Last year, the NFL hunk Rob Gronkowski did what many retired athletes do—he appeared in an advertisement.
Gronk’s no stranger to hawking stuff. His muscular frame and goofy smile have appeared on behalf of Cheerios, Lyft, T-Mobile, and Cheerios, among others.
But this ad was different.
“You might know me as football star Rob Gronkowki,” said Gronk, standing in his bathroom at home. “But the truth is, I stink.”
Gronk then grabs some Dove whole body deodorant and proceeds to apply it everywhere—on his feet, his inner thighs, and then on the Gronkowski family jewels. (That part’s behind a sign that reads: “He’s actually putting it everywhere,”). With a wink at the camera, this 46-second endorsement is complete.
Needless to say, this isn’t your father’s deodorant ad. Like most effective marketing ideas, the celebrity pitch has been around for a long time. But to stay effective, it’s had to change with the times, too.
Few ad men understand that dynamic better than Doug Shabelman and Mark Ippolito, the CEO and president, respectively, of Burns Entertainment. For the last 55 years, the Chicago-based shop has orchestrated some of the advertising’s most memorable celebrity-brand collabs, from Johnny Bench spraying his bench with Krylon (1978) to Michael Jordan holding his Haynes boxer shorts (1995) to the aforementioned personal ablutions of Gronk.
ADWEEK caught up with Shabelman and Ippolito to talk about five ways that celeb endorsements have changed over the last half century.
1. The definition of “celebrity” is always changing
Half a century ago, a brand in search of a celebrity was lucky to land a ball player. That’s how consumers would see New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath pitching them on La-Z-Boy recliners and Cincinnati Red’s Pete Rose singing about Ice Blue Aqua Velva aftershave. But the media fragmenting that began with cable TV—and accelerated through Web 1.0 and then social media—had created wholly new categories of fame.
“[With] segmentation, you had stars out there who weren’t just the A-list movie stars,” Shabelman said. “Emeril Lagasse came out of New Orleans and all of a sudden he got a [Food Network] show.”
For brands, a broader selection of luminaries has not only let them address target audiences more precisely but, overall, has lowered the cost.
“Companies now don’t have to spend Coca-Cola levels of media investment,” Shabelman said.
2. The old stigmas are gone
After the Hollywood studio system collapsed and film stars controlled their own careers, many didn’t want to stoop to advertising work.
One exception was screen legends long past their prime, which is how a 66-year-old Bette Davis—cigarette in hand—wound up in ads for Jim Beam bourbon in 1974. On the few occasions that Hollywood royalty did take money from a brand, they kept it hidden. In 1996, for example, Brad Pitt hawked Edwin jeans—but only in Japan.
