Is it time to shelve your household name?

But hang on a minute, you say. Several months ago, Jamie Oliver won a huge victory, using his celebrity status to bring about a potential revolution in the way schools feed our children. He's obviously earned our trust on this major issue. What you might ask yourself should marketers make of this?  

Well, it might help if we go back to branding basics for a moment. Whether or not you consider a celebrity to be a brand, you have to treat them as one. And funnily enough, you need to follow the same rules.

Endorsements, celebrity or otherwise, count as brand stretching and require a strategic approach. Does it/he/she fit with the brand? Will they enhance it? Is the partnership a credible one? There's nothing here that even a junior brand manager won't be familiar with when it comes to brand development.

When a partnership has been well thought through in this way, there's no doubt that celebrity endorsement can succeed. And there are some brilliant ones around. Just because so many consumers claim they would not buy a celebrity-endorsed product doesn't mean marketers should shy away from this tricky territory. 

So why do so many celebrity endorsements score high on the consumer turn-off register? Sharon Osbourne and Asda -- need I say more? Common sense anyone? And poor old Jamie O and Sainsbury's? For a while he risked becoming the supermarket Birdie Dance -- great once, twice or even three times, but hard to stomach repeated cheerily ad infinitum. But his impact can't be argued with and he's certainly flavour of the month once again. His ads featuring asparagus caused a major supermarket shortage after boosting sales of the vegetable by nearly 300%.

If it's not marketers who wield the hatchet, it's the celebrities themselves. While Vic Reeves' antics behind the wheel put the spotlight on Churchill's ad campaign, the incident illustrates that most difficult of truths. Celebrities are fallible. They can say and do "bad" things. Even the smallest of misdemeanours can count as a brand crime. 

As if that wasn't enough, although we are obsessed with celebrities like our biggest brands (Tesco, anyone?), we take a vicarious pleasure in bringing them down. The tabloids and celebrity chatter mags make their living out of character assassination.

Well, nobody said celebrity endorsement was a piece of cake -- even the best-laid plans can blow up in your face. Moreover, shifting product has never been easy in the complex relationship between a brand and a consumer. 

Yet the best celebrity endorsements can provide so many benefits. As marketers, our job is not to be swayed by hysterical headlines. Common sense and seeing things through the eye of the consumer are vital, but so too are our strategic skills. Good brand planning goes a long, long way.

If you have an opinion on this or any other issue raised on Brand Republic, join the debate in the Forum.