV spots. The crooner told the Wall Street Journal: "It certainly will be lucrative. They're being very good to me."
The bottom line: Do celebrity advertisements focus too much on celebrities and not enough on product?
"In a lot of instances, there are celebrity endorsers who embody the real personas of brands," claims Mike Ritchey, marketing manager for Goodmark Foods, the Raleigh, N.C.-based maker and distributor of Slim Jims, which are endorsed by the World Wrestling Federation's Randy "Macho Man" Savage. "But there is some danger with celebrity endorsers. Sometimes people enjoy the commercial, but they don't remember the product."
Why are consumers so enamored with celebrity endorsers?
"People are always looking for heroes," says Ritchey. "That's as close as I can come to an answer."
Janice Meyer, an analyst for New York City-based Prudential Securities, points out that most celebrity endorsers are popular in the fast-food market because teenagers and young adults-who make up most of the customer base-are "entranced" by their distinguished faces and candor.
A celebrity is not enough
However, a celebrity endorser alone may not lead to a product's overnight success.
"Celebrities' names don't assure a product's success," says Tom Vierhile, executive editor of two publications for Marketing Intelligence, a Naples, N.Y.-based new-product tracking firm. "The name recognition of a celebrity should help a product gain entrance onto a store shelf. But from there, it's anybody's guess as to how well the product will sell."
Most importantly, a celebrity endorser has to be believable, Vierhile points out.
"If you have someone like (pop singer) Paul McCartney promoting the meat industry, most people wouldn't find him as a credible person, being the devout vegetarian he is," Vierhile adds.
The beef industry knows that. In the late 1980s, the Beef Industry Council hired actress Cybill Shepherd to star in television commercials promoting the industry.
Later, Shepherd admitted she didn't eat meat.
"The purpose of any ad is to get notice and increase awareness, and a celebrity helps a company get instant recognition," says Chris Strange, senior vice president and group creative director for J. Walter Thompson, a Chicago-based advertising agency that represents Oscar Mayer Corp. "But there are celebrities that you question why they are promoting some products at all."
Oscar Mayer enlisted boxer George Foreman to promote its product because "he's likable and approachable," Strange says.
Foreman is also noted for his big appetite, and it made sense for Oscar Mayer to select him to promote the company's Big & Juicy Hot Dogs, which are hardly low in calories and fat (the quarter pound variety dog has 360 calories and 34 grams of fat). Strange would not reveal how much Oscar Mayer paid Foreman for his services.
A good match is also what drew Goodmark Foods to "Macho Man" Savage. Ritchey says the company was very selective when it went looking for a celebrity to promote Slim Jims. Its target audience: male teen-agers aged 12 to 17, according to Ritchey.
Goodmark Foods conducted television ratings studies of the World Wrestling Federation. Ritchey says the company found male teen-agers comprised a large part of the WWF viewing audience.
"It's clear to me that teen-agers know far more about professional wrestlers than they do about presidents of the United States," Ritchey claims.
Savage, whose character is owned by the WWF, has been promoting Slim Jims for nearly three years during WWF programs, and on MTV and ESPN.
"Ninety-percent of male teens connect Randy Savage with Slim Jims," Ritchey says.
Savage's presence is paying dividends for Goodmark. And yes, the brawny Savage will occasionally munch down a Slim Jim.
"Our Slim Jim business is up more than 20 percent this year," Ritchey adds. "And it was up more than 20 percent the previous year."
More than a celebrity
On occasion, a celebrity will endorse a product for more reasons than money and recognition.
Entertainer Jimmy Dean didn't get into the sausage business to stroke his own ego or thicken his wallet. Dean, chairman of the board for Sara Lee Corp.-owned Jimmy Dean Foods, became a sausage maker because he believed he could bring a better product to dining tables throughout the country.
"It's not a matter of me slapping my name on a product," Dean told MM&T. "I accept responsibility for the quality of the product. If you like it, I did it; and if you don't like it, I did it, too."
Dean, who had his own network TV series in the 1960s and starred in motion pictures including "Diamonds Are Forever," claims he also wanted to diversify his career interests.
"I never had a lot of faith in the entertainment business," adds Dean, author of "Big Bad John," a song that sold 6 million records and was made into a motion picture. "I've seen entertainers get as hot as a depot stove, and then they turn around and they're broke."
Dean is more than a celebrity endorser. "I'm knowledgeable about the industry because I learned about the industry," he points out.
Most of today's kids and teen-agers have no idea Dean graced stages and movie screens. In a sense, Dean has become a celebrity to another generation-via his sausage line.
"Kids today call me the sausage man. That's fine with me," Dean points out.
The voice
The Beef Industry Council has found that successful TV advertisements don't require familiar faces. A quality voice and tasteful music will do just fine.
In the past, the Beef Industry Council enlisted celebrities, including actors James Garner, Timothy Busfield and the aforementioned Shepherd to promote beef. The industry was a bit burned by the non-carnivorous Shepherd and later by Garner, who suffered a heart attack.
The council decided to change the direction of its ad campaign. Its current ad theme, "Beef. It's What's for Dinner," was honored by Advertising Age for having the world's best food advertising campaign.
The television commercials, which debuted in May 1992, utilize a catchy composition by classic composer Aaron Copeland. The off-camera voice belongs to Mitchum.
"Robert Mitchum's voice was chosen for no other reason except its resonant quality and characteristic," says Jonathan Blake, vice president and account director of Chicago-based Leo Burnett Co., the agency that created the campaign. "(The voice) could have been anyone, including a complete unknown or a standard announcer."
Blake says the point of the campaign is not to get listeners to identify the voice as Mitchum's and assume the actor was endorsing the beef industry.
"We never publicized that it was Mitchum's voice," Blake adds. "And there's no mention of it in the ad."
Overall, Blake claims the campaign has helped stimulate beef sales at the retail level.
"And we seem to be positively influencing people's attitudes about beef through the campaign," Blake adds.
When a 'star' fades...
Like a shooting star, a celebrity's appeal is destined to fizzle in time. And the brightest star often burns out the quickest. Just ask professional football player William "The Refrigerator" Perry.
In 1986, the Chicago Bears won the Super Bowl and Bear defensive tackle Perry became America's endorsement darling. McDonald's was quick to sign him to a contract.
But Perry's star flickered as fast as it turned bright. Such is the case with celebrity endorsers. Their endorsement life spans are dictated by their careers and personal lives.
For instance, in the late '80s, Madonna starred in television commercials promoting Pepsi. But the disputatious Madonna released a controversial music video creating such a stir that Pepsi was forced to pull the ad. It's debatable if Madonna ended up hurting or helping Pepsi's image.
"There are risks to celebrity advertising," Prudential's Meyer points out.
Meyer admits that a spokesperson such as Jordan is popular enough to be used extensively as a celebrity endorser. But even Jordan's star will eventually fade. Meyer suggests companies use more than one celebrity to promote their products.
"You never want to hitch your horse to only one celebrity," she adds. "And you're finding a lot of companies moving away from celebrity advertising that focuses on one individual and more toward event advertising, such as World Cup soccer."
Many companies also invent fictional characters to promote their products.
Arguably, McDonald's Ronald McDonald, first played by television weatherman Willard Scott, is one of the most popular fictional characters-turned-celebrities in history.
"A fictional character will never get busted for drugs," Marketing Intelligence's Vierhile says. "That's part of the rationale. (Fictional characters) are celebrities, but they don't have some of the baggage that human celebrities carry around."
A Match Made in Hamburger Heaven
Through a tune and his own admiration of the cheeseburger, singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett has helped increase business at a popular family-owned hamburger stand in Northeast Ohio.
Buffett has become Akron-based Sky-Way Drive-In's unofficial spokesman. His popular composition, "Cheeseburger in Paradise," has become the fast-food restaurant's unofficial jingle.
Sky-Way is an area institution of sorts. For years, the restaurant has been a magnet-attracting burger lovers of all ages. There's something unique about its special-recipe burgers that have kept patrons coming back for more than 40 years.
Buffett is one of those patrons. He bit into his first Sky-Way cheeseburger about 10 years ago, and he has been coming back ever since.
In fact, Buffett enjoys the burgers so much that he raves about them during concerts when he performs in the area. As a prelude to performing "Cheeseburger in Paradise," Buffett usually gives Sky-Way a plug. Area newspapers, magazines and radio stations, too, have picked up on the Buffett/Sky-Way burger love affair.
Steve Large, Sky-Way's third generation manager, claims Buffett's food reviews have helped the old-style drive-in restaurant garner more business, especially during the summer months. He says it's not uncommon for a patron to order a "Cheeseburger in Paradise."
"There's no statistical measure of how Buffett has helped our business financially," Large adds. "But people come in all of the time and talk about him."
Large says his business has refrained from capitalizing on Buffett's name to further help business.
"We won't run an advertisement in the paper that says: 'This is where Jimmy Buffett eats.' We won't run a 'Buffett Special.' We don't feel right doing that," he points out.
"Still, it doesn't take away from the fact that a lot of people know that he does eat burgers from Sky-Way."
More than a year ago, Buffett released a retrospective album that spanned hits from his career. A booklet in the album included Buffett's listing of the top cheeseburgers in the United States. Sky-Way made the list, and Large says he couldn't have asked for better publicity.
Through tradition, a popular product and a four-star review from Buffett, Large has found that the best marketing ploy is perhaps of the oldest form.
"We're just letting word of mouth take its course," Large adds.