“When a celebrity with a lot of followers tweets something, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get an avalanche of traffic.” – Ricky Van Veen, co-founder and CEO of College Humor  [SocialTimes.com].

Van Veen’s comment, while just a single remark in a much broader interview, pries into an ongoing dilemma that marketing is facing – who influences consumers?

In the “old days” brand marketing became almost formulaic: Take a compelling message, put a compelling plot behind it and pair it up with an icon to really drive results. Browse old TV or Print ad archives and its clear: this worked. Fast forward into the modern age and celebrity visibility has not gone away, in fact thanks to inventions like reality TV, twitter and just the simple amount of information consumers are able to access, celebrities have likely become even bigger.

But the role of the celebrity has changed.

Today’s celebrity is important and visible making them an ideal cornerstone to whip up attention. Attention however is not, as any direct marketer will tell you, sales. Today’s consumer is informed; right or wrong there is more information out there than anyone wants to read, a significant shift from when John Wayne put his name behind Camel cigarettes.  A celebrity is an icon.

“Some 70% of Americans say they consult product reviews or consumer ratings before making a purchase” – Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates – October 2008 via Business Week

On the other hand, if you take a look at the Social Commerce Stats page BazaarVoice maintains and you’ll find literally hundreds more quotes about the power, demand and use of ratings and reviews like the one above. When it gets down to brass tax, it is the everyday user who, through a good post, a bad post, or even no post, makes or breaks the sale.

One conversation between a group of friends; one pseudo-anonymous 5 star review on Amazon; one rant on a Facebook wall. It all adds up to trust, credibility and authentic support. Technology has made people aware of what other people think. The user is now the influencer.

The right celebrity still has value, but relevancy matters.

When Eminem paired up with Chrysler for the Super Bowl / Detroit ad the first comments were surprise and after a few minutes the conversation became very positive (10 million views later it’s still rolling with 32,000 thumbs-up to just  1,600 down). Eminem wasn’t saying this was the best car ever – he was an icon of the location bringing attention back to it and the brand that is represented by it. An endorsement of the brand and where it’s going was something authentic and it worked.  

Similarly there are many celebrities who have built their brand in social channels. Ashton Kutcher is probably the most common example, and why not, he has over 6.5 million twitter followers and while the vast majority of these individuals are likely not even using Twitter anymore, have little “Klout”, he’s spent enormous time setting up his personality as someone accessible and connected. If you can get @aplusk to talk about a brand that’s relevant to who is as a persona, you can find success.

Flip it around and unfortunately there’s a lot more bad than good. Look at the 10 Strangest Celebrity Endorsements  blog and you’ve got the former U.S.S.R. president positioned next to one of the flagships of consumerism: Louis Vuitton. Flip on TV and you’ve had the outspoken A-Team member, “Mr. T”, talking about cooking products. These are ads that draw visibility, perhaps get the person’s attention, but are not going to close a sale [unless it’s a practical joke].

It’s not a black and white subject… brands will not, cannot just drop celebrities, too much visibility is at stake; but the icons that they use must be the right partner to support their brand, and frankly, the icon’s as well.

So what is a marketer to do?

In my career I’ve had the chance to work on a number of celebrity driven marketing campaigns and without giving away any specific on which ones or at which role, I’m quite certain that they create noise, attention and awareness which are all good things. Sales however require something more – visibility paired with believability.

In a world with social media nothing is more important than the authenticity that user generated content can bring, except perhaps for people wanting to see if the product is really that good in the first place. You can’t do a good job in convincing people to buy when no one is looking at you, so while I wouldn’t rely on a random celebrity to sell my products any more than I would believe their ad as a consumer, their voice can bring the right attention to push people to take that next look.

Just imagine an ad where a major celebrity, someone with a family, in the spotlight talked about their first trip to Disneyland and told you to read a million “real” experiences on the new Disney stories page. Or an ad with a musician telling you that they went to iTunes for the best new songs, rated by you, the users. Attention getting, believable and relevant.

Celebrity marketing can work. It just works best when you understand that an icon doesn’t influence, we do.