What do Cheryl Cole and Peppa Pig Have in Common?

Cheryl Cole's
New Bum

Firstly, sincere apologies to all of you out there who have missed hearing my marketing meanderings over the past few months. I have been crazy busy (no excuse I know), but I am back on the blog now and those queuing outside my door can head off home and start reading.  So, what do Cheryl Cole and Peppa Pig have in common then? No, they do not both share the same bum tattoo artist. The answer is they both get paid obscene amounts of money to promote brands to a target consumer audience. 

We all know that celebrity endorsement works, right? Certain consumers, whether they admit it or not, will be influenced when they see Brad Pitt endorsing Channel No. 5, David Beckham sporting the latest Armani budgie smugglers or Cheryl Cole uttering the words “because you’re worth it”. (I wonder would there be any room left on Cheryl's bum for a L'Oréal logo tattoo?)

Well this week, while doing the grocery shopping, I came across a real-life example proving celebrity endorsements are alive and kicking in marketing to four-year-olds as well as those a little older. This eureka moment occurred when we got to the TESCO aisle containing the spaghetti hoops (one of their 5-a-day apparently). My little genius didn’t rationally say; “It doesn’t matter to me mammy if I have the TESCO own-brand or the Heinz product, sure they’re all the same”. No, he incessantly requested the Heinz product until he sufficiently influenced us 'decision-makers' into making the right purchase. What was the difference between the two near identical products?  The difference was my four year old son's feelings for a young farrow with a cute little snout and strange squeaky accent (no, not Cheryl, the other one).  Peppa Pig. And that got me thinking; apart from the obvious ‘parental yielding’ that was taking place (in other words, anything for a quiet life), from a consumer behaviour theoretical viewpoint, what was going on here?

Well, the clever marketers at Heinz have obviously heard of Heider’s Balance Theory (developed in 1958, believe it-or-not, well before Peppa was even born), which considers relations among elements a person might perceive as belonging together. The perspective (the perceiver’s subjective point-of-view) involves relations between three elements resulting in an attitude structure called a triad.  Each triad contains (1) a person and their perceptions, (2) an attitude objective, and (3) some other person or object. The perceptions between each can be positive or negative, but the theory specifies that the triad must be balanced to be effective in formulating consumer attitudes. So, what would my little fella's triad have looked like for the two alternative products? Because of his positive perception of spaghetti hoops and his positive perception of Peppa Pig, the product that featured both resulted in his positive perception of it, meaning the Heinz product won. 

And so it is, for four year old and forty-four year old consumers, celebrity endorsement works. You just have to find out who your target consumer is into or who they aspire to be like. Not that my little genius aspires to be like Peppa Pig (at least I hope not), but you know what I mean.