Head to Head: Are brands wasting time using celebrity endorsements?
In this series, Mumbrella invites the industry’s senior PR professionals to share their opposing views on the industry’s biggest issues. This week, Aaron Brooks, co-founder at Vamp, goes head to head with opr’s head of brand advocacy, Erin Murphy, on whether or not brands are wasting time using celebrity endorsements.
There are many executives, brands and agencies who warn against the use of micro-influencers as a form of advertising, while others believe top tier celebrities and famous influencers are the best way to grow a brand.
Vamp’s co-founder Aaron Brooks believes the use of top-tier celebrities as influencers is a waste of time and celebrity endorsements are incredibly expensive and focus on the the wrong metric.
Meanwhile, Erin Murphy, head of brand advocacy at opr Agency, disagrees and argues that top-tier celebrity influencers play a vital role as brand advocates and can deliver reach.
Yet another attempted plug for influencer agencies!
Influencers make very little impact, because quite simply anyone can call themselves one and their is no single, authoritative measure of influence. Prove me wrong.
Many Australian influencers are products of lazy PR agencies who end up building the influencers profile more so than the brand they’re hired to look after. Your typical Aussie influencer that turns up to launch events is either friends with some lowly paid PR exec or who’s appearance fee is a free-teeth whitening product / goodie bag. At your next event, I encourage brand managers to talk to some of these people. You’ll quickly realise their influence doesn’t stretch too far and you’re funding their lifestyle aspirations.
Now, can someone explain why would anyone should care what a fashion influencer has to say about a $5000 LG fridge? https://www.instagram.com/ashleighdmello/
Hi Broken Record, your answer is in the comments: https://www.instagram.com/p/BnODVajA5pJ/?taken-by=ashleighdmello