An advertising adventure

Now I’m not saying that this advert is offensive in itself, it’s actually quite nice really. The mountain shots, the exciting looking windy roads, the wistful music. It’s just that it’s Ewan McGregor and he’s so much better than this. The Long Way Round/Down was the highlight of my week for months at a time and I feel like Ewan is trading in my joy for his own cynical commercial gain. And it’s Davidoff. I mean, really?!

I feel so much better now. I might even be able to rustle up some interesting stuff about celebrity endorsements on a wider scale. Further research is also helping me to accept what Ewan has done to me, as it turns out that the most paid for celebrity advertising was 20 million dollars, to Catherine Zeta Jones of all people, for being the face of T mobile.

Not all celebrity endorsements are that worthwhile though - I can’t image a young Leonardo DiCaprio made that much when he was ‘The Hot Wheels Kid’ in the late 80s. Similarly I suspect that Matt le Blanc was not able to command close to $500,000 an episode when he made this wonderfully 90s ad for ketchup.

The course of advertising love doesn’t always run smooth, though, as Kate Moss found out when she was dropped as the face of H & M in 2005 after drug allegations. Rimmell threatened to do the same but clearly decided that all publicity is good publicity. Though they later got into trouble for misleading consumers by using ‘digitally enhanced’ lashes in a mascara advert.

Then again why have one massive celebrity playing with your product when you could have three, as happens in this extremely bizarre Pepsi advert:

David was probably just doing this one as a favour though, because he already makes a total of £19 million from advertising for Gilette, Vodafone, Adidas and Pepsi. These obscene amounts of money spent by Coke and Pepsi do sometimes make me feel bad when I just shrug at the barman who tells me their Coke is Pepsi but I’m sure that both I and they will get over it.

And after all this it turns out that we’re not even fooled by the ad men’s games anyway. Research has shown that participants preferred products when they were endorsed by a contemporary basing their support on positive personal experience rather than a high profile celebrity, who we all know is just getting paid shed loads to go into raptures about the shoes/drink/perfume.

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