The best spokesperson for a product is the person who has used the product and genuinely believes that consumers can benefit by using it. The magic is getting the spokesperson to convey the “believability” to an audience, be it online, television, radio or print. We were privileged to be a part of several campaigns with terrific spokespersons who believed in what they were selling, including one that featured one of the top grossing products of all time.
George Foreman’s pleasure in food was well established. Since 1989, when he launched his comeback into the boxing ring, he had become the spokesperson for many companies, including McDonald’s. When he became the oldest boxer to win the heavyweight title, he admitted that his training table meals consisted mainly of hamburgers. The idea that this former heavyweight champion boxer might be getting to “that” stage in life where it became important to get interested in healthy cooking made him credible on the subject.
The reason George Foreman was so perfect for the grill was that viewers coupled Foreman’s status, age, and want to eat better with the health lifestyle benefits of the grill. The clincher was his now-famous line at that end of every segment. He would make a fist and throw a short, right-cross punch and say “it knocks out the fat”! That became his signature line and movement.
Foreman became the brand because the connection between the grill and him was plausible. He surpassed his own celebrity status as a boxer to become the believable, guy-next-door, cooking a satisfying healthy meal on a Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. More importantly, he turned out to be a great down-to-earth guy with a huge heart and great sense of humor.
Successful celebrity branding transfers the value of the person to the product he or she endorses. Because George was considered a solid citizen who was known to enjoy his food and pack a punch of personality, he made a perfect spokesperson for a kitchen “must have.” His age and past experience as a finely tuned athlete helped to make him the perfect spokesperson of the special innovations of Salton’s fat reducing grill.
In our first version of the show, we included lots of footage of George boxing to re-connect the viewer with his amazing accomplishment, the title fight. We learned however, that our female audience was not engaging with the boxing footage, they frankly just didn’t like it. We learned that the viewer knew who George was without having to re-connect him to his boxing matches. By simply removing the boxing footage and letting George be George in front of a live audience, we received much better results. Even though the grill was both new and different and was a truly useful product, we needed to let the world see that George had a great personality that matched it.
Barb Westfield, the former Salton vice president for brand development who was lured away in 2002 to become the senior vice president of consumer marketing for Wolfgang Puck Worldwide Inc., was responsible for rolling out dozens of hotplates, ice cream systems, espresso machines, juice squeezers and bread makers. Barb supplied a wonderful story about the extent of coupling George Foreman with that grill.
“I had to meet George at the airport in Seattle,” Westfield recalled. “It was 2001, and he was flying in from Houston. As we were walking through the airport, a high school baseball team – all young boys – saw George Foreman as we were passing them. Suddenly, all these young kids yelled out in unison: ‘It’s the Lean Mean Grilling Machine!’
“Clearly, there was a big age difference. George brought a big recognition factor across a wide age demographic. George could connect with young and old.”
There’s no doubt the Salton and George Foreman collaboration has been studied closely by others hoping to achieve a perfect endorsement match. Brand strategists and ad execs search constantly to find celebrities or athletes that might actually use their brand products in their day to day life. Players can’t just carry a tote with a logo on it in front of the cameras on game days. That kind of “endorsement” no longer works.
R. Cesari
