First Impressions Matter: Leveraging Talent for Your Brand Launch
First Impressions Matter: Leveraging Talent for Your Brand Launch
Hi, hey there, hello, or as Snoop Dogg iconically said in California Gurls, “Greetings, loved ones.” There are so many ways to make an introduction — and if you are a brand trying to break into a new market or launch a product with the potential to go viral, the way you say that initial “hello” is one of the most important decisions you will make. As a talent booking agency, we partner with brands to align talent to their campaigns, marketing, and launches. This goes much further than face value and association, and as we will explain in this post, having a celebrity or creator to help launch a product or brand can be the key to out-of-the-gate success.
THE NEW FACETS & FACES OF ENTERTAINMENT
When you think of talent booking, you may think of television shows, podcasts, or events as the predominant areas of business. And you would be right! Historically, the entertainment industry has been the venue of agencies like ours and we made our name (quite literally, as Cultivated Entertainment) on having the ins with celebrities and being in-the-know about pop culture and what’s trending.
What has changed, though, is that savvy brands have now entered the picture as a new realm of entertainment, along with the traditional lanes previously mentioned. A brand no longer offers just a product or service to consume, but a lifestyle to adopt or aspire to, and marketing has gone far past catalogs or Facebook ads — many companies are making entire pieces of content to promote themselves.
A great example is Loewe’s DECADES OF CONFUSION commercial, which starred Aubrey Plaza and Dan Levy. This video had high entertainment value along with strategic marketing impact. Not everything has to be on this scale to be successful, many brands are now posting videos on TikTok alongside people’s favorite creators and friends and offering content in a very casual way.
UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF FANS
Understanding these shifts opens the door to envisioning all of the potential having the right talent aboard your brand launch can offer. At CE we are constantly strategizing about how to leverage celebrity to bring viewership, followers, or whichever metric of success the project follows. We also know when the opportunity would be advantageous to the talent as well, and can strike when the moment is best for both parties. Having a celebrity be the face of, or post about, a new product or company immediately gives it recognition, context, and a built-in audience.
Let’s chat about that theoretical audience, shall we? Celebrities and creators used to attract fans with their work, but increasingly, people are connecting not just to the film, song, or series someone has participated in, but for who they are. We’ve never been more aware of the personalities, lifestyles, and quirks of our famous faves. We no longer just want to watch someone like Sydney Sweeney act, we want to wear the dress she’s wearing on vacation, use the skincare products she does to get the same glow, and drive the same car (if only in our dreams.) Celebs and creators bring fan bases that are incredibly activated and always on the lookout for recommendations and new ways to bring some of that sparkling lifestyle into their own.
The Golden Seal
When targeting an audience for a new product or brand launch, you’re looking for a certain level of buy-in. “Here, try this thing you’ve never tried before.” The trust established by repeat customers or earned with reviews doesn’t exist yet and it can be an uphill battle to get consumers on board. However, if someone they already know, follow, and like is introducing them to the same exact thing, it is immediately given status that may have taken months or years to earn organically. This doesn’t need to happen on a large, A-list scale — micro-influencers have an incredibly loyal following and their endorsement of a product or brand is like a golden seal.
NEW BRANDING, WHO’S THIS?
Another benefit to aligning your launch with talent is that it gives you a chance to show the world what type of company you are. It’s a method of communicating your values, your intentions, and what type of consumer you represent. There is so much opportunity here for a brand to redefine or evolve by working with someone unexpected — look at McDonalds and Travis Scott. This collaboration reinvigorated a legacy brand and catapulted them into the pop culture zeitgeist.
There are many different ways celebrity or creator endorsement of a launch can take shape — whether through a piece of social media content, an integrated campaign, or even a product collaboration — but the throughline is the amplified impact due to their recognition, trust, and admiration. Cultivated Entertainment has been making waves with brands by bringing talent on board to help them launch into new waters, and we are excited to continue breaking the mold and creating more cultural impact and opportunity in this space.