Celebrity endorsement: the various uses made of celebrity involvement in marketing strategies.
My focus: Star Power: Why so many of us buy cosmetics to 'get the London look'

‘I touched you at the sound check: you’re just the same as I am, but what makes these people feel happy, leads us headlong into harm’ this is a famous quote from the infamous singer song-writer Morrissey, described by NME is ‘one of the most influential artists ever’. This one man has inspired thousands of musicians and has set the standard for indie music, worldwide. In this case, Morrissey’s celebrity status has made a positive impact on his fan-base, even though his private life might not be so admirable, he has been awarded elitism from the masses because of his musical skills. This is refreshing, especially in todays world where a celebrity, according to Wikipedia is ‘someone who is easily recognised in a society or culture’, they may be famous for 15 minutes or a lifetime, for an achievement or through pure infamy and be positive or negative, to name just a few. The stark contrasts between each of these groups connotes that a celebrity is hard to explain. And do they even need explaining? Not in the post-modern era were living in today; they’re quite simply just another part of society, at least in my opinion. Richard Dyer documented that ‘stars articulate what it is to be human in contemporary society’ and this seems so in the case of fan-culture and star worship my peer group are subconsciously members off.
Rimmel’s young, experimental female 16-24 year old target market is me. Their marketing strategies have been effective in that I have bought and continue to buy their make-up products because they are up-to-the-minute, cheap and accessible. Or is it just plain consumerism at its best? The ‘equation of personal happiness with consumption and the purchase of material possessions’. (Bennett 2009). I answer yes; buying these products makes us more happy, confident and self-assured. I can vouch for that. I quote Charles Revson of Revlon cosmetics who said, ‘In our factories we make lipstick: in our advertisements we sell hope’, I’m confident that by buying a certain lipstick, I’m not going to look like the featured celebrities and models and for the executive of a leading cosmetics company to say openly the aforementioned, sends a condescending message to their customers.

The Rimmel website exclaims that there was ‘really only one possible choice’ for the face of the brand. That face would be Kate Moss, the ‘quintessential London girl’. She is popular worldwide and in my home, we have spoken about her over dinner, I have a picture of her on my wall and style myself on her from time to time. But Kate, a single mother has been quoted saying ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’, snapped taking cocaine and gone to rehab. Is this a good image to follow? She is described on the Rimmel website as ‘influential’ and many girls idolize her for her fashion, beauty and rock & roll boyfriends, not for an athletic or scientific achievement but her lifestyle. Richard Dyer’s work focuses on the relationship between a star’s on-screen and off-screen ‘meanings’, considering Kate Moss, her off-screen life is just as important as her on-screen image, were these two merge together, Rimmel have their perfect marketing formula.
Kate Moss’s adverts boosted the brand's mascara sales by 74% between August and October 2003 and because of its success, that the brand continued to use Kate Moss and the punk princess theme for the following campaigns, launching with the tagline of ‘break the rules’, apparently appealing to consumers' sense of individuality. Kate Moss also appeared at the launch of the product, and was the main draw of much publicity and media attention. The star has rarely spoken in the media, adding to her mysterious façade so it represented a significant PR coup for the brand. A study by MEC Medialab says we are so seduced by the sight of a famous face that one in four of us claim that we will buy a product simply because a celebrity is promoting it. There is even a website called the Davie Brown Index, for companies to evaluate a celebrity’s awareness, appeal and relevance to a brand’s image and their influence on consumer buying behavior.

Celebrity lives have become to some extent our cultural narrative. It is not rare to hear my friends say ‘I can’t come out tonight, I’ve nothing to wear’ or ‘I look rubbish’. The thing is, they do have something to wear and definitely don’t look rubbish. But because they are kept ever so up to date with their idols, they feel this is the case. The post-modernist concept of style over substance supports my view that the surface is all that matters and the underlying reality doesn’t. Girls are always criticizing themselves and we are more aware than ever of the beauty and lives of others in comparison to ourselves, thanks to the mass media and adverts such as this, we are constantly reminded of what makes you ‘pretty’ or worthy of stardom. Cooley suggested the ‘looking-glass theory’, where we are influenced by other people’s responses, especially those who we admire. Being a fan of a celebrity through want of acceptance into a group, can lead to obsessions with their lives, image, work and even as far as eating disorders all in a bid to get a little closer to that which we have dubbed the ‘ideal’. Kate Moss’s comment, ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’, in used on the anorexia website Starving For Control, yet again, her famous face is being used to promote a damaging ‘false need’. Should we support this by promoting so often this image to young girls who are easily influenced by a 30 second advert or picture of a sultry, waif-like model on our bus stops so easily placed without much regard for the potential harm it could cause. Obviously, some girls with lower self-esteem, believe, that if they were to take cocaine and hang out with junkies, then they too, could be slim and beautiful and earn millions of pounds every year? I believe it, to an extent and I’m as happy and content as they come.
Surely women can identify more with ‘Joe Bloggs’ than a celebrity. Rimmel recognised the public’s want for real women in their adverts, because in October 2010, they launched a competition to find a new star for the brand, a member of the public, not a celebrity. Following in suit of Dove’s Campaign for Real Women and Coleen Rooney’s popular TV show, but nothing has come to our screens as yet and I’m not too sure that we can anticipate this happening either. In Rimmel’s TV adverts, they ‘transmit highly redundant but also highly targeted communication.’ (Bennett 2008). The receiver expects to see a model/celebrity/pretty woman, hear popular music and be sold something in less than 30 seconds. By sticking to the expected formula and making messages more redundant, the more chance the message has in being accurately decoded and thus a sale, this simply gives real women not much of a chance.

Okay, so these models are drop-dead gorgeous but the adverts that they feature in are enhanced with ‘false eyelashes’, airbrushing and ‘hair extensions’. Two of Rimmels TV adverts have been banned by the Advertising Standards Agency, but there are many more still being aired that use-faked images. Women need to know that the looks they hope to achieve through buying these beauty products and copying their favourite celebs aren’t attainable by the celebrities and unfortunately not by us mere mortals either. The Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson, co-founder of the Campaign for Body Confidence, welcomed the ASA's latest ruling, saying: ‘The beauty industry has a long way to go in promoting honesty in the content of the pictures it uses, rather than presenting totally unachievable aspirations of beauty and faked images’.

The adverts have tag-lines such as ‘zero to sexy in seconds’, ‘the more you put on, the sexier you are’, ‘soft lips, hard world’ and ‘now party for longer’ to name just of the few which star Kate Moss. This sexy image seems to be a theme running throughout the adverts that often objectify women to the male gaze, although the products are for women. Through deconstruction, I believe that the adverts have been designed to put the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘male-gaze’ relegates women to the status of objects or props, ultimately what all celebrities are when endorsing a brand. If women know that femininity is just a construct, then they can play with its signs from a powerful position. In one of her adverts, Kate rides a motorbike through the Centre of London. A motorbike is traditionally a male product but Rimmel use this signifier to show the power of a beautiful female in the big city from a postfeminist perspective, celebrating the power of women regardless of men.

The customer is lured into a hyperreality and as Baudrillard suggests ‘the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world’, what is all the hype about London, and does the reality live up to the simulation. London is a tourist hot-spot, people come and go to take in the sights of Big Ben, Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, to name a few. The aforementioned are all featured in a number of Rimmel’s adverts, providing the audience with what they expect to see from London, who then forms a simulated view of the City. What Rimmel are trying to project is a true British brand, offering products to people who want to be in the in-group within this imagined community. Unfortunately, the simulation of London overrides the reality of London and the ‘big cat’ companies again fool the audience.

By marginalizing ‘The London Look’, Rimmel are able to appeal to a niche market, in my opinion, the ‘cool kids’. Characterised by their individuality and want not to be perceived as mainstream, doing so by playing with their body image to represent themselves in a different way to the rest. Rimmel’s website describes their products as being ‘designed to encourage experimentation and self-expression’, but their popular products, endorsed by popular celebrities and popular music to attain the popular ‘London Look’ send out a contrasting message. They may as well say, ‘buy our products and you too can be in our cool crowd’. This is pseudo individualization, Adorno’s term for the tendency of popular culture to seem to provide us with outlets for our individuality, which are really ‘pap’ for the masses.
Bernays’ argues that products should make people feel better about themselves by engaging with hidden and irrational emotions’, and media companies have worked with this idea when creating advertisements which ‘operate entirely at the level of feelings and emotions’ (Bennett 2008) Adverts invite the audience into a scenario that promotes a product and the lifestyle associated, an object of desire. The semic code is the code of connotations, which describes the situation. Here, often making the product more appealing by introducing a syntagm with an image of an attractive woman or man. This cultural product could be anything from a nail varnish to a car, but whatever it may be it is not a necessity and is thus a false need which brings ‘easy pleasures’ ‘through consumption of popular culture’ (Bennett 2008). Owning these items supposedly makes us happy but really, they are just tools used to represent ourselves they way we want to be perceived. It is a well known saying that ‘money can’t buy you happiness’, but in today's materialistic world, that phrase is tending to be proved otherwise. We as a nation have succumbed to the ideology that by having the newest phone, designer shoes and a pretty face we will be accepted by society and lead successful lives. Some agree, some don’t, but the general consensus of my peer group is that by having these commodities and supporting unknowingly a capitalist system, we at least fit in and I suppose that is what we all want, acceptance by somebody or a group.

Rimmel have launched a new marketing strategy called ‘Generation Y’ which will tap into the youth market arena featuring a variety of young models via print advertising and extensive online efforts, so here is to say that even Kate Moss has lost her appeal. A recent survey by Superdrug showed that ‘a third of women wear make-up every time they go out’, beauty in this case is very much on the outside, superficial and unforgiving. I ask the question, how long can our fixation with celebrities last and how much damage will it cause?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://store.aqa.org.uk/qual/gce/pdf/AQA-2625-W-TRB-OGA2KT.PDF http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/6602430/Kate-Moss-Nothing-tastes-as-good-as-skinny-feels.html http://www.nowmagazine.co.uk/blogs/beauty-buzz/503211/have-you-got-the-london-look-/1/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1346530/Make-agoraphobia-A-women-wouldn-t-dare-outside-make-on.html#ixzz1C95ogS4A http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/advertising/rimmel-is-given-a-lashing-over-claims-in-mascara-advert-2143079.html http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/when-will-i-be-famous?/3008024.article http://www.dbicelebrityindex.com/?page_id=2

2112 words (excluding titles and bibliography).