How to pitch your product to celebrities
I once got a celeb to wear my client’s bunny slippers on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. How did I do that?
Photo from fOTOGLIF
First of all, pick someone that’s not an A-lister like Angelina Jolie or Matt Damon. Sure, it would be nice for them to wear your shirt in Us Weekly, but that’s probably only going to happen if you’re really lucky, or if you are besties with their stylist. Try for celebrities that have something to do with your product…Earth Mama Angel Baby sent their stretch mark oil to all the pregnant celebs they knew of…another motivational coach sent her book to all the celebrities that were going through divorces….we sent bunny slippers to celebs who were big runners, or dancers or had something where their feet HURT. Be creative!
To find these people, send the gift to their publicist, or agent. You can find the right contacts at www.whorepresents.com If you’re serious about this, it’s worth the subscription. Hit up the publicist first. Or you can send it to them at the production company of their show. DO NOT buy the lists of personal addresses. Even if they’re right (which most often they’re not) it is creepy for celebs to get things at home. Don’t be a stalker, use the proper channels.
On occasion you may get a note back with a thank you. You may never heard anything again. But if you’re lucky, you may all of a sudden hear that they wore something of yours in public, or they may order more product. But remember…its one thing to get them to use your product. That does you no good unless everyone knows about it. So what do you do next?
First of all, do a press release! Don’t imply that the celebrity has endorsed your product, use the “as seen in..” angle. Just state the facts. Simple fact. If you’re not sure, call their publicist and ask if what you’re doing is okay. You’ll get much farther that way. (And by the way ALWAYS address the celeb as MR. or MS. Do not use first names!!) Here’s an example of a press release we did a couple years ago after Joey Fatone wore the bunny slippers on Dancing with the Stars. Put the release on your website or better yet, if it gets picked up by media plug your placements like crazy on your site.
Then, tweet it, FB it, put comments in every celebrity forum you can find. Put it in a comment after a celeb story on Perezhilton.com or eonline.com Blast it out wherever you can!
For more great tips this topic, here’s an article in Smart Money’s Small Business I was interviewed for a couple years ago. Also, share your own successes, and how you did it, here too!
Tags: Bonnie Harris, Branding, celebrity, celebrity product placements, getting celebrity to wear your product, pitching product to celebrity, Public Relations
June 24th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Good call on pitching products… I believe celebs have so much thrown at them it is utmost important to be respectful.
Have you thought about how to pitch services to celebrities? Since you can not simply get a sample in front of them, how do you offer your service?
June 24th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Houston, obviously it depends on what the service is. If it’s something that can be offered to a movie set on location, they often jump at that. Or I know a pilates trainer who trains Sting when he’s here on tour. She sent out a note to several music publicists offering her services when their clients were in town.
If it’s a home service, or something like that, my recommendation is to get to know the people that influence celebs. Those are usually stylists, trainers, makeup artists, etc. Maybe you can introduce what you do to them, and they’ll recommend it.
In a nutshell, go to the places they’re working, or get to know their “people.” And of course, you can always call the publicist or agent and nicely offer some complementary time. Keep in mind though – celebs ALWAYS expect a discount or to get it for free.
June 25th, 2010 at 4:40 am
Excellent post.
I guess the trick though is to market the product to the celeb at the beginning so as not too obvious this is a PR stunt you’re pulling. Something relevant will probably go some way to that I guess. Nice ideas though.
June 26th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Aha! Something interesting to know about product marketing! Valuable advice. Thank you for sharing. I would like to add something more…Apart from PR, businesses can take an advantages of writing nice articles about their products and submit the same to nice article directories like Ezinearticles or goarticles. What do you think?
Love & Peace,
Jenny
June 27th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
There’s some good info there. I would agree that the best way to go about getting a celebrity to wear a product would be to go through the proper channels and build a good relationship with the publicist. Then if he/she is happy with the way in which you’ve presented yourself and product he may encourage other celebrities to also wear it.
June 27th, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Great post! I guess I always thought that getting a hold of celebrities would be next to impossible. But I checked out the http://www.whorepresents.com site and did a search for some random celebrities…very cool indeed!
June 28th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
It would take a lot of creativity to compete with other companies trying to pick up celebrities. That was a great idea with the slippers and a good example of a press release. I mostly tend to notice what phone a celebrity uses or sunglasses.
June 29th, 2010 at 5:27 am
Celebrities are one of the most toughest customers to pitch for your product or service. In order to get through to them, one has to roll in the most appropriate of networks and use the right means.Persuading them without sounding desperate is the key. Convincing their publicist that you are genuine is almost half the work done. Great post.
June 29th, 2010 at 6:07 am
“Persuading them without sounding desperate” that’s SUCH a great point. So many pp actually beg its sad. I would add too that persuading them without sounding like a groupie or awestruck fan/potential stalker is really important too. Some people get one little opening and then they won’t leave their contact alone. All goes back to being respectful and professional.
July 8th, 2010 at 3:19 am
whorepresents.com… that is a most unfortunate URL, as I did really wonder what I was going to find clicking through to a site that I believed to be called Whore Presents …!
July 8th, 2010 at 4:58 am
Lol that’s what several of the publicists call it!
October 8th, 2010 at 1:27 am
Not sure I get this, but good job either way.