Celebrity “Undorsement” and Negative Product Placement

We are tired of all the marketing messages thrown at us. We’re bombarded with ads everywhere we look, so we’ve learned to ignore them. But we do pay attention to celebrities, which is why many brands use stars in their communication efforts.

Brands have picked up on our generation’s love of celebrity and will give the stars free products to show off so we’ll buy whatever said product is. Recently, though, marketers have also devised a much more devious way to associate brands with celebrities in a tactic that I’m going to call “negative product placement.”

Celebrities have a lot of influence. There are countless examples of the influence celebrity culture has over our generation, but for the sake of brevity I’m going to use just one.

Everyone’s favorite prepubescent singer, Twitter star Justin Bieber, tweeted just once about MTV’s show, “The Hard Times of RJ Berger,”  and its ratings skyrocketed. If you need any more proof, just thumb through a magazine or watch an hour of primetime TV to see how often celebs are used to hock products. Brands know we pay a lot of attention to celebrities and understand that they are a big influence on our consumption habits.

A celebrity endorsement is great for a brand when someone like Christina Hendricks wears London Fog raincoats in ads, not just because she is a well-respected star, but also because she is seen as an elegant female that many women aspire to be like. However, more often than, not our favorite celebrities are less than stellar role models.

Despite popular belief, brands want nothing to do with Gen Y celebrities. This is of course a huge generalization, but it’s relatively true. Our generation grew up with reality TV and trashy tabloids. Women like Christina Hendricks are considered boring on TMZ and The Real World, so the media had to create a different type of celebrity: The narcissistic, borderline-insane drama queens that make entertaining TV. These are the Lohans, the Kardashians, and the Real Housewives of our world. Unless you are a liquor brand or a diet drug, these celebrities aren’t exactly the sort of people you want showing off your brand’s products.  Their lives are a bit of a car crash, and we can’t help but watch what they wear and purchase. So, what is a brand to do?

Essentially, a brand can try to sabotage a competitor using negative product placement.

It works like this: give a celebrity the competitor’s product and hope that the star’s negative reputation will rub off on the competition. This tactic was most recently used by designer handbag brand Coach on everyone’s favorite Oompa Loompa, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. The Jersey Shore “star,” who was literally arrested for being criminally annoying earlier this summer, has always been seen with her Coach purse. Coach, sensing the negative association between Snooki and the brand, has started sending her products from competing brands. Apparently, many designers are jumping at the opportunity to ruin the reputation of competitors by tossing free purses at the guidette. Brands have resorted to baiting celebrities into staying away from their products.

I think it’s brilliant.

Some might call it unethical behavior, but I think negative product placement is a very interesting marketing tactic. By associating a competitor with a public figure like Snooki, negative product placement both improves your brand’s image and can make a competitor look worse. Let’s face it, the behavior of celebrities won’t improve anytime soon, and I certainly don’t see our generation looking away from the train wreck known as “reality” TV.

Photo by ChicagoPhotoShop

What do you think about negative product placement? Is it unethical, genius, or both?