Is it just me, or was this a crazy moment in marketing?
So, I was at Brian Lara’s fete two Sunday ago.
Clearly this was a Bmobile jam with plenty opportunities for the telecommunication firm to push their brand to a very targeted audience.
And why not?
TSTT sponsors cricket's sensation, Brian Lara, in a major way. The party was at his lavish home that perches on a hill. If I was Bmobile and TSTT I would jump all over this opportunity.
And they did.
At the fete there was a constant stream of BMobile advertisements featuring the full range of spokespersons befitting the occasion: Machel, Shurwayne, and Lara.
Partygoers waved their lime green sticks and there were loads of gorgeous women who adorned their equally gorgeous dresses with necklaces that beamed Bmobile pendants iridescently through the night.
Perfect? Not quite.
The situation I found perplexing was when Destra took to the stage.
The uncrowned queen of soca is sponsored by Digicel, TSTT's and Bmobile’s competitor and arch rival for the souls and wallets of this audience who clearly are all highly networked.
Destra took to the stage first in her gold hot pants, multicoloured braids, skyscraper eyelashes and a clear sexually charged attitude. She was in a mood for bacchanal.
"Hold up", she instructs her band, asking them to lower the decibels of their music as she addresses the crowd.
“I know some ah all yuh feel that because I on stage, that yuh cah wave what yuh have in yuh hands because all yuh go get me vex."
The crowds roars.
"But don’t worry, all yuh could wave yuh rags…. We are friends, we are friends. So right now, I want all yuh to put up whatever yuh have in yuh hands, yuh rags, yuh flags and jump, jump….. this is bacchanal in the streets. ”
Destra proceeds to move the masses to jump to her sensational road song with their Bmobile light sticks and handkerchiefs in the air.
Is it just me? Or was that a crazy moment in marketing?
Three things:
• Destra is Digicel’s spokesperson.
• Digicel and TSTT's Bmobile are not friends, far from it.
• This was clearly a Bmobile's fete. Brian's Lara is their spokesperson.
Clearly, I have no insider information into Destra's contracts etc.
But as brand custodians, do you feel there is something just a bit off here?
Should a spokesperson of a competitor's brand drive the masses to endorse a product even in a covert flag and rag waving way.
Should there be restrictions on how spokesperson's interact with a competitor's brand even in the wine and jump ways of the tremendous marketing opportunities that define our Carnival.
Heck, in Trinidad’s laissez faire Carnival culture should brand custodians even care?
http://www.mangomediacaribbean.com/blog/trackback.cfm?C6A69B9B-3048-2D03-0A14ECB784F5F1F4
Judette Coward Puglisi (MSc, Dip IR, BA), Managing Director. Find out more 
Understandably, given the nature of our Carnival, the job of our artistes, and the small environment in which we operate (it comes down to people waving Bmobile/ Digicel flags etc when a sponsor of the other band is performing) can we tell a performer to keep saying Digicel during the performance? I mean she how would the crowd take it if she told people to get something other than the glow stick/ rag/ whatever it is to wave. That might have killed people's vibes. Secondly, what's the nature of her contract? And to what point is it an endorsers job to get into the competitive relationship between the brands. We all know that the Bmobile/ Digicel relationship is quite a competitive one. Remember the tit for tat ads. I know the media houses love it; it's a cash cow.
I'm sure that at that point in time Destra was not thinking from a marketer's perspective. Yeah she could have "big up" the "bigger, better network" but maybe she thought she might have looked as if she was aggressively dissin bmobile? I don't know. Maybe she also thought at that point in time that she didn't have to incorporate a Digicel chant in her performance. From her statement, I figure the way she saw it was, she acknowledges that she's a Digi endorser, that it's a clearly bmobile sponsored event at the home of a bmobile endorser, and that you know what Carnival, jumping, wining etc have nuttin to do with market competition and which network is better.
But certainly for Carnival, the question has to be asked how far should we go re dictating how our endorsers should conduct their performances? Devil's advocate here: From a purist (non-marketing perspective) should we even bother?
If you are representing a brand then do just that..it might sound harsh but i honestly feel that Destra would have had prior knowledge that the sole sponsor and endorser of this event was/is BMOBILE.. i know that! I cannot recall and forgive me if i am wrong..please correct me as well, ever seeing any of the BMOBILE artistes performing @ DIGICEL events...Maybe I am wrong..but that is not the case @ hand..
I strongly believe that if you are representing a brand you should do so 100% and not occasionally..you have to believe in the brand and be the brand, the brand becomes your life almost..So i strongly feel that no artiste or endorsed person should be on any forum where the title holder or sponsor is the competitor...totally unethical..
One has to be loyal to the brand!
It was just completely surreal to me because even though this was Brian Lara's fete, it was, for all intents and purposes a Bmobile fete.
Destra urging the crowd to wave Bmobile's branded paraphernalia was an endorsement of her competitor's brand. Lock. Stock. And barrel. Nowhere in the world of clebrity endorsemt can or should that happen. Does Micheal Jordan endorse the Jockey brand.? Nope Hanes would cut that contract immediately. Does Micheal Phelps support Post cereal? What would Kellogs have said? This is in Phelps pre-bong days.
Perhaps it ought to begin at contract level. Maybe a clause that states that the two brands and their spokespersons can co-exist in one space (by this I mean fete) provided that there is plenty opportunities for both organisation's collateral to share the spotlight in equal measure.
When a party is hosted by one company exclusively, there is only one role for the competitor's spokesperson: to show up as a guest.
If that means a performance fee needs to be paid for a missed opportunity, then so be it.
Maybe, its just time for Destra to have her own fete (I'd be the first to get a ticket) with Digicel's support.
So yeah we can pay for a missed performance, as long as it isn't too frequent, then that takes away from the artiste and their mileage.
However, subsequent to those rumours and the ... Read morerelease of his song "Antz" with a line stating "follow the TRIBE" I was told that because of his contractual obligations to Bmobile he had to remain with Island People. One only knows how true this was but Machel and his entourage were seen "liming" in TRIBE for part of Carnival Monday but performed with Island People on Tuesday.
Also, one of my friends works with Bomible and plays with TRIBE and told me a story of a TRIBE official asking them to put away their Bmobile paraphernalia (rags, cups etc) on the road Carnival Tuesday!
Being Trinis they ignored the request!
What Brian wants, Brian gets. And Brian clearly wanted Destra. She has always performed at this fete, at least for as long as I have been attending.
In any event I would have thought TSTT had a bigger issue to consider; Machel Montano's outburst at his concert against fellow Bmobile endorser Sherwayne Winchester should at least have raised some concerns at the corporate office as to whether Mr. HD is theright spokesperson for the brand. The Bmobile brand already enjoys a love hate relationship in TT without Machel making it seem more cantankerous.
In "real" countries where a company's brand is as alive and valued as its employees or customers, Mr Machel would not have lasted five minutes on the Bmobile bandwagon after that behaviour.
Going back to your original post, Judette, it might bea lack of udrstanding on the part of the endorsee, but I want to think that if contracts were followed to a "T", as we say, the female performer would not have even appeared on that stage! Go easy on her...in that scenario, she was clearly outnumbered and to ease the "pressure" she probably felt that she had to address it up front before getting into d bacchanal.
Thanks for holding up a mirror...Did no one really think for a minute, as the once popular song by Ronnie Mc Intosh said,
" HOW IT GO LOOK???"
At the end of the day, I don't think we really give two hoots about who sponsors who but rather are swayed by services relevant to our individual needs or desires and how well these are addressed.
Joseann we'll have to agree to disagree. I do think people give two hoots.
When I studied in Boston I did a heap of research into how celebrity endorsers positively impact consumer attitudes towards product and the associated brand, consumers’ purchase intention. I can send you some references if you like but substantial research on the topic, suggests celebrity endorsement may materially improve financial returns for companies that employ them in their advertising campaigns.
If we don't care two hoots then at least the brand managers should.
My friend, Wynell Gregorio over at CLICO, (she's a brand purist) said something that I never even thought of in this whole discussion. Destra was placed in a super mighty position with a competitor's brand.
What if Destra didn't encourage people to jump and wave their BMobile rags? What if she said: " All yuh know I representing Digicel, and I want all yuh to throw dem rags down, yeah ! Throw down dem rags and when you do I want yuh to mash dem into the ground real good...."
What do you think the bachanal crowd would have done then?
so i'll write this out one more gain!!
the point i was battling modern technology to post was, endorsed professionals face this type of situation often. i want to submit the example of michael jordan when he was in the 1992 olympics. reebok sponsored the dream team's warm up uniforms. at first, micheal went on record saying that he would not appear to receive the gold medal because of that conflict. however, he ended up wearing the reebok warm up track suit BUT hung an american flag over his shoulder covering the logo. none of the pictures ever showed michael displaying the reebok logo.
"I feel very strongly abut loyalty to my own company." is what he said about it.
i think destra could have thought about it a little more and come up with something.
What you expected to be marketed is not what was actually marketed. What
was marketed was celebrity, carnival and alcohol. In fact, it was a
sponsored event.....a carnival fete.
The subliminal - some may even say overt - winners in thye area of marketing
were celebrity, carnival and alcohol.
Had Destra gone up on stage and bad-talked the host she would have done more harm than good, particularly to her own personal brand which, at the end of the day, is the only thing she owns outright – sponsor come, sponsor go. And it would probably have done more to turn off the crowd, many of whom would probably have been embarrassed to follow any instructions to stomp on the bmobile paraphernalia. It would have also embarrassed the real host and the real big brand – Brian Lara. Any such action would have made both Destra and Digicel look childish and churlish.
Should she have performed in the first place? If she has been doing it for years and this is what patrons have come to expect, then – yes - because the other thing Trinis don’t like is a corporation intruding so as to dictate their entertainment. Start your own thing by all means with your own line-up, but if it is an established event you need to make a practical a practical assessment of just how big is your brand.