Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

One of the first things you learn as a copy­writer is that bor­rowed inter­est is a lame way to engage a con­sumer. What is bor­rowed inter­est? It is bor­row­ing inter­est from a celebrity or some­thing per­ceived as inter­est­ing, like skate­boards or super­heros and attach­ing it to a prod­uct with no log­i­cal tie. Sex may have a lot to do with a lin­gerie but skate­boards have noth­ing to do with orange juice.

Now I believe Cather­ine Zeta-Jones uses a tele­phone. But I don’t believe she knows any­more about cell­phone ser­vice than most peo­ple. Men may watch Cather­ine slink across the screen and maybe even think it’s a good spot, but do they really believe her words any­more then the would an unknown actress? Not likely. They may lis­ten, but aware­ness is another topic.

Bor­rowed inter­est worked great in the 50’s. But after awhile peo­ple noticed that if celebri­ties were paid enough they’d whore them­selves out for any prod­uct under the sun.

What does a band leader have to do with a “lux­ury trailer”?

Any­one wanna guess if Michael Jack­son ever rode a Honda Scooter around LA?

The strength of social media is about peo­ple con­nect­ing and inform­ing each other what they really think. Trans­parency aside, a tweeter paid per tweet about rat­tle on about deodor­ant, or cars, or com­put­ers doesn’t seem like brand advocacy.

Sure, there are celebri­ties that peo­ple should lis­ten to. @lancearmtrong is one I fol­low on Twit­ter and some­one I wrote an Oak­ley ad for in 1996 when he was a for­mer world cham­pion headed to the Olympics. And just before being diag­nosed with tes­tic­u­lar can­cer. He used and still uses the prod­uct. Could there pos­si­bly be a bet­ter advo­cate for can­cer research or the ath­letic gear he actu­ally uses? My step mother who is recov­er­ing from breast can­cer finds what he’s done and, and is doing inspi­ra­tional. Now that’s a brand advocacy.

The best brand advo­cates aren’t paid for their tweets. They’re peo­ple who believe in a prod­uct and are spon­sored and use it like Arm­strong or Tiger Woods who both use Nike.  Or they are the thou­sands of peo­ple that use a prod­uct and advo­cate for it every­day. Ever talked to a Harley owner about Japan­ese vs American?

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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This entry was posted Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 11:48 pm and is filed under advertising, social media. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.