I met Yumiko in Hong Kong!
Posted by Fione Tan, Internet marketing coach
In Hong Kong, you can meet celebrities rather easily. 2 days ago, I met Paco, the man who’s behind many successful singers such as Joey Yung. Then yesterday, guess who I met?
Yes, it’s Yumiko! Is this the law of attraction as we’ve made a few postings about her in this blog last week?
While i was shopping in Harbour City last evening, I saw her walking past me, but I didn’t have my digital camera with me. Therefore, i just used my Motorola cellphone 2.0 megapixel camera.
She is very slim and very tall, but as you can see from the picture she is bending down so that the “tall” me can be seen in the picture too! Isn’t she sweet?
It’s been well known that you can use celebrities such as movie stars, singers, and even models to increase your company’s brand exposure.
How much would it cost to get a celebrity to grace your event? If you have them become your spokesperson, it can run into the hundreds of thousands of US$ depending on whether this person is among the hottest star of the month.
Anyway, back to the topic of how to use the celebrities to increase your company sales. Here are some ideas:-
1. Get celebrities to attend your event
- if say you are opening a new store, you can have a celebrity come over and officiate the opening. How much would this cost you? In Hong Kong, i’ve heard this being in HK$100,000 (about US$13,000) for the basic stars (not the top class stars). Is this expensive?
Then not really, because it can normally attract a good media crowd who will be snapping photos of your event and get the news published in the local magazines and newspapers. Just a one page coloured advertisement in a local gossip magazine in Hong Kong would cost you HK$100,000 or so.
In certain markets it’s cheaper, such as in Malaysia a basic celebrity would cost you about RM6,000 only.
2. Give away your products to celebrities to use
- it’s been well known that all the top brands like Gucci, LV, and Coach would send out their merchandise to the major celebrities in the hope that one day, their bags will be picked to be worn. When a paparazzi catches this photo and gets it published on the magazines, thousands of fans will flock the store to buy a similar item.
3. Getting celebrities as your spokesperson
- if you’ve got the budget for this, then you can hire a celebrity to be your brand spokesperson such as what popular cosmetics brands like SKII (using Sammi Cheng and Carina Lau) or Loreal (using Michelle Lee and Gong Li) are doing. However, you need to be careful in choosing the correct celebrity that can project your brand image.
Remember how Kate Moss, the popular model who got into hot water for her drug abuse cases? It caused her to lose out on many top brands she was initially associated with. It was what these companies had to do in order to ensure that their brand is perceived as a “healthy” and “positive” version. After her recovery, many brands came back to support her and this shows that we are still much willing to forget and forgive.
Are there any other ways to make money using celebrities? In Hollywood Los Angeles, one of the common souvenir for tourist is the house map of celebrities in Hollywood. Seems like many of us are catching up with the “celebrity” bug.
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