Another celebrity endorsement gone bad!

Celebrity endorsement is an age long practice that had been used by brands to drive brand association, recall and ultimately sales. Many top brands have used sports, music and movie icons in their marketing campaign and the practice still continues. The recently concluded Olympics once again bring to the fore the dynamics of celebrity endorsement. With the Olympics occurring once in four years, it brings with it a lot of fascination and festivity around the many events. Never in recent time has any Olympics generated as much anxiety and concern as the Rio Olympics due to many factors, amongst which are the late completion of the sports facilities, the general apathy of the citizens as a result of the country’s economic issues, the political terrain and of course the issue of the Zika virus!
It turned out that this Olympics survived many of the anxious moments and will go down as one with many surprises and some talent discoveries in addition to Olympic record breaking. However, one unforeseen incident that will be remembered for a long time is the controversy surrounding US swimmer Ryan Lochte. With 12 Olympic medals to his credit, he is a celebrity athlete by all means; courted by some brands top of which are Speedo and Ralph Lauren. However, his career got a serious dent with the discovery that he had misrepresented the facts of an incidence that occurred during the games. This singular incident kick-started a chain of events with implications on all the parties involved:
· Host nation Brazil, which has been managing the myriads of domestic issues and the perception of Rio as a crime-ridden city would have had such an issue aggravating an already bad reputation and perception.
· Several million-dollar endorsement at risk of cancelation and the resulting impact on the personal brand of Ryan Lochte.
· Sponsors who now find themselves in the middle of a mess they could very well do without.
· The swimming team values and country (USA) pride and reputation at risk!
This becomes another case of celebrity endorsement gone bad! It will not be the first of its kind, as we have seen many cases of cancelled endorsement contracts as a result of celebrity personal life affecting their terms of engagement. In this, it was apparently a case of an individual acting without a thought to his personal brand and the personality and values of the brands he represents and brings up the downside to the use of celebrities for brand campaigns.
Beyond the allure of attractive and mouth-watering endorsement deals, individuals need to be true to themselves and be aware that they are constantly on display and their brand is always on – whether offline or online. While it may be easy for brands to quickly dissociate themselves and cancel existing contracts (in this case, Ryan Lochte lost his endorsement deals) they may not easily be scathe free entirely! As for the concerned celebrities – they may be able to pull through and have a second chance if they are lucky enough to rebuild their personal brand.
The bottom line is this – celebrities are human beings and can make mistakes! Mistakes that can mar your brand!
Bolajoko Bayo-Ajayi