With nowhere to go but up in the luxury automobile market, Infiniti is embarking upon an agency review. Brand building is an exciting endeavor for agencies and creative teams are chomping at the bit for this opportunity. There are many strategies that Infiniti and its agency of choice can employ in this quest to establish a unique brand position in the consumer’s mind.
Allyson Witerspoon, Infiniti USA’s Director of Marketing, commented on the desire to find a pop culture “influencer” in an attempt to recapture Infiniti’s successful use of Jonathan Pryce in the 1990s. Infiniti has experienced the value that a celebrity influencer or spokesperson can provide as a brand linked equity (BLE). The deliberate development and nurturing of BLEs can strengthen the ROI by dramatically improving the odds that consumers in your target audience will engage with your advertising and link it to your brand. One celebrity benefit that could be of considerable interest to Infiniti as it further defines its image, is that the personality of the celebrity has the ability to transfer onto the brand being advertised. This image transfer is far more likely to happen if you use the same celebrity over time. Which – if they select their spokesperson wisely – could help them to position the brand in a manner that makes it stand apart from the competitive set.
But even some one-time uses of celebrities have proved successful for auto brands. In general, celebrities have shown mixed results in their ability to persuade consumers in a single execution, but a notable exception appears to be automotive Super Bowl commercials. An analysis of the performance of 2014 Super Bowl auto commercials with celebrities versus non-celebrity car ads, reveals that celebrities boosted brand linkage by 33%, branded engagement by nearly 60%, and the chances of persuasion were more than five times greater for celebrity commercials. Perhaps Infiniti will go the route of a celebrity “influencer” and take them for a spin for the 2015 Super Bowl?
