Star search: here's how even the smallest business can win big-name celebrity endorsements - includes instructions on getting an endorsement

Entrepreneur, Sept, 1996 by Mark Henricks

WHEN YOU'RE skating on thin ice, who better to help you out than Wayne Gretzky?

That was John Egart's conclusion several years ago when his in-line skate company was languishing in the middle of a pack of lesser-known companies. Industry pioneer Rollerblade Inc. dominated the fast-growing market, while the Ultra Wheels line from Egart's First Team Sports in Anoka, Minnesota, was just a small fry trying to survive in a competitive industry.

"We had to separate ourselves from the rest of the pack," Egart says. "And we felt the best way to do that--without trying to convince the world in-line skating was synonymous with Ultra Wheels--was with a strong endorsement."

Gretzky was the obvious choice. Using a mix of stock options, royalties and personal appeal, Egart persuaded the hockey superstar to forego most of his normal $500,000 fee and publicly endorse First Team's fledgling skate line.

With Gretzky on board, sales soared from $35.5 million in fiscal 1994 tn S97.S million in fiscal 1995. And today Egart and his partner, David Soderquist, are millionaires. "It's made a big difference," Egart says of Gretzky's continuing endorsements of Ultra Wheels.

Marketing experts agree that endorsements, testimonials and other ties to well-known personalities are a boost to any business's marketing arsenal. Of course, they're not foolproof. "With human beings, something can always go awry," says Egart, "such as having O.J. Simpson as your prime endorser."

Even without that kind of debacle, obtaining a celebrity's endorsement can be expensive and, if poorly conceived, unproductive. But for small firms trying to get a break the way First Team Sports did, a celebrity endorsement may be just the ticket.

Nowadays First Team Sports has the wherewithal to sign up figure skaters Katerina Witt and Kurt Browning, as well as hockey star Brett Hull. But it all started with a single endorsement by one well-known name. "Wayne Gretzky," says Egart, "became the backbone of our company."

* PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE

A celebrity can help an entrepreneur's marketing efforts in several ways. First, celebrity endorsements help to differentiate a product, service or company in a crowded marketplace. They are especially effective with commodity-type products or services--those where there is little difference between various providers' offerings. That's why celebrity endorsements play such a big role in promoting, for instance, long-distance telephone services.

"It's a strategy to prevent channel-surfing," says Dennis Jorgensen, COO of the American Marketing Association. "Presumably, celebrities hold the viewer's attention."

Celebrity marketing is also a way to build instant name recognition. By associating your product or service with a person whose name and face are already well-known, you can quickly achieve the kind of awareness that might otherwise take many years of marketing.

"The reason [this works] is that people are interested in people," says Bob Gold, vice president of marketing at Prime Sports, a regional sports TV network in Los Angeles. "A good salesperson sells him or herself, not the product. If your product takes on the attributes of a sports personality, you're ahead of your competitors who are simply selling nuts and bolts."

Credibility is perhaps the most powerful contribution a celebrity can make to your marketing efforts. This can work several ways. A customer may see a well-known face using your product in a marketing campaign and think "If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me."

"Basically, what you're doing is legitimizing a business," says Andrew Shevin, an account director and sports marketing specialist at Seiniger Advertising in Beverly Hills, California. "You're adding something that's known and that people look up to."

You can also use a celebrity to say things you can't say, says Steven Piersanti, owner of Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., a book publishing firm in San Francisco. For example, the jacket of a recent Berrett-Koehler book on global business sported a straightforward description of its contents along with an admiring quote from Bishop Desmond Tutu.

"He's an outside party and can give the kind of evaluation that would sound biased and self-serving if we did it," explains Piersanti. "[The endorsement is] an integral part of the promotion package because it provides something we don't do in our own copy."

* FAME AND FORTUNE?

A celebrity endorsement can be a powerful boost to your business, but it won't solve all your problems. Remember, a celebrity endorsement is only one possible reason--along with price, functionality, convenience, service and more--for someone to buy your product or service, says David Urban, associate professor of marketing at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business in Richmond.

For that reason, it's important to regard celebrity ties as just one part of a more comprehensive marketing plan. Only when combined with good research, design, distribution, pricing and promotion will celebrity marketing yield impressive returns. "I don't think you should necessarily expect dramatic results from celebrity endorsements in terms of automatic increases in sales," says Urban.