938 – Careful before you jump: Tom talks Celebrity Endorsements

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Tom Antion explores the topic of celebrity endorsements, critiquing their effectiveness and offering alternatives for businesses and charities. Here's a breakdown of the episode's key points:

Overview of Celebrity Endorsements:

Tom argues against the value of paid celebrity endorsements, especially for businesses and political campaigns.
He believes that celebrity endorsements often fail to justify their high costs, particularly when the product or service lacks quality.
Critique of Political Celebrity Endorsements:

Using examples from the 2016 and 2024 U.S. elections, Tom highlights how political campaigns spent millions on celebrity appearances with minimal impact. For example, Hillary Clinton's use of celebrities in 2016 didn’t translate to election success.
He notes that paying celebrities often results in superficial benefits that don't address the core issues or challenges of a campaign.
Why Paid Endorsements Fail:

Most celebrities endorse products or causes solely for financial gain, not because they believe in the product or service.
Their involvement doesn’t guarantee responsibility or loyalty to the brand, and their reputation can potentially harm the brand if controversies arise.
When Celebrity Endorsements Can Work:

Tom sees value in free endorsements for charities or non-profits, as these are often part of a celebrity's goodwill efforts.
He advises researching a celebrity’s personal values to ensure alignment with the cause and avoid potential controversies.
Practical Advice for Businesses:

Instead of spending on celebrity endorsements, businesses should focus on delivering quality products and services that can stand on their own merits.
Paid celebrity appearances are often ego-driven and may not generate meaningful returns.
Caution for Charities:

Even for free endorsements, charities should carefully vet celebrities to avoid reputational risks tied to the celebrity’s past or actions.
Final Takeaways:

Celebrity endorsements rarely provide a good return on investment.
Building credibility through genuine service and marketing is a better long-term strategy.
Additional Notes: Tom encourages listeners to explore his free e-book on business automation, his mentor program, and his licensed digital marketing school.

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Episode 938 – Celebrity Endorsements
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute, the entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 938 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about celebrity endorsements. This is part of my very short series on not talking about politics, but talking about politics as an example of some of this stuff. Hope you didn't miss episode 937. That was pay attention to your markets. It also had some political examples in it. Make sure you pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Just one of the tips in this book is save me over 8 million keystrokes. You will thank me for a long time if you take advantage of this free e-book. screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. All right, so yeah, I got to talk about the election and how this celebrity endorsement thing applies. I'm pretty much against celebrity endorsements, unless they're free for like a charity, which I'll address later. But paying for them just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And apparently the folks that were in charge of the 2016 election and the 2024 election somehow didn't get the memo that if you spend millions and millions and millions of dollars on celebrity endorsements and you screw up everything else, then it's probably not going to work out for you. Okay. And even if you did good on the other stuff that you need to promote your business or to win an election or whatever, you probably don't need the celebrity endorsement because people will love your product and service and buy it.

[00:02:16] See, and I've got experience with this in that I've seen some shyster kinds of people hire B-list celebrities to show up at events that they had, or to endorse them online or things like that. And they're still rip offs. These people, they're still pieces of crap garbage. People that are that should be, uh, you know, ostracized from society, kicked out of society. But anyway, they do it anyway because you can get a B-list celebrity, some of them five, 10,000 bucks for an appearance, and even they could know nothing about you. They just show up and say something nice about you and and the promoters that do this kind of thing feel like, oh, wow, now they're celebrities rubbing off on me. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but most of the time it isn't. And here's what I got to tell you about celebrities endorsement stuff. That celebrity is just doing it for money. In 99% of the cases, 99% of the cases, they're just doing it to get paid. They're actors. A lot of them. And they get paid to lie. That's their job. They're really good at it. Okay, so and another thing is you can be enormously sure that that celebrity is never going to intervene or try to help you if something goes wrong with your purchase.

[00:03:57] Never in a million years. Then 100 million years. All right. There's even been lawsuits where people have tried to sue the celebrity endorsers. And I think most of them either settled out of court just to get rid of them or were dismissed. Some, you know, summarily, because that celebrity is not taking any kind of responsibility for what they're saying. Most in most cases, unless they're highly ethical. But how do you find that highly ethical celebrity? You know, that when there's a lot of money on the table. But anyway, for 5 or 10 grand, you could get some, you know, B-level or former A level that's now on the decline. I mean, it's hard to get an A level because the the fee would be enormous, I mean enormous. And they some of them make so much money. It's just not worth for them to get off the couch. If you give them $100,000 C and, you know, to you that's, you know, it could be a year's worth of profit. So, so. But anyway, you can get 5 or 10,000 bucks and you say, well, how do you do that? Tom well, I personally have never done it, but the way you do it is to just pick out someone that you, you think would be good, and you just type in their name and their agency, and then you contact their agency and contact their agent, and then you see how much it would cost you tell them what the deal is and they give you a fee.

[00:05:26] If you if you give them the money, the person shows up. Right. So and does, you know pretty much what you want them to do within limits. You know, you can't expect them to, you know, for 5 or 10,000 bucks to, to memorize a whole script like they were doing a TV show. Right? They're going to say a few words and pat you on the back and take pictures, you know, things like that, and then that's it. But, you know, it's pretty much for people that are desperate because they know their product and service is terrible. They do this. And so the example of, you know, like I said, I'm not really political, but this the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton surrounded herself with a bunch of celebrities, most recently Kamala Harris, uh, you know, Bruce Springsteen and Cardi B and Beyonce and Oprah and all this stuff has spent millions and millions and millions of dollars paying these people to say, she's good, right? And she got her ass handed to her in the election. See? So it didn't none of it was worthwhile. That money should have been spent on media trainers for her, so that she didn't make an ass of herself all the time like she did. And again, I'm just telling it like it is. And if Trump made an ass out of himself, great.

[00:07:00] Okay. I agree, but he won, all right. She didn't. And it was because thinking all these celebrities. Yesterday I talked about incentives. And so she believed that an incentive of bringing Beyonce would bring a big crowd to her and make her look good. Well, actually, it backfired because Beyonce didn't sing for that. I don't know how many millions she got for showing up, but she didn't sing. And then everybody was pissed off and you know, and it didn't help him at all. So all that money could have been saved or spent on media trainers or other ads or whatever. They, uh, you know, those, those campaigns spend money on. But it certainly didn't pay off paying all those people, you know, maybe it did a little bit because the crowds weren't like two people like Joe Biden used to get. And you know, he, you know, during Covid, they'd have they'd be in a movie theater with like 12 cars or something, you know? So. So but at least they didn't waste any money on celebrities, you know? Um, now there is a time when I think celebrity endorsements could be valuable to you, and that's if you ran a charity or non-profit and that celebrity was doing it for free as part of their goodwill efforts. And see, here's the thing almost all the celebrities look or look for either look for to make themselves look good. Something to get behind to, to promote animals or homelessness or whatever.

[00:08:44] Right. And, and a lot of them are totally hypocrites, like, you know, trying to save the environment, but flying your private jet around the world that caused, like 300 days worth of carbon, you know, in one trip. So? So, yeah, you get a lot of that crap. But if you have a charity or a non-profit, you could search out celebrities that are interested in that topic. And, you know, it takes a lot of research. You've got to go. I think there might be some sites where they, you know, they're listed, but any big name person is not going to list themselves at a site. But you have to do research, watch a lot of their interviews, see what they're interested in, what their, you know, their interests are and what their passions are. And then you would go to their agent and make your pitch that you're looking for a celebrity endorser and there's no money involved. So if you get somebody, a well named person, well-known person to promote your charity for free, hey, now I'm all for that. Okay, now here's the thing, though. Here's the thing. You might have a really great moral charity or non-profit, and a lot of these celebrities make so much money and they're not necessarily good people. Just think, if you had gotten P Diddy to promote your women's, battering kind of thing, you know, I don't forget what it's called, but, you know, how would you look then? Say so a lot of these celebrities aren't that morally grounded.

[00:10:33] So you got to look deeper in to see do even if it's free. Do I really want that person representing me? Because as you dig deeper into everybody, as they're doing, to all the people that are being suggested for cabinet positions or digging, you know, every kind of dirt up they can, if you remember what they did to Brent Kavanaugh when he was trying to become O. Kamala was part of that, by the way. Um, when he was, uh, you know, going up for Supreme Court, you know, they dig and they dig and they make stuff up and they, you know, they tear you to pieces. So you wouldn't want to have that tied to your charity. So even if you get a well-known person tied to you, is that going to be good for you in the long run? If somebody starts digging in or they do something stupid and make you look bad, say so. So, uh, celebrity endorsements? Yeah, like I said, if they're free and it's a good person and it's a good fit for your charity or nonprofit, beautiful. But for you to take your hard earned money and pay for these celebrities, it kind of reminds me of I tried to, you know, when I was a sports nut for, you know, my the first, I don't know, 20 some years of my life.

[00:11:48] And I always got a football scholarship and I was All-State Football, and I was fourth in the state of Pennsylvania in wrestling. And, you know, I went to Junior Olympics and track and field. And so I was always into sports. But, you know, since I graduated, I never watched a complete football game. I mean, I'll watch a play or two if it shows up a highlight reel or something. Um, but I the thing is, those athletes that you get so whacked out about that you buy all their merch. Same with like, Taylor Swift. You know, she's going to be a billionaire or is a billionaire from selling all the crap she sells, you can be darn sure she is never going to help you pay your bills. Ever. She's never. These celebrity football players and basketball players are never going to help you at the grocery store unless you happen to run into Shaquille O'Neal, who is one of the most benevolent, wonderful people I've seen from all the stories about him. Um, so, so wasting your time and money on these kinds of efforts does not pay off. 99.99999% of the time, you're just wasting money, and you could set yourself up. If you hire somebody that's that's got some shaky past and it gets revealed, then now you're tied to them. You know, so it's just a not a good idea to waste your money on these kinds of things, and it rarely sways anybody but idiots.

[00:13:22] And then the idiots are going to end up charging their credit card back, you know, after they find out they were hoodwinked and disillusioned. So, so just do a good job and sell legitimate things and services to people on your own merits, and then you don't have that big expenditure. Yeah, you might not have these pictures to brag about with some celebrities, but those pictures, again, are not going to sell things for you. They're ego driven mostly. So that's my $0.02 on celebrity endorsements. You can find them. You can easily get them for five, ten, $15,000. B-listers. You can get free ones for your charity, which I'm okay with. But again, doing just doing regular stuff that that takes care of the people you're supposed to be serving probably is a better idea. All right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hey, check out besides my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. Check out my school. It's the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country. Probably the world at IMTCVA.org. That's internet marketing training Center of virginia.org. And it's distance learning. So you don't have to be in Virginia. It can be anywhere in the world actually. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you all on the next episode. See you later.