Good Idea or Disaster Waiting to Happen?

On the face of it, the plan makes perfect sense. After months of toiling in the lab, honing formulas, refining and redesigning and after hitting several brick walls you’ve finally done it, you’ve created the perfect product. Now all you need is the perfect celeb to market it to the masses.

With your advanced formula and their mainstream appeal, it’s a success story waiting to happen. What could possibly go wrong?

Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything.

From Victoria Beckham’s custom-designed Range Rover (complete with mohair floor mats) to porn star Ron Jeremy’s eponymous rum celeb endorsements are ten a penny. But do they add value to the product they’re flaunting or do they cheapen it to the extent where surplus stock is being sold for, well, ten a penny?

(image from www.digitalspy.com

Some celeb-fronted products – including the aforementioned Ron de Jeremy ‘adult rum’ – have performed better than expected. Others have plummeted like a millstone, destined never to be seen again. Anyone remember Paris Hilton’s Creativity Collection scrapbook? Or how about Nelly’s Pimp Juice? Nope, thought not.

For a celeb endorsement to be successful, there generally needs to be a connection between the product in question and the starlet marketing it. Lady Gaga and perfume? Sure. Hulk Hogan’s ill-fated restaurant Pastamania? No. Just no.

(image from www.anchorofgold.com

One of the biggest problems companies face when weighing up celebrity involvement is who to approach. Choose wisely and their product could become a runaway success. Choose poorly, however, and their stock is destined to sink the moment that celeb goes off the rails. For a public figure such as Lindsay Lohan, who is invariably in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, any endorsement must surely be fraught with peril. In saying that, it didn’t stop her from becoming the face of Sevin Nyne self-tanning spray in 2009.

(image from www.viply.de

Lohan’s lurid orange spray seems to have fared better than the actress herself over the last five years – which is more than can be said for other ill-fated celeb endorsements. In no particular order, here are three of the worst celeb-endorsed beauty products of all time:

The Three Most Horrendously Awful Celeb-Endorsements Of All Time

Brad Pitt, Chanel No 5. The Hollywood heartthrob was paid £4m to appear in a Chanel No 5 advert – which was then voted the worst commercial of 2012. The cringeworthy 30-second commercial damaged the perfume brand as well as harming the image that Brad Pitt had worked so tirelessly to cultivate. Still, at least he profited from it, which is more than can be said for Chanel. http://www.chanel.com/en_GB/fragrance-beauty/Fragrance-95228

The Hollywood heartthrob was paid £4m to appear in a Chanel No 5 advert – which was then voted the worst commercial of 2012. The cringeworthy 30-second commercial damaged the perfume brand as well as harming the image that Brad Pitt had worked so tirelessly to cultivate. Still, at least he profited from it, which is more than can be said for Chanel. http://www.chanel.com/en_GB/fragrance-beauty/Fragrance-95228 (image from www.sandiegored.com) Kardashian Beauty. This mascara and highlighter collection, endorsed by a triumvirate of Kardashian sisters, was beset by problems from the outset, when it ran into legal issues due to another beauty product bearing a similar name (just how many Kardashians are there?). The product then failed to interest the beauty industry thanks to a safe and uninspiring colour palette.

This mascara and highlighter collection, endorsed by a triumvirate of Kardashian sisters, was beset by problems from the outset, when it ran into legal issues due to another beauty product bearing a similar name (just how many Kardashians are there?). The product then failed to interest the beauty industry thanks to a safe and uninspiring colour palette. M by Mariah Carey. Mariah may know how to bust out a killer Christmas tune, but her olfactory senses could use a little work if her eau de parfum spray is anything to go by. Variously described as ‘nasty’, ‘cheap’ and having a ‘strong burnt marshmallow-smelling fragrance’, it would be fair to say that fans weren’t too taken with M.

Sometimes the celebrity endorses the wrong product, sometimes the product is endorsed by the wrong celebrity and sometimes, just sometimes, they strike gold with a celeb-endorsed match made in heaven.

On a final note, consumers are becoming much more savvy and learning that a celebrity endorsed beauty or skin product does not necessarily equate a superior product, in a recent survey conducted by The Anti Ageing Show 2014, 94% of respondents sated that they would NOT buy a celebrity beauty product if it was endorsed, that’s quite refreshing to read, as consumer power is now biting back and learning to take spending control into their own hands, as L’oreal rightly says “you’re worth it”.

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