41 GOOD LUCK’S BAD LUCK

Eleanor Roosevelt had a most impressive CV. She was First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, supporting her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal policies.

After her husband’s death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an internationally prominent author, speaker, politician and activist. She worked tirelessly to enhance the status of working women, though she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.

She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 to 1952, a role in which she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Truman called her the “First Lady of the World”, in tribute to her human rights achievements.

So when this colossus of a woman was asked to endorse a brand, you might have thought that nothing could go wrong. Unfortunately for all concerned, it wasn’t her finest hour.

In a TV commercial for Good Luck Margarine, she told viewers that: “The new Good Luck margarine really tastes delicious”. She was paid the then handsome fee of $35,000 for her troubles. Sadly, the results weren’t great for either the company or herself.

Looking back on it, she said with her normal forthright honesty and wit, that she had received a postbag full of letters in which “one half was sad because I’d damaged my reputation; the other half was happy because I’d damaged my reputation”.

And the moral is that celebrity-based advertising affects both the celebrity and the brand. If you use a celebrity, will they add value both to your proposition and to their own?