Was anyone else completely over the minute by minute updates of Paris Hilton's comings and going's over the new year period?
'Paris went to a BBQ'....'Paris arrived at the party at 11.15pm'....'Paris ate a lettuce leaf last night'.....'Paris went to the toilet'.
Her visit to Australia must have been extraordinary for her. She got paid somewhere in the vicinity of $100K to $600K depending on which trusted source you get your news from. She flew around in private planes, getting $5,000 worth of shopping vouchers everywhere she went, going to parties, all away from the Hollywood press. It feels like the winner out of this trip was.... well yes Paris.
So who brought her out here and footed the bill? And what did they get out of all of this?
After a small amount of research, it was Bongo Virus, the new social networking / entertainment / mobile site launched late last year. I wonder whether they'd be happy with what they got for their investment.
From what I can gather, she posed with their mascot at a press conference & she went to their new years eve party for a couple of hours at The Trademark in Kings Cross, after arriving almost 2 hours late (and spent a fair bit of that time in the toilet).
The major issue I see with this type of celebrity marketing is that when the star is so much bigger than the brand, the brand doesn't see the light of day. I might be wrong but I never heard Paris mention Bongo Virus once and the media went out of their way not to mention the endorsement in their coverage.
I did a lot of celebrity marketing when I was at Pepsi and it was interesting to track the effectiveness of the celebrity's impact on brand KPI's. The most effective celebrities were the ones that had relatively equal stature to the brand when they were signed or had a rapid rise to fame during the endorsement period. The 2 that worked best for us were Jennifer Hawkins (just after she won miss universe) and Guy Sebastion (we launched him the morning after he won Australian Idol). The 2 failures were Delta Goodrem and Beyonce Knowles.
Whilst Bongo Virus could probably produce a stack of paper with column inches and mentions, you kind've feel like Paris was the winner in all of this and we are all the losers as a result...
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