For years, corporate brands have spent vast amounts of money sponsoring and aligning themselves to celebrities to accrue reflected value from the fans who are loyal to them. The theory is obvious, “people love this singer, actor, athlete etc…so if they become our brand ambassador, they will love us too”. In the past, this was easier to manage but in today’s world of ubiquitous information and social media, the pitfalls are just as obvious.

This post from Doc Searls captures the problem perfectly. In the wake of the Tiger Woods scandal “his biggest corporate sponsors, such as Nike and Gatorade, saw as much as $12 billion wiped off the value of their shares in the wake of the scandal.”

In the current business world, brands aren’t human beings. They should be, and any social media practitioner worth her salt will be working damn hard with their clients to try and make them more so, but as it stands they are companies, corporate vehicles which are not set up to deal with human error…the kind we are all susceptible to, especially some high profile celebs.

Some may seem perfect, Tiger Woods being the obvious example, but as we have seen, no-one is going to be perfect all the time, they all have transgressions, which as a human is fine…well, most of the time! Other human beings by and large will forgive mistakes from others. However, when one makes a mistake which is seen as representing a company then its not so easy. Companies can’t claim human error.

If companies want to get the most out of these relationships, they need to accept that these people are just that, people and there will be times that they step out of the corporate line. From a social media angle (sorry, got to bring it back to that at some point!), celebrities who are active on social channels in an authentic way, may be a better bet for corporate endorsements. If the public ‘know’ the person behind the celebrity better, they may be more forgiving when the curtain gets ripped down or the celeb is beaten with the proverbial golf club by his proverbial wife. Some celebs use social media for good – Shaq, Lance Armstrong spring to mind and, no doubt their corporate sponsors do very well off them…but these companies need to be aware what they are potentially setting themselves up for.

Corporates need to let go of the term ‘brand’ and all the connotations it brings when they are working with celebrities. When they hire the celeb, they think that person is now representative of the brand…something which humans can’t do! They can be themselves and if the company is comfortable with whom they are and what they stand for as a human being…then there is value to be derived by association. Expecting the person to fit into the perceived brand of a company is a recipe for (potential) disaster.

Would love to hear any thoughts in the comments.