The perils of celebrity endorsement

English: Stephen Hawking giving a lecture for NASA’s 50th anniversary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Intel must have thought it was onto a winner. Invest in building a new system to help Professor Stephen Hawking to speak, and not only does it get lots of media coverage (to help a good cause of course), but it also put one over on arch rival ARM by linking itself with Cambridge’s most famous living scientist.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite turned out like that. Headlines are dominated by Professor Hawking airing his worries that mankind will be threatened by the rise of artificial intelligence, with the machines (which Intel obviously makes the chips for) posing a threat to our very existence.

It isn’t the first time a big brand has been caught out by its chosen celebrity undermining its carefully thought out plans. Here’s another five that a quick Google search turned up:

1. Samsung and LeBron James
American basketball player LeBron James was unveiled as the face of the Samsung Galaxy Note III phone amid much fa

nfare. All was going well until he tweeted to his 12 million followers that his phone had just erased all his data and rebooted itself – hardly the message of reliability that Samsung was looking for.

2. Motorola and David Beckham
Another classic issue is a celebrity being caught using a competitor’s product. Sticking with sports stars, footballer Ronaldinho signed a lucrative deal with Coke – and was then caught on camera sipping from a can of Pepsi at a press conference. Not to be outdone, David Beckham lent his celebrity status to Motorola’s £14,000 Aura mobile phone, only to be snapped by paparazzi with an iPhone in his hand. He later claimed he’d been ‘holding it for a friend’.

3. Microsoft and Oprah Winfrey
At least Becks had an attempt at an excuse, unlike Oprah Winfrey. Paid to endorse Microsoft’s Surface tablet, she sent out a tweet extolling its virtues. Trouble was every tweet has the program and platform it was sent from automatically added on the bottom. So “Gotta say love that SURFACE!” was appended by the unfortunate words “sent via Twitter for iPad.”

4. Bacardi and Vinnie Jones
Ex-footballer and professional hardman Vinnie Jones was always a risky choice for an alcohol brand, as Bacardi found out to its cost. After using him as the face of the rum, he had to be hastily removed after he was convicted of a drunken assault on a flight from Heathrow to Tokyo. On a similar, but less dramatic note, car insurer Churchill dropped actor Martin Clunes after he lost his driving licence for speeding. Clunes may have complained, but he should have done his homework – previous star of the ads Vic Reeves was sacked after losing his licence for drink driving.

5. Yardley and Helena Bonham Carter
Perhaps the best example of a brand not doing its homework (and for sheer star insouciance) comes from actress Helena Bonham Carter. Chosen as the face of Yardley cosmetics she admitted in an interview that she rarely wore makeup and couldn’t understand why the brand had chosen her. The deal ended soon after.

All of this puts Professor Hawking (and Intel) in rather exalted company – demonstrating the perils of the celebrity endorsement, no matter how highbrow the name involved actually is.