Scared of the cost of celebretics? Try this. . .

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Dr. Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto

A GOOD number reacted to our past two columns on Celebretics (the practice of using celebrity endorsers as an advertising execution strategy). Most of them asked:

"What about us small, medium companies who can't afford celebrities in our advertising? What's available to us that can have the same or nearly the same persuasive power of a celebrity endorser?"

Okay, let's start answering this question with the proper diagnosis.

The proper diagnosis must basically be to understand why using a celebrity succeeds at times and why it does not at others. We mentioned in our past two columns about celebritics that even the most successful and most expensive celebrity endorser, Sharon Cuneta, does not have a 100 percent success scorecard.

So why don't you analyze "success" cases. Do this with the end in view of identifying their "common denominator." When you do this, you'll discover that the effectiveness of using a celebrity came from what the celebrity was able to get the ad audience to do. That's the word-of-mouth activity that the celebrity's "words" and recommendations succeeded in getting the ad …