Andy Lau: One celebrity spokesperson, three usage strategies

Exploring how Andy Lau became a model of brand spokesperson, this article deeply analyzes three celebrity endorsement strategies, provides new ideas for brand marketing, and is recommended for marketing professionals and brand strategy planners.

We often see various brands using celebrity spokespersons. Using celebrities is essentially to amplify the corresponding value of the product through the influence of celebrities. Products basically have only three types of value: functional value, experience value, and symbolic value.

For example, a car can take you from home to work, which is the most basic functional value; its appearance design is good-looking and its acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h is fast, which is the experience value; its logo makes you feel very proud and like an upper-class person, which is the symbolic value. The difficulty lies in how to cleverly integrate the value of celebrities into the value of products, make good use of celebrity resources and enhance the influence of products, and form a nearly perfect fit like a mortise and tenon structure without dislocation or waste?

for example:

• Some products that should appeal to functional value only use celebrity images;
• Some are known for their experience value, but they only use the traffic of celebrities;
• Some have very high premiums and it’s obvious that they are selling for symbolic value, but they only use the celebrity’s looks.

Recently I saw an advertisement of Andy Lau endorsing Audi A8L, which reminded me of several brands he endorsed, ranging from ordinary fast-moving consumer goods costing dozens of yuan, to high-end technology products costing more than ten thousand yuan, to luxury goods worth millions. I think Andy Lau was used very well in all of them and it has certain reference value.

1. How to use fast-moving consumer goods?

Andy Lau x Head & Shoulders: Using celebrity expertise to endorse product value

As far as I can remember, Head & Shoulders has been promoting "dandruff removal". Decades later, its main function is still dandruff removal, and it is as stubborn as dandruff can be. But now the brand has been upgraded to care for the scalp, and the advertising slogan has also changed from "The best dandruff remover, of course Head & Shoulders" when I was a child to "Dandruff removal and scalp care, of course Head & Shoulders" . For such an advertisement that appeals to the functional value of the product, a 15-second TVC is the most appropriate, but the embarrassing thing is that now there is no place to place such TV advertisements except Focus Media.

If you put it on a social platform, it will be swiped away in half a second. Head & Shoulders is very smart. Andy Lau is an excellent and dedicated actor. If you want to use him, use his expertise and his most serious side in filming to endorse the functional value of Head & Shoulders' products.

Head & Shoulders used a play-within-a-play approach to film his working process of shooting an advertisement into a three-minute-long advertisement. Andy Lau communicated with the director, staff and brand owners, and repeated the functional value of Head & Shoulders products (dandruff removal and scalp care) more than a dozen times. This advertisement was more than ten times more attractive than a hard advertisement, and it was very interesting. Putting such an advertisement on a social platform would not be inferior to competing for attention with various entertainment contents, and the audience would also like to see it.

Its accompanying outdoor advertising is also quite interesting. Contrary to the conventional big-headed images of celebrities, the large-character posters present the functional value of the product, making Andy Lau a small supporting role, and noting that it was Andy Lau who ordered this arrangement, giving it a sense of "I'm just a hard-core advertiser, what can you do to me?"

2. How to use high-end products?

Andy Lau x Huawei Extraordinary Master: Using celebrity achievements to endorse product experience value

ULTIMATE DESIGN is Huawei's high-end flagship mobile phone and the top RS of the Mate series. For a mobile phone that costs more than 10,000 yuan, its configuration must be top-notch. It is meaningless to use a spokesperson to talk about the functional value of the product. Mobile phones at this price point are more about the experience beyond the phone, that is, the experience value of the product, the ultimate aesthetics, the ultimate craftsmanship, and the ultimate innovation. And the ultimate of this experience is ULTIMATE DESIGN. What better endorsement of such an ultimate product than the achievements of a master actor?

Therefore, in the advertisement, Andy Lau tells how he pursues perfection and extraordinary things, and how he stands at a height rarely seen by others and walks at the forefront of the times together with the masters he respects. In such a story of a master craftsman working without leaving any trace, the master level reached by the product is quietly tied to Andy Lau's master achievement.

3. How to use luxury goods?

Andy Lau x Audi A8L: Using celebrity opinions to represent product symbolic value As a top luxury car, what is the most important thing? To have your own luxury opinion. I don't know if you have noticed that after the rapid rise of domestic electric cars, many of them are priced on par with BBA, but if you don't look at the car logo, you can't tell who is who. There is no design language of its own, and no clear luxury attitude. Domestic cars are moving too fast.

Audi's luxury car view is also the theme of Andy Lau's 2024 mid-year speech: How to waste time correctly. There is no better form of advertising than a speech to express opinions. Why "waste time"? Because some things can't be rushed, just like Andy Lau spent 20 years to win a film award, just like Audi spent a hundred years to carve out its own luxury language.

When everyone was rushing to the top of the mountain, the leader who had seen the scenery on the top of the mountain smiled slightly, stepped on the accelerator lightly, and went down Nanshan Mountain leisurely. I wonder if you have noticed another detail. In addition to the A8L spokesperson, Andy Lau also signed a "Member of Audi Elite Club". This is to treat the spokesperson as one of his own people, and also to hint to the audience that the users of Audi A8L are in the same circle as Andy Lau, and the symbolic value of the product is self-evident.

To properly use a spokesperson, one needs to determine where the product value lies. If one connects the functional value, experience value, and symbolic value of a product to draw an upward curve, the lower the point, the more consumers value the basic value of the product; the higher the point, the greater the premium space for the product, and the more consumers value the resonance of aesthetics and values.

Author: Chen Wuyong; Source public account: Chen Wuyong (ID: 1087819)