FACING ADVERTISING REALITY: In Asia, celebrity advertising is widespread as consumers tend to take notice of such ads and product recall is likely to be higher, but there are pitfalls. Jo Bowman repor

In the United States, where there is a similar penchant for star-gazing, an estimated one-in-six advertisements uses a celebrity. Advertising industry veteran, Royce Yuen, who has done a doctoral thesis at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University on celebrities in advertising, says a similar figure would apply to Asia.

"By using a celebrity, it makes any brand or product stand out, and if a celebrity puts his name to a product people think it's of a certain quality, says Johnnie Doran, executive producer, Saville Productions, which matches celebrities with brands around the world.

"Consumers also tend to take more notice of celebrity ads and product recall tends to be higher. The recent campaigns we produced featuring Penelope Cruz for Lux in Japan have had some of the best product-recall results ever.

"Celebrities also help raise the profile of the company itself and bring with it a significant amount of cachet. It signals to potential customers and investors that the company is rich and important. This can also be a good way to attract better recruits to the company, Doran says.

With this in mind, advertisers around the region have signed up countless famous faces, both home-grown and international, to help boost sales.

Brad Pitt promotes jeans and canned coffee, Chinese diving sensation Fu Mingxia endorses Sprite as does Taiwan singers Elva Xiao and Alex To, Zhang Zhiyi of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, and Taiwan pop group F4 have promoted China computer giant, Founder. Richard Branson has helped sell Nissan cars, Sylvester Stallone has endorsed ham and Robert De Niro has done adverts for light bulbs in Japan.

"I think at the end of the day it comes down to the fact that if you use a celebrity, hopefully, it will convince people that this product is endorsed by the celebrity and, therefore, it's good, says Dick van Motman, D'Arcy's managing director for Southeast Asia, and client managing director for Procter & Gamble and Philips Asia-Pacific.

He says people who become celebrities in very populated Asian countries, such as China, Japan and India are deeply venerated, and advertisers can easily turn this adoration into dollars with a cash carrot for the celebrity.

In Europe and the US, meanwhile, celebrities are more cautious about the products they'll put their name to; many Hollywood stars who have done TV commercials in Japan do so on the promise that they won't be shown outside Japan.

So, do consumers really believe that the celebrity on their screen uses the product they're endorsing when the camera stops rolling?

"Yes and no, says Yuen. "It depends on the choice. For example, a lot of properties for sale in China use Hong Kong celebrities in their advertisements.

The consumers are quite clever, and they can understand that the advertiser is using a celebrity to express a particular message, he says.

"But if the celebrity is endorsing something like cosmetics and they're heavily involved with the brand, consumers may believe it, and if people believe the celebrity actually uses a product that's a big advantage."

The key to a successful celebrity campaign is, therefore, a good match between the values the brand wants to project, and the star chosen to front the ads.

But Eddie Booth, executive creative director and chairman of Leo Burnett Greater China, cautions that not all brands gain from celebrity endorsement, no matter who the celebrity is.

"The product has to have enough brand clout for it not to be overshadowed by the celebrity, he says, citing Sprite as one that's big enough to support celebrity advertising.

"But if you go and use it for a brand that nobody's heard of, people remember the celebrity but not the brand and that's really wasting money.

"In China, we've done surveys where people say 'I don't believe that the cele-brity actually shot that commercial' - they think it's a post-production trick - 'because the brand can't be big enough'. There's so little respect for the brand, and that's very detrimental.

"And, usually, the first (brand) in a category to use a celebrity wins out. When others in the same category follow suit you're bound to draw a comparison and that's a very, very stupid move because it really does scream 'me too', says Booth.

Choosing the right celebrity starts with finding someone the target market knows and identifies with. An ageing rocker, no matter how famous, will have no sway with teenagers, for instance. Yuen says three factors then come into play - the physical attractiveness of the star, their credibility, and their level of expertise in relation to the product.

For a cosmetics campaign, he says, beauty matters more. If it's a sports or technology product, then an athlete or someone perceived as being intelligent will carry more weight.

"Nike always use sports stars and sports stars actually wear the product. It's not just someone famous saying something nice about the product - they live with the product."

Doran says Penelope Cruz, with her olive skin and long, lustrous hair, was perfect to endorse shampoo in Asia. He also says it's vital to catch a celebrity before their career hits its peak and starts to decline. Saville, which devotes an entire division to discovering up-and-coming stars for endorsement, found Ricky Martin for Pepsi before he achieved his current superstar status.

Yuen says one of the best matches he has seen is Michael Jordan for Nike.

"It's perhaps one of the most outstanding examples because he's such a global figure. It doesn't only work in the US, it crosses borders and crosses cultures."

Van Motman likes the Apple computer campaign featuring actor Jeff Goldblum: "Jeff Goldblum embodies values that are closely related to Apple. He's a Hollywood star, but he's creative and a little bit different, not run-of-the-mill."

Everyone is coy on what makes a bad match, although there have been some high-profile embarrassments in which the link between brand and celebrity frontman has been revealed as rather weaker than the advertisers may have liked.

In Britain, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver became the face of Sainsbury's, then confessed that he didn't like supermarkets and preferred to buy produce for his restaurant from organic grocers and farmers. Tiger Woods, meanwhile, admitted he didn't use the Nike Precision Tour Accuracy brand of golf balls he was paid to endorse.

But in Asia, advertising chiefs say that what damages a celebrity campaign more often than a bad match is a dearth of creativity. Celebrities are often the only point of interest in an otherwise moribund commercial, and the same faces are recycled again and again.

"When you use celebrities it really does not mean you can't have a very clever twist or storyline, says Booth. "The best use of celebrities is when they're used not as themselves, but they act in creative storylines."

Doran agrees that celebrities should be weaved into an imaginative story, and even used to make a gentle joke at their own expense. He says it was a lost opportunity that Hugh Grant never endorsed a car brand as having more "head room", after his brush with the law in LA.

The other problem in Asia is that often it seems the same handful of celebrities is endorsing almost everything. In Hong Kong, for example, pop and film star Nicholas Tse is the public face of Coca-Cola, Rado watches, Bossini clothes and Panasonic, as well as a noodle brand, a travel agent, a fast-food outlet, a computer supplier and a satellite TV station.

"If a celebrity is used in too many categories it becomes a bit of a joke and raises the credibility question. People may aspire to be the celebrity, but at the back of their mind they think 'they don't really use this product', says Booth.

Doran says this is especially the case when a celebrity is not well enough established in their career. "Consumers will just think they're in it for the money, he says.

Of course, advertisers take a risk when they hook up with a star - getting not just the celebrity's public recognition, but also their high-profile and often precarious lifestyle - with the potential to taint the brands they endorse.

Take Nicholas Tse, for example, who recently wound up in court accused of allegedly allowing someone else to take the blame after crashing his Ferrari. Despite the controversy, however, Coke says that it will still be using Tse as one of its celebrity endorsers. But brands aren't always damaged when things go "wrong for a celebrity, and in some cases a high-profile incident, depending on its nature, may actually help.

In the case of Oliver and Sainsbury's, his comments fit with his cheeky persona and were probably what many consumers expected to hear.

Doran says any damage caused by a celebrity's brush with the law depends entirely on what the offence is. "In Hugh Grant's case, his offence raised his public stature rather than lowered it. It's very sensitive."

Booth observes: "Nike uses celebrity sports stars who are notoriously always getting into trouble, people like Eric Cantona and John McEnroe. Their appeal is an image of rebellion - if a sports star breaks certain rules it's 'cool'. If they're using drugs, you pull the ad."

Yuen says the same principle probably applies to Tse. "Perhaps, some of the brands pick him because he's got a rebellious image, and if that's the case then recent events don't do the brand any harm."

Of course, the brand-celebrity relationship can backfire on the celebrity too. Frenchmen are now joking that the reason their football team bombed out of the World Cup this year is that the players were all so busy shooting adverts in the lead-up to the tournament that they hardly had time to train. Ironically, when they were knocked out of the Cup in the first round, members of the French squad were dumped by many of the brands they had endorsed.

Van Motman says there is a danger of celebrity overkill in this part of the world.

"It's a quick way to get noticed and it's often used as an easy way out, but I think whether celebrities, to a large extent, make your brand depends on something other than a real brand essence, he says.

"Sometimes you have to wonder who is the brand - the celebrity or the brand itself?"

Booth says the root of the problem in Asia is not so much the celebrities, but the lack of imagination in the way they are used.

"In Asia, I think there's a tendency to overuse celebrities. But do I think using celebrities is wrong? No, it depends on how you use them and obviously what kind of product you use them for, he says.

But, like them or loathe them, celebrities' appeal to advertisers shows no sign of waning.

"Celebrity endorsement will continue because it's proved to be a successful way of advertising, says Doran. "These ads work. They raise the profile of a brand and I think it can be a happy marriage."