Celebrity Founders Beat Celebrity Influencers

Nothing is more disappointing than paying way too much for a celebrity influencer to pump up your brand, briefly, and then leave you without a proven marketing mix to continue growth. 

This has happened many times to brands with more cash than experience in brand-building. Unless you can get your product launched like a large public firm, an A-list celebrity plugging you will not be very productive long-term for a low-awareness brand. 

Even though it will drive a surge in trial, if your product is not really ready or the celeb you chose has no semantic or symbolic credibility pushing your kind of innovation, it can just lead to tons of low-repeat trial – I term it curiosity trial.  

The reason that Celebrity Founders have early-stage companies that perform better than early-stage companies who use celebrities is simple – they have real, long-term stakes in the business. They will carve out more of their platform’s limited space to push the brand. They will be more enthusiastic and engaged. They will know more about the business and can help creatively come up with marketing/PR tie-ins inside planning meetings. 

Celebrities without skin in the game won’t dedicate much time or platform space to you, since they most likely have other businesses asking the same thing, probably too many. These are transactional monetizers. What helps early-stage brands is committed promoters.