Celebrity sells
In November I saw Max Clifford speak.
When the audience was called to ask questions it invariably was: “How do I promote my charity or good cause?” The answer invariably was, from Max: “Use a celebrity.”
Well this is all well and good for charities, but try using a celebrity to promote your push to handle capital gains tax for an accountancy company or use SEO for an e-commerce agency – you cannot use celebrity for everything, indeed most things. And even if we could get Mylene to promote CGT it would cost. Perhaps we would use Boris Johnson or Sacha Baron Cohen anyway – lend a bit of intellectual clout and humour hey?
Last week though I was helping promote Reds In Business: business networking for football fans.
Duncan Drasdo who heads the Manchester United Supporters Trust came up with a simple but potentially attractive concept. The media loved it!
A few years ago I was doing the PR for Mark Greenwood who runs Networking4Business, business people along the M62 might recognise the Simply Networking brand.
I had a lot of success: NW Business Insider, Entrepreneur NW, Liverpool Daily Post, South Manchester Reporter, The Metro (national) and so on. But as a subject, after a wave of journalistic enthusiasm, it lost its interest among the media community. There were further opportunities that resulted in good coverage, but you had to work much harder.
So my point, eventually, is an association with Manchester United (Duncan runs the Manchester United Supporters Trust) and football has resulted in a great deal of media interest and coverage. Celebrity (in this case a football club rather than a person) really sells in the media.
A couple of small plugs:
Mark Greenwood is very active with his networking meetings, still going strong after five years.
Wigan FC has a networking event when it meets City on the 18th October. Shaun Petafi of Wigan can give more details 01942 770448 or click through.
In addition to the above I go networking at Manchester Business Breakfast Club. We do not play football or watch as a group, but we are looking for members, football fans or not.
Tags: celebrity, football, networking