Is Snooki Building Gucci's Brand?
Posted by Jaci Russo
It has long been a custom for companies to gift celebrities with their products in the hopes that there will be a picture of it that will make the press. This approach to 'free pr' has generated an entire business of gift bags at awards shows and gift suites during press junkets.
One of my favorite branding practices is "borrowed glory". The theory, proven true time and time again, that if a consumer has an emotional connection to a product then they will develop an emotional connection to another product that is connected to it. If an athlete wears a particular shoe then I will wear it also to play just as well. Borrowed Glory is the basis of celebrity endorsements.
Why bother, you might ask? The value of one photo of a fashion forward celebrity wearing a specific designer can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in free publicity and that can equal millions of dollars in sales. Hence the number one question at awards shows is not "how do you feel about this nomination" but "Who are you wearing".
Along comes Jersey Shore, a train wreck of a reality tv show on MTV. The female lead 'Snooki' has been seen everywhere with a Coach bag and then all of a sudden starting wearing bags from other designers. Is she now on the list of celebrities worth gifting to? Not so much. As the New York Observer explains,
"Here's the deal: Remember how Snooki, drunk or sober, was never seen without that Coach bag dangling from the crook of her arm? Snooki and her Coach were as synonymous as The Situation and his six-pack. But then the winds of change started blowing on Jersey Shore. Every photograph of Guido-huntin' Snooki showed her toting a new designer purse. Why the sudden disloyalty? Was she trading up? Was she vomiting into her purses and then randomly replacing them? The answer is much more intriguing.
Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here's the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other's bags! Competitors' bags!"
This is Reverse Borrowed Glory and I think it's brand new. I've never heard of a company sending a competitor's product to a celebrity in the hopes to pre-emptively connect the two and make the competitor look bad. That is both genius and dirty pool all at the same time. I think we might have to amend our ebook on the New Rules of PR to include a chapter on this new practice.
