Having a large following and a successful career as an influencer promoting products and paid collaborations does not automatically mean you can make it in the entrepreneurial field. The success of celebrity brands has evolved far beyond slapping a face with a recognizable name on products. In an era where most content creators are already doing just that, celebrity brands need to have purpose and value to what they would add differently to our lives. Products come first in the new celeb-branding landscape as customer scrutiny towards celebrities trying to enter the market has become an immensely tough hurdle to cross with ease.
A celebrity-backed brand must be unique and have its own personality rather than relying on the influencer’s personality and prowess. While there is no exact formula for success, there are some major key points and pillars to have in place when thinking of expanding your influencing image into the entrepreneurial landscape.
3 Steps to successfully launch a celebrity brand:
Make the product bulletproof
- Have a clear purpose and passion behind the brand
In order to stand out as a celebrity-backed brand today, there must be purpose backed with authenticity. Setting out to make a brand that derives from passion and the authentic need to address a gap in the market that you as an influential figure feel is missing would allow for a unique positioning within the market as your purpose and goal for the brand’s existence is clear - Have a clear vision of what you want your brand to constantly achieve through its products. Incorporate mission statements on how you will reach that and what values will function as the brand’s foundation. This will act as the fundamental pillar of the brand and the core of what makes the brand’s positioning unique.
- Have quality-focused products. A celebrity brand must add value with whatever they bring to the market — exemplifying quality and solving a significant problem or need existing in the market that can ensure strong differentiation, stand the test of time, and retain consumers in the long term. If you have a good quality product it also eliminates the risk of customer critique of another celebrity’s profit-seeking ambition and is noticed and valued by the average consumer.
- Bring on Industry Expertise
Bringing on the right people to be involved in your brand is key to a quality product line and building immediate credibility. Behind the best celebrity brands are industry experts matched with celebrity passion.
First Impressions count: Importance of landing the launch
- Have a well-planned launch
Be strategic and have a well-thought-out plan to gain exposure and reach your target consumer. A well-thought-out and time-intensive launch are what’s required to stand out as a celebrity brand today. Think of how well Hailey Bieber promoted her glazed moisturizer by teasing her fans with doughnut images and how for months before the launch she promoted her new dewy skincare regimen. This enabled her to be launch-ready with a credible influence and purpose of the brand. - Determine your personal relationship to the cause
It’s incredibly important to ensure the brand aligns with the values and passions of the celebrity. For years, Hailey Beiber has been vocally passionate about her skin and has flaunted her shiny cheekbones all over social media and tabloids alike. So, when she announced Rhode, a skincare brand, it didn’t feel like she was squeezing into a category she didn’t belong in, which is the first major requirement of celebrity brand success. - Align your social channels with the tone and direction of the brand
Curate well-thought-out partnerships and schedule a full PR circuit; from collaborating with creative content creators, to co-branding partnerships to carefully picked launch parties. These are some of the main drivers of building anticipation and gaining exposure for the brand before initially launching to the masses and acting as ways to amplify brand awareness in a more organic way.
Plan out your social media strategy: Stay true to yourself & your brand
- Have a strategy that can generate its own content
User-generated content (UGC) is the name, authenticity is the game. Sparking buzz about your brand to, in turn, prompt organic UGC is beneficial for a brand in a number of ways. Not only can you repost this content to your own organic social channels, but it can be used as ad creative that feels more authentic, and can be shared on the brand’s website as testimonials further driving social proof. - Only collaborate with creators in line with your brand value
Leveraging the power of influencers and creators, both micro and macro, as a celebrity brand is important, but what needs to be scrutinized is the fact that whomever you want to promote your brand, must create content that aligns with their influential figure. If not, this would come off as flaky and unauthentic. - Build a sustainable long-term marketing strategy
For celebrity brands, with any campaign, it’s important to consider the long-tail strategy — especially when it always comes back to the vision, mission, and values of a brand. For example, Kim Kardashian’s Skims is all about different ways to promote inclusivity. The long-tail strategy is essentially realizing profits from selling large volumes of more niche products, rather than selling larger numbers of a reduced amount of more popular, easy-to-find items. Having a long-term strategy enables a celebrity brand to introduce future products without diluting the brand value nor straying away from the vision of the brand’s goal. Like switching from Skims shapewear to Skims under-wear or loungewear. All lines revolve around the same value of inclusivity.
Lastly…
The density of celebrity brands in the market has drastically risen the bar for emerging new ones. There is a responsibility to prove the brand is more than just a cash crab, as well as the authentic passion behind the celebrity building of the brand. It starts with a long, well-thought-out launch strategy that informs the consumer of the product offering, taps into a niche using influencers and creators, collaborations that align with the emerging brand for exposure, and a star-studded launch party doesn’t hurt either.
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