Tea Blog

From Hugh Jackman to the Beatles to “the Oprah,” famous faces are popping up related to tea. All this to get you to go ga-ga (or should I say “go Lady Gaga”?) over their tea and rush out to buy some (and inspire various tea accessories like these Beatles-themed ones). Good or bad, it seems to work, at least for awhile…until the next celebrity tea endorsement comes along. So here I present my good and bad reasons for these endorsements (and why you might want to ignore these endorsements).

3 Good Reasons

There must be something good in this marketing practice, because companies keep doing it over and over. So I put on my thinking cap and also did some online searching. Here are the results:

1. Gets a big splash of attention from customers.
2. That big splash very often results in a spike in sales.
3. The association of the brand with the celebrity continues in people’s minds for awhile past that initial big splash.

3 Bad Reasons

After awhile, I tend to go “ho-hum” when the latest celebrity tea endorsement is announced, such as the one a large coffee shop chain (that is now getting into tea big time) recently ballyhooed. But there are other bad reasons besides customer ennui. Here are the ones I came up with:

1. Implies that we should all drink the tea the celebrity is endorsing, with little or no information given about the actual quality and value of the tea product.
2. Encourages “celebrity worship” where we base our life choices on what these famous people like instead of on what we like.
3. The association of the brand with the celebrity continues in people’s minds for awhile past that initial big splash. (Yeah, this one can be both good and bad. If a celebrity like Lindsey Lohan is pictured with a bottle of ready-made tea in hand and has clearly been partying all night, that image will be linked with the tea.)

Feel free to add your own good or bad reasons for celebrity tea endorsements. Love ’em or hate ’em, I’m pretty sure they’re not going away any time soon.

See more of A.C. Cargill’s articles here.

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