A Wren Says

Over the past couple days, I wrote about high profile celebrity endorsers and brand decisions when they fall into scandal. I did continue to do some digging about how brands choose their responses. (I found this article in the Harvard Business Review, When Scandal Engulfs a Celebrity Endorser, should you want to read more on the topic.)  Admittedly, I hid behind the banner of, “this is what brands think,” on purpose. But what do I think?

As a regular person, I don’t know what to think. I would like to think that it doesn’t really matter to me, that I make my own decisions and am not swayed in anyway by celebrity. Keep them or don’t I was(n’t) going to buy your product anyway.  But at the same time, it can be heartbreaker to see someone I respect act in disappointing ways or voice hurtful opinions. I can’t say that those thoughts won’t transfer to the brand, even though I know how at a higher level how this works from a marketing perspective.

In addition, I sometimes wonder whether a public dismissal is the best approach, on the human level. That is me looking beyond how an association with someone who falls from grace drags us down, too.  How do you best get people to be where they ought to be? Is it by dropping them completely or is there a way to work with those people. Who is walking with celebrities as they undergo rehab, serve prison sentences, or otherwise rebuild their public image? And who is doing it purely out of respect for the dignity of the person they are working with? Even if it is just behind the scenes?

I would love if I could wrap this all of neatly, but I am still thinking things through. I think there is a difference between someone making a very public mistake and someone showing a clear pattern of transgressions and intentionally different path. How do we support people, even very famous people, in both spaces?