What Consumes Really Want

Is it enough to have a celebrity’s face on an advertisement to sell a product? Ashton Kutcher is the featured spokesperson for Nikon. Taylor Swift is the new Cover Girl, and Sarah Jessica Parker is face of Garnier. But I can’t help but wonder if these celebrities actually use the products. It is hard for me to believe that celebrities like Jessica Alba or Halle Barry use Revlon makeup over fancier department store cosmetics like Chanel or Dior. According to Forbes, consumers are less likely to buy a product if they believe the celebrity endorsing the product is unauthentic.

Consumers want truth, and authenticity is the key to capturing the heart of today’s consumers (McNicholas). Most ad campaigns don’t care enough to take this factor into account. They throw the hottest celeb of the moment into their ads, not realizing that we are seeing past the gimmick.

PepsiCo Gatorade and FRS energy drinks has chosen the authentic route. PepsiCo’s marketing director Kate Denton said that if they approach a celebrity or are approached by a celeb, the first thing they ask is if they use the product. If they don’t drink Gatorade or use the products, she tells them to go and use the product for a while and then come back to talk. Gatorade’s new G-series Fit products aren’t advertised by the most famous athletes. Instead, they are using up-and-coming athletes who used the products long before being approached by Gatorade.

The new G-Series Fit products aren’t actually new. They’ve been around for a while, but were only used by elite athletes. Only now are they being marketed toward the public. FRS energy drinks were what football player Tim Tebow contributes much of his success to at the NFL Combine before being drafted.

FRS’ VP of Marketing Deepak Masand said their ad campaign started from a creative perspective, not the celebrity endorser like many campaigns. They began by creating a brand point of view, and gave it a very personal, human-element. The goal was to create a campaign that consumers related to.




This perspective made Tim Tebow the perfect fit for the campaign. He used his own real-life struggle toward the NFL to promote the product. What makes this campaign successful is that it is very genuine. You don’t doubt that Tebow actually uses the product. It has an authentic, yet inspiring feel that consumers will appreciate rather than throwing a celeb that we’ve seen in a dozen other campaigns.

Consumers want authenticity.





Tim Tebow's commercial for FRS.


Works Cited

McNicholas, Kim. "Say Goodbye To 'Fake' Celebrity Endorsements! - Forbes." Forbes. 19 Apr. 2011. Web. 18 Oct. 2011. .